My friend insomnia

My friend insomnia is back; our friendship has spanned a timeline of ten years. She first became my friend at the age of eleven when we first moved to the suburbs and as I settled into my new surroundings she soon became my distant friend but then she came back when I was in my first year of high school; a horrendous amount of events happened to me that year, firstly I was in a high school where none of my former friends would be, I was the only black person in the entire school, my baby brother drowned and practically died in my arms and my mother passed away six months later.

My friend insomnia sat with me through all the rage and maniac nights, she wasn’t the most comforting of friends but at least she was there. She was there to see my creativity sprout out of my sadness, I wrote countless poems in the silence of night, I cried into my pillow until it was soaking wet and my friend insomnia was there with me. I would stand up and watch as the sun slowly rose from under the earth and when my step-mom would walk in to wake me up I would pretend I had just woken up. 

In the day my friend insomnia was nowhere to be found, I would buy energy drinks and energy bars to keep my body from getting lethargic, my cravings for knowledge in all forms kept me awake in classes but when I got home I would throw myself on the bed and stare at the ceiling, waiting for night to come, waiting for my friend to arrive.

I became a philosopher if I can say so, I wrote many essays ,theories, thesis  and poems Shakespeare would be proud of but still I felt empty, I was mad, I was sad, I was confused. I would sit up in my bed and ask my friend insomnia “Why did my mum leave me without saying goodbye, she died with no one around her, why didn’t she tell me she was sick. Why did God take my baby brother- he was an innocent soul?” Of course insomnia would stare at me like a stupid dog and not answer, she just lay there heavy and cold on my lap.

Every night was the same: I would watch tv until I couldn’t watch it anymore, I would then read my English school books and finish some readings that were supposed to take us weeks to finish, I would then read some books that weren’t part of the school syllabus and then I would write and write and write but still I felt empty. One particular morning the sunrise resembled that of the morning when the news of my baby brother’s death arrived, I could feel my veins draining and my soul dissolving into the ether but then suddenly out of the blue I remembered a Psalm I had learnt when I was nine years old, Psalms 27, I remembered the first four lines. “The Lord is the light and my salvation, whom shall I fear, the Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?’ A sudden lightness came upon me, I could feel my friend insomnia slowly letting go. My eyes were opened, my heart was healed and every night from that night I slept earlier and earlier.

I had forgotten my old friend Jesus in my time of need; instead I had hung onto my dark friend insomnia who took more than she gave. I opened the Bible to bring forth light in my life for where there is light darkness cannot exist even in the night. I felt lighter and newer- God was my light and Jesus my stronghold. How could I have forgotten that?

When I went to university my friend insomnia had but disappeared and plus I met great people with great energies, being around them was like lying close to a slow running stream.

But my friend insomnia is back; it maybe because I am anxious about events in my life I have no control over, it may be that I am being tested. I don’t know but I must keep my faith and not let my old friend insomnia get a hold of my life again. It is 01:48 in the morning. I’m going to try to go to sleep but before I do I’ll read Psalms 27.

The "noor" of my eyes

As my favourite writer says about the wome in his life, here is my "noor" (or light for those of you who don't know) of my eyes. She brings me absolute joy. She was a week old when I heard about my mother's death but holding her tiny body made it all okay, it made me believe even more that there was and is a God- a merciful and loving God. Seven years later and she is still a constant reminder of true love- the unconditional kind. My baby sister is an absolute joy.

She is always jolly, never shuts up and speaks what's on her mind. She reminds me that Jesus is my healer for she fills the sore that was left by mother's death. I love her very much.

She once said to me "Do you know that every time you open the Bible the Devil dies" I'll never forget that she is Godsent.

My dad is like God

My dad is like God in that he is much of an enigma and is hard to understand. He has no divine powers and he has yet to create something as great as the universe.

I remember a few weeks ago my dad came in the house in a jolly mood and asked us what we wanted, I wasn’t in the mood for anything so I asked for nothing, my baby sister still new to pizza asked for a whole pizza for herself; my dad nodded and walked out.

