It is the fourteenth month of January today as I write this piece. Surely, 2022 has started off with fresh lessons for me. Yesterday taught me a whole lot, with just a single experience. An experience that brought a stinging warmth of fresh tears to my eyes, as I looked out the bus window. A lot ran through my mind, uninterrupted by the constant  hiccup of the vehicle, with every road bump it encountered.

Returning from school this very Thursday afternoon unlike other days, was quite a remarkable ordeal for me. For the first time in a long while, I pondered in retrospect. It turned out I had n0t realized how much strain I had subjected myself to, over the years. The very habit of being overly critical and hastily judgmental, had sat like a big pile of weariness in the few years I had so lived. Of people, places, things, statements and most especially myself.  Nothing was spared in my web of criticism.

Many times, I had spent so much time spinning webs of complex complexities around the most simplest of intentions and messages, that I oftentimes ended up creating a workload of unnecessary tensions, anxieties and yes, the big word: fear, for my perpetually worried self. It showed in every hesitant step I took, every skeptical glance I made and every anxious breath I released.

Yesterday, I was at it again. Overworking myself over the news that exams were in two weeks and I had just a week to submit all my project-chapters to my supervisor (or so I thought). The panic came in immediately, then the prayers, the worries and the exertion. I resulted to sleeping for less than three hours a day, in dreadful thought of the deadline I was given for submission.

After several sleepless nights, I finally did it! I completed chapters two, three and four in less than a week! Haha! To think that it took me months to get to chapter two in the first place. I finally made it to my supervisors office, several minutes past the scheduled 1pm for the meeting. Oops! Now my palpitating heart screamed: trouble!

My fellow supervisees were already seated, listening to my fiery supervisor make corrections as she went through their project work. Cut the long story short; I had come with my 92-pages-long hastily completed project work; only to realize that she had not even looked at the third chapter one I had submitted a month ago.

I had fearfully taken for mine, her corrections on someone elses project work, which she sent to the WhatsApp group we had. This was immediately after she had addressed me on something totally different. To think that I had effected the same changes in my supposedly completed project work, which now rested heavily in my arms. ‘Mary is confused was her statement after learning what had happened.

What had pushed me into this very state? The misconception I got from the lips of others that: my supervisor was a murderer of dreams! So, I thought:  one week remaining! I must live!”. None of these was true after all. She was no killer of dreams and we were not under the threat to submit all chapters that very week or face the penalty.

So, walking to the park that very day, I traced the defective trend that had plagued me all these while. Too much worry! To much strain! To much of being critical of everything and everyone, including myself. I prayed to God when I was in a difficult situation, but went right ahead to figure out the solution on my own. This was what had clouded several relationships I had had with people in time past: me misconstruing their intentions or their personalities without taking time to calmly  observe and understand.

In all of these realizations, I reflected on this simple, almost banal catchphrase, which suddenly made much more sense to me, thereafter: life is not that hard, Peace is real, enjoy it. The simple act of relaxing and letting God take the wheels of your life, is the best thing you can do for yourself. Even in that budding relationship you have with that new friend or business associate of yours. You would be amazed at how much the Holy Spirit knows about things like this 

Really, there is something called “The Believers Rest. I am sure you will get the hang of it after looking deeply into the following lines:

There remains therefore a REST for the people of God. For he who has entered HIS REST has himself also CEASED from HIS WORKS as God did from His. Let us therefore be diligent to ENTER THAT REST, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience. (Hebrews 4: 9-11 NKJV)

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