Swing Girl, Don’t limp! You’re the Child of a King

Waiting for God

God had not smiled on me for a long time, or at least, so it seemed. All that I had known about him had gone out of the window, and this God that was now with me in this new land of Canada felt like he was a different person from the one I had known back home.

The God back home had been kind and majestic and good tempered – the type that liked to throw parties and give free gifts – and I had experienced many miracles and testimonies from him. This God in Canada, however, was more stern. 

Sick!

From the time that I had landed in Canada and for the whole of the following year, I had been ill. It had started with an intense abdominal pain and nausea, followed by a cancer scare, and then weeks of admission at the hospital. During all this period, I had continued going to school, because the doctors had not been able to figure out what was wrong with me at first, and also because the immigrant laws did not allow me to take a break, without serious consequences. 

So basically, I was sick but also really stressed because I had to figure out a way to pay my tuition, my rent, bills, and many other needs that continued to exist despite my illness.  My tuition fees were at the top of my list because if I couldn’t pay my fees, I would be kicked out of school, and if I got kicked out of school, then I would also get deported from the country. 

As soon as I got released from the hospital, even though I was still ill and taking medicine, my first thought was to get a summer job to be able to make up some funds before the fall term began. The only job that accepted me was a dishwasher’s job, so I did that for about two months, but the strain was so much on my still recovering body, that I quit shortly after. That provided some funds for my living costs, but not much for my tuition. 

After that job, I was fortunate to get a part-time student job at an office, which was easier on my body, but could only cover mostly cost of living bills, and nothing more. So by the time the fall term had started, what I had saved up was still far smaller than what I needed to cover my tuition fees.

I had prayed and hoped and believed that God would come through in a miraculous way, as he had often done, during my undergraduate studies in Nigeria, but the deadline for tuition fees payment had come and passed and God had still not done anything. I didn’t know what kind of faith or trust to have in this situation, and I soon realised that I would have to stop waiting for God and try instead, to take some steps of my own before my situation turned even worse. There was only one course of action that I knew at this point and that was, to go to the student office to negotiate a payment plan if possible.

The Student Office

When I walked into the student office that morning, I was trembling and my anxiety was through the roof. All sorts of thoughts ran through my head, because I still had no foreseeable way of paying those fees, nor did I didn’t have any explanation or strategy for payment to offer.

I was the first person at the office and I hoped that no other student would come while I was there, so that no one would witness my shame. Despite this, I went into the office with my head held high, a fancy scarf on my neck, high-heeled boots, and a catwalk swing, looking the perfect picture of a boss lady. No one would have guessed the pitiful condition that I was in. In fact, the lady that opened the gate seemed really puzzled to see me at their small office. “What could I possibly want with them”, she seemed to think.

Well, they soon found out.

By the time I left the student office, I had officially been registered as a charity case because they had also realised that I didn’t even have enough funds to realistically be able to live, eat and pay my rent at the same time. Fortunately, they had allowed me to make monthly payments of 100 dollars per month until I graduated or got a job that could pay the fees off  faster, but that all seemed like a very uncertain future that I would never get to. 

At that moment I felt very hopeless and even betrayed by God.

The Back Story

My toes and feet hurt from being squeezed into a shoe that was a few inches smaller than my feet size, but it had been my only option at the cheap thrift store where I had gotten it. So although I seemed to walk with a hipswing and graceful catwalk, I was really just avoiding pressure on my injured feet and toes. The fancy scarf had also been a gift from a coworker at the new job that I had just started that month. So that fancy boss lady look had just been an unintentional facade.

Sadness

I walked out of that office with my head bowed low. Now I limped instead of walking a catwalk, and my vision was blurred with tears. The meeting had really exposed my sad reality to me and my mind was saddened by how low I had sunken in my life. 

I looked at my past before I had come to Canada – lawyer, good job, respectable lady, etc- and it seemed that all those places where I had once looked like I was doing really well or at doing okay, now seemed so irrelevant and forgotten, and my future did not seem to hold a single glimmer of hope. 

So many people passed by me oblivious to the thoughts going on in my head and by the time I got to the outer doors, my one sole ambition had become to keep the flood of tears threatening, from pouring out. Fortunately, I had gotten enough practice in this already, from several years of physical and emotional pain, so I took a deep breath, swallowed my tears and opened the exit door.

The Lord’s Voice

I walked like that with my head still bowed and back stooped as I headed for the bus. I wondered how to go on from here and what I would do with my life. I had gotten some help from this meeting, but the problems seemed to loom even closer now, and the unsolved problems began to seem far larger and more insurmountable than before. 

Along the way, still wrapped in my misery, I heard the Lord’s gentle, peaceful, quiet voice call my name, “Sarah! What are you doing”? In that same second, I immediately also saw a mental picture of myself with my neck, head and back stooped and bent. 

The Lord continued, “the daughter of a king does not stoop, she walks with her head held high and proud no matter her circumstances”. 

Then he said, you have a choice right now, to be sad about how low you’ve gotten, or to be happy about the good things that are currently in your life – then he helped me recount a few of them, including the job that I had just started that month. 

Finally, the Lord told me, “you have a future. Stop looking at yourself based on the now that you see. Hold your head high because your God is not asleep and he will do what he says he will do and he is not done with you yet”.

Hope Revived

All these happened in a second and I don’t even know how or why, but those words instilled a sudden strength and courage in me that was not there a second ago. It was like that quick rap of the teacher’s ruler on your knuckles that brought you back to reality, wherever your mind had wandered off to. 

In the next second, not yet fully convinced for my future, but fully believing that I was a wonderful woman with a great God, I got back my swing and held my head high again. It didn’t matter anymore if I was the poorest person on the road that day or if I had every reason to be ashamed. At that moment, I was fine and my future was in the hands of God. At that moment I knew that I would triumph and that I would live to see another day. I also knew that the day would come when I would testify of that great day when I stood proud and strong despite my darkness and my rags. 

Did God finally make the way for me to pay those tuition fees, or did I have to pay 100 dollars for 78 months? Find out in ‘Lessons in Humility and Might: The fly’