I failed to be supplemented...

So I recently received my half-year results and to my shock I actually passed everything. The last time I actually passed every module I’m doing was eons ago, and do trust that this is not an exaggeration.

When I viewed my student portal and was confronted by those good marks, I really couldn’t believe it. I even had to look at the student portal a few more times for the reality to sink in, this was a first...no supplementary, no fails..I had genuinely passed. In utter disbelief I just sat at my office desk and started praising God for being so good to me. As the day carried on I noticed an unfamiliar feeling in my spirit but I couldn’t really put my finger on it. 

I carried on with my usual office tasks and managed to suppress the feeling for the rest of the day. The second I got home I felt the feeling come up again like water that’s been waiting to gush out of a suppressed cylinder, by this time I knew that I couldn’t ignore it anymore and had to attend to it. So I started by examining the events leading up to that 1 specific moment when I had finally summed up the courage to check my results. Amongst many were feelings of despair, anxiety, and a recurring feeling of failure that had become all too familiar to me. I won’t dare lie, all I could think of and pray about was “God all I ask for is an admission to write the supplementary exam, I really cannot afford to fail this semester. I’ll do better in the supplementary”.  While in my room, reminiscing on all these thoughts that flooded my mind before I had even gotten the chance to view my marks, I realized that one thing stood out, I had ‘second-hand faith’. So I thought it best for God to give me something lower than what He initially promised. One of the first few things God had promised me this year was academic excellence, but my mind and heart quickly fell back to its comfort zone…failure.

It was equally shocking and heart breaking to be hit with this realization, that for the longest time I had not felt that I’m deserving of God’s goodness, His unwavering affection and His raw promises, I always settled for the second hand promises; the kind that aren’t in His word but are made up by yours truly (points at self) to alleviate the pain of disappointment should God not deliver. God started showing me how this had become a way of life for me, in most of the decisions I made and even in my approach to God as a Father. I had always thought of myself as the ‘second-in-favour-of-everything' type of daughter, Christian and friend. I didn’t know how to receive pure goodness, and hence the odd feeling that overwhelmed me the entire day. The bulk of my life has been a series of decisions that reveal God’s secondary-goodness,a diluted goodness of His provision, a goodness that doesn’t even exist. I had become so accustomed to taking whatever I’m given even if it was just breadcrumbs that I had never stopped to ask myself whether that was God’s best for me.

I’m grateful that this was revealed at this stage of my life. There are so many more decisions that I’m yet to make, which I cannot afford to be anything lower than God’s best for me. Though this may not be a magical shift overnight,  It is a mindset I’m hoping to cultivate, to stop daily in my tracks and ask that uncomfortable question “Is this Your best for me God?”.

I’m deserving of God’s richness, lavish promises, goodness and complete fullness and every inch of my life should reflect this…and so ARE YOU!!

Signed: Love Soldier Leeray