The wind is blowing,
Many winds from everywhere
Blowing me here, blowing me there
Blowing up things I don’t like
Blowing me how I can’t tell
Blowing where I don’t want to go
I can’t escape no matter my efforts
All the changes it shoves at me.

I tried to hide but the wind found me.
I tried to run, the wind stopped me.
I tried to stand, the wind tripped me.
Nothing I do seems to work. Nothing I do
Appeases this wind, blowing with determination
To make my world a circle of uncertainties.

 Yet through the wind
My faith will rise
To find my feet and take a stand.
Through the wind
My hope will rise
Shine brighter, bolder until I am ashore
Despite this recklessness of winds
I’m anchored to unshakable foundation.

I went through a phase in life recently where I felt stripped. Changes and uncertainties were the only ways to summarize my life. I gave everything I owned away save a few suitcases of personal items. There was nowhere else but God to run to, nowhere else but God to look up to, and no glimmer of hope in the horizon as I battled the diverse winds that hit my reality from all sides.

I have learned that our possessions, positions, experiences; gains and losses and pressures inclusive, don’t dictate who we are and how we respond. We are who we are before, during, and in spite of all of those.  And who we are escapes through the cracks of time and events to counter assumptions and imaginations we may have built around who we think we are. I have given many things and can give just about anything away so long as I sense that leading within that it is the right thing and the timing is right. That I had done to the best of my ability during this phase. Nevertheless, a friend mentioned a teenager who wanted to learn to play guitar and he thought I might want to pass on my guitar to her.

Don’t forget this friend knows me very well, knew my circumstances and my readiness to give. At first, it didn’t feel good about giving the guitar away. I had already given dear and precious items. That guitar was one of the very few things I kept back even though I wasn’t using it and had no immediate plans for it. I thought through it and decided to give it. The day my friend was coming into town, I forgot the guitar and had to go home after work to pick it up before our meeting. However, in the course of our discussion, I changed my mind about giving it.

In my mind, I was not willing to release that guitar. I have given everything away – I felt entitled to keep some things back. I felt entitled to be selfish if that was what it amounted to so I told my friend and he agreed. In fact, he felt bad for suggesting it. Well, I drove back home with my guitar but I wasn’t happy. I don’t know why it was such a struggle to give that away but I sensed that guitar was seed. I had learned in my walk with God to distinguish between bread for consumption and seed for sowing. By morning, I had decided that teenager, who like me was in a place that she couldn’t help herself except God intervened; who would not be able to buy herself a guitar except God gives it to her; will not have to wait one day longer to have her desire met. As I sat on my desk at work composing a mail to my friend about my change of heart, the tears welled and spilled. I felt the pain when my heart released it that night and the pain stayed all day as the tears hung on my lashes, waiting to spill at the slightest upset.

It was frustrating having to arrange to deliver what my friend would have easily carried the previous day but I went through that. We talked and it was equally painful for him to take it from me to pass it on yet he kindly accepted to. According to His explanation, giving out of inconvenience, when it cost us, when the gift goes bearing drops of our tears and shards of our hearts – God sees it and God honors it. That has been my life experience: God has asked things that cost me and God has rewarded my faith and trust in Him. Nevertheless, I had to remind myself of lessons learned in the past; that it is not about the loss of what we give but the faith we have expressed in God who can do what man cannot in our lives; about the room we have made in our hearts through the giving for God to reach into those places no other can and do for us those things that no other can. At the end of the day, I had this peace that passes all understanding knowing that I have been part of making someone’s sincere dream come to pass, that I have been able to live God’s purpose for me by touching a life, and irrespective of harvests and rewards that I had touched my Father’s heart: that made my day.

Glory!