As I Turn 30...

It’s been a while,

…and I can’t promise it won’t be another “while” till I send another mail

Hope you have been good?

I have this friend who has a tradition where she calls me a day before my birthday and asks me “how do you feel about tomorrow, and your new age?” and she’d just stay quiet on the other line and listen as I try to put my thoughts together. She’ll allow me to ramble, beat about the bush, say everything, and nothing, until I realize myself and make some sense. She’ll always end the conversation with “let’s pray”. 

Soon enough, I cultivated that culture and lately, I have been sitting with myself and asking, “Alice, how do you feel about this new age”... Does this result in some sort of birthday blues? yes, sometimes. But I am most grateful about how it makes me sit back and think.

So for 30, it doesn't just feel like a new age. It feels like a new decade and you know what that means? It means that as I looked back, I analyzed my life from 10 years before, till date and girl, that’s some sadness trigger.

Toh, who send me work?

Of all the things I came to realize or would I say, notice, looking back at my life from 10 years before, till date, one thing this reflection did for me was that it made me see just when I started losing my spark, my light, the thing that made me bold, the thing that made me feel alive, that thing that made me feel like Alice. 

I realized when and possibly how I became quiet outside and how the same girl that would go from school to school to debate topics, started to become that girl that would rather just keep her opinions to herself.

I traced the root of my fear of failure, of being mocked, of being wrong, of offending people, of living my life without some people’s permission. 

Beyond tracing the root, I looked at my life and gosh, I've held back wayyyy too much. I played it safe, went for the lowest hanging fruits and just stayed as far away from “too much” attention as possible.

I don't like that. That’s a sad life.

You know the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30, right? I am beginning to see how it's possible for even the guy with ten talents to also bury his. 

Just like the parable, it could also be because of comparison. You know, you may decide that because you don’t want the guy with one talent to feel like you are too much or you don’t want him to feel too small or maybe you even don’t want him to feel the master cheated him.

What you may easily miss is that the master gave each one, according to their ability.

Wait!

How did we get to that sermon?

I digress…

So for the next decade of my life, I'm on a mission to build the trust and faith I used to have in myself. I am on a mission to trust that if I have prayed and God says go, that is enough ‘ginger’. I am on a mission to trust my journey, to find my light.

No, this is not some “me first” era (at least that is not what I intend it to be), I just want to be able to look at my life and realize I am doing the things God  wants me  to do. I don’t want to bury my talents because using them would either make me look like i am showing off or I am just doing too much.

I want to go for the things that “pass my power”

There's a certain kind of long throat I want to have going forward.

A little delulu never hurt no one.

I want to live a life where when the master calls me to account for my talents; whether 1 or 10, I will have an answer. 

So as I close the curtains to my 20s, I bid farewell to whoever I was not, and I open my heart to new beginnings and to the woman I become.

Please say a kind prayer for me, when you're done reading this.

The next time you’ll be hearing from me, I’ll be a 30+ woman☺️

Be well,

Love, Alice.