When God gives trials

Right away, I’ve angered God’s image protectors because the idea of God trying me, us makes Him look like a strict disciplinarian.

He isn’t.

But He made humans that like things easy but find no fulfillment in easy.

I’ll speak for myself. In the end when I get what I want, it’s the pain that makes it sweet.

I’ve been on a 4.5 year journey to get my green card. I put everything in my life on hold for it. It’s been easily the most difficult experience I have been through. I’ve lost so much positioning for it, yet it’s here now and what I celebrate isn’t that it’s here and all the possibilities with it. All I can think about is that I wish I lost more to get it. The feeling of being able to look back and see how this journey pruned me, how this journey woke me, how this journey defined me, how this journey wrote my name over and over again on the screens and whiteboards of my mind.

I’m still processing it. I’m so full of anger for some weird reason. People around me are asking me how I feel and it’s been hard to say the things I hoped I would feel. Frankly those emotions are just not there.

Why is it not there ? I lost a fiancé over this. I lost business opportunities over this? I lost employment opportunities over this? But more than those, I lost 5 years of traveling home to see my father over this. I have not been to Nigeria for 11, going on 12 years. What am I saying, it’s been 12 years this January.

For 5 years, somewhere in my subconscious I thought of the day that I would give my dad a big hug again. It’s been so painful to talk to him and recently see him on video. The man who I emulated unintentionally, kicking and screaming. The man who represents everything my mold of a man began from. The man God used to shape my definition of love. That man, had been physically absent in my life in the most formative years of my life and this dang green card is the symbol of that lost time.

I wake up some days and question the wisdom of it. Like I could have gone home. Worst case, I get stuck there and stay home. Like so many other heady decisions of my life. This green card symbolizes so much stubbornness. Yet, as I feared it would, I opened the mail and shocked to see it and it did not much to me.

I sunk in shock, I found enough words to praise Him but God, I know you saw my heart. It wasn’t filled with the kind of tommy roll and total loss for words that I envisioned. This is a big deal, it’s huge, it’s massive but it’s just another milestone in this rat race of life.

I want to get off the field. I am tired of running. I just want to hug my dad and enjoy him. I just want to fight my brother and wrestle him to the ground and dare him like a lion to come get me, on a soft bed of course like we used to play with my dad growing up. I just want to see my little sister dress up and get cute. Apparently she is getting married soon. Apparently, not because I am not happy for her. Apparently because it’s another moment that I don’t know where I will be for.

I am a Nigerian. My heart belongs to those fine people. The Nigerian princes and the Vaccine creators. The engineers and the doctors. The corrupt government and the artistic individuals. These are my people. I have spent 12 years not smelling that stench of home. 12 years not hearing that hustle buzz of Lagos traffic.

I sit back now and ask God; what was the point? Why did I lose so much? Why did you allow me go through this much pain and setback to get it. Was it the right call?am I at least making you proud ? Am I tracking your purpose for me ?

Crickets.

Son, you don’t need a green card to earn my love. I loved you before I decided to create the breath that made you human.

Son, relax. Breathe. Wait. Whether you feel the brightness of the future or not. Whether you taste the delight of how I perceive you or not. Whether you are proud of yourself or not. Whether you know deep within you that you are enough.

Son, Your trials refine you. Count it all as dung, for the excellency of the knowledge of me.

Son, I know you. I love you. I died for you.

Son, listen to what you feel, let it educate you but in the end. You are more than conqueror in Christ. Translation: you’re a baaaaddddd son of Grace.