Down October Road

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It’s drizzling outside, far off I hear the pelting of rain on my window. It’s 5 am in the morning. Its been awhile since I woke up with an urge to eat leftovers, listen to India Arie and just write. This is what I have missed; writing. The release in words. The comfort in words. The beauty of words. Words. Though life demands I speak a different language, I use the same words to get by. Love. Hope. Faith. Courage. Strength. Grace. God. I probably don’t use or understand them the same way I did when I was a child, but I still find comfort in them.

I feel the need to take you with me down October Road. It’s an empty paved road just outside my neighbourhood. Right now it’s carpeted with purple because of the Jacaranda trees lined up on the road side. I love Jacaranda trees. There’s a man who stands at a corner of October road under his umbrella, roasting maize. He stands there on a daily basis even when it’s not October.  Sometimes in the scorching sun, other times in the rain. What I would do to go stand there with him, look at life through his eyes and eat some roasted maize while at it.

October was mostly hard but ironically,I didn’t feel the pain. It was a silent numbness of letting life just be. It’s the simple pleasures that helped me through it. Like the hour long telephone conversations spent laughing at nothing, the silly TV commercials in the bus, the guy at the book stand feeding my addiction of Toni Morrison, the background music in the supermarket, the hours spent in silence listening to the sound of absolutely nothing and God; I don’t know where I would be without Him.

And eventually I got by, one day at a time, literally.

There were times I searched for an escape; a piece of serenity; to get away from the stuffy life of being an adult and I found it. But then I had to go back home to the very thing I tried to escape; to find my to-do list barely ticked, the dishes waiting, sticky notes scattered, books piled up on the floor; chapters still unread. *sigh* Now I no longer runaway. I take deep breaths and face my fears head on.

All the while I wanted to write about it, I tried to find the words for it, but I couldn’t. I tried poetry but it didn't rhyme, I tried to write long sentences but I couldn’t find the right place to put the full stops. I was waiting for a time when I could write positively about hardship. And I finally reached that point.

I pass the October road daily but not as the same person. I have grown. I carry around lessons it has taught me. I learned that there will be times when life will allow you to be weak in order to find your inner strength. That every now and then we hit rock bottom to realize that God is the only rock at the bottom. 

October taught me how to make courageous 'move this mountain from point A to point B' kinda prayers. It taught me to have unchanging faith even when circumstances changed, how to be still in raging storms and how to replace cloudy days with sunny thoughts. October showed me how to find beauty in flaws and it’s during this time I discovered great truths in the simple and great joys in small pleasures.

At last I can clearly hear India's 'Beautiful Surprise' in the background; it's stopped raining. I have reached a conclusion; life can be a little soulless without words and writing but I have finally found my words and my soul.

"Do not worry about your life, what you will eat, drink or what you will wear. Doesnt life consist of more than this? Look at the birds of the air; they do not plant or harvest or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable to Him than they?Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?" ~ Matt 6:25-27

Happy November,