Now for context, I didn’t grow up in RCCG. And I didn’t grow up in a family where we identified ourselves by the church we attended. Church was simply that: church. A place to worship. A place where people gathered around something bigger than themselves and for younger me, a place to see my crush and play with my friends. It was never a badge of honour or a class marker.

We moved around churches a few times growing up and not once did it feel like losing something essential. Because what we carried with us was never the name above the door. It was the faith itself. The relationship. The Person we were all supposedly gathering around.

For further context, my parents were deeply embedded in church life, (I’m talking first in church, last one out) from fellowship leaders to deacons and deaconesses, eventually to my father becoming a pastor in RCCG. I grew up inside these institutions, close enough to leadership to see how they actually function. I’ve seen it all - the politics, the humanity, the machinery behind the ministry.

I think it was the mercy of God that He brought me close enough to see it all, but far enough not to be seduced by it.

I have seen genuine faith and deep contradiction sitting side by side in the same person. I have watched leaders who love God deeply hurt people with their humanity. And I think that is a mercy. Because it means I am not jaded enough to dismiss these spaces entirely, and not naive enough to be captured by the branding. When you have seen the full picture, you stop mistaking the organisation for the thing it is supposed to point to.

Which is why I will never identify myself by a church organisation. I am a follower of Jesus. Of the Way. That’s it. That’s the tweet.

But back to the interaction. Because it is a window into something worth examining honestly.

Look at how we talk about church in our communities. I go to RCCG. I go to Winners. I go to Hillsong. I go to CCI. Particularly in West African and diaspora communities, church affiliation has become a kind of social infrastructure. It determines more than where you spend your Sunday mornings. In Nigerian circles especially, there is an unspoken hierarchy. Certain churches carry prestige, signal education level, indicate the kind of family you come from. A family attending one of the major Pentecostal churches in Lagos or London becomes socially legible in a way a quieter family does not. Mothers size up potential in-laws partly by where they worship. Social circles calcify around congregation. To leave is not just a spiritual decision. It is a social one, with real consequences.

And God forbid you leave without a sanctioned reason. God forbid you outgrow a season, follow a prompting, or simply find yourself somewhere different spiritually and make a different choice about where you worship. GOD ABEG!

What disturbs me most is that this isn’t a modern dysfunction. Paul wrote to the church in Corinth about this exact dynamic. Some were saying I am of Paul. Others, I am of Apollos. Paul rebuked them immediately!! (CORRECT GUY!)

Because he knew that once the body of Christ begins organising itself around personalities and institutions rather than around Christ, something has gone deeply wrong. The unifying centre has been displaced, and what fills the gap is tribalism dressed in spiritual language.

We are doing the same thing. Worse, we barely seem troubled by it.

Certain expressions of these spaces can drift uncomfortably close to cultic logic. Not in the extreme sense. But the structural logic: in-group loyalty rewarded, departure punished socially, the organisation conflated with the truth itself, belonging contingent on continued affiliation. That is not Christianity. And the fact that genuine encounters with God happen within these structures does not exempt the structures themselves from scrutiny. Both things can be true.

So what is the body of Christ supposed to be?

Paul answers this too, and the vision is almost jarring in its simplicity. One body, many members. Each part belonging to every other part. No hierarchy of affiliation, no tiered belonging based on which expression of church you call home. A living thing rather than an institution, held together not by shared branding but by shared allegiance to Jesus Christ.

A healthy body does not war against itself. They don’t have members that snub each other for migrating from one function to another. When a body does that, we call it disease, not health.

What would it cost us to live this way? The comfort of our tribes. It would require us to hold our church homes with open hands: grateful for them, shaped by them, but neither defined nor imprisoned by them.

It would mean that when someone leaves one church for another, or outgrows an organisation entirely, the response of the body is not suspicion but curiosity. Not “and you’re proud to say that?” but “how is your walk?”

It would mean grounding our unity in something no organisational restructure, pastoral scandal, or denominational split could touch.

Because Jesus did not die for RCCG. He did not die for Winners or Hillsong or CCI or any of the thousands of organisations that carry his name with varying degrees of faithfulness. He died for people. Redeemed, complicated, organisation-leaving, still-figuring-it-out people.

The people are the church. They always were.

I left RCCG. I am still here. I am still his.

And if that surprises you, it might be worth asking what exactly you thought Christianity was. The organisation was never the saviour in the first place.

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Covenant, do you really believe the old stories?

Which then pulled me somewhere deeper.

Covenant, do you live your life as though you believe the old stories?

· · ·

Do I believe God parted a sea? That He split the water, held it back on both sides, and let an entire people walk through on dry ground, with the army of their worst nightmare closing in behind them?

Do I believe a man stood on a mountain, soaked with water, and called fire down from heaven and it came?

Do I believe the sun stood still? That God held the rotation of the earth because a soldier needed more daylight to finish what He had already promised?

These are the stories I, and a lot of us, grew up with. They live in my memory the way childhood does: vivid, familiar, maybe a little worn from handling. But familiarity is not the same as belief.

The question isn’t whether these things happened. The question is whether you believe in the kind of God they require.

Because those aren’t just ancient wonder stories. They are theological statements. They are God, in narrative form, saying: This is who I am. This is what I can do. This is what I will do for those who are mine.

And if I don’t really believe them, if somewhere under the surface I’ve quietly relegated them to metaphors or folklore or the kind of thing God used to do before the world got complicated, then I am not worshipping the God of the Bible. I am worshipping a smaller, tidier version I’ve made room for. One who works within my logic. One I can predict.

· · ·

This is where it gets uncomfortable. The ceiling on your faith isn’t your circumstances. It’s not your background, your past, your situation, the difficulty of what you’re facing. The ceiling on your faith is your theology: what you actually, functionally believe about the nature and character of God.

If you believe in a God who used to do the impossible, you will pray accordingly. Carefully. Moderately. Managing your own expectations so the disappointment doesn’t land too hard if nothing happens. You will hedge. You will add quiet disclaimers. You will ask for things within reason, and call it maturity, and maybe it is.

Or maybe it’s unbelief, dressed neatly in sensibility.

But if you believe in a God who is, present tense, unchanging, the same yesterday, today and forever, who parted seas and can part yours, who stopped the sun and can stop what’s working against you, who answered with fire and can answer you, then you pray differently. You live differently. You carry yourself differently into rooms, into conversations, into the unknown. You don’t shrink your requests to fit your faith. You let your faith stretch to meet the God you say you serve.

I’ve spent time on several walks just sitting with this question, and what unsettled me most wasn’t the asking. It was realising how much of my life I had built around a God I said I trusted but quietly lived as though I had to manage alone.

· · ·

A small God doesn’t just limit your prayers. He limits your imagination, your courage, and eventually, your life.

A lot of us believe in God and live as though we’re on our own.

We confess an omnipotent God and carry the weight of everything ourselves. We sing about a way-maker and never actually expect a way. We quote ‘all things are possible’ and immediately list every reason this particular thing probably isn’t. And then we wonder why our faith feels thin. We wonder why prayer feels like a routine rather than a conversation. We wonder why we’re so exhausted.

We are exhausted because we are serving a God we don’t fully believe in. We are doing the motions of faith around the shell of a theology that was never allowed to become conviction.

· · ·

Here is what I know to be true and what I am still learning to live: you can hold orthodox theology in your head and still functionally live as an orphan. You can know the right things about God and never let them become the ground beneath your feet.

Your belief is not a private spiritual matter tucked away in the part of you that goes to church. It is structural. It is the scaffolding underneath everything you are building: every relationship, every decision, every risk taken and every risk avoided.

So maybe the most important question isn’t whether you believe in God.

Maybe it’s this: which God do you believe in? And is He big enough for what you’re actually facing?

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The kind where pain surfaces in places you thought had already healed. Where old wounds begin to speak again. Where grief, disappointment, and unmet expectations seem to gather quietly in the same room.`

For me, a lot of it has been people wounds, the kind that come from doing life with others. From what was said, what wasn’t said, and sometimes from actions that feel so unnecessarily cruel you struggle to make sense of them.

And underneath it all sits a grief that still feels sharp: losing my mum.

And with Mother’s Day coming up, I’ve felt it even more.

The shops and social media clearly didn’t get the memo that for some of us, Mother’s Day isn’t just a celebration. It’s a wound. A reminder of what will never be again.

Time has passed, but the ache has not disappeared. Some losses don’t resolve neatly. They stay with you, resurfacing in unexpected moments. A memory. A milestone. A quiet evening where the absence feels louder than the noise of the day.

In this season, I have found myself bringing these things before God in prayer — not polished prayers, but the raw kind. The kind that sound more like lament than language.

And honestly, there have been days where the sorrow has felt acute, days where I’ve struggled to find my footing in what it means to move forward.

Recently, while lamenting on a prayer walk, I heard God say to me clearly:

“Covenant you can’t look at the wound and the cross at the same time.”

And I’ve been sitting with it ever since.

Because the more I’ve reflected on it, the more I’ve realised it speaks to something deeper than a passing encouragement. It reveals something about how we process pain, and perhaps even more importantly, where we place our attention when pain surfaces.

The Direction of Our Focus

The statement isn’t denying the reality of pain.

The wound is real. The betrayal was real. The disappointment was real. The loss was real.

But what the statement confronts is where my gaze settles.

The wound represents the injury itself — the place where something broke.
The cross represents redemption — the place where suffering is taken up into the story of God and transformed.

Both exist. Both are real. But the truth is, my attention cannot hold both in the same way at the same time..

When I fix my eyes only on the wound, the narrative becomes centred on what happened to me.

The mind circles the injury.

I replay the conversation. I revisit the moment. I reconstruct the scenario over and over again, hoping that if I think about it long enough we might find resolution.

But wounds rarely resolve through analysis alone.

Sometimes they only deepen.

Because when my gaze stays fixed on the injury, my identity slowly begins to organise itself around the pain. The story becomes less about who I am becoming, and more about what was done to me.

If the wound tells the story of what happened, then what does the cross reveal?

Injury and Meaning

The wound tells us what was done.

The cross reveals what it can become.

This is the strange mystery at the heart of the Christian story.

The worst act of violence in history — the crucifixion — becomes the doorway through which redemption enters the world.

Something that should have ended the story instead becomes the centre of it.

And this reveals something about the way God works.

Betrayal becomes the soil where forgiveness grows.
Loss becomes the place where dependence deepens.
Disappointment becomes the workshop where character is formed.

None of these things are good in themselves.

But in the hands of God, nothing is wasted.

The cross reframes suffering. It tells us that pain does not have the final word.

But if that is true — if suffering can be reframed — then it also explains why fixating on the wound alone can be so dangerous.

The Danger of Fixating on the Wound

When we continually return our attention to our wounds, we reinforce them.

