1.

My love affair with words, begins with me, hiding out in my family home’s bathroom in Zimbabwe, reading a dictionary and finding so much joy in picking random words and getting to understand what that word means. I was in the bathroom because that was the only place I had privacy, the joys of a big family. My mother is a retired high school English teacher. She taught English and English literature, and that love of words came from her. How words can sometimes be the conduit or the magic spells I use to weave in some pretty awesome things in my imagination.

I was that kid that some people thought was aloof or always in my head because I can be really introspective. It was just the love affair I had with words. That’s what I choose to believe anyway. All the wise teachers that have walked this earth have tried to teach us the importance of words and you can build worlds from the things you say. They can become anything and everything, one thing and all the things, just like us- humanity. We are both simple and yet complex and with everything going on globally, words, as much as others may no longer honor their power anymore, are crucial now more than ever.

A teacher of mine in kindergarten described me as having the ability to take complex concepts and ideas and dwindling them down to simple ideas. Now I know that was kindergarten, but I kept that skill y’all. I didn’t understand that I enjoyed the simple and the complex until I started being a confidant to a lot of the people in my life, the majority of their compliments seemed to say the same thing as my kindergarten teacher and I also didn’t realize that my love of literature and of playing and using my imagination had everything to do with what is both simple and what is complex.

I love existing bigness of that kind of power, a power that allows me to oscillate between what is powerfully simple and uniquely complex, that’s what words are to me. 

2.

In this blog, I am choosing to have open dialogues that kind of sound like an audio book/book club discussion and a podcast mixed together. The topics will range from the spiritual to the intellectual, and maybe the occasional social commentary but I will be highly selective regarding that part.

There is always a chance that we could get sucked in the vortex of judgment and criticism. All things considered; on this channel I want to use my words economically with a splash of flamboyance. I may chang my mind about what I just said but that is also the point. I hope you join me in enjoying expressing a complete thought, not because of the desire to be liked, or even understood but because it feels good to express a complete thought or feeling without it being about proving yourself to anyone. And I am not talking about being an a-hole either. This is about the mere joy of talking, hoping another human will receive what I say, and we engage in dialogue, not destruction. Since this is my first video, please bear with me as I learn how to do this YouTube channel loveliness, pacing myself here. 

I am going to start with my first story/thought for this video, it also happens to be about pacing actually so here it goes. My Mhamha (mother) used to walk with the pace of a Stallion when running errands. She still does it, which is incredible. Her fast pace was something she did whether she was running errands on her own or with all her children. Needless to say, running errands with her was infuriating the majority of the time. Her pace was so fast that all you could do was run after her. Even if you sulked and got irritated with her, she paid no attention to that. This memory came to me, and I could not stop laughing.

In retrospect, it was as though I (and probably my siblings felt this way too), intrinsically knew that not keeping up with her was detrimental to me, no matter how I may have felt about her speed.

3.

Let’s put the fear of disobeying black mamas on the side for a second. I want to focus on fear but on a particular aspect of it. In this case with my mum, I believe that her refusal to slow down gave me only one “good” option which was to catch up with her. I was either going to do that or get lost. I was afraid of facing her or being lost in a not-so-safe crowd. The moments I did whine out loud about her brisk pace or did not keep up because of it, she would slow down (sometimes). But she did not do that to appease my feelings. She always made sure I could still see her for my safety. Or to make sure that I could see her too and her either unbothered face or irritated face. One way or another I was going to understand that I was the one holding things up and not her lol.

She would take quick glances here and there, just to check if I was ok or still there. Since my pace sometimes was too slow for her, she would temporarily slow down (or so I thought). As soon as I was close enough to her, she would turn on that dreaded Stallion pace back up again. On the few occasions where she would say something on purpose (things that some may consider “rude” ), statements like “hurry up”, “come on”, “uri kuendepi – where are you going”, “handeyi – let’s go”, “fambisa – walk faster”, etc, would be uttered in the ways only a black mother can.

4.

These statements didn’t represent encouragement at face value but in retrospect, I now understand that they were more about re-centering and almost quickly re-introducing the dynamic of our relationship. So, what does this have to do with anything you might ask?

Well, since this is a healing journey, God continuously brings back to memory some delicious moments in life as a reference. God was acting exactly like my mother! I felt like I was running after God because the pace was brisk and sometimes slow. There were some moments G’s pace was stern, sturdy, and steady. And then other times, it was simply overwhelming no matter what the pace was. I was frustrated, confused, and annoyed until I got to a point where I recognized that the dynamic of my relationship with G had always been the same as with my mother until one day, it wasn’t.

It had changed, drastically and there was a need for re-centering and re-introducing the dynamic of our renewed relationship. Before the newness of pace, I used to hear G like a child would. I expected and needed the handholding, the safety of seeing and hearing him in a certain way.

5.

As a grown woman who has now learned to be the Steward of the child within, I intuit and understand what G says quite differently. There is no handholding per se, but rather an absolute knowing that I can reach for G’s hand if and when I want to. I trust what I hear, see and intuit. I do not fear being uncertain, but let’s be clear, I still get uncomfortable with uncertainty, I absolutely do.

Another thing that has changed is that I do not fear not “seeing” God when the Stallion pace kicks in. The truth is, sometimes the pace still can be a bit brisk at times or even too slow for my egotistic mind. But the interesting thing about being made in G’s image is my horsepower kicks in any time it is needed, and my brakes work just fine too. Now that I know who I am. It no longer infuriates me, nor do I feel as though I am “running behind” or playing “catch up” with God anymore.

Instead, I feel honored that God could trust me enough to follow the guidance I receive in different ways and move at the necessary pace. Even in the moments I feel I cannot “see or hear God”, I now KNOW there is actually never a moment that I am not with G. I can even veer off on another path and play, it would still lead us straight back into each other. This rather collaborative space I am existing in feels like Freedom.