Expectations & Experiences

On grief, having hope, giving up and life as we know it

19/2/23 11:15

It was the year 2019 when I came into the new year with a different strategy than I was used to. To not set any expectations, see how things go and adjust accordingly. Boy oh boy. Was I in for the wildest ride. Whilst a lot of things were going very right for me spiritually and my faith in God grew to more than it ever had, nearly everything else was going left. I knew it was a bold, yet naive move to not set any concrete goals going into the year. If you know me, you know that is very off-brand for me. VERY. Nevertheless, I was driven by faith and knew I would come out with a lot of lessons. A key highlight was learning how sorrow and joy can and often do co-exist. Of course, I wasn’t at all prepared for reality to shake my faith the way it did when I failed my final ACA exam, or when I nearly broke up with my then-boyfriend, now husband, or even not getting into my then-dream role. But I grew immensely and wholly. I learned the importance of having expectations and coming into 2020 I was very much back on the bandwagon that Hope is not a strategy, but having ‘only faith’ without goals doesn’t work.

But then 2020 came, and so did the start of ADAYA House - my first business. And the pandemic came and kicked my ass big time. I was having the great experience of starting something from scratch, going through the challenges of bringing it to life, whilst in the thick of a global pandemic that seemed to never end. I pushed. I persevered. I worked the hardest I ever had. I pushed myself beyond limits and found new experiences I could’ve never imagined. I experienced high highs from the orders we got, seeing the website live finally, seeing people wear ADAYA items, and meeting incredible people during the process. I experienced low lows from a failed launch day, fundraising (!), people who just didn’t get the vision, and the constant uncertainty around COVID. I experienced every feeling in between that - excitement, anguish, anxiety, happiness, annoyance, joy, overwhelm, anger, frustration, sadness, delight, and thrill. But my goodness, what an experience that whole period was. And it would go on for 2 more years before I closed the business down last year.

2021-2022 was a season of many transitions which I talked about last year extensively so I won’t rehash but a key thing I tried to do was find balance in all of life’s experiences and my expectations for life itself.

To know me is to know how much I love life. I’ve been extremely privileged to have a full life filled with beautiful memories. Growing up and being raised by the most incredible parents, loved deeply by my family and friends, and just filled with a deep sense of knowing who I am, whose I am. My identity in God, since I turned 18, has only grown deeper roots, and nearly 10 years on, it’s been a journey of expectations and experiences.

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When I got the call from my dad telling me to urgently come to the hospital to see my mum who had been ill for a few weeks, I could not have been prepared for the experience that would follow. In fact, I was not at all prepared for grief. I had seen her every day for the last 21 days since I got back home to Lagos, and she was getting better. But when the doctors who had told me we could take her home soon looked at me to tell me she was gone, I could only think of one thing: But God is not unkind, He won’t let me down. And on and on that phrase chanted in my mind for the next 3 days. Because of all the experiences I had had with God, and above all the expectations I could have, what I know for sure is that God always shows up. Never in the way I think but always in the miraculous way He does things. And so, I wait for Him to show up and make my mum better. I wait for Him to show up and reverse the news. This can’t be my life, my experience. I had every faith and expectation that He’ll show up in the way I think. In the way I wanted Him to. I wanted to be writing a different type of letter today. One on believing God against all odds, in a continuation of the closing to my last letter. I desperately and frantically begged for a different ending than the one I got. I didn’t get it.

On Christmas morning, as I looked at the experience of a woman who had lived a FULL life, I released my expectation that if God didn’t show up this way, then He wasn’t good. I know that I knew better. So I let her go. My mum is, was, and will always be an experience of a lifetime. She surpassed every expectation of who I thought a good mother should be. She broke every glass ceiling and embodied what it meant to LIVE and LOVE. She was a huge part of my identity and the woman you all know me as today. And although I’m still learning what it means to live life with a part of you missing, I still know that when all is said and done, God is still good. God is not unkind.

“People with the most to teach live like they have the most to learn” — and momma loved learning. She was the most curious person I’ve ever met, which made her the best teacher I’ve ever known. As I find again a new normal — my new normal — I’m remembering all the things my mother taught me, lessons learned and indeed taught from the most curious person I’ve ever known. And for that, I know that I’ll be fine. Even in this, I am finding my own way in this new experience and I will learn from it, hard as it may be. I will learn how to live life even more like my mum - ever curious, always intentional, and forever full of hope. I can hear my mum saying, “All is well, my gorgeous girl, all will be well.”