welcome to year 23: a this-is-23 entry / onitsha living diaries 29.
30-09-2023
there’s this solemnity that i believe everybody wakes up with on special days, like birthdays for instance.
you tend to wake up in the wee hours of the morning, reflect, mediate, you know, totally in your feelings about stuffs. you find yourself wearing a Solomon kind of wisdom cap, you didn’t know you had.
it could be sad or joyful, but i know that there’s is a feeling of change. as a reflection of the past year, you can either make a choice to change for better or even if the past year was good, you still wanna grow more, so you’ll make mental or journal notes of places in your life that needs improvement.
personally, i know about change. i know about growth. I know about improvement. but most importantly, i feel more gratitude. I know this sounds cliché, but it's the honest truth.
year 22 was undoubtedly the hardest year of my life - another cliché, but very honest. the consequence for every bad, manipulative, deceitful and dishonest choices i've ever made in my life all told on me. i was repeatedly going from bad to worse and back.
every destructive habit i've picked up along the course of my life either as a survival or coping mechanism was stripped from me and i was thrown into the wolves pack without protection. life was hitting me left, right and center and i was so helpless.
anyways, this is not a story of woe.
without doubt, i do not want to relieve this year, but i'll always be indebted to the lessons from my wilderness experiences, they'll see me through my best years. and this is where my gratitude is stemming from.
when God takes everything and everyone you have and know and requires you to start learning how to build again and this time the right way alongside learning the consequences of your every actions and living them you'll understand why i'm grateful. it's counterintuitive, i know.
on a particular morning in july during my quiet time, i heard clearly "i'm not taking you on a journey of salvation for nothing" in my mind, i'm like 'salvation? i'm saved' i asked for clarity and it came in the course of prayer, salvation meant 'to salvage and to save'
as i write this, i check out the definition of salvation on the dictionary in my mobile and it says "the process of being restored or made new for the purpose of becoming saved; the process of being rid of the old poor quality conditions and becoming improved." and this is exactly what i've been on.
this may not sound impressive, but when you start having this feeling of 'there's more' and you get tired of the way things are and the way you do them, but you can't help yourself so you live your life with that burden and try to move on and one day everything starts crashing down and you're forced to finally pause, think and find a helper, then you'll understand why i'm grateful.
i really needed a helper. i needed to grow. I needed to let go of a lot of things in my life. I needed to lay aside a lot of habits, if i was going to be the kind of person i'm meant to be, i want to be.
So, when i heard that message that morning, i knew God was on my case and even though it hasn't been easy, i could see changes in my life, towards myself and towards others.
so, you'll understand why i'm so grateful on this birthday. i'm a better person because of year 22. i'm a better daughter because of year 22. i'm a better sister because of year 22. i'm a better friend because of year 22.
and because of year 22, year 23 will be the beginning of the best years of my life.
if those life lessons weren't thought and learned, year 23 might not be a big deal to me, because i'll get into it same person physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, financially and it'll just be a series of just existing instead of living.
i'm really excited about this year, like i'm really excited about it.
i don't know how to put my excitement into words, but y'all will be seeing and sensing it from my subsequent entries.
here's to year 23.
happy birthday to me.
nations have come to my rising
and kings to the brightness of my light.
🎂🕯️👑🌟💡❤️
i knew i wouldn’t post this on my birthday, i just knew. lolz.
ps: the above emojis were suggested by my keyboard, after having written my entry, so i felt i should use them.
