This one time I met a Nigerian Prince... Seriously

Kyle and I slipped out last Friday evening to attend a Robin Mark concert at Lakeside Church in Guelph. The lovely wee man is from Belfast, Northern Ireland and has precisely the same accent as one half of my extended family. Although it was nearly a sold-out show in a room with a 1000 person capacity, I felt like I was in my Aunt May's living room with the McChesney/McShane connection. Hearing that accent makes me feel there's someone in the room who understands me. There are few feelings of comfort like it... I needed only a wee cuppa Earl Grey and a Rich Tea biscuit, and I would have been in my version of heaven.

The concert was lovely; an evening with my man, enjoying that familiar voice leading 1000 people in beautiful songs of praise. The highlight of the evening, however, was when I met a Nigerian Prince. Ok. I almost met him. Well, I was in the same room as him as he played a drum set. Stay with me.

While introducing his band, Robin Mark arrived at his drummer and with a smile this Irishman told us he would keep the story short; ha. Keeping stories brief is not the strong suit of any of my relatives. I knew we were in for a good one. This is how he introduced his drummer...

(Side note - if any incorrect details are apparent, please post a comment with the correction. I only heard this tale once, but some stories simply must be repeated at the risk of some minor occurances of misinformation.)

In the 1960's, a young man came from Nigeria to study in Belfast. While there, he fell in love with an Irish woman. After a while the young woman became pregnant, and when word of this soon-to-be grandchild found it's way to Nigeria, the young man's father collected his son, bringing him home in shame.

Letter after letter was sent from the young man to the mama-to-be, who ripped up each one without examination. As such, the young woman remained ignorant of the truth about the child's father, why he left and of the blood ran in the veins of the child she was carrying.

32 years later, no longer a child, Nicky decided it was high time he spoke to his father. After a few security hoops, the phone was finally connected to the right office in London,

"Hello? Who is this?"
"This is Nicky McWilliams."
"..." ... "I've been waiting on this call for 32 years."

Unbeknownst to him, a young man born and raised in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Nicky was the son of a Nigerian Tribal King. His father now occupied the throne. Nicky was by rights, a Nigerian Prince.

Soon after, Nicky was flown to Nigeria to meet his family and to be a part of an adoption ceremony (in which he had to dance - Mr. Mark says he saw a video of this and has to testify that his drumming abilities come from the African connection, but his dancing legs have Belfast written all over them).

At a banquet held for the extended royal family while Nicky was visiting, his father, the King, stood up. "For the past 32 years, at every banquet held for this family, a portion of meat has been set aside, for the long-lost prince. Today, we do not need to set a piece aside. My son, finally, is here."

Mr. Mark then motioned to his drummer and requested of the audience, "Would you now all join me in welcoming to the stage, PRINCE Nicky McWilliams!"

I love this. The man didn't become a prince at the moment of realization at the age of 32. Although he had not been aware, he had been a prince his whole life. His surroundings, his paycheck, his up-bringing, his circumstances, his fame, or lack-thereof, did not take away from the truth of who he really was.

What an illustration!

Hearing the tale of the Belfast-raised Nigerian Prince reminded me of another I heard years ago called "You Are Special" by Max Lucado. 

Punchinello, a wooden 'Wemmick' lives in a town where all day people go about covering each other with stars or dots. The most admired and celebrated Wemmicks had the most stars to display. Those who were teased, and insulted sported the most dots. Punchinello, was one of the latter. One day he meets someone unlike anyone he had seen before: a Wemmick with no stars or dots. When asked why she doesn't have any, she says they simply don't stick because every day she spends time with Eli the carpenter. After Punchinello works up the courage to visit Eli too, he starts to lose some dots when he dares to believe Eli when he is told, "you are special because I made you...". 

And, what a great reminder. If I was to strip away others' perceptions of who I am, my 'success' at my work, the size of my bank account, the measure of prestige I may enjoy placed on me by various positions, titles or degrees, I would still be a person of worth because I belong to and am loved by the Someone made me. Just like Prince Nicky McWilliams, the truth of who I am and my worth as a person remains regardless of my life's circumstances of who acknowledges it. 