The mind rehearses the pain.

Every time we revisit the injury, the emotional pathway becomes stronger. The memory becomes sharper. The story becomes more central.

Over time, the wound becomes more than something that happened to us, it becomes the lens through which we interpret everything else.

We begin anticipating disappointment before it arrives.
We guard ourselves in ways that slowly shrink our capacity to trust.
We start protecting ourselves from future pain in ways that quietly reshape how we live.

And slowly, the wound stops being an event in our story and starts becoming the centre of it.

But the cross interrupts that trajectory. The cross refuses to allow suffering to become identity.

And perhaps the most comforting part of this truth is that the cross doesn’t dismiss the wound in order to do so.

The Cross Does Not Deny the Wound

Looking at the cross does not mean pretending the wound isn’t real.

Christianity has never asked us to ignore suffering.

In fact, the cross itself is the clearest declaration that God does not dismiss pain — He enters it.

The Son of God is not spared the wound. He carries it. And even after the resurrection, the scars remain.

That detail matters more than we often realise.

Because it tells us that healing in the Kingdom of God does not necessarily mean erasing the wound.

It means the wound no longer defines the story.

The cross does not deny the injury.

It absorbs it.

And then, somehow, transforms it.

Which brings me back to the sentence that stopped me on that prayer walk.

Because the more I sit with it, the more I realise it was not meant as a rebuke.

It was an invitation.

The Invitation

God is not scolding me for feeling pain. He is gently asking where my gaze will rest.

Will I centre my life around what has hurt me?

Or will I centre my life around what He can redeem?

This is not a choice we make once and never revisit. Some days the wound still feels louder. Some days grief still rises unexpectedly. Some days I still find myself asking questions that do not have clear answers.

But the cross reminds me of something steady.

The wound explains the pain.

The cross reveals the purpose.

And when my eyes drift back toward the wound, as they inevitably do (I’m still human) , the invitation remains the same:

Lift your gaze again.

Not because the wound isn’t real.

But because it is not the end of the story.

Till next time

When I was younger, up until my final year of college, I used to say I wanted to be a doctor. That didn’t quite work out (THANK GOD!)

Since then my working life, if I can even call it a career, has been less a clear path and more a collection of jobs. I’ve worked in Banking, Audit & Assurance, Human Capital Consulting, and now Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. All of them have been good to me in their own way. They’ve paid my bills. They’ve taught me things. On paper, it probably looks like movement, even progression.

But underneath it all there has always been a quiet, lingering uncertainty.

None of those roles have really answered the question: What do I want to be?

For a long time, that felt like a personal failure. If I’m honest, there are still parts of me that feel it that way. We live in a world that expects clarity early. By your late twenties, certainly by your early thirties, you’re supposed to have some kind of trajectory. A sense of direction. A story that makes sense when someone asks, “So what do you do?”

As I approach thirty, I’ve found myself wrestling with that expectation. And slowly, almost reluctantly, I think I’ve arrived at a different conclusion.

Perhaps the goal is not to know exactly what I want to be.

Perhaps the goal is simply to be faithful.

Faithful with whatever is placed in my hands. Faithful in whatever season I find myself in. Faithful with the responsibilities I’m entrusted with, for however long I happen to hold them.

The older I get, the less certain I am about what I want to but the more certain I am about who I want to be. I want to be a woman who loves and fears the Lord.

A woman who is wise. Kind. Considerate. Disciplined. Someone emotionally aware of both herself and others. Someone who is helpful, but not driven by the need to please everyone. Someone discerning, but not cynical. Loving, but not without boundaries. Someone who tells the truth with gentleness. Someone who can hold conviction without losing compassion.

I know that I want to use my voice in the world in some way. That desire has followed me long enough that I can’t dismiss it anymore. But even there, the deeper question for me is not simply how I use my voice, but what kind of voice it becomes.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is maybe the point of life is not primarily the what. Perhaps it is the who.

Who you are when no title or achievement is there to explain you. Who you are when success arrives. Who you are when disappointment does. Who you are becoming in the small, unobserved moments of your life.

So no, I still don’t know exactly what I want to be.

But I am slowly learning who I want to become.

And right now, that feels like a steadier place to stand.

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I started colouring. Yes. Colouring. With markers. Like a six-year-old.

If you read the piece I wrote recently about wanting to find the magic in my life again(read here if you missed it) , this is step one. And I am absolutely loving it.

It calms my nervous system in a way that feels almost medicinal. My mind, which is usually sprinting three laps ahead of my body, slows down. It focuses. It softens. There’s something about choosing colours and staying inside little lines that gently insists you be present.

Here's my unsolicited advice: every adult should revisit at least one hobby from their childhood that sparked joy.

For me, that was always colouring and creating. For you, maybe it's building Lego sets or making friendship bracelets. I don't know your life.

And apparently, there’s science to back me up.

Studies show that highly playful adults tend to be more optimistic about the future and more resilient in the face of challenges. When we play, the limbic system, the part of the brain responsible for emotion and behaviour, lights up and opens itself to new connections. Play literally nourishes the brain. It creates space for stimulation and innovation.

Which makes sense, because traditionally “childlike” hobbies tap into the imaginative part of us that adulthood politely asks to sit down and be quiet. And that imaginative space? That’s often where our best ideas live. For our work. Our leadership. Our creativity.

If I’m honest, I didn’t start colouring because I was trying to be whimsical.

I started because I felt anxiety creeping back in. I could feel that familiar tightness at the edges of my mind. I also felt like my creative edge was dulling a bit. And I needed somewhere safe to channel it.

It’s early days. But I feel so much better.

Which brings me to something else. I love being a Daddy’s girl.

And by Daddy, I mean the Holy Spirit.

I love when He reminds me that He cares about the little things, not just the big, destiny-shaping, life-altering things. The small, mildly inconvenient, “why is this happening to me at 8:43am on a Saturday?” things.

This weekend, I couldn’t find my wallet. And isn’t it always the way? The one time you urgently need something is the exact time it decides to disappear.

On Saturday morning during my quiet time, I asked the Holy Spirit to help me find it. Not in a calm, composed, spiritually mature way. In a slightly dramatic, borderline whiny way. Like, “Dad pleaseeee.” Fully aware that I am the one who misplaced it.

Then I began searching my room like someone who had never owned a wallet before in her life. Emptied all my suitcases from my recent trip. Called my friend Seyi in Dubai in case I had somehow left it in her apartment.

At some point I felt a prompting. Check your other bags.

Now logically, this made zero sense. I had not used those bags recently. But I checked anyway.

Nothing.

At this stage I sighed the kind of sigh that deserves its own soundtrack and said out loud, “Holy Spirit, help me pleaseeeee.”

And as I was about to get up, from the corner of my eye, I saw the faintest tip of something in the narrow gap between my wardrobe and the wall.

Let me explain something. That gap is dark. My wallet is dark. It is the kind of space where objects go to retire permanently. There is no logical reason I should have seen it.

But there it was.

I reached down.

And lo and behold.

My wallet.

I literally stood there grinning like I’d just won a million pounds and said out loud, “Wow. You really, really do care.”

God is such a girl dad.

I always say that God loves everyone equally, but He loves us all uniquely. And this? This was so Him in our relationship. Not grand. Not dramatic. Just deeply personal. Slightly cheeky. Very tender.

It was such a needed reminder that it doesn’t have to be big for Him to care.

Sometimes the magic isn’t in the miracle.

Sometimes it’s in a colouring book.

And sometimes it’s in a wallet wedged in a dark corner, just waiting for you to notice that Heaven is paying attention to your very ordinary Saturday morning.

So here’s my question for you.

What did you love doing before you started calling it “unproductive”?

Revisit the thing you stopped doing when life got serious.

Go find one. Just one. This week.

And if you do, tell me. I want to know what magic you’re bringing back.

I really want to build a community of adults who refuse to lose their wonder.

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I feel like I’m allowed to say that because this is my first Substack of the year. Also, sidenote: it’s officially been a year since I wrote my very first Substack. (Okay a year and two days, but semantics 🙄.)

The bottom line is this: I’m really proud of myself. 26 Substacks in a year is no small feat. I’m proud of the consistency, the discipline, and shoutout to my ultimate collaborator, the Holy Spirit, who gives me what to write and helps me slip into flow state. My guy fr fr.

I know most people do the whole "new year, new me" thing and rush into production mode. That would've been me too. But I'm reminded that January and February are still winter - nature is still in hibernation until March when the flowers start to bloom. So I'm also still in hibernation. Jan and Feb for me have been about resting, rejuvenating, and restrategising.

I turned 29 in January, which is… wild. The fact that I’ll be 30 next year feels like a conversation I’m not emotionally available for just yet. Not because I fear ageing—I actually don’t—but because 30 feels like such a big number. Anyway.

A lot of people kept asking about my birthday plans, and the only thing on my mind was fleeing the miserable, soul-sucking darkness of British winter. I needed sun. Real sun. The kind that actually warms your skin instead of that weak January thing Britain tries to pass off as daylight. So there I was basking in 24+ degree weather, sun beaming on my face, surrounded by loved ones, with great food and plenty of nature. Honestly, that's all I can ask for!🥰🥰🥰

As I reflected over the past 29 years, one of my major realisations is that I’ve become much more comfortable with not knowing and actually saying the words “I don’t know.”

We live in an age that’s allergic to ambiguity. Google has basically trained us to believe every question has an answer waiting just a search away. And when it comes to my faith especially? I’ve always felt this pressure to defend God, to explain His ways, to have some perfectly packaged theodicy ready for every tragedy.

But what if this whole compulsion to always have an answer is itself a form of immaturity?

When my mum died, my father laid himself on her still-warm body, just as Elisha had done with the Shunammite woman's son. He prayed with the kind of fervency only grief and faith combined can produce. He believed. He knew the biblical precedent.

She didn’t come back.

Later, I asked God: “Why didn’t You tell my father? You’ve shown him things before they happened. Why was this time different?”

I didn’t have an answer. I still don’t. And I’ve learned that’s okay.

When people ask me about my three‑year plan or my five‑year plan - me, a recovering Type‑A personality with control issues - I’ve found unexpected freedom in saying, “I don’t know.” Not because I’m lazy or aimless, but because sudden loss has a way of humbling even the most stubborn planners.

The day before my mum died, I was at brunch with two friends, talking about how excited I was to celebrate her 50th birthday. I had no idea that the very next day, she would pass and never see 50. That kind of reality rearranges your relationship with certainty.

Here's what surprised me though: Scripture is far more comfortable with mystery than we are.

Moses, after encountering God more intimately than perhaps anyone was told, "You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live." Even in the closest possible relationship with the God, there were boundaries. Like, "We're close, but not that close, Moses.

