Look A Little Closer

Over the past week  through two encounters I have learnt a bit about judging people and also gained an appreciation of how we are all faced with different internal situations. I have learnt to be slow to anger or speak as well as the importance of LISTENING. Listening not only to the words spoken but listening to the heart. 

Okay so you are probably thinking, "Huh....How does one listen to the heart?"

That's a really good question and I'm not entirely sure how to answer that but what it is to me is that it goes a little deeper than meets the eye or ear. The bible says in Jeremiah 17:9-10, "But I, God, search the heart and examine the mind. I get to the heart of the human." and this is where my notion runs from.

This "life lesson" or impression leans a lot to the cliche side of life where you have probably heard it all before with all the catch phrases and what not but I've decided to tell it using my own words through my own experiences and hopefully it well help someone see some of the issues i'll touch on in a different light as well as the issue at hand..... 

look a little closer....... 

Encounter #1)

I work at a government clinic in one of the high density suburbs of Harare. I work directly with pediatric HIV and on numerous occasions I have found myself ANGRY! My anger is often directed to to the parents of these children whose condition has gone undiagnosed for years despite the fact that the parents have been coming in for their monthly supplies of antiretroviral drugs for years. They are on treatment and their children are not. They have never had them tested and I often find myself feeling unsympathetic and angry. I get angry and consider them foolish and selfish for protecting themselves while disregarding the life of their offspring....
 And then when I think about it a bit more it starts to hurt. It starts to hurt when I look at the child  who is often extremely ill by the time they land up at the clinic and it dawns on me that he/she hardly understands what's going on. With and HIV positive result this child's life has changed forever. From that day onwards it is likely that he/she will be having to take multiple drugs on a daily basis because of something that was predetermined waaaay before he/she could use her voice to ask, "Mummy why?". Then I understand WHY....why a mother would try hard to convince herself that her child couldn't possibly be HIV positive. Why she would keep him/her away from confirmed medical diagnosis in a bid to shelter her baby's childhood and life. If it's not confirmed then it can't be so. Fear. She doesn't want to believe that it can be, it is difficult to accept and this is exactly where a single glance or looking at "the facts" doesn't cut it.
You have to look a little closer and listen to the heart.... The heart of a mother who understands so little about a condition except that it makes you ill and cannot be cured. The heart of a mother who loves her child and wants only to protect them. 

 I have learnt to cut people some slack. It's not easy to deal with some of these things and I've had to put myself in their shoes to appreciate and understand.... It's not near justifiable but it is someone else's reality. 

Encounter #2) 

Zimbabwe has been hit with the whole "the other woman"/"small house" pandemic and phrases such as the aforementioned have become far too common. I have personally heard young women encouraging it for whatever reason and on other occasions divulged on how they are the other woman. When I hear this I get ANGRY! I get angry because I want to believe in love and being faithful to your husband/wife. I get angry because it messes with the fairy tale marriage I have in mind. I get angry because my mother is married and I know how much it would pain her if she discovered there was another woman. I get Angry!...And then it starts to hurt.  It starts to hurt because I have no control over it and I cannot change things. My pastor once said to me that, "Hurt people hurt other people." and sometimes this is the reason WHY. 

When you look a little closer you realize that when a heart has been battered and bruised the instinct that kicks in is to protect me and survival. You stop to feel or seek for more... 

"Any man will do as long as my needs are met." 

"Any man will do as long as they want me or make me feel wanted."

"All men cheat so what difference does it make?"

"This is how it's done these days."

A mental shift has occurred and instead of seeing the external. "she is committing adultery." look a little closer, listen carefully to the heart and that is where you will find the root of it all. 

Sometimes it is retaliation or exasperation but unless you look at it like that you will never find the core. I'm not justifying peoples actions but sometimes this is where first impressions don't count. Something went horribly wrong in the heart and mind of this individual who lives their life knowing full on they may be breaking a home, a family, a covenant. It's only when you look at it beyond what meets the eye that you could possibly relate and deal with the real issue.

These two encounters are only the tip of the iceberg to a concept that runs much deeper and affects us all all the time. I don’t know exactly what circumstances you have faced/are facing where you have made a judgement on somebody else and ultimately that judgement has stopped you from being able to help, receive from or even relate with that person, however, I hope and pray that my two experiences help you to perhaps think a little more about these instances where you need to cut people some slack and possibly even yourself. We are complex beings and things are never plain and simple. Our lives are not lived in black and white but in sooo many different colours…some are fusions of two different picks while others are simply different shades of the same colour. Wrapping our heads round all we are is an incomprehensible feat but if we at least try to look a look a little closer them maybe we can uncover the heart…

XOXO

Chido Dziva Chikwari

Biblical Reference 

Jeremiah 17:9-10

The Message (MSG)

“The heart is hopelessly dark and deceitful,

    a puzzle that no one can figure out.

