Wishing You a Decade of Dependency and Thriving Despite Deficiency

As a teenager, I wasn’t really ‘taught’ how to cook. I moved around a lot. And in every home, I would have tasks like dicing onions and tomatoes, fixing the vegetables, grinding spices up, etc. But no one allowed me near the pot and no one allowed me to do everything from scratch. I knew how to cook in theory-everything that needed to be in that meal, but I hadn’t ever done it for myself.  It was only when I had dropped out of school in lower-sixth (think age 17) and was staying with my older male cousin at his studio that I was actually ‘in charge’ of cooking (he must have thought,  oh now there is a woman in the house). I recall that every time I cooked, no matter how familiar I was with the ‘process’ of the meal I was making, I would begin with a prayer. An honest to God prayer as in :

Every. Single. Time. 

If only my cousin knew how much I wanted to impress him then- and not poison both of us, of course. 

I would pray like that for over two years- 2007 to 2010; just picture it, me praying for guidance for something as simple as mixing pancakes or stewing cabbage. Something that ‘insignificant’, would have me with eyes closed fervently praying and I would BELIEVE God was hearing and would help. Because he God wouldn’t allow me to be shamed before those who I was cooking for nah? Is he not God again? Especially when I was in my first year at the university and imbibing all those self-help books that had us believing we needed to impress guys with our cooking… let me not even go there. 

The point is, by mid-2010 I was living on my own, had to cook just for me. I was experimenting and learning a lot more but also, the pressure to impress someone else was off. So I stopped praying before cooking. I had mastered a lot of the basic meals, so no need to ask for guidance so the food comes out well. And just like that, I stopped depending on God for that. I believe(d) I was a pro. 

Cooking isn’t the only thing I have grown out of depending on God for. I used to pray before every time I write- and I’m talking fiction, a blog post, an email, etc. I never felt like I deserved to be in the places I had been accepted into. How could I be at Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s workshop when I only just discovered her that year? When I only just managed to buy her book THAT trip because quite frankly I had no access to it before. How could I be in Uganda with so many amazing women writers when all I have a horrible collection of poems published? So of course, I would pray before every single thing I wrote, praying that God makes it better than it is because I know it is crap. 

Occasionally, I still pray before I write, but now it’s more “Lord, you know I procrastinated and now this deadline is here, help me make it”. The prayer is no longer about really depending to make the thing happen. I am ‘grown’ now and jaded. I think “Monique just sit up and work, what you need is discipline!” And I am right. But I am believing I can (and should) be the discipline master of myself, all day every day. I am also believing I need only discipline. And on these two things, I am wrong. 

As many cooks will tell you, you can follow the recipe exactly, do everything as you should have and still come out with a mess. As we say in Pidgin-English, life get as e be. 

Why am I sharing this? Well, two reasons. 

First, because it’s the end of the year and we’re all taking stock on how far we’ve come (or not) and how far we have yet to go. It occurred to me that as we grow up, mature, and life hurts and disillusions us, we become jaded. We may grow in faith, yes, but it no longer the faith that is hopeful. It is a surrendered faith. Our faith now is either more calculating with us marrying our adult logic to it and thinking along the lines of: “if I fast for this number of days, torture myself in this way, make a vow to God or give this amount of money to church then he will answer my prayers” 

OR the other which I think of as surrendered/resigned faith which says “Che sara sara, whatever will be, will be”. We lose that innocent faith, that faith that believes God listened to your childish prayer request to have the meal come out just right. We lose that child-like dependency that has us needing God for everything; and like five-year-olds who have finally learned how to use the bathroom on their own, we begin to shut daddy out. 

Until they may need a new roll of tissue and open the door a crack screaming, so we too call when it’s a mess ‘please give me this or that’. We’re not so independent after all. And we hate it!

Or at least I hate it, and that is the second reason I am sharing this. One of the major lessons 2019 taught me is I cannot be all the things. I cannot meet my ideals (and I wasn’t even striving for perfection o!), I cannot save myself, I will be forced to depend. Because I have been built flawed and meant to depend because I am human and expected to fail. With this lesson, I gave myself permission to make mistakes, gave myself permission to be wrong. Trusting that God, being God, would catch me to the glory of HIS name. And trusting that there is no wrong that He cannot make right and generally trusting the process as I wrote about here.  

This year taught me that I am, whether I like it or not going to be dependent all through my life. And now, I’m praying I can return to the Monique that calls on God before doing even the most

As the New Year begins, I pray you to learn from my own reflection and realization that it’s not on me. The battle literally IS NOT OURS, but the Lord’s. And with that may we be a lot more dependent on our heavenly father in the next decade.

Happy New Year!