Job demanded answers from God and basically got hit a "Who do you think you're talking to?" God's response was essentially: "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?" Job's resolution didn't come from getting answers, it came from encountering a God too magnificent to be reduced to human logic. Sometimes the answer is just "I'm God, you're not, let's move on. AND THAT SUCKS!

Deuteronomy 29:29 puts it plainly:

There is literally a category of divine knowledge that is, by design, off-limits.

So here’s what I’ve learned in 29 years of living: intimacy with God does not equal immunity from mystery. If anything, the closer you walk with Him, the more you may encounter moments where His ways feel not clearer, but more inscrutable.

My father had experienced God’s voice, His guidance, His prophetic revelation. And yet, in the moment that mattered most, there was silence. Not because God had abandoned him, but because God was doing something that transcended his understanding.

The same God who had shown him things to come chose not to show him this. The same God who had demonstrated His power chose not to wield it the way my father desperately hoped. And my father had to face the question every person of mature faith eventually encounters:

Will I trust God only when I understand Him, or will I trust Him precisely when I don’t?

This is where faith becomes faith and not just religious optimism. Past revelations don’t obligate God to future ones. Previous miracles don’t establish a pattern He’s bound to repeat. Our relationship with Him is not transactional.

There’s a strange irony here: the younger we are in faith, the more answers we seem to have. New believers often possess crystalline certainty about God’s ways. Meanwhile, those of us further along are just like, “I honestly have no idea what’s happening. Because when you walk with Him long enough, the mystery deepens rather than clears. You watch prayers go unanswered. You see godly people suffer while the wicked prosper. You learn that faith is not an equation where the right inputs guarantee the desired outputs.

Maturity often looks like becoming more comfortable with less certainty.

FYI embracing mystery doesn’t mean abandoning the pursuit of understanding. Abraham negotiated with God over Sodom. David poured out confusion in the Psalms. Habakkuk demanded to know why God seemed to tolerate injustice.

God doesn’t punish honest questions. He invites them.

The difference is posture. We can seek answers without demanding them as our right. We can ask for understanding while acknowledging that some things may remain hidden this side of eternity.

For me, this has meant I no longer feel the need to defend God’s reputation with explanations that don’t hold water. I don’t have to pretend I understand what I clearly don’t. Instead, I can sit with people in their pain without rushing to fix or explain it.

And paradoxically, this honest uncertainty has deepened not diminished my faith. Because I’m no longer worshipping a God small enough for me to fully comprehend. I’m in relationship with a Being whose ways are “past finding out,” whose understanding has no limit.

That God is worthy of worship. A god I could fully explain would not be.

Anyway, back to earth. Here's what's been happening in my regular, non-metaphysical life.

I got two new piercings and I'm obsessed (I currently have 17; I promise I'm done now 😭). I'm taking a social media detox for all of February—my soul desperately needs the reset—which means you're about to see a lot more of me here. And honestly? This year I want my Substacks to stop feeling like soliloquies and start feeling like conversations.

So talk to me: How's your year been so far? What's life teaching you right now? Did anything here hit home? (DON'T IGNORE ME, I'M VULNERABLE HERE LOL)

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This time of year is loud with declarations. Words for the year. Themes. Prophecies. Strategies. Everyone trying to articulate what the next twelve months will hold.

As I was showering (because honestly, that’s where some of my most honest conversations with God happen), I asked the Holy Spirit what I should write about. And in response to my question, I didn’t hear anything complex or dramatic. Just a quiet, steady instruction:

“Tell my children to fix their gaze.”

As we step into a new year, there’s a subtle pressure to overhaul everything. New goals. New habits. New versions of ourselves. The language of momentum is everywhere - hit the ground running, don’t waste January, start strong. And while intention is not the enemy, it’s worth pausing long enough to ask a deeper question before we move forward:

What am I looking at?

Because what you fix your gaze on becomes what sustains you….

Listen, focus is not neutral. Whatever consistently holds your attention will begin to shape your expectations, your responses, and your endurance. And the truth is, none of us truly knows what this new year holds. We don’t know what will shift, what will stretch us, what will disappoint us, or what will surprise us. We can plan carefully, pray earnestly, and prepare wisely - but still, the year will unfold in ways we cannot fully predict.

I know how easily my own gaze drifts, toward outcomes, timelines, fears, and expectations I was never meant to carry. But if our gaze is fixed on the One who already knows how the year will unfold, then even when circumstances are uncertain, our footing doesn’t have to be.

Fixing our gaze doesn’t mean ignoring reality. It means choosing, again and again, to return our attention to God - in prayer, in Scripture, and in trust especially when our minds want to scatter.

Scripture reminds us of this invitation:

“Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.” Hebrews 12:1–2

What strikes me about this passage is that endurance isn’t rooted in speed or strength — it’s rooted in sight. Keeping our eyes on Jesus.

I keep thinking about Peter. Brave enough to step out of the boat. Faithful enough to attempt the impossible. And yet, the moment his eyes shifted from Jesus to the wind around him, his confidence gave way to fear. The storm didn’t suddenly intensify. The water didn’t suddenly change. What changed was his gaze.

For me, 2026 is about learning where to look and choosing to stay there.

Because here’s what happens when we get this right: the storms still come, the waves still rise, but we don’t sink. The unexpected still happens, the plans still shift, but we don’t lose our footing. When your gaze is fixed on Jesus, you’re not rattled by what you didn’t see coming because you’re anchored to the One who did.

So as we step into this new year, I’m not making a thousand promises to myself. I’m making one commitment: to keep my eyes on Him. To filter every decision, every dream, every disappointment through the lens of His faithfulness. To let His perspective shape mine. To remember that the race isn’t about speed, it’s about endurance. And endurance comes from knowing where to look.

Maybe that’s the word for you too. Not a detailed roadmap for the next 365 days, but a simple redirect: fix your gaze. Let everything else flow from that. The goals, the growth, the healing, the breakthrough… it all starts with looking at the right thing.

So here’s to 2026. Here’s to keeping our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Here’s to running with purpose, rooted in His promises, sustained by His presence.

May your gaze be steady. May your footing be sure. And may this be the year you discover what it means to walk on water not because the storm stopped, but because you never stopped looking at Him.

Happy New Year. Let’s fix our gaze and run this race well.

My mum says I used to go around announcing to anyone who would listen:
“Hi, I’m Covenant, and I’m magic.”

Not that I had magic or could do magic - I was magic.

Because back then, my existence itself felt like an enchantment. Life shimmered. Possibilities felt endless, alive, just waiting to be discovered, touched, lived into.

My parents nurtured that belief like it was sacred.

I grew up with a father who told stories by moonlight—not reading from books, but spinning tales out of the dark like he was pulling light from nowhere. One story still lives inside me.

Six men, each with superpowers:

• Mr. A, who carried a bone that made him the strongest man alive whenever he held it.

• Mr. B, who could translate the language of animals.

• Mr. C, the tallest man to ever walk the earth, who could see what was coming from miles away.

• Mr. D, whose drum summoned rain.

• Mr. E, who felt the inverse of everything—cold when the world burned, warm when it froze.

• Mr. F, the prayer warrior, whose words could move mountains or calm storms.

They were sent on an expedition to retrieve the king’s lost necklace.

For reasons I couldn’t understand at the time, the story stretched across two weeks. Every night, just when it was getting good, when the men were about to face some impossible obstacle or unlock some hidden power, my father would pause, smile that maddening smile, and say:

“I’ll tell you the rest tomorrow.”

My brother and I would groan, beg, bargain.

But the next day, we’d wake with anticipation humming in our chests, counting down the hours until nightfall - until we could return to those magical men and their impossible journey.

What I didn’t know then - what I only learned years later - was that my father was making it up as he went.

He stretched the story across those two weeks because my mother had travelled, and he needed something to fill the gap her absence left. He needed us to have something to wake up for. Something to wonder about. Something to keep us from feeling the full weight of missing her.

But to six-year-old me, all I knew was this:

My father was magic.
He held entire worlds inside him.
And he could pull them out whenever we needed them most.

That childlike wonder followed me deep into adulthood—a golden thread I refused to let go of, even as the world tried to teach me otherwise.

I believed in the magic of possibilities. The kind that whispers that your entire life can pivot on a single moment. A single conversation. A single choice made at 3am when you’re tired of being who you’ve always been.

I believed in the kind of love that didn’t need translation - where recognition is instant, cellular. Not love at first sight, but knowing at first sight. Your soul reaching across the space between you and saying:

“Oh. There you are. I’ve been looking for you.”

I believed in the magic woven into nature itself - the way light bends through leaves and turns ordinary afternoons into cathedrals. The way oceans hold memory in their salt and their waves. The way certain places feel like they’ve been waiting for you to arrive so they can finally exhale.

I believed the world was alive and paying attention. That synchronicity wasn’t coincidence, but conversation. That magic wasn’t something you had to search for—it was the air you breathed, if you remembered how to notice it.

But the older I grow, the more I’ve had to reckon with how adulthood and the sharp edges of life slowly erode that wonder. Like water wearing down stone.

I started to believe realism was what I needed to survive - the cynics, the disappointments, the people who mistake hope for naivety. I learned to suppress the magic. To dress my wonder in pragmatism so it wouldn’t be laughed at, dismissed, or worse - crushed.

But here’s what I’m realising:

I never stopped believing. I just tried to make myself smaller. Quieter.
More palatable to a world that treats magic like foolishness.

I armoured my wonder so it wouldn’t get hurt. And in doing so, I dimmed the very thing that made life feel worth living.

So this next year is about finding that magic again. Not the dark kind—not manipulation or illusion or performance. The beautiful kind.

The kind that believes a story told by moonlight can heal a child’s loneliness.
The kind that trusts love that doesn’t require you to translate your soul.
The kind that sees the extraordinary in the ordinary and refuses to apologise for it.

The world needs more people who believe in the magic of life. People who move through it like sheep among wolves— as shrewd as snakes, but as innocent as doves. People who see clearly but refuse to let that clarity harden them into cynicism. Who know the world is harsh and choose softness anyway. Who understand that realism and wonder are not opposites - they’re partners.

One keeps you grounded.
The other keeps you alive.

Even in my writing, I want my words to do what my father’s stories did.

Not just inform.
Not just entertain.
But remind.

I want to write in a way that cracks people open just enough for the light to get back in. That makes magic feel accessible again not something reserved for children or fools, but something we all have access to if we’re brave enough to stop pretending we don’t need it.

I want magic. Not because I’m naive but because I’ve seen what happens when we stop believing in it. We survive, yes. But we stop living.

And I didn’t come this far, didn’t hold on through everything I’ve held on through - just to survive.

I’m remembering what six-year-old Covenant knew without question:

That my existence, your existence, this—all of it—is magical.

And that’s not something to outgrow.
It’s something to reclaim.

“People are both your greatest asset and your greatest liability. And sometimes… the same person is both at once.”

