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Why Identity

We are living in a world where there are so many voices defining us, some from within and some from without. I personally sometimes find myself believing what people say about me or how my emotions or circumstances define me. It is not until I realize who I really am irrespective of all the voices, that I will live up to the person who my Creator says I am. This piece I’m not only writing for myself, as a quick reminder of the truth, but also for you who may find it helpful.

It doesn’t matter how everybody else calls you or defines you, it doesn’t even matter how you define yourself. The only truth about your identity is found in the word of God. Not even your circumstances, your history, your failures, your success, your struggles, your ideologies, your feelings /emotions either good or bad, have the authority to define you. You are who God says you are. You have been created in the image of God, it means your skin color, your body shape, your personality, every unique aspect of your physicality have been made in the very image of God. You personality is a unique expression of the creative genius of God. You are made and fitted with the uniqueness of your personality in the image of God. You are not introverted by mistake, neither are you extroverted by mistake. Even your weaknesses aren’t a liability, they are actually a unique fitting by God because these weaknesses just become a platform for the strength of God to be displayed through your life. So you can surrender all of who you are to God through Jesus Christ so that His glory will be shown through you.

So Who Exactly Are you

You are a child of God and the Holy Spirit lives on the inside of you. You are reconciled with God through Jesus Christ, you have been justified and you have peace through God. You have access to God’s wisdom, you are Christ’s ambassador and you have Christ’s righteousness. You are completely forgiven and you are tenderly loved and you are the temple in which God dwells. You are blameless, you are the salt of the earth and you the light of the world. You are chosen by Christ to bear fruit, you are a joint Heir with Christ and you share His inheritance with him. You are united with the Lord, you are a member of the body of Christ and you are a saint. You are chosen by God, you are a child of light and you are holy.

You share in God’s heavenly calling, you are sanctified and you are one of God’s stones being built up in Christ as a spiritual house. You are a member of a chosen race, you are a royal priesthood and you are created to sing the praises of God. You are rooted and built up in Christ, you are fearfully and wonderfully made and you are born of God. You have the mind of Christ, you can approach God with boldness freedom and confidence. You have been rescued from the devil’s domain and you have been transferred into the Kingdom of Christ. You have been made complete in Christ, you have been given the spirit of love and the power of a sound mind. All of your needs are met by God for you are royalty in God’s Kingdom.

You have been born with a price, you have direct access to God through the Holy Spirit in you and you are free from any condemning charges that are against you. Nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. You have been established and anointed by God, you are a personal witness of Christ and you are a citizen of Heaven. You are God’s co-worker, you are seated with Christ in the heavenly places and you are God’s workmanship. You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you.

It is difficult to live your life as who you truly are when you try to do it on your own. The good thing is you are not on your own, you have the Holy Spirit of God strengthening you to be who you really are. In every decision that you make in your every day to day life, allow yourself to just take a second to think if it allows you to align with who you really are, irrespective of the other voices around you.

By Grace Through Faith (Ephesians 2)

Many times I find myself forgetting who I am and the only truth of who I am is found in the word of God. So I’m writing this piece for myself and for someone who may need to remind themselves of who they are at a personal level.

And He made me alive, who was dead in trespasses and sin in which I once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among once also I once conducted myself in the lusts of my flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and was by nature a child of wrath, just as the others.

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved me, even when I was dead in trespasses, made me alive together with Christ (By grace I have been saved), and raises me up together and made me sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward me in Christ Jesus. For by grace I have been saved through faith and that not of myself, It is the gift of God, not of works, lest I should boast. For I am His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that I should walk in them.

Now therefore, I am no longer a stranger and foreigner, but fellow citizen with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.

Why this question

Many at times we find our identity in the things that we do or that we own, the good, the bad and everything in between. If anyone was to ask me who I am, I’m probably going to tell them that I’m a medical doctor or the director of so and so. If that was to be truly my identity, does that mean if all that is stripped away from me I will be a lesser person or if more was to be added my identity would be inflated (I don’t think so). We may be tempted to define ourselves with our emotions, our mindsets or our actions, but the truth of who we are is in the word of God and it is more than we can imagine. It is our responsibility to ask the Holy Spirit that is within us to help review who we really are as we are living in this life.