A couple of days passed and still my dad had not returned with my baby sister’s pizza. I laughed as every single night when I dished up supper my baby sister wouldn’t want any food, she would look up at me with her dark eyes filled with innocence and say “My dad is coming with the pizza and I don’t want to be full”.  I would half smile at her unbelievable faith in believing that my dad would still bring the pizza.

Almost a week later my dad came early in the morning with a box of pizza in his hands.
“Give it to your baby sister” he said.
“But what about me? what about my pizza?” I asked suddenly craving the Italian fast food.
“But Nobantu I asked you if you wanted anything and you said you wanted nothing” he said and looked at me as I tried to come up with an explanation. I couldn’t think up of one so he left. I reheated the pizza and gave it my baby sister whose faith had been rewarded.  I moped around the whole day that day mulling over my dad’s weird persona and in the end I came to the conclusion that he is like God and here’s why:

1) My dad is loving man, not the hugs and kisses type but you know when you are in his presence that you are loved.

2) My dad keeps his promises, they maybe a little delayed but in the end you get what he promised. He promised me a car and I’m sure I’ll get one. He promised my brother he would kick him out of the house if he continued to misbehave and he did.

3) He wants the best for his children. He is a strict father, has never drunk a drop of alcohol or experimented with drugs, He warns us of the dangers of narcotics and alcohol. He put us through the best schools. He teaches us the hard way the things that the world would teach us in an even harsher way. He warns us of the consequences of not listening to him.

4) He is a hard worker, he built himself up when his peers where busy playing around- they all wonder how he got to his success. He indulges in resting after a hard six days of working; he did after all create his own empire.

5) He appreciates those who are grateful to him.  A “Thank you” to my dad is not saying those words to him but it is showing it to him- in other words you must live your life to show his impact in your life.

6) Everyone knows how good he is. People I don’t even know come up to me singing the praises of my father of how good he is and how great his achievements are.

6) He hates a lazy person.

7) You get what you ask for so be specific.

8) He is an enigma. In my 21 years of life I have yet to say I full know my dad and in his 48 years of life my grandma is yet to say she fully knows him but even so we love him and accept him, not knowing him to the fullest is what makes him amazing.

I love my father and every day I learn something new about him. I understand God better now because of him, he of course does not compare to the love and greatness of the Lord but every day I learn new aspects about Him and it is all because of him.  

New Beginnings

I have recently turned twenty one and I thought by this age a lot in my life would have changed but I have come to find that it is not so. My turning twenty one has made me look at life in a different way; I've always been a serious person from the age of seven, I guess you could say I have an old soul but I know how to have fun. I know that I can be a fun person but someone new to me might not know that, they may preview my blog and think it's "meh" and so because of my new revelation I have decided to write lighter pieces, they are still going to be innovative and interesting but theyll be more positive. I'm going to post some pics because I love photography. This is still a blog about me wading through the tides and waves of being a Christian.

Prepare yourselves for fun times ahead.

My Freedom Day

I am turning twenty one this year and so are my hundreds of other friends. This means there’ll be a lot of partying and drinking but it also means there’ll be a lot of gift shopping to be done. So yesterday morning I woke up to meet my friends at the mall, we had decided to put our money together and buy our friend an extravagant gift. After almost having a fight with my mother my brother drove me to the mall, on the way I suddenly discovered I had car sickness. I felt so sick that I could not even tell my brother to stop the car. I could feel the vomit lodged in my throat but I kept quiet, kept my composure and when we got to the mall I got out of the car and puked right there. I felt like someone was stirring my insides. I convinced my brother I’d be okay and he left. I walked into the mall and the floor felt skew (darn I was really sick) and walked straight into the bathroom where I puked some more. I breathed, walked out of the bathroom and into Game where I bought a bottle of coke (yes that toxic stuff that helps with a stomach ache) and gulped it down.

After what seemed like eons my friends finally arrived and informed me they were at the other end of the mall. Did I mention this mall is huge? They might as well build an air strip and turn it into an airport. Anyway I walked fast and like the apostle Paul kept my eye on the prize and looked to finish the race or rather get to my friends.