I think this might be the first Substack I’ve written in real time while the pain is still fresh, while the lessons are still bleeding through. So, yes, it’s raw. Unpolished. But it’s honest. And that’s the point.

People have always been my greatest asset and my greatest liability. The same hand that holds you up can also knock you down. It’s strange that both truths can exist in the same person, in the same moment, in the same relationship.

I’ve always struggled with “doing life with people” because… people are unpredictable, flawed, sometimes reckless with your heart. My natural instinct is self-preservation.

This year has been full of people cuts and wounds. People I thought would know better—who do know better—still hurt me in ways that make no sense. And I’ve realised that even if people share similar principles, values, or theology, they’re often at very different stages of actually living it. Which is unfortunate when you’re on the receiving end of someone else’s unfinished homework.

It’s made me want to retreat into my shell, to love less openly, to build walls so high the walls of Jericho would ask me for construction tips. I’ve wanted to harden my heart, because honestly, why would someone I trusted speak to me that way? Why would they do that?

And here’s the truth: I’m not naturally loving. I’m skeptical, cautious. Loving people doesn’t come easily, it’s something God has cultivated in me over time. I thought I’d mastered it. But last week reminded me: no. Not even close.

This past week, I experienced a wound from people I least expected it from. And it sent me spiraling: anger, offence, irritation… pick your poison. My response was essentially: “If this is how people are, then I’m out.”

And yet, while love doesn’t come naturally, forgiveness does. I forgive quickly, because unforgiveness feels like poison for me. I literally cannot function if I’m holding onto it. But this latest offence? It has me in a chokehold. Even as I write, I’m still working through it. And the Holy Spirit? He’s been gently and insistently unpacking me. What I love about the Holy Spirit is He uses one hand to comfort you and the other to convict you. Looool.

Last week I found myself thinking: “Holy Spirit… not today. Please. I am angry.”

This wound dredged up emotions I thought I’d conquered, especially anger. I used to have terrible anger issues. As in: once punched someone and dislocated their jaw. (Not proud. Moving on.) I thought I had moved past it. Clearly… I have more work to do.

Here’s what He’s been showing me:

1. I have an issue with not being perfect yet.

Sanctification is progressive. I struggle with the fact that I’m not perfect yet. I’ve prided myself on wisdom, conflict-resolution skills, emotional discipline… and somewhere along the way, pride slipped in.

I assumed that because I hadn’t felt certain emotions in a while, I had mastered them. But this week reminded me: I haven’t. And I hate relearning what I thought I’d already conquered. Being corrected more than once? My ego does a dramatic backflip.

2. Forgiveness is never my strength—it’s His.

Because I forgive quickly, I assumed I was doing it on my own. Me. My strength. My maturity. My ability. And then reality smacked me in the face: nope. Never me. Always God.

3. Forgiveness can take time and it’s ok.

This is definitely linked to my performance mentality. I want to do things right immediately. I want God to look at me and be like, “Wow, mature queen.” But that’s not how He thinks.

But healing isn’t instant. Forgiveness isn’t always quick. The depth of the wound determines the length of the healing. God isn’t disappointed in me because one situation is harder to forgive than another. He isn’t comparing my speed. He’s far more patient with my humanity than I am.

4. Love requires wisdom.

I think I confused love with access.

If you asked me, I would’ve confidently said, “Oh, absolutely not. I have boundaries.”
But truthfully? Once I love someone, I take them all the way in. Every guard down. Every wall lowered. And I forget that even people I love deeply are still… human. And humans remain capable of causing wounds - intentionally or not.

Love without wisdom is a recipe for repeated cuts.

5. I am in good company

There’s nothing I experience that Jesus didn’t experience first. Two days ago, I was lamenting to God in the bathroom—dramatic, of course—and as I walked out, I heard:
“Don’t worry. You’re in good company.”

He reminded me of Peter denying Him three times, Judas betraying Him, Thomas doubting Him, the followers abandoning Him at the cross.

If anyone understands betrayal, disappointment, human failure, and heartbreak, it’s Jesus. And if He understands, He knows how to heal it. And somehow, that makes the wound feel less isolating.

6. God often uses people to stretch you

Since August, He’s been telling me He would stretch my capacity, specifically for people. I said: “No thanks, Lord. I’m good.” Because stretching is never comfortable. And people? Even more unpredictable.

And then He confirmed it through a friend. The irony was painful: God said, “Covenant, I’m stretching your capacity for people,” and the very next week, boom - here comes the wound. People, as it turns out, are part of the curriculum.

Of course He’ll use people to stretch my capacity for people. I hate how much sense that makes.

Right now, all I want to do is recoil. But I know the Holy Spirit somehow, He will show me how this stretching works.

And honestly, be careful when you pray for a specific fruit of the spirit to grow God may just bring the most chaotic situation to grow it and it will almost always involve… people.

I’ll be honest: this entry is probably more for me than for you. But if it blesses you too, glory to Jesus.

I can’t tie this up neatly. I can’t offer three easy steps. I’m still taking the test. But it feels good to show the wound and not just the scar. To admit that even when you think you’ve arrived, my dear—you have not. The journey is long, messy, beautiful, and ongoing.

In a few months or years, I’ll look back and say, “Ah yes, remember when? Now I see the lesson.” For now, I’m learning not to obsess over the destination, but to sit in the process. To reckon with my humanity. To let God stretch me gently… and sometimes painfully.

And somehow, amidst it all, I’m learning that being human isn’t a failure, it’s the canvas for His work.

Till next time

There are friends celebrating birthdays, friends getting engaged, friends signing papers for their first homes, and others packing their lives into boxes to relocate somewhere new. Some people are lighting up a the thought of Christmas; others are shrinking from it, bracing themselves for the weight the season brings (like me).

All of these storylines running at the same time. All of these emotional temperatures existing side by side. And somehow, in the midst of all that motion and commotion, we’re all trying to stay balanced - attempting to live in a way that doesn’t tip us off the scale, while still showing up for each other in whatever capacity we have left to give.

It’s strange to witness how these moments; joy, loss, transition, waiting can coexist so effortlessly, almost like parallel universes sharing one sky. It makes me think about how intentional God must be with each of us. How He can hold billions of lives at once, each with its own timings, detours, miracles and devastations, and still not lose track of a single detail.

We occupy the same calendar, the same December but we’re living out chapters that couldn’t be more different. It’s comforting and humbling at the same time, this idea that our timelines aren’t random but appointed.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about the phrase “Earth is a marketplace, heaven is home” which I posted on my insta story yesterday…and the more I sit with it, the more it feels true. Earth really does feel like a place of constant exchange - of joy for sorrow, of certainty for uncertainty, of dreams becoming reality and losses reshaping us.

Everyone is trading something, carrying something, letting go of something.

We pass through seasons like stalls in a market: some loud and vibrant, some quiet and painful, some where we leave with full hands and other where we walk away empty. And maybe the reason everything feels so transient, so fragile and yet so intense, is because this isn’t the final destination. It’s the in-between. The place of movement, not permanence.

And maybe that’s why everything feels a little heavier right now, a little more textured, for me right now. It’s my mum’s birthday this Friday - she would have been 53. There’s something about this time of year that makes the world feel louder and quieter at the same time. The contrast of everyone else’s milestones against the stillness of my own grief. It makes me more aware of the layers: the parts of life that continue to move forward and the parts that stay tender, no matter how much time passes.

Maybe this is what December does. It gathers all the contradictions of being human and places them in front of you. Joy next to sorrow, beginnings beside endings, hope laced through memory. And somewhere in the middle of that, I’m reminded that earth is the marketplace where all these exchanges take place, heaven is the home where everything finally makes sense.

Aye l’ọjá, ọrùn nílé, mu mí dé’lé o.

Translation: Earth is a marketplace, heaven is home.

In the first, I sat across from one of my mentees at dinner as he described what seemed, in his eyes, a hopeless situation. When he asked for my advice, I found myself, almost unknowingly, challenging his faith. Challenging him to believe God for the impossible. To trust the character of God even when circumstances screamed otherwise.

He looked at me almost stunned and said, “Covenant, what you’re saying touches me so deeply because, given everything you’ve gone through in life, the affliction, the suffering, for you to still be able to defend God’s character and speak of Him in such a way is so humbling and moving to me.” His words pierced me, because I had never really evaluated myself through that lens. I had simply been speaking from the place God had been forming in me for years.

The second scenario unfolded more recently. A sister of mine was lamenting to myself and another sister about the pain of grief. She had lost her father over ten years ago, and the wound still ached with the particular sharpness that only those acquainted with bereavement know. I didn’t rush to offer solutions or fix-it prayers. Instead, I held space for her emotion, sitting with her as someone who is intimately, painfully acquainted with loss.

After some time, the Holy Spirit led me to pray, a prayer that became a conduit for His encouragement to flow through me to her. As I spoke about the lifelong journey I’m on, still healing from losing my mum five years ago, I found myself once again vouching for the character of Christ. Defending His heart even when we don’t understand His ways. I discovered myself defending the Father’s heart though I myself don’t have all the answers to soothe my pain, talk less of hers, yet concluding: In all things, God can still be trusted.

DISCLAIMER: Before I go any further, I want to say something clearly and tenderly. What I share in this piece—especially the phrase “God can trust some people with affliction”—is not a universal doctrine, nor a theology I am placing on anyone else. This is not a claim that God assigns suffering as a badge of honor, or that those who suffer less are less faithful. It is simply the language the Lord used to comfort me in the darkest season of my life. It is a personal revelation, a way God helped me make sense of my own pain. Please receive it as my testimony, not a rule or expectation for every believer.

Shortly after, the Holy Spirit reminded me of something He whispered to my heart in the early days after my mum’s passing:

“There are some people who God can trust with affliction because He knows they won’t misrepresent Him.”

When He first spoke this to me, I didn’t understand. It was something that, as days turned to months, kept resonating in my spirit like an echo I couldn’t quite grasp. It is only now, five years later, that I’m beginning to understand what the Lord meant by that statement, and what a staggering privilege it truly is.

What an honor it is to be one of the people the Lord can count on to suffer well.

I’m sure some of you are reading this thinking: Covenant, what are you talking about? This is madness. Are you saying God is a sadist? That He delights in suffering?

Let me be unequivocally clear: God is not a sadist. He is not indifferent to pain. The shortest verse in Scripture, “Jesus wept,” reveals a God who is moved by our grief, who enters into our suffering rather than standing aloof from it. As Tim Keller often said, Christianity is the only religion where God becomes the victim. Our God knows what it means to suffer unjustly, to cry out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” from a Roman cross.

But here is the scandal, the offensive beauty of the gospel: God is so committed to His glory and our ultimate good that He will allow, and sometimes even orchestrate, circumstances that crucify our self-sufficiency and false securities.

