Love Is…

That reminded me of that Love is… comic strip from back in the 90s Daily Nation leisure page. Actually, if you Google it, that’s the first result. Anyway, that’s not the point.

Sometimes I struggle. I struggle with a lot of things. Feelings of uncertainty. Feelings of hurt. Holding on to hurt. Holding on to the wrong things people do to me. Feelings of fear. Then right after that comes the guilt. The defence. The rationalization. The waste of time taking things personally (although I will admit I don’t know how else I can take things other than personally). I also struggle with love. With the concept of it. What it is. What it should be. Whether I should even be thinking the stuff I think if I claim to love those around me. Today’s sermon made me think about this. It’s been a while since I listened to a great sermon. You know those guys who preach without shouting? Those guys who are straight to the point and show you things clearly and in all practicability? That was our preacher today.

The word was about love. Passages we know by heart. Galatians 5:22-23. Fruit of the spirit. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. Oh, it’s the second result on Google when you search for “Love is”.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

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Diary of a Single Girl: June

It’s been a minute since you thought about this topic.

Lie.

Everywhere you turn, that topic is bound to crop up. Think back to this Sunday. The first thing that happens when you walk into the church compound is a friend telling you that he dreamt of attending your wedding. Somebody say amen? He insisted on it, even after bumping into him again after the service, even though the last time you talked was ages ago. This is not the only dream that someone has told you about btw.

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Conquer

How are you guys? So today, we’re all about conquering. When I was young, like primary school young, my dad took out a foolscap and wrote down something for me with a felt pen and made me stick on my bedroom wall. It was about Julius Caesar and what he said after a certain victory. What I remember most about that passage is the last phrase, “We came, we saw, we conquered.” When you Google that, you find the actual phrase was in Latin, “Veni, vidi, vici”.

By now you might have guessed why dad wrote that for me. Every day, I saw that writing on the wall. Literally. And every day I strived to conquer in class. I also had a newspaper clipping next to that foolscap, I remember. Betty Gikonyo was on it. I don’t know why I don’t remember the other lady on that paper. Actually I do know. I remember Betty because for half the years I have existed, I wanted to grow up to be a doctor. Yes. Didn’t we all? I’d like to say that I changed my mind easily. I didn’t. It was a combination of teenage indecisiveness and JAB’s decisiveness. But I still went ahead and conquered whatever came through. My dad says “conger” btw, like every other person of his generation. So for the longest time I was confused on the pronunciation. It made no sense to me. Like why do old guys decide a q should be pronounced as g? Anyway, that’s beside the point.

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How Are You?

Good? You know how it is. The cold. The Twitter dramas. The quest for truth.

Sometimes you wonder why you are doing what you’re doing. You wear very many hats at work. Very many. Too many.Sometimes you almost fall into the trap of comparison. You want to compare yourself with others who look like they do nothing all day. But then you look back a year and realize you have grown immensely. You can look people in the eye when you talk. People think you know a lot about certain things and look to you for help. Even when you think you don’t really know anything. Then when you sit with them and talk about something you thought everyone knew, you realise you’ve been sitting on a mine! Not a land mine of course, but the Turkana kinda thing. A gold mine.

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Diary of a Single Girl: The Return

Everyone from your mother to your cat asks why you don’t blog anymore. Are you out of the country? Did you quit blogging? For how long should I keep refreshing your blog? Where am I supposed to read single girl stories? Are you testing us? Lol. Hii inaitwa kuzoeana bana!

Pull up! Rewind come back again, selecta. Take it back from the top!

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This is a reblog (if that’s a word) from a blog I follow. The first time I am doing this, even though the blog is on holiday. Worthy cause. Click below and read on.