 There’s something about seeing the ones you love that lightens a heavy heart and settles a restless stomach. After getting hugs from them I felt much better and we started our shopping. We had decided we would get her jewellery, she did wear a lot of it and jewellery is like money, one can never have enough of it. This would be easy or so I thought. At our first shop my boy friend and I fell in love with a dragonfly piece, it was beautiful and it had a lot of detail on the wings but my girl friend did not like it so we went to another shop where we found more dragonflies and my boy friend and I fell even more in love with the flying insect much to the dismay of our girl friend.

So we stopped looking at the necklaces and decided we would get her a charm bracelet but we could not agree on what to put on it. We went to another shop and thought we would get her her birthstone until we found out her birthstone was diamond so that was the end of that idea. We went to another store and designed our own charm bracelet for her but then they told us they could not smelt the pieces on the bracelet themselves; we’d have to find another jeweller to do that so that was the end of that. Our girlfriend had to go and my boyfriend and I decided we’d get the first dragonfly we had seen. We asked the young lady to take it out for us and I tried it on and fell in love with it; I now wanted it for myself. As the young lady was wrapping it she came and informed us that the price was actually four times more than what we thought. “Okay put it back” we told her. My boyfriend wanted to buy a gift for a friend of his and he wanted a necklace from a display box, the young lady took it out and gave us a tangled mess of necklaces. “It’s not in my job description to untangle necklaces” she said as she slowly untangled the necklaces. I laughed. My boyfriend helped her untangle the mess and after admiring it he found out it was too expensive. We were at a dead end, where would we find a gift for our friends? We ran, literally ran through the mall to another jewellery store where we bought our friends a necklace and a bracelet.

Thank God we were done with the shopping now I could focus on being sick again. After hugging my friend goodbye I went to a shop to buy food but ended up getting junk food for my baby sister.  I tried calling a friend of mine who lived closed by but she did not answer. I decided to catch a taxi but I got lost in the parking lot and had to ask a security guard. I found a taxi, a beautiful clean taxi, I sighed, I would be home soon I thought but as soon as the taxi took off I felt sick again, this taxi driver would not like it if I puked in his car so I closed my eyes and shut my mouth. I opened my eyes to find I was surrounded by tall buildings, I was in Joburg, this taxi went north and I was supposed to go west. I was scared, I like people to think I know Joburg but actually I know zilch. I closed my throat and looked out, I saw the Nelson Mandela Bridge and was relieved, the taxi should stop here but it didn’t, it sped on and my heart beat fast. The taxi stopped at the robots and I got off without saying a word surprising the driver and the passengers. I walked and saw a huge building where taxis were going in and out. I went in and asked some guys about finding a taxi home, some didn’t know and some directed me into the wilderness. An old man tried hitting on me, I asked him about the taxi and he escorted me to one. I slumped into my seat and fell asleep. Some guy poked me, I gave him some money and fell back to sleep. I was woken up by some rowdiness: the passengers and drivers were fighting over the change. The guy who had poked me poked me again “how much did you pay?” he asked me, I told him and he told me I had paid too much and the passengers demanded from the driver that I get my one rand change back. I didn’t care. I wanted to puke. I wanted to die. I fell asleep again, my face squished against the window, the sun frying my right side; my ear would be as crispy as deep fried bacon. I didn’t care. I wanted to go home. “Anyone going to destination X?” the driver asked. He asked again except this time he was shouting. “I am” I slurred.

I got off the taxi, the ground felt skew; I tried my best not to keel over and walked with purpose to get home. The gate was open, the door left ajar, I went in and threw myself on the bed. I got in a foetal position and wallowed in self pity. Why me? Why me? I asked myself, a vision appeared: the finger of my doctor pointing in my face, his lips moved: “remember never to take this medication without ever eating because it might irritate the lining of your stomach”. That morning I was in such a hurry that I took my pills without there being food in my stomach. I immediately jumped off my bed and went downstairs to eat a block cheese.