He loves us too much to leave us in the comfortable shallows of faith untested.

C.S. Lewis understood this when he wrote, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” Pain is not God’s preferred instrument, but it is often His most effective one. Not because He enjoys our suffering, but because suffering has a unique way of shattering our illusions and exposing what we truly believe about Him.

Job is perhaps the clearest biblical picture of this. Here’s what we often miss: Job’s suffering wasn’t caused by sin or disobedience. It was caused because the Lord was bragging about him!

The Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.” (Job 1:8)

Job’s suffering was not the result of God’s disappointment in him but God’s delight. That alone is a theological shock.

This is what theologians call God’s “alien work,” the work that seems contrary to His nature of love and protection, yet is still done in love for purposes we cannot immediately see. As Isaiah 28:21 says, it is His “strange work,” His “alien task.” God was so confident in Job’s faith, so certain of the foundation he had laid in this man’s soul, that He allowed the scaffolding of Job’s life to be torn down, knowing the structure would stand.

As the story unfolds, Job’s life collapses piece by piece. ob loses everything: his wealth, his children, his health, his dignity. His own wife tells him to “curse God and die.” His friends, in their misguided theology, insist his suffering must be punishment for hidden sin. Job is alone, confused, covered in sores, scraping his skin with broken pottery, and yet, in that pit of despair, he declares one of the most staggering statements of faith ever uttered by human lips:

Pause there. Sit with the weight of those words.

Job is essentially saying, “Even if trusting God costs me my life, even if this faith brings me to the grave, even if God Himself becomes my executioner, I will not let go of Him.”

MAKE IT MAKES SENSE!

The past five years without my mum have become my own education in the omniscience and sovereignty of God.

If anyone had told me at 23, “Covenant, you will lose your mum. Your whole world will collapse like a demolished building. But don’t worry, your faith in God will emerge stronger than ever,” I would have called you a liar. I probably would have cursed you out, used language my mother would have rebuked me for, and declared “God forbid” fifteen million times with the fervor of a Pentecostal prayer warrior.

But here I am. Five years later. Walking with what I call an amputation, because that is literally what her death feels like to me. An amputation. Not a wound that heals but a permanent absence, a phantom pain where wholeness used to be. And yet, somehow, I am still here defending this God.

Let me be honest because I think we do each other a disservice when we sanitise our testimonies. The journey was not linear. I didn’t move from grief to glory in some neat, upward trajectory. I definitely walked away from any form of righteous living for the first two years of my grief journey. I turned back to worldly mechanisms to cope, to numb, to forget, because I felt betrayed by God. I was angry. Furiously, blasphemously angry. I shouted at Him. I wept until I had no tears left.

But as I look back on the journey now with eyes that can see a bit more clearly, I realise that even in my rebellion, I was still in relationship with God. I also worshipped, though my worship was mixed with tears. I praised, though my praise sounded more like a question than a declaration. I lamented with God, not just at Him, because you can only lament to someone you believe is still there, still listening.

I experienced Jesus as the Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief in ways my comfortable faith had never allowed me to understand. I experienced what it means for God to be near the brokenhearted, to save those who are crushed in spirit. I experienced Him walking with me through the valley of the shadow of death, not as a distant guide pointing the way, but as a fellow traveler who knows what it means to lose someone you love.

C.S. Lewis, in his raw and honest “A Grief Observed,” written after the death of his wife, confessed, “Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him.” That was my struggle. Not atheism, but something perhaps more insidious: maintaining faith while wrestling with what that faith demanded I believe about God’s character in light of my loss.

To be continued……

You may or may not know this about me, but I’m someone who doesn’t do well with routine. I GET SOOOOO BORED. It’s both a blessing and a curse because, sure, not every part of life is meant to be a thrill-seeking adventure (I’ve heard). Routine builds discipline and consistency, I get that. But right now, it doesn’t even feel like routine; it feels like stagnation. Life feels stale.

Let me confess something: I’m rarely jealous of unbelievers. In fact, envy’s not really my thing. But if there’s one thing I do envy, it’s their “so what?” attitude to life—their breezy ability to just move. You know my problem? I know too much. Not in a “know-it-all” way, but in an “I know life has consequences and God will humble me if I play around” kind of way. Some people can wake up, quit their jobs, move to Bali, and say, “I’ll figure it out when I get there.” Me? I have to consult the Holy Spirit, wait for an answer, maybe get radio silence, maybe a “not yet,” or the classic, “I’ll let you decide.” Which is somehow the most unhelpful of all.

So I’m torn: do I just move and trust God to redirect me, or do I wait for a clear green light from Heaven HQ?

And look, nothing is “wrong.” I have a job (which is saying a lot in this economy), a church, a roof, a loving community, women I get to disciple... yet there’s still this restlessness, like something’s waiting on the other side of the unknown. Maybe that’s the Holy Spirit nudging me forward. Or maybe it’s the annual “what have I done with my life?” inventory that shows up right around this time every year, when the year starts to wind down and everyone pretends to have learned profound lessons. Or maybe it’s because I’m inching closer to 30 (still have some time, but not that much).

I jest, but in all seriousness, this unrest has been lingering for a while now, and I honestly don’t know what to do with it. Maybe it’s divine discontent. Or maybe it’s just that part of adulthood where stability starts feeling suspiciously like standing still.

But see why I envy unbelievers? They’d have packed and gone by now. No prayer circle. No fasting. Just vibes. Meanwhile, I’m here overthinking whether my desire to move is divine instruction or just emotional turbulence disguised as purpose.

The truth? I’m restless but cautious. Curious but convicted. And honestly, I wish I could outsource the whole decision-making process. And before someone says, “You can, just ask the Holy Spirit,” I am asking. But apparently, there’s still “a part for me to play.”

I’m just waiting for that part to come with clearer instructions. Maybe even subtitles. Or at least a divine progress bar that says, “Recalibrating your destiny... please wait.”

I’d love to end this with some profound spiritual takeaway, but the truth is... I don’t have one. I’m just here, trying to make sense of what’s next and hoping Heaven replies to my messages soon.

“Who’s your daddy?”

Not once. Not twice. But again and again throughout our lives, in different seasons, at different altitudes. The question doesn’t stop coming just because you answered it before.

Growing up in Nigeria, I often heard this phrase in different ways: “Who born you?” or “Who be your papa?” and for me its hits different because they’re not asking for your father’s name. They’re asking: What gives you the audacity? What’s backing you? Where does your confidence come from? Show me your pedigree, your foundation, your reason for standing when everyone else would fall.

And brother, sister—you better have an answer.

At 28, after all the shege PRO MAX (Nigerian slang for deep suffering) life has shown me, I’ve learned something that changed everything: if my why isn’t rooted in Christ, it will collapse. Not might. Will.

The Illusion of Borrowed Strength

We live in an era of borrowed whys. People start businesses because someone else is making money. They chase degrees because that’s what their parents wanted. They stay in relationships because leaving seems harder than staying. They build lives on foundations that aren’t theirs.

This works fine, until life applies pressure.

And life will always apply pressure. It’s not being wicked; it’s just doing quality control.Life squeezes you to see if you’re real or just performing.

I didn’t realise how much of my why was borrowed until life tested it.

I’ve seen people with impressive résumés fold when things got difficult, while others with nothing but a clear why stood firm like iroko trees in a storm (if you don’t know what an iroko tree is or looks like, Google it). The difference wasn’t talent, money, or connections. The difference was knowing their daddy.

Your daddy - your why - is what you call on when your own strength isn’t enough.

April 2014, I was staring at my fourth medical school rejection letter in four years. Four cycles of hoping, applying, interviewing, praying. Four times of hearing “we regret to inform you.”

21 years of my life had been building toward this moment that never came. Every decision calibrated to fulfil a dream, except it wasn’t even my dream. It was my parents’ dream. And I had no backup plan because who needs a Plan B when you’ve been told since primary school that you were going to be a doctor?

After those rejections, I did what a lot of people do - I pivoted hard. If medicine wouldn’t have me, I’d prove myself another way. I’d build something. I’d make a name for myself.

I threw myself into the self-made grind: vision boards, affirmations, five-year plans. I told myself I was the master of my fate, the captain of my soul.

And for a while, it looked like it was working. But underneath, I was building on sand again, just different sand. Instead of my parents’ dreams, it was my ego. Instead of their approval, it was public validation.

Then life showed me shege. Real, proper shege. OMO! Everything I’d built my identity on had failed or was failing. One by one, life had asked “who is your daddy?” and my answers had proven insufficient.

And in that moment, broken and exhausted, I finally said what I should have said from the beginning: “Jesus.” The truth I’d been running from because I wanted to be self-sufficient.

But here’s what I learned: making Christ your why isn’t weakness. It’s the only sustainable strength there is.

What Changes When Christ Is Your Foundation

When your why is rooted in Christ, pressure reveals strength instead of cracks.

Your worth stops fluctuating with your wins and losses. The medical school can reject you. The business can fail. And yes, it hurts. But it doesn’t destroy you, because your identity wasn’t in those things to begin with.

Your purpose outlasts your circumstances. When your why is about stewarding what God has given you, about being faithful in the assignment, about reflecting His character in your corner of the world? That works in every season.

You stop carrying what was never yours to carry. I learned to work like it depends on me and trust like it depends on Him.

My why has evolved over the years. At 21, with those rejection letters, it was survival - figuring out who I was outside of expectations. At 25, it was about freedom from validation. Now, at 28, it’s about faithful stewardship - building something that outlasts me, creating pathways for others.

Each version was true for its season. But here’s the key: all these versions are branches of the same root. They’re all expressions of the same foundation—that I’m here because God put me here, and my job is to be faithful with what He’s entrusted to me.

The why you start with might not be the why you end with, and that’s perfectly fine. What matters is that it’s built on something that can actually hold when the pressure comes.

Because here’s what I’ve learned through all the shege: a why rooted in anything other than Christ will eventually crack. Not because other motivations are meaningless, but because they’re not ultimate.

Love for your family is beautiful, but what happens when family disappoints you or worse, what if they die? Desire for achievement is noble, but what happens when you fail? Only a why rooted in the unchanging character of God can hold steady when everything else is shaking.

The Question Keeps Coming

Life doesn’t ask you once. Life will keep asking you “who is your daddy?” at different altitudes of your journey. When you’re starting out, when you’re succeeding, when you’re failing, when you’re transitioning, it asks again and you need to make sure your answer can hold the weight.

The difference now, for me, is that my answer doesn’t change based on how I feel or how things are going. My answer is Christ, in the good days and the terrible ones. In the seasons of clarity and in the wilderness of confusion.

He’s the constant. Everything else is variable.

So, who is your daddy?

Not who do you claim when it’s convenient. But who is the actual foundation of your life? Who or what do you run to when everything falls apart?