So this is happening. 1. I have good friends. I have not lifted and will likely not lift a finger towards organising this. These days I get tired from just waking up so this is good. I’ve been out of commission for about 8 months now. This time it was really out of commission. […]

via When #Sheblossoms is not just about me – Lupus Diaries — She Blossoms…

shikungigi

Diary of a Single Girl: Easter Edition

Long weekend. Yayyy! Right? You had it all drawn up, how you’d spend it. First, there was that cousins’ meetup. You are all grown-up and so are most of your cousins. You have finally decided to form a group that meets up and helps each other out, like your parents have done for years before you. That is a good distraction, a really good one before other issues crop up in the remaining three days. You sit in the dark, smoky but yet cosy kitchen with your closest cousin and talk men while cutting up veggies to go with the meat. You nod at her story. She has a story. You don’t. He lied. The end. Men. Cucu asks your brother whether he has found “a person”, directly translated. You all laugh, you, bro, cuz and cucu together. He says the “person” is coming. You wonder why cucu didn’t ask you. Why she never asks you. How young does cucu think I am? You ask yourself. She definitely knows exactly how old I am. Should I be worried that she is not asking me? You don’t find an answer and move on real fast.

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The Day I’ll Never Forget

So this story has to be told. How I found myself dripping with tears at a modest corner office at Kikuyu. How I learnt so much about my church just sitting at its office. I had planned to take my passport for months. I even filled in the application on ecitizen and paid but just left it until the day I’d take leave from work just for it. That day finally came last week. And because I had a feeling something would go wrong somewhere, I took two days off. Let me tell you feelings are solid things.

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Design to Transform

You might be aware that I wanted to be a web designer after uni. You also know that’s not what I ended up doing. I still harbour those dreams sometimes. Plus playing around with the way this blog looks always energises me. Anyway, yesterday I got a call from a friend. I was getting my hands looking for dusty books at a supermarket in Westlands.

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Diary of a Single Girl: March

You know exactly what you want. But so as to make things sound complicated, to not hurt people, you tell them you don’t know what you want. People here being men. You know you want a man who knows what he wants, not just by word but by action. You want someone who, right from the start, made his intentions known. Someone who is decisive. Someone who does not practise certain rituals that you do not approve of. Think about something like drinking. Not milk. Alcohol. This, especially, is becoming increasingly hard to have as a “don’t” on your dos and don’ts list. It makes you wonder whether your list is too prefect. Like seriously. You know exactly what you want, you just haven’t found it yet.

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Earworms Everyday

I will tell you the truth. The reason I did not blog yesterday. It was a long day, like every other day. My data connection refused, and so did my brain. I wanted to post one paragraph. A status update. Earlier on, someone had joked about how half his emails are from my blog. I am basically spamming people. Lol. So I decided that from now on, I will blog every other day, until something makes me change to another pattern yet again.

@sircalic Hahaha, @shikungigi is writing so much her emails were being sent to my spam folder.

— M. (@Owaahh) March 9, 2016

Anyway, my topic today; earworms.

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If I Were a Man…

I would wonder what it’s like to be a woman, to do nothing but wait for a man to come knocking. That’s what you men think we do, right? Nothing but wait for you? Yeah? Well, if I were a man, I’d think the same too, so I don’t blame you. I’d think deeply before making my intentions known to any lady, because I would know that she would go ahead and tell her friends all about what I did and said on our first date. If I were a man, I would not pretend to understand women and their cycles. I would not play hard to get. Why would I do that when the woman is also playing the same game? I would know that’s how people end up in the friendzone. I’d pay for dates. I’d let her pay if she really insisted on doing so and near caused a scene. I’d not pull chairs or open doors for her. They have hands for this. No point having awkward situations because she’s not used to it. I would, however, give ladies way, and general gestures they are used to.

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Pray

It’s Sunday. You know me. I love me some Sunday. Today was different though. It was Founders’ Day at AHS. The 90th anniversary. Coincidentally, it was school birthday at AGHS. But as they say, there’s no such thing as coincidence. School birthday was supposed to be last Sunday, but it was pushed to today for some reason. So I cheated on my alma mater and spent the day at across, mostly because my brother is in form four. Back when we lived at across, Founders’ Day was a modest ceremony. We all fit in the chapel, it took just two hours or so and we ate nice little baked stuff from the kitchen in the lawn behind the chapel. Kimori and I loved these times! Nowadays, the service takes the whole day, in the sun or if you’re early, the tents, and there are no sweet little snacks at the end! Just kawaida food. Childhood memories are just the best!

Anyway, that’s not why I’m writing. I’m writing because of something the preacher said.

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