But I, God, search the heart

    and examine the mind.

I get to the heart of the human.

    I get to the root of things.

I treat them as they really are,

    not as they pretend to be.”

Romans 2:1-3

New King James Version (NKJV)

God’s Righteous Judgment

Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge another you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things. 2 But we know that the judgment of God is according to truth against those who practice such things. 3 And do you think this, O man, you who judge those practicing such things, and doing the same, that you will escape the judgment of God?

i DARE you

Hebrews 11:1

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. 

i DARE you to be sure of what you hope for 

i DARE you to be certain of what you do not see

i DARE you to ACT

like NOAH 

i  DARE you to BUILD an ark

with no storm cloud in sight 

without the expertise

i DARE you to CONDEM THE WORLD; what others think.

i DARE you to be sure of what you hope for 

i DARE you to be certain of what you do not see

i DARE you to GO

like ABRAHAM 

even though he did not know where he was headed

like a stranger in a foreign country he lived in tents

i DARE you to OBEY.

i DARE you to be sure of what you hope for 

i DARE you to be certain of what you do not see

i DARE you to consider him FAITHFUL who made the PROMISE 

like SARAH 

she was barren

like ABRAHAM 

one man who was as good as dead 

i DARE you to BELIEVE.

i DARE you to be sure of what you hope for 

i DARE you to be certain of what you do not see

i DARE you to be FEARLESS 

like Moses' parents

they hid him from Pharaoh for months

they weren't afraid of the King's edict

i DARE you to SEE, he was no ordinary child. 

i DARE you to be sure of what you hope for 

i DARE you to be certain of what you do not see

i DARE you to SAY NO

like MOSES 

he refused to be known as the son of Pharoah's daughter

he chose to be ill-treated along with the people of God

For the sake of Christ! 

i DARE you to LEAD the way. 

i DARE you to be sure of what you hope for 

i DARE you to be certain of what you do not see

i DARE you to STEP OUT

like THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL 

they passed through the Red Sea

as if on dry land. 

i DARE you to TRUST

like REHAB the prostitute

she took in the spies

i DARE you to DO WHAT IS RIGHT. 

i DARE you to be sure of what you hope for 

i DARE you to be certain of what you do not see

i

DARE 

you

XOXO

Chido Dziva Chikwari 

This blog post was inspired by two major incidences and a number of minor ones. In the past few years I have mustered an "I do what I want attitude" mainly because I got tired of doing stuff because someone else said so and I want to please them and also because I realized that at the end of the day the only person that's going to be held accountable for how I lived my life is ME. Weather I'm happy or not is founded on a series of decisions made by ME. Soooo for the past few years I've learnt to step out, listen to advice, weigh it out and then do what I want. Obviously I've made a few mistakes where I've thought "hmmmm I probably should have listened to nhingi"  but ultimately I have no regrets. I accept that what I did was defiantly what I wanted at the time and I make sure I learn from those experiences.  

The above has led me to be sort of stubborn and to make some BOLD decisions. Decisions where I'm THE ONLY ONE doing a particular thing, decisions where I've had to trust my gut and most importantly trust God because when it came to crunch time it would just be me and him up against the wall. In a few months time I will be embarking on a huuge journey...one that I will be taking 'alone' and as I was thinking about it my mind sort of wandered to the heroes of the faith (HEBREWS 11) and that's where this blog post got all it's UMPH! Many of them where men and women, young and old, who dared to believe and dared to step out based on their FAITH. They all stood apart from the crowd and wrote their own stories. Stories different from anything that was the norm, stories that have touched generations and generations and from that I'd like to challenge anyone reading this blog post to emulate some of those traits. You never know :) 

"If I sink I sink.

If I win I WIN!!!"

Self.Set.Limits ; Limit-less!

"We are only limited in terms of what our mentality tells us we can or cannot do" 

Bishop Garlington 

As of January 2014 I made a resolution to join the fitness-exercise bandwagon and started my personal walk/jog regime :) ....yay me for being healthy or rather it's more about my clothes being a tad bit too tight lately but anyway a win is a win!! Sooo yes I started my weekly routine and this post is inspired by one of the things that I discovered on my morning waaaaaaaaaaaaalk/jog.... 

I believe that this may be common knowledge, however,  it's something that's been heavily impressed on my heart every morning, you shall soon see how, and I hope in sharing it here and in this way someone might be motivated to Limit-less! 