God loves you too much to let you build on sand forever. He’ll let the borrowed whys crumble. He’ll let the false foundations crack, not to destroy you, but to invite you to something unshakeable.

So when life asks you the question -and it will ask - I pray you have the answer that holds. Not the one that sounds good. Not the one you borrowed from your parents or your culture or your Instagram feed. But the one that’s true.

Don’t get it twisted o, even with Christ as your daddy, you might (scratch that) you will still face storms. You will still get rejected. You might still fail by the world’s standards.

But you won’t collapse.

You’ll stand.

And when the storm clears, your answer will still echo, steady and sure.

Till next time x

I said those things so often they started to sound like my personality. They became labels I stuck on myself, excuses that felt like explanations.

But looking back, I realised those “personality traits” were really survival strategies. They were the residue of moments when people I trusted didn’t protect me, when the access I gave to others was mishandled. I learned, quietly and deeply, that openness was dangerous. I decided that being closed off, guarded, and controlling was safer.

And for a long time, I thought that was just who I was.

But here’s the thing: what starts as protection has a way of becoming identity.

And I think that’s exactly where the enemy works. Scripture tells us that “the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10). One of the thief’s most subtle strategies is to take our brokenness — the very places Christ longs to heal — and rebrand them as “personality.”

Instead of seeing fear, shame, or anger as wounds to be surrendered and restored, the enemy whispers: “This is just who you are.” And when we agree with that lie, brokenness begins to shape identity more than the Spirit does.

We all carry versions of this. Imagine a child who learned that speaking up earned punishment. The child learns to shrink. That shrinking keeps them alive in that environment. Decades later, that same pattern shows up as “quietness,” or worse, “coldness.” The person is told, implicitly and explicitly, to own that trait as identity: “You’re just reserved.” People interpret the armour as essence.

A teen grows up constantly criticised, and defensiveness becomes “just their personality.” A young adult learns love is conditional, and people-pleasing gets baptised as “kindness.”

At first, these behaviours are armour. They keep us safe in unsafe spaces. But when the armour hardens into identity, we start to believe the enemy’s whisper: “This is just who you are.”

That’s the first step towards weaponisation: survival patterns are rebranded as immutable traits. When a survival strategy becomes identity, it’s harder to change. It becomes the explanation people accept — and the one we accept for ourselves.

Here’s the truth: survival is not the same as life. Jesus didn’t just promise survival — He promised abundant life. When we wear our coping as “who I am,” we start mistaking the armour we built in pain for the new self we are called to put on in Christ (Ephesians 4:22–24).

Why Calling It “Personality” Is Dangerous

When we confuse brokenness for personality, we risk letting the enemy write the script of our lives. We begin to live more from trauma than from truth. And when we stop being curious about our behaviours and start branding them as permanent, that’s where the enemy slips in.

The enemy is subtle. He takes what was once a wound and sells it back to us as identity.

• “You’ll always be guarded — it’s just your nature.”

• “You’ll always need to control things — it’s just who you are.”

• “You’ll never be able to trust — that’s just the way you’re wired.”

But those are not God’s words. Those are counterfeits.

The truth is that the enemy cannot create — he can only distort. And he delights in keeping us bound to patterns that Christ already died to set us free from.

When brokenness gets mislabelled as personality, three things happen:

1. It naturalises the wound. “This is just who I am” keeps us from seeking healing.

2. It provides cover for exploitation. Others can excuse harmful dynamics: “She’s just like that.”

3. It feeds the enemy’s narrative. As long as we believe we’re defined by survival, we won’t live in freedom.

This is why naming the difference matters. Personality is not always essence. Sometimes it’s evidence, evidence of the wounds we’ve carried, the armour we’ve worn.

Practical Ways to Reclaim

Here are some steps that have helped me, and might help you:

• Ask the Spirit to reveal the lie. Pray: “Lord, show me where I’ve mistaken a wound for identity.” God is faithful to uncover what we cannot always see.

• Bring it into the light. James 5:16 reminds us that healing begins in confession — not only of sin, but of pain. Telling safe, trusted people dismantles shame.

• Replace the label with truth. For every “I am controlling,” replace it with God’s Word: “I am held by the One who is in control.” For every “I can’t open up,” replace it with: “I am known fully and loved by God.”

• Experiment with new creation. Try small acts that contradict the old script: let someone in a little more, surrender a plan to God, or rest in uncertainty. These are ways to practise the freedom you already have in Christ.

• Remember who names you. Jesus says: “You are chosen, holy, and dearly loved” (Colossians 3:12). That is your truest personality — the new self clothed in Him.

Your wounds may have shaped you, but they do not define you. The cross tells us that our scars are not the end of the story. Resurrection life means that what was once armour can be laid down, and what was once wound can become witness.

“If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

But other times?

It’s simply not your time yet.

I know that’s not what you want to hear. I know it’s not what the prosperity preachers told you. I know it doesn’t fit the neat little formula of “name it, claim it, frame it.”

And if I’m honest, this is the harder truth for most of us to swallow.

Because if it’s warfare, I can fight.
If it’s delay, I can press harder.
But if it’s just not yet…then I have to surrender. I have to endure. I have to wait.

Listen, I absolutely believe life is spiritual. I know there are unseen realities that shape the physical (Ephesians 6:12).

But here’s what I’ve been wrestling with lately: we’ve spiritualised the normal rhythms of life to the point where waiting itself has become an enemy.

Sometimes waiting is just…waiting.

I was listening to a podcast last week called You Can Rest Here, and Mazino, the host, reminded me: “waiting is not an exception to life — it’s woven into the very fabric of life itself.”

Think about it.

You waited to walk. You waited to talk. You waited to go to school, to drive, to vote, to drink legally (well, most of you). You wait in traffic, you wait in lines, you wait for your food at restaurants. You wait for your paycheck, you wait for weekends, you wait for vacations.

Waiting is not a spiritual crisis — it’s called being human.

But here’s the problem. In Christian spaces, we’ve dressed waiting up in clichés: “I’m in my waiting season.”

We use the phrase to comfort ourselves, but I think we’ve accidentally set ourselves up for disappointment. Because if waiting is only ever thought of as a “season,” we treat it like a temporary inconvenience rather than a lifelong discipline.

And the result? Unrealistic expectations. Fragile endurance. Shallow faith.

Let me tell you about a woman who should be the patron saint of everyone tired of hearing “it’s not your season yet.”

Elizabeth. Mary’s relative. Zechariah’s wife. John the Baptist’s mother.

Here’s what Luke 1:6-7 tells us about her:

“Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord's commands and decrees blamelessly. But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old.”

Read that again. Righteous. Blameless. Childless.

All three at the same time.

She was righteous. She was blameless. She was faithful. And still — she waited.

Elizabeth wasn’t barren because she lacked faith. She wasn’t childless because of generational curses. She wasn’t waiting because she hadn’t broken through enough spiritual barriers.

She was waiting because she was carrying the forerunner to Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ wasn’t ready to be announced yet.

Elizabeth’s womb was closed not as punishment, but as protection — protection of God’s perfect timing.

Think about it: John the Baptist’s entire purpose was to “prepare the way of the Lord” (Isaiah 40:3). But he couldn’t prepare the way for someone who wasn’t ready to walk it. Elizabeth couldn’t birth the forerunner until it was time for the Messiah to be forerun to.

Her barrenness wasn’t spiritual warfare — it was strategic waiting.

For months, I’ve been praying about something deeply personal. In my mind, it should have happened by now. But it hasn’t.

So, naturally, I assumed it must be warfare. Maybe the enemy was blocking me. Maybe I wasn’t praying hard enough. Maybe there was a spiritual delay.

So I went to war in prayer — hours of intercession, fasting, crying out, wearing myself thin.

Finally, exhausted, I prayed: “Lord, if it’s me — if I’m the reason this is delayed — show me. I want to fix it.”

And in that quiet moment, I sensed the Lord whisper: “Covenant, who told you it was delayed?”

That question liberated me.

Because the truth is, I had labeled “delay” what God was simply calling “not yet.”

Look I know we love the slogans: “Now faith is!” (misquoting Hebrews 11:1). “Name it and claim it!” “Command your blessings now!”

But friends, that is not biblical faith. That’s consumer faith.

And consumer faith produces consumer Christians: impatient, easily discouraged, offended when God doesn’t move on our timeline.

Let me press this a little further: what if your obsession with God’s timing is actually revealing the poverty of your faith?

Because true faith isn’t proven by how fast your prayers are answered. True faith is often proven by how long you can endure without losing heart.

Hebrews 11 is full of saints who “died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar” (v. 13).

Abraham waited 25 years for Isaac. Joseph waited 13 years from dream to palace. David waited over a decade to sit on the throne after being anointed. If waiting disqualifies you from faith, then none of these heroes belong in the Hall of Faith.

The truth is we need thicker skin. We need stronger spines.

We need to recover the kind of endurance our fathers and mothers of faith had — the kind that can trust God when the womb is still barren, when the prison door is still locked, when the throne still belongs to Saul.

We cannot keep collapsing at every “not yet.” Even Jesus waited 30 years before beginning His ministry. Think about that. The Son of God — the Word made flesh, the exact representation of the Father — had to grow. Had to wait. Had to develop.

If Jesus Himself had to wait for His time, what makes you think you’re exempt from yours?

So instead of asking “Why is God making me wait?” start asking:

• “What is God preparing me to carry that I’m not ready for yet?”

• “How is this season developing the character I’ll need for the next one?”

• “What dependencies need to align that I can’t even see?”

• “How is my impatience revealing areas where I’m still spiritually immature?”

Because God operates on divine timing, not human urgency.

He’s not moved by your deadlines.
He’s not intimidated by your timeline.
He’s not impressed by your impatience.

He is moved by His own wisdom, motivated by His own love, and committed to His own perfect timing.

Romans 5:3–4 says it plainly:

“We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”

Endurance. Character. Hope.

These are not microwave virtues. They are forged in the slow furnace of waiting.

So if you’re tired, discouraged, tempted to give up (I GET IT) — but don’t.

Endure. Strengthen your heart. Stand firm.

Because maybe it’s not delay. Maybe it’s just not time yet.

The Kindness of the Cross

God’s kindness is often displayed through times of trials and hardship—not always through ease. And yet, most of us (myself included) only regard God as kind when things unfold smoothly: when prayers are answered quickly, when doors open without resistance, when blessings come without a fight.

But here's where I need to challenge both you and myself: is that really what divine kindness is? Or is that just comfort dressed up in spiritual language?

Because when you really examine Scripture closely, the highest expression of God's kindness to humanity came drenched in blood, wrapped in thorns, and nailed to wood. The cross isn't just a symbol of sacrifice; it's a complete inversion of how we think love should behave.

