Sink or Swim?

Dear September, 

This is the one where I talk about faith and perseverance and resilience. As you know, March is Women’s History Month. So the plan for the blog is to discuss different positive attributes and character traits every week, and highlight the women in my life that exemplify these qualities (which if you read last week’s post, you also know this). This week’s post is all about faith, perseverance and resilience, because they often manifest the same way, and there is no one who exemplifies these qualities better than my aunty-mother, Aunty Ede. 

According to the Oxford Dictionary, ‘faith’ is a complete trust or confidence in someone or something. Trust and confidence. Trust is a firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something. Confidence is the state of feeling certain about the the truth of something. By definition, it is unlikely that you have faith in just one thing. Thus, choosing to be a Christian and choosing to have faith in God FIRST, does not disqualify anyone else. In other words, as a Christian, my commitment is to put God FIRST and have Him on speed dial, not to have Him be the only one on my contact list. Christianity is more a relationship than a religion, so naturally, everyone’s journey is unique and there is freedom to make it what you want it to be. 

Christianity, like any other positive relationship fosters and ignites other positive relationships. The Bible teaches that we were created to help each other and the Christian faith is built on the foundations of communion and fellowship, asking for help and being your sister’s keeper. My aunty Ede, as everything as she is, has a tribe of people who support her and the last thing you will do is shame her for it. No one became richer or better or more successful by insisting on doing everything on their own; that is exhausting and it is an unnecessary burden. I mean I love a good grass to grace, started from the bottom now we’re here, coming from nothing to something story as much as the next girl, but that’s all it is, a story. It is definitely not necessary. With the rise in popularity of YouTube as a career, and a thousand other DIY narratives that following your passion and glamourize success, admitting that you need help or you feel confused, makes you stupid or lazy or ungrateful. So many people buy into this narrative and get tricked into believing that they are one viral video or one Instagram post away from being great. The status quo often overlooks the potential of having too many options to be just as heavy a burden, and as overwhelming, as having too few options. 

There is also something about the rhetoric and dialogue around faith, and asserting your absolute trust in God, that makes one sound lazy and in search of an easy way out or worse, like one wants a perfect life with cotton candy and unicorns and rainbows, that obviously doesn’t exist. As a Christian, I think it is quite the opposite, in that, faith in God is NOT the easiest or most convenient thing in the world, not by a long shot. Being a Christian and using the Bible as a life manual in no way guarantees a perfect life, if anything it prepares you for criticism and having to fight for what you believe to be true and what you want to achieve. Faith doesn’t eliminate obstacles or difficulty, faith merely removes fear, which is not to be undermined because it makes all the difference. I mean going to church on a Sunday and being reminded of how God has got your back is an amazing feeling, and it is no wonder Maya Angelou refers to religion as “the opium of the people.” However, faith is easiest and most glamorous on a Sunday morning. Unfortunately, it isn’t about what happens on Sunday, it is what happens on Monday and Tuesday and every day after that, but of course, no one ever talks about that because it is not nearly as pretty and perfect and Instagram-worthy. 

Keeping the faith is a battle, in that way, I guess this is a story about putting up a good fight. Perseverance is persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success. Perseverance is continued effort to do or achieve something despite difficulties, failure, or opposition. Perseverance is a relentless pursuit of a desired goal. Perseverance is consistency. Perseverance is absolute refusal to give up hope. Perseverance is putting up a good fight. My Aunty Ede works a “9 to 5” where she oversees an entire Human Resources team for a really big bank in Nigeria. Her “9 to 5” is more like a “6 to 9, or 10” on most days and this does not include all the weekends she’s had to come in, but she does it without complaining. And like in most corporations, her work, her diligence and her sacrifice is often overlooked and taken advantage of in fact, but it’s ok because she doesn’t do it for them. She does it for her children because they deserve the absolute version of her. She does it for her mother, who has taught her that giving up is never an option. She does it for herself because she needs to know she’s doing her absolute best. She also makes it to church almost every Sunday and attends a mid week service because she does not flake on her commitments, she knows that her faith is a priority. Her faith is her strength, it centres her and gives her peace.

Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. Capacity is the maximum amount that something can contain, the maximum amount of water that a boat can hold before it begins to sink. So, essentially a vessel cannot know its strength and the maximum amount that it can contain, until some water is poured in. Sink or swim? Resilience is being able to float, or better still, being able to breath under water, resilience is perseverance. Capacity is also having the ability, fitness, or quality necessary to do or achieve a specified thing. Thus, resilience is very much a choice because the fact that a body possesses a quality does not guarantee its use. If you don’t swim, you will sink. Sink or swim? Drowning doesn’t automatically mean you can’t swim, sometimes it means that you didn’t, you chose not to. There is a fundamental difference between ‘can’t’ and ‘won’t.’ Resilience does not have the time for mind games, resilience requires you to go through life not trick it or avoid it. My aunty Ede knows resilience, in fact she breathes it. There is no other way to put it when you have to balance a “9 to 5” and 4 children and writing a novel, while going through the unimaginable, mind-numbing loss of 2012, the kind of pain that nothing can prepare you for. In university, every time I had one of those weeks where 6 assignments were due, and things to do for Black Ties, and I had to clean my apartment and cook food, I would think of her and it would seem like nothing, in comparison. This is not to say that, because some people have gone through more difficult things in their own life, your own struggles are irrelevant. It just offers some perspective, because maybe you are making something more of a thing than it needs to be. And I mean, if you think about it, YOU have probably been through worse and survived, so you’re good and strong and capable. Maybe you’re drowning and you just need to be reminded that you can swim, is all.