Self.Set.Limits a.k.a The limits We Set for Ourselves

• January 1st she decided she wanted to be "healthier" and exercise. She proposed that she would jog only on Monday through to Friday because she rests on the weekend and couldn't possibly be waking up so early in the morning. 

In all honesty the statement in bold is not true. I could be waking up on Saturday and Sunday morning to waaaaaaaalk/jog but what's in bold is the bar that I set for myself and as a result I do not waaaaaaalk/jog on Saturdays or Sundays.

• So she hops out of bed at 5.30AM and sets out on her waaaalk/jog. Initially she told herself, "No you are going to walk because the last time you did any exercise was 4 years ago and you can't handle anything too drastic." 

The statement in bold is NOT TRUE but for two weeks I was pretty content with my status quo. It wasn't until my dad and my sister walked into the scene and rocked my smug self-accomplishment boat by letting me know, " OMG it takes you 15 minutes to go round the block!! What are you doing, crawling?" Soooo from then on I thought okay maybe I need to step up the tempo a notch. . 

• She settles on less waaaaaalk and adds a little jog to the routine. She can't possibly go round the entire block and the thought process goes a bit like this...... "I am going to jog from my gate to that tower light. If I get to the tower light I have done well. Thereafter I can walk for a bit" How she sees it, the tower light is like faaaaar. In her mind if she manages to jog up until the tower light she would have done well. So she would jog, jog, jog and really push herself if need be but the moment she'd reached the tower light she would stop, mentally clap hands for herself and then walk because as far as she is concerned she has done exceptionally well in exerting all this effort.
• As she is jogging she often looks up and tells herself, "There is the tower light, there is the tower light...I'm going to the tower light, there is the tower light!!!" And when she gets there she stops, She is Happy! She is very satisfied with herself, she has no qualms and the jog immediately turns into a waaaalk. 

HOWEVER, the truth of the matter is when I'd reached the tower light most times I really wouldn't have exerted myself to tipping point. I could actually go way further than i'd set out to but because that was the standard/the bar that I had set for myself going any further than that designated tower light felt like a strain. In my mind the reflex would be to ask myself, "Why are you doing this? You have already done so well. You have already reached your destination." But we all know that even though I'd jogged to the tower light it doesn't mean that I can't jog any further. it doesn't mean that I am tired, it doesn't mean that this is the best that I can do. All it means is that that is the limit that I had set for myself. 

Thinking much further than just my jogging experience I realize that this goes a lot deeper into how we handle life in general and how self thoughts can either positively of negatively shape how far we go. There are real life consequences and stagnating circumstances that arise when we don't self-talk further than what we think we can/should accomplish. There are so many examples that  I am sure people can share from their personal experiences and I am reminded of a chain message I received a few weeks ago about a man who was asked why his relationship with his wife and family was so close knit and the response that he gave was that he had made a decision for it to be like that. His response was that it was a decision, a choice and I strongly believe that this extrapolates to everything else in our lives where we make mental decisions and they stand as the bar.

I'll give an example of academic bars you may have set in the past, "If I get 5 o'levels I have done well". That is a limit already set. You are not going to be inspired to push any further than that because that is the epitome of your satisfaction.  Another personal example would be of the times I've spent with my dad. My dad is my hero and someone who really inspires me and  I am always in awe when I sit with him and he shares some of the ideas and expectations that he has for his business. I'm often blown away because his vision goes much further than what is possible now or can be projected given the current circumstances. His aspirations are HUGE and his thinking is never the limiting factor. He aims far above what's normal, beyond what's expected of him because of his background or the economic climate. As a result he is never contented with where things are at now,  he rises far above what's expected, far above what is normal, far above what his background holds him to. He recently challenged me, "Chido why do you want to buy such a small car?" My response, "Daddy that's where I am at." But the truth of the matter is that that's the limit I have set for myself. 

So yeah today I decided to share this post to hopefully inspire somebody to push yourself. Set goals that go beyond what you think you can do.  there is a famous quote that says, "If your dreams don't scare you then your dreams aren't big enough!" 

Reach further than the stars, aspire to be something more! Don't be your own limiting factor. Don't stop yourself from getting where you can be. Very often it's not anybody else...it's an internal bar that you have set. It's not the economic climate....it's a mental challenge. It's not where you grew up it's up to you. We all know of so many success stories from men and women who have risen far above where the odds would have them placed. Why can't you? Make a conscious effort to challenge yourself...rethink your goals, rethink your attitudes to what you can or cannot do...Limit-less!

XOXO

Chido Dziva Chikwari