And honestly, this unsettles me, because it means my instinctive definition of kindness is too thin. If God’s kindness is most visible in the suffering of Christ, then surely His kindness toward me can’t just be about things coming easily. It must mean something deeper, sharper, more unsettling.

The Counterfeit Kindness of Culture

Now, let me paint a picture of where we are today. We live in a culture that has commodified faith. Social media feeds us a steady diet of breakthrough testimonies, miracle stories, and “prayer worked” posts that subtly reinforce the idea that God's favour looks like immediate answers and comfortable circumstances.

But listen carefully—this isn't just prosperity theology; it's deeper than that. It's the assumption that divine love should feel comfortable. That God's kindness means getting what we want, when we want it, in the form we want it. We've confused God with a vending machine: insert prayer, expect blessing. Input faith, output favour. When the machine doesn't deliver, we assume it's broken—or that we haven’t inserted enough coins. Here's the truth we need to grasp:

God isn't a vending machine dispensing comfort—He's a father raising children.

And any parent knows that sometimes love requires saying no. Sometimes love looks like allowing struggle that builds character. Sometimes love means watching your child fail in order to help them grow.

The Kindness of the “No”

So what does this actually look like in Scripture? The Bible reveals a consistent pattern that contradicts our comfort-seeking theology. God's kindness rarely arrives wrapped in ease, but rather emerges through the crucible of difficulty.

Take Joseph, for instance, sold into slavery by his brothers, falsely accused, forgotten in prison for years. The kindness wasn't in avoiding slavery—it was in how slavery positioned him to save nations."You intended to harm me," he later told his brothers, "but God intended it for good" (Genesis 50:20).

Or consider Israel's forty years in the wilderness—a generation wandering in circles, eating the same manna, facing the same struggles daily. Yet Moses would later describe this as the place where God "humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna... to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord" (Deuteronomy 8:3). The wilderness wasn't punishment; it was preparation.

Job's story is even more disturbing. A man who lost everything—wealth, children, health—not as punishment for sin, but as a demonstration of faith's true nature. Through his suffering, Job encountered God in a way that his previous prosperity had never allowed. "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear," Job says after losing everything, "but now my eye sees you, (Job 42:5)”

The pattern is unmistakable: God's kindness often comes disguised as struggle, delay, and even denial.

The God Who Suffers

Now let me get personal with you for a moment. Looking back on my life retrospectively, I have seen God’s kindness in ways I once would have called cruel.

When I begged Him to bring my mum back to life before her funeral, His silence felt like the cruellest abandonment. I was certain that if He truly loved me, this one miracle would prove it. The God I thought I knew would never let a child bury their mother. The God I thought I served would never ignore such desperate prayers.

But the God who exists—the God who let His own Son die—knows something about love that I didn't understand then:

sometimes love hurts before it heals.

In those sleepless months and years of grief that followed, I discovered a God who doesn't sleep either. I discovered a God who stays awake with the broken-hearted. In the questions that had no answers, I developed a faith that trusts not because it understands, but because it knows the character of the One who holds all things together.

When I fought to salvage relationships He wouldn't allow to continue, when I prayed for hearts to change that remained closed, when I begged for reconciliation that never came—I thought I was experiencing divine cruelty. But I was actually experiencing divine surgery.

God was cutting away attachments that had become idols, dependencies that had become chains, connections that were preventing me from discovering who I actually was beneath all the people-pleasing and approval-seeking.

Don’t get it twisted I'm not grateful for the pain itself—grief is still grief, and loss is still loss. But I'm grateful for the person I've become through wrestling with God in the middle of that pain. I'm grateful for the faith that can hold mystery without demanding explanation. I'm grateful for the compassion that can only come from having been broken and finding that God specialises in making broken things beautiful. Here's what I've learned:

The kindness wasn't in what He allowed me to keep, but in what He allowed me to become.

Not in what He gave, but in how He shaped me through what He withheld. The difficulties and trials I’ve encountered aren't evidence of His absence, but of His intimate involvement in my transformation.

The Strange Mercy

Here’s what revolutionises everything: Christ didn’t just die for our sins; He lived through our struggles.

Hebrews 4:15 tells us He “has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” This means when you’re battling addiction, Christ knows the grip of temptation. When you’re grieving, Christ knows the weight of sorrow. When you feel abandoned, Christ remembers the cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When you’re wrestling with doubt, Christ recalls the garden prayer, “If it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.”

The incarnation wasn’t just about salvation—it was about empathy. God didn’t just observe human suffering from heaven’s throne; He descended to experience it firsthand. Now, when we cry out in pain, we’re not speaking to a distant deity, but to a High Priest who has walked every step of our journey.

This reframes our trials entirely. They’re not evidence that God doesn’t care, but proof that He cares so deeply He chose to experience them Himself.

The cross teaches us that God's greatest gifts often come wrapped in thorns.

So understand this: God’s kindness may feel cruel by our standards, because it refuses to settle for our comfort when it could give us our destiny. It may feel violent, because it wages war against everything in us that settles for less than we were created to be. It is uncomfortable, because it loves us too much to leave us unchanged.

The God who let His Son die rather than let humanity stay lost is the same God who will let us struggle rather than stay shallow. Who will allow our false securities to crumble rather than let us build our lives on foundations that won’t last. Who will sometimes (and this part SUCKS!) but who will break our hearts in order to give us new ones.

This is a kindness that transforms rather than simply comforts. A love that rescues rather than merely relieves. A God who is more interested in our becoming than our ease.

The Invitation

So the real question is not, “Is God kind?” The real question is: Will you allow Him define what kindness actually is?

And if you do—what would it mean for your faith if you stopped equating God’s kindness with comfort? What prayers would you pray differently? What trials might you begin to see as mercies? What unanswered prayers might you reinterpret as invitations to deeper trust?

If the cross is the blueprint, then even the “no” becomes not divine neglect, but a strange and holy mercy.

A gift is a strange thing. On one hand, it is sheer grace — something you did not earn, a spark given by God. On the other hand, it can feel like a demand, an unchosen burden you are expected to carry, polish, and present to the world. And the irony is this: the very thing that is meant to bring life to others can slowly drain life from you, if you are not rooted in something deeper than your usefulness.

People come to you not primarily to know you, but to use you — your gift becomes a kind of currency in the marketplace of relationships. They love your output but overlook your being. They see the gift, not the soul. You risk becoming reduced to function. As Martin Buber might put it, you become an “It” rather than a “Thou”—an object to be consumed, rather than a person to be encountered.

One of the saddest things in Scripture, to me, is seeing how many gifted people crashed under the weight of their gift. Let’s take Saul who started well, anointed and full of promise, but his insecurity and obsession with appearances rotted him from the inside out. Samson was so dazzlingly strong that nobody ever stopped to ask if he had the character to hold that strength—and eventually, he didn’t. Even Solomon, blessed with wisdom beyond compare, ended up undone by compromise and idolatry.

Their gifts were intact. But their souls were starving.

And that’s the danger. Gifts can intoxicate. A truth I’ve had to reckon with is that giftedness is seductive—not just to others, but to me. There’s a subtle high in being useful, admired, or indispensable. My ego loved those places. My soul, less so. What felt like fuel at first eventually became poison. I found myself gravitating toward the spaces that fed my ego, even when they were starving my soul. And over time, I began to burn out trying to be “worthy” of my gifts—as if I had to keep proving I deserved the very thing God had already given me freely.

Every gift has its shadow. Wisdom can shade into cynicism. Discernment can sour into judgment. Boldness can tip into arrogance. What blesses others can warp you if it is not anchored in grace.

So here are the questions I find myself wrestling with:

1. How do I carry the weight of my gifts without letting them crush my soul?

2. How do I honor what God has given me without becoming enslaved by it?

3. How do I push myself to grow without pushing myself over the edge?

I don’t have neat answers (and if you do, please feel free to send them my way). But I’ve been trying, slowly, to insist on my humanity. That means setting boundaries that prioritise well-being over expectations. It means surrounding myself with people who see my struggles as real, not imaginary problems of the privileged. It means being with friends—my actual friends, peer to peer, not just downstream relationships where I’m always the one pouring—who love me not for my crown but for my soul. Who remind me that my value is not in my brilliance but in my belovedness.

It also means giving myself permission to be a whole person, not just the walking embodiment of my abilities. It hasn’t been easy.

But here’s what I try to remember:

My gifts will outlast most of the people who want to use them.

My humanity will outlast my gifts.

My soul will outlast everything else

I have to tend to each accordingly.

I don’t want a life that’s merely impressive. I want one that’s sustainable. The kingdom of God isn’t built by spectacular burnouts, but by faithful servants who keep showing up—day after day, year after year—carrying their gifts lightly and their humanity honestly.

The demand isn’t just to use my gifts well. It’s to remain usable—to myself, to others, to God. And that requires a humility that cuts against every instinct when you’re the person people come to for answers.

So if you’re like me—gifted, wearing a heavy crown—don’t confuse your gifting with your identity (which trust me, it’s easier than you think). You are not your talent. You are not your platform. You are not your productivity.

Your gift is an assignment. Your soul is eternal. One will fade; the other will last forever.

So yes—use your gift. Steward it well. Offer it as worship. But don’t go where the gift is platformed and the soul is neglected. Go where you are humanised. Go where you are more than what you can do.

Because at the end of the day: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36).

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Second, her message made me reflect on all the wins I've been downplaying lately because they're not "significant enough" or "big enough" to count.

Sidebar: Lately, I’ve been making a deliberate effort to stop indulging in self-deprecating habits. Turns out, when you're not constantly cross-examining your worth, you actually have energy left over to build something.

So here's my list of recent wins — no disclaimers, no "but I'm still not where I want to be." Just pride — the healthy kind, not the “I invented oxygen” kind.

1. Signing up for a gym… and actually going in the mornings. Look, I know this sounds like the most basic adult achievement, but hear me out. Morning gym sessions require a level of self-betrayal that I previously thought was reserved for Navy SEALs. It's choosing future-me over present-me at 6 AM when present-me is very persuasive about why the bed is actually a perfectly good place to do stretches. I’m not saying I bounce out of bed like a Disney princess — more like I shuffle there half-conscious — but I still go. And for now, that counts.

2. Cooking. My relationship with cooking has historically been one of mutual avoidance—along with small talk, it represents everything I find inexplicably draining about adult existence. But because I'm trying to steward my body better—fancy way of saying I got tired of feeling like rubbish—I'm being more conscious of what I eat. Which… means cooking. (Insert dramatic sigh here.) It hasn’t been terrible, though. . Shout out to TikTok for recipes and my air fryer for making me feel like I can cook without actually “cooking.”