Our Journey

Honestly I don’t even remember how we met nine years ago, we were not best friends when we first met but we were just friends. I used to believe in coincidences and thought that we are friends just because we happen to have the same interests and almost all the times it just so happens that when I’m feeling like doing something or eating something you feel the same way. People used to ask and some even are asking how we are always together, having a great time talking and laughing yet we stay together and almost everyday we sleep late talking and laughing.You would think common sense says ‘I need a break from you Smacky’,because you are always there, everywhere.

We used to have dreams since high school of which most of them came to pass with the grace of the Lord and He continues to guide us through. Like I said before, everything that we lived from 9 years ago, I thought we got what we got because we were working hard, I thought we are staying together and are friends because we just happen to be in the same place at a particular time wanting the same thing. It is only recently when I realised that in my life there’s really nothing that is a coincidence, everything I’m living is predestined because of God’s Sovereign nature.

I learnt a lot of things from you Smacky and the biggest among all is your unconditional love and I still am learning. I wonder how much I would have learnt If i made this realization 3 or 5 years ago. You never know, maybe I met you so that I learn and know what I know now that I didn’t know before . Maybe if I have learnt that 5 years ago we wouldn’t be where we are today, the point is I’m grateful we are were we are now and I’m so grateful. If you were a humble friend I was going to list all the things I learnt from you but NO THANKS, I will tell you in August. Just know that you were a very huge blessing in my life and I pray and hope that whoever you are going to meet from now on see the blessing that you are, continue shining your light to everyone.

This is probably the last birthday that we will spend together like this, I don’t know what the future holds for both of us, but what I know is God has something great reserved for you. I wish you love, joy, happiness and peace all the time like before. There is something that I don’t know if I should be happy or sad you taught me slowly but surely, to be a food lover. Now people don’t believe me when I tell them that I used to be a very light eater and not to be a fan of ‘red blood cells’.

You are going to run away from me soon, yah you are right, this is me trying to make you feel bad. I wish you meet other great friends and probably this time around try to screen your friends and get one who will give you a better birthday present than a piece of writing. Being worried about physical presents is for children, you are a grown up I’m not expecting that from you.

HAVE A GREAT YEAR

LOTS OF LOVE

Your one and only

When I was below ten years of age, life was so beautiful and fulfilling but that is the time that I didn’t work so hard to achieve anything. Every day was a totally new day disconnected to the previous or the future day. I would wake up with so much energy to play and every time I was awake it was play, play, play. At the moment that’s all I could think about, so even when my mother would call me home to bath or eat, I would feel disturbed because to me the day was so short, I couldn’t get enough play in one.

I had friends from different social classes in the growth point, we would all be playing together. During that time, we all had fantasies about how our future lives would be like especially during the time when we would be playing house. The beauty of a fantasy that I know even now is that it doesn’t have any limits. I could describe my future career or family the way I was imagining it and we had no limitations to that. No one among the group would stop at imagining what they wanted because someone else have imagined it. Now that I’m thinking deeply about it, I think as children we knew for sure that our successes in life are individualized and so everyone was creating their own reality without focusing much on what someone else is creating.

During the times when we had fights during playing, the approach to solving it was always like a GPS. You know what GPS does when it tells you to take the next right but you don’t, it redirects you from where you are at that particular moment. It never says you should now stop and let’s discuss why you didn’t follow instructions. There was no moment when we would seat down to explain how everything went wrong and who should have done what better, so that the outcome would have been different. We would just look at the current problem and address it from there, we didn’t care much of the details of how it happened.

If someone was to be angry, bully or selfish, we would tell them how we no longer want to play with them forever, but forgiveness would come within minutes and we would reunite. Every day was new to an extent that if we went to sleep, we would wake up and not pay attention to the activities of the previous day, all we knew was playing should be fun. The so called realities of life were introduced to us slowly with the adults we lived with or met from around 6 years. They would tell you how you should never play with such and such a friend, they would remind you that if you give someone your toy again today he/she will do what he/she did yesterday, they would ask for the specific details of what went wrong when you were playing, they will tell you reasons why your fantasy will remain a fantasy.

Of course they didn’t mean any harm, but I’m just thinking what if they left us in that world. What if what we call reality today became reality because we have fantasized it for long enough without realizing? What if the way we lived as children is the purest form of living? If people left children in their fantasy lands and their forgiving selves, does that mean we can create a generation with abundance of love, kindness, forgiveness, sharing and joy by supporting the realities of our children? What somebody did yesterday is considered today’s reality, what we do today is considered tomorrow’s reality. How much of what we are doing today is subconsciously considered reality for tomorrow?