 

Style versus Trend

 

I had on my three quarter baggy pants stuffed into my black military boots, on top I had on a thin powder blue jersey. I sat confidently with my legs crossed and waited patiently for my cousin to come out of her bedroom when suddenly her good friend barged into the lounge. She was excited to see me and so I stood up, gave her a hug and afterwards watched her as she scanned my outfit from top to bottom. “I like your jersey but those boots are ugly” she said and looked at me disappointingly. I smiled and looked at them. “But I must really get that jersey” she said as if trying to deflect my attention away from the boots. I told her where she could get the jersey, sat down, crossed my legs and watched the television.

 What my cousin’s friend would have me do is to have followed  the season’s trend and wear boots that were in season like the ugg boots or suede boots or the pixie boots anything but my hardcore military boots. What my cousin’s friend did not know is style and with my military boots on I had it. Most people misuse the word style; they use it to mean someone looks good or well matched in their clothes. If someone looks like a photocopy of fashion catalogue found in a cheap general magazine then they truthfully do not have style; they may look good but they certainly do not have style. My outfit was not typical of the season’s trend, it was different and that is what style is about; it is about being different, rebelling a little and deviating from the trend; it is ultimately about making a statement so strong no-one else could plagiarize it.

The trend in Christian world is to obey and observe the Sabbath commandment on Sunday which as we all know is the first day of the week but there are those Christians who observe the Sabbath on Saturdays- these Christians  believe that observing the Sabbath on  Saturdays is the only way to keep the Sabbath holy, they are strict on themselves, vegetarian or vegan diets are encouraged, women should only wear dresses, women and men should not pierce their ears and the Sabbath is observed from Friday evening to Saturday evening. Those who observe the Sabbath on the Sunday dress as they please, go to church for only a few hours and eat whatever they like.

A person new to the faith of Christianity would whether it really matter when the Sabbath is observed. Such a person would be confused between the popular trend of going to church on a Sunday and the different traditional choice of attending church on a Saturday. In this argument the Saturday church goers would win but only so far. Jesus Christ was Jewish and he observed the Sabbath on Saturdays. Paul and the other followers of Christ were culturally and ethnically Jews so they too observed the Sabbath on Saturdays.

 I have a diluted version of why the Saturday Sabbath observance was changed to the Sunday Sabbath observance. Basically the first Christian emperor of Rome (Constantine) realized that Christianity was growing beyond borders, the Romans hated the Jews and Constantine thought of a way to integrate Christianity into the ever stylish and idol worshipping Romans by making sure that the Sabbath was observed on the same day the roman pagans worshipped their sun god. With this change the Roman Catholic Church grew in abundance, the popes wore rich clothes and jewelry; they added a whole lot of rituals and even changed the Sabbath commandment to suit their church. Today the Roman Catholic Church is the largest and most powerful church on earth, its members have reserved seats in international bodies such as the UN and EU and it is because of it that traditional and modern churches observe the Sabbath on Sundays. The Catholic Church had many scandals and as a result many break away churched formed, but back to the basic question: does it really matter when we observe the Sabbath?

While many Christians may ask what would Jesus say, I ask what would Paul say because in all truthfulness Paul built the church; he wrote to the Corinthians about love, to the Jews (Hebrews) about Jesus being Lord, to young Timothy about not being discouraged because of his age; in all his letters he leaves instructions about how Christians should behave, how Deacons should act and how the dynamics of relationships between fathers and sons, daughters and mothers, husbands and wives should flow. In Colossians 2:16 Paul writes “let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a holy day or of the new moon or of the Sabbath days”. While Seven Day Adventists seek righteousness and holiness through what they eat, drink and when they observe the holy Sabbath; most Christians seek only Jesus and His love and it is in Him that we find righteousness and holiness.

 We (Christians) do not seek holiness or righteousness because that would make us no different from other pagan religions because we understand that we are merely human and what we eat or drink does not make us any holier, that no amount of meditation could make us reach the God and His holy place, that what he seeks is our hearts and not our religiosity and that when we accept Jesus we get into the holy place, we become holy and are righteous.