3. Crying without feeling stupid for crying. This one's big. I used to think crying was inefficient (for me!!!)— like, shouldn’t I be using this time to do something productive? (I know.) Now I cry freely, without giving a TED Talk in my head telling myself to "get it together." Revolutionary stuff, really.

4. Spending time with God without an agenda. Not because I need something, not because I feel guilty, but because I actually want to. There's something different about showing up without an agenda, without the desperate energy of someone trying to fix themselves. It's been... nice. Which feels like an understatement, but sometimes nice is exactly what your soul needs.

5. Saying no. Plot twist: I discovered I'm a people pleaser, which came as a shock to someone who thought she was refreshingly direct. My version just looked like “helping” until I realised that sometimes helping meant harming myself. So now, I’m practising saying no — even to people I love — without spiralling into fear that they’ll stop liking me. Which has been terrifying and liberating in equal measure. The shocking revelation: people still like me even when I'm not performing my usefulness. Imagine that.

6. Posting consistently on TikTok. I’m terrified of being visible, which is ironic for someone who writes on the internet but somehow finds video more exposing. Every post feels like an act of bravery… or foolishness, depending on the day. But I’ve been showing up anyway. And since I haven’t combusted in public shame yet, I’m taking that as a win.

So yeah, that's it really. No trophies, no fanfare—just a handful of small stones that are keeping me moving toward the bigger things. Don’t get me wrong — big goals matter. But, momentum isn't built from grand gestures. It's built from doing things that feel ridiculously small until you realise they're not.

This is probably the shortest Substack I've ever written, but sometimes the most important things don't need much explanation.

What about you? Any small wins you've been quietly (or loudly) proud of lately? Tell me. I want to celebrate them with you.

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It’s strange how that number — five — has been lingering in my mind. Biblically, five is often seen as the number of grace. And honestly, I find myself clinging to that. Not as a cliché, but as a quiet expectation: that somehow, in this fifth year, the grace of God will show up for me in ways it hasn’t before.

Grief doesn’t exactly work on a schedule, but anniversaries have a way of surfacing things you thought you’d buried. And this week, I’ve found myself in a deeply reflective place — revisiting the questions I’ve asked, the prayers I’ve prayed, and the tension I’ve held for the last half-decade.

And it’s still wild to me -

That I haven’t heard her laugh in five years.
Haven’t heard her voice in five years.
Haven’t felt the warmth of her embrace, or had her say my name in that way only she could.
Five years of not picking up the phone to tell her good news, or call her when I just need to hear, “Don’t forget whose daughter you are.”
Five years of silence from someone who once filled so much space in my world.

Some days it feels like yesterday. Other days it feels like a different lifetime. But all of it? Still real. Still raw. Still aching in places that don’t seem to heal with time.

After she died, I felt like God owed me.

I felt like He owed me big time. That after allowing such a brutal loss, the least He could do was make sure nothing bad ever happened to me again. He should give me what I asked for, when I asked, with minimal effort — matter of fact, I shouldn’t even have to ask. He had a lot of making up to do.

I remember saying to Him — even as recently as last month —
“You have to show me why it’s worth sticking with You.”

I expected overcompensation. I expected the pain to come with a kind of divine severance package. I wanted a grief exemption card — one that got me out of any future suffering.

Almost five years later, I’m still here — still breathing, still believing (ish), still waiting for the divine payback I thought was coming. Still waking up to bills, heartbreak, anxious prayers that feel like they evaporate somewhere between my lips and the sky.

The divine debt I thought I was owed? Turns out God doesn’t keep that kind of ledger.

When the perfect life failed to materialise, I cycled through every stage of spiritual grief. First came the anger — righteous indignation at a God who, frankly, wasn’t holding up His end of the deal. Then the bargaining — longer prayers, strategic church attendance, performative belief. If I acted the part well enough, maybe He’d notice and reward me. I had developed a grief-based economy of faith — one where pain was currency and God was supposed to repay it with blessings.

But the disappointment? That cut the deepest. Not just disappointment in God, but in myself — in the naïve theology I’d built that told me suffering was a one-time entrance fee that bought protection from future heartbreak. That pain had somehow bought me immunity.

It made me ask, and keep asking:
Do I still believe God is good?
Do I believe He still loves me?

I'll be honest — the answer fluctuates. Some days, the answer is yes.
Other days, it’s “I believe You’re good, just not to me”
And then there are days when even that feels too generous. When I can’t summon any tidy declarations of faith. When I just want Him to come down, physically, wrap His arms around me and say, “It’s going to be okay.”

And some days, I don’t even want to pretend to be okay. I sit in the tension. I want to believe that faith isn't based on feelings, but when feelings are all I have, what then?

I’ve found myself in this strange dance with God — part longing, part silence, part protest, part worship. It reminds me a lot of Job, actually. Not the tidy version we sometimes hear in sermons, but the gritty middle chapters — the part where he’s angry, accusing, bewildered, and still clinging on somehow. He didn’t lose his faith, but he did question everything he thought he knew about God. And God didn’t rebuke him for it — He met him in it.

Or Elijah, under the broom tree, asking God to just let him die. “I’ve had enough, Lord.” (1 Kings 19:4) That sentence has felt familiar to me in recent years. God didn’t lecture him. He didn’t shout over the depression. He let Elijah rest. Fed him. Sat with him in the stillness.

What has been beautiful about this dance is that He meets me there — not always with answers, but often with presence.

And sometimes that presence comes quietly:

In a sunset that looks too kind to be random.

In a friend's well-timed voice note.

In a song I wasn’t expecting that says exactly what I can’t put into words.

In a morning where I wake up with a little more strength than I went to bed with.

In a line in Scripture that reads differently now — not because the Word changed, but because I have. A scripture that comes to mind is John 11:35 “Jesus wept” — not because He was powerless, but because He loved.

No lightning bolts.
No booming voices.
Just grace. Quiet, unassuming grace.
Like manna — not enough for the week, not a grand feast —
just enough for today.

Maybe you’re here too — tired, confused, walking with God but sometimes side-eyeing Him. I don’t have a neat bow to tie this up with. No miraculous breakthrough to report. But what I do have is this: I’m still here. I’m still asking. Still showing up. Still whispering prayers, even the angry ones.

Jacob’s limp wasn’t punishment. It was proof. Proof that he had seen God and lived. Maybe my limp — this ongoing, clumsy faith in the wake of loss — is its own kind of evidence. That I haven’t given up on God, and more importantly, that He hasn’t given up on me.

Even when it doesn’t feel like it.
Even when the silence is deafening.
Even when I’m still waiting for Him to show up in the dramatic ways I want.

And maybe in this fifth year, what I need most isn’t a reward, but a revelation.
Maybe the grace I’m waiting for won’t always feel like ease — maybe it will look like endurance. Maybe its in the quiet grace of waking up with just enough faith to wrestle with Him one more day. Maybe the Father's heart is revealed not in the answers to my prayers, but in His willingness to keep listening to them—even when they sound more like accusations than requests.

Maybe the grace is that I’m still here.

Still wrestling.

Still hoping.

Still turning toward Him when everything in me wants to turn away.

So if you’re limping too, you’re not alone. I see you. And more importantly - God does too.

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It's subtle. It can sound like:

"God, I know You're good… because You'll bring my person eventually."

"I trust You… because I believe You'll reward my waiting."

"I'll worship through this ache… because I know You'll show up with the promise in the end."

I've had to confront something uncomfortable in my own heart lately: I've been treating God's presence as a consolation prize while I wait for the "real thing." As if the very reality that the God of the universe wants to be intimately acquainted with me—wants to sit in my mess, know my thoughts, feel my pain—isn't the real prize itself. I've had to be honest enough to tell Him that He doesn't feel like enough for me. And somehow, that honesty has become the doorway to discovering that He actually is.

And while there's nothing inherently wrong with holding on to hope—it becomes exhausting when your sense of intimacy with God becomes transactional.

Because then, when the thing you have been praying/desiring doesn't come, or the timeline stretches longer than expected, you're left thinking:

"Did I do something wrong?" "Is God mad at me?" "Was I not faithful enough?" "Does He even care about this?"

But here's the deeper truth— God is not just preparing a gift for you. He's preparing you with Himself.

Maybe you’ve been faithful. Maybe you’ve fasted, tithed, prayed, served, waited—and still, silence.
You’re wondering if it’s your fault. If you misheard. If maybe you’re just invisible to Him.
Let me gently say this: You’re not.
You are seen in this waiting. Not for what you’ve done or withheld or performed—but simply because you are His. God hasn’t overlooked you. He hasn’t withheld out of cruelty. He hasn’t tuned out your ache.

He's not only good because He gives you the desires of your heart—whether that be a spouse, a job, a child. He's good because He doesn't abandon you in this ache.

This is the kind of revelation that shifts your foundation.

You have to remember: God is not watching you ache from a distance. He feels it with you. He's not saying, "Hold on until I fix this." He's saying:

"I'm sitting in the ache with you. I haven't left. I'm not embarrassed by your disappointment. I'm not disappointed in your disappointment."

You don't need to sanitize your sadness for Him.

In fact, your ache—this very season of longing, confusion, tiredness—is where intimacy with Him can become truer than ever. Because you're not worshipping for a result… you're just reaching for Him.

That's real relationship. That's covenant.

The Gift Hidden in the Waiting

What if the waiting itself is sacred? What if this season of not yet is where God meets you most intimately—not in spite of your longing, but through it?

When you stop demanding that God prove His love by delivering your desires on your timeline, something beautiful happens. You discover that His presence was never dependent on His presents. His nearness was never contingent on His answers.

The psalmist knew this: "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." Not after they're healed. Not when their prayers are answered. While they're broken. In the crushing.

This doesn't mean we stop hoping or asking. It means we stop making our connection to God conditional on getting what we want. It means we learn to receive His love not as a transaction, but as a gift that flows whether our hands are full or empty.

A Different Kind of Trust

Real trust isn't believing God will give you what you want. Real trust is believing God is good even when He doesn't.

It's the difference between "I trust You because I know You'll come through" and "I trust You because of who You are, regardless of what You do."

One keeps you on the performance treadmill. The other invites you into rest.

When you anchor your faith in God's character rather than His delivery service, disappointment doesn't derail you. Delayed timelines don't define you. Unanswered prayers don't undo you.

Because you're not relating to God as a means to an end. You're relating to Him as the end itself.

The Invitation

So here's what I’ve been telling my heart and I hope it encourages you too:

God is not slow.
He’s not careless with your heart.
And He is not only worthy of praise after the blessing shows up.

He is good in the ache.
He is good in the in-between.
He is good even when you’re sick of hoping.

Because His nearness isn’t a reward for your waiting—it’s a constant in your wilderness.

And when the promise does come—because I believe it will—it won’t feel like relief from suffering. It will feel like the overflow of a heart already made whole by the presence of God.

I hope this strengthens your heart.

Till next time