Health impacts mood, mood impacts outlook and outlook impacts health.

Have you ever noticed that when you are not feeling well your friends and relatives seem to talk to you with caution .If they were laughing about something, suddenly they lower their voices. I don’t know if that’s supposed to make the patient feel better in any way, but I can’t help but realise when it comes to health issues, people are not as happy.

“The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.”

Sir William Osler

If you come to the hospital, most of the times we want to make sure we relieve you of the symptoms of the condition you are presenting with. We ask you if the symptoms are getting better or worse, we ask any other associated symptoms-you know the usual doctor stuff. We do all this so that we know how to manage you appropriately so that you feel better. It was taught to me very clearly in medical school that I should have a holistic approach when treating patients and in my mind its exactly what I should be doing for every patient.

But in contrast, as a doctor in practice, I will be more focused on the physical aspects of the disease, to the extent that if a patient reports that their symptoms are better than the previous day I feel happy that I would have done a good job. It is on very few occasions that I inquire about the emotional status of the patient. Not because I’m a very bad Doctor (or maybe I am), but in most cases I will be having a long queue of patients waiting to be assisted and typically patients will rather freely report their physical ailments- having been programmed accordingly or perhaps and even sadly not wanting to burden us with the emotional qualities of their illnesses.

Being on the other side of the table when a patient is sick had subconsciously made me someone who sees a patient with the eyes of the doctor. Forgetting that if a patient is being followed up for conditions like hypertension, Diabetes, HIV or even an acute condition like typhoid, they still have to tolerate their medication every day, they still have to deal with the effects of the disease and medication in their daily lives. Their feelings are the stories and impact behind their conditions.

Their pain might be improving, they maybe tolerating their medication but perhaps they are afraid, frustrated, nervous, angry, hopeless, depressed or upset. And if so, does it matter? Does it impact their disease state? Should we care? If time is a limiting factor for healthcare professionals , whose responsibility is it to make sure that being a patient doesn’t mean misery? I truly believe that someone can actually be a happy patient. I don’t presume that these challenges are facile to solve, but I know that a patient’s happiness matters as much as their cholesterol.

Growing up as a girl child in Zimbabwe, I really wasn’t sure if any opportunities would come my way for me to achieve what I imagined I would achieve. In my early years of high school, I would go to school and do the business of the day and that was it. All I knew was that I one day want to be successful but I didn’t know how. I learnt at Gwindingwi High School, which was not among the best schools in the area. There was no career guidance to talk about, all I had was hope. I hoped that one day I will know what I wanted to be in the future, and its interesting that I was very comfortable and was not worried about it for a single day. If I can say, this is the time that I really lived one day at a time, without thinking about tomorrow.

Years went by, I wrote my O Levels, got 5 As and 5Bs then I transferred to a boarding school Silveira High School where my brother was doing his A Levels. My brother was and is still among the smartest and intelligent people I know and he somehow determined the  subjects that were given to me at this new school, not directly though but rather without him knowing. When the senior master who was allocating the new students their classes saw my surname, he imposed that I do Maths , Physics and Chemistry for my A levels because he thought I was as intelligent as my brother. This was the first opportunity that rang a bell inside me, I didn’t think I was good enough to do such a combination of subjects.

Time went by, ups and downs I went through my A level and I managed to get 18 points after adding Accounts to my combination. Again I was inspired to add the fourth subject by my brother who did five subjects and got 23 points. I then applied for the Joshua Nkomo Scholarship Fund (a scholarship for academic excellence offered by the Higherlife Foundation). I got the scholarship for my University education, this again was a life changing opportunity for me. I applied for Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery Degrees at the University Of Zimbabwe which I got, another life changing opportunity.

Time and again, I meet new people who offer life changing opportunities in the most unimaginable ways, but opportunities keep coming and I’m so grateful. There is a question that keeps coming to my mind every time I get even the smallest of opportunities in my day to day life. Is everyone else getting opportunities to lead them where they want to be? Is a girl who is in her early high school years at Gwindingwi at this moment getting opportunities as well? What about a girl who didn’t get an opportunity to go to school to start with, how will they be able to reach their goals if they miss such a life changing opportunity?