The Sabbath is holy not because it is on the seventh day but because the Lord made it so. God looks at the heart so while you are physically at church on Saturday but the heart is somewhere else trust me you are not doing God a favour but when you wake up on a Sunday morning and are happy because the day of the Lord has come, trust me the Lord is happy and pleased with you because you are happy that the Lord made the Sabbath and whether you are observing it on the seventh or first day of the week does not matter to you; it’s the fact that the Sabbath was created in the first place. Paul died for Christianity, for Christ, for the advancement of the church not for the Sabbath. How many times had Jesus Christ broken the laws of the Sabbath? He was trying to show us that the Sabbath mattered not because we blindly followed its laws but because we had seen through its creation the greatness of the father, the might of the father but most importantly the love of the father. Jesus died not for the Ten Commandments, not for the Jewish laws and customs but for the love of the Father and of the Father’s love for us.

 There is a thread that holds Christianity together, a thread that is not found in other religions and that thread is love, true love, the Jesus kind of love. It is with this love that we come to the father and whether we come to Him on a Saturday or Sunday does not matter, what matters is we come with love and with style.

Buying Jesus

I like to think of myself as an honest and loyal follower of anything that fortifies my soul. I like routines and consistent sequences; I like to work around the clock and to time myself. If I do not follow my daily routines I feel lost, agitated and irritated, hence I do not visit a lot because once I am in another’s person’s space I cannot impose my lifestyle on them and I become like a hobo and a wandering lost soul.

So I wake up every day at about eight and I automatically say a quick prayer; thanking God for the blue skies, the birds and my family; I then brush my teeth and wait for Creflo Dollor to begin on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, after him I’ll watch Joyce Meyer and after that it’s either Perry Stone or Pastor Rod Parsley. I feel revived as if I have jumped in a cold blue pool filled with the Holy Spirit and with this feeling I flip to my favourite channel Fashion TV- from ten to eleven they showcase men’s fashion which I enjoy and watch with utter and undisturbed concentration. Men’s fashion is simple; it can make cheeky statements without needing too much, with men’s wear it’s all in the detail; the make of the shirt, the cufflink, the pattern on the shirt, or the type of stitching on the pants or leather shoes. I make a mental note of what I like; the black and blue brogues, the simple but classic black and white t-shirt and the always-in-season white shirt.

I think of how amazingly creative the designers are as I sip my extra strong coffee and eat my all protein breakfast (carbs are the devil, at least that’s what the models say). I go through my mental notes again, I really like the black and blue brogues but I can’t afford that quality and make, so I settle on looking for a cheap black and white t-shirt.

 At one o’clock I watch Pastor Hagee, I like this man’s truthfulness in his messages; his booming voice resonates to my soul and I listen to him with great submission but also with eager willingness. At the end of the thirty minute sermon he promotes his own books, CDs and DVDs just like Creflo Dollor, Joyce Meyer and Perry Stone did. I don’t particularly enjoy these promotions; they leave me feeling guilty and inadequate as a Christian. All the books, CDs and DVDs are a must-have in order to lead a “prosperous”, “holy” life. I debate with myself on which ones I should buy and decide on neither- I can’t buy Jesus. I can buy Jean Paul Gaultier, I can buy Dolce and Gabbana, Viktor and Rolf, Karl Lagerfeld, Roberto Cavali or Salvatore Ferragamo but I can’t buy Jesus Christ that is one label that is priceless. He bought us with a priceless substance that surpasses all substances- love.

I am not saying one should not buy Christian self-help books, I’m just saying there is too much to choose from and are they all really necessary? The style of the books are not to my taste, I enjoy story telling and not dictation, so books like William Young’s The Shack are the type of books I would feel compelled to buy. I love Jesus and getting to know Him better is my main aim in life; now I must confess the secular world does invade my relationship with him but it does not overtake or consume it.

At the end of the day I go through my mental notes again: my list is empty, no black and white t-shirt, no brogues and no Joyce Meyer DVDs or books. It’s six o’clock: it’s time to watch the final minutes of the setting sun, drink my strong coffee and listen to my heavenly mix of gospel music. I turn up the volume and imagine Jesus is in the room enjoying the sunset with me. In three hours I will need to take a shower then glare at the stars and thank God for them.