Ephesians 2:10 says that we are God's handiwork, his masterpiece, created with a purpose in mind.  

Whether or not we feel like masterpieces, (honestly, many days I feel far from it), or worthy of being called "God's handiwork", that doesn't take away from it being true. 

You. Me. Masterpieces. Uniquely and lovingly created by God himself.

Incredible.







 

Beautiful Things

You make beautiful things

You make beautiful things out of the dust.

                                                                                 - Gungor

A few weeks ago, my friend Jordan Raycroft, a Canadian singer songwriter with mad talent, asked if I would be willing to fill in at a performance for his usual violinist. I felt incredibly honored to have been asked and quickly agreed. After a few marathon practice sessions, I found myself in a tiny back room of a church having a pre-show band meeting with a bass player and jazz drummer I had only just met wearing make-up (a rarity) and new clothes I hoped would fool the audience into thinking I belonged there.

Opening for Jordan’s band was a 17-year old girl, playing her guitar and pouring out her heart to a room full of youth. She was kind of country, and I smiled to myself as I heard her sing of summer camp romances, broken hearts, hope and expectation for what lies ahead. I felt I was listening to the slightly more confident younger version of myself - less jaded, more hopeful, laughing easier.

I started wondering at faded hopefulness wondering in my own life; what caused it and how to wake myself up to it hope again.

When I first started this blog, I was determined to recapture the Joy in my life, and honestly felt like I had begun to succeed. My motivation began slipping when I heard story after story of friends dealing with their own heaviness:

A dear friend, cancer free for two years, in and out of the hospital battling complications and medication side-affects

Friends of my in-laws, sharing with me their fresh grief over the sudden, unexplained death of their son, in his early 20’s

A woman I love as my own sister, and have known for nearly a decade, breaking the silence on horrible abuse in her own life

A friend’s child lost to cancer

My own experience has softened my own heart to others’ pain and I began to feel like there were just too many reasons to bleed. The Joy Project was temporarily abandoned.

Since then, I’ve begun not to just know but rather to know and internalize, that experiencing Joy isn’t the result of a one time battle, but the fruit of a continuous struggle to notice all that’s good in your life already. Ann Voskamp describes them as ‘gifts’.

You can read about her journey HERE.

Something happened earlier this week that inspired me to pick up my sword again – to find things to be thankful for and to continue this battle for Joy. On Saturday morning I sat in a room full of women while a friend of mine courageously picked up a microphone and publicly broke the silence on a history of abuse in her own life. She shared what she had experienced, how it continued to affect her as an adult and the coping mechanisms she has used to emotionally and mentally deal with her pain. She is one of my closest friends. I love her dearly. I had no idea. I could feel my heart breaking.

Then she did something that amazed me and gave me hope for my own journey.

She put her cue cards down, moved to the keyboard and sang a solo version of Gungor’s You Make Beautiful Things”

All this pain
I wonder if I’ll ever find my way
I wonder if my life could really change at all.

All this earth
Could all that is lost ever be found?
Could a garden come up from this ground at all?

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust.

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us.

All around
Hope is springing up from this old ground
Out of chaos life is being found in You

What Truth. What courage. What hopefulness.

This woman amazes me.

I’ve been thinking lately about the story of Joseph, one of the 12 brothers from which Jewish lineage stems. This is the ultimate tale of beautiful things coming out of the dust. As a youth, Joseph was beaten and bound by his own brothers, thrown into a pit and later sold to some Egyptians. For years afterward, he suffered slavery, false accusations, and imprisonment until much later he was brought before Pharaoh to interpret a dream. As a result became Pharaoh’s 2^nd in command, in charge of planning and implementing a food rationing/storage system that would later save the lives of his brothers, preserving his family line.

Here’s the part I’ve been hanging onto.

When Joseph is faced with his brothers again, who are at his feet and terrified of his planned course of action to repay them for their cruelty, this is how he responds,

“You meant evil against me,” (the Hebrew word used here means ‘weave’), “But God rewove it together for good.” Genesis 50:20

For Joseph, for his brothers and for all of Egypt, God made something beautiful out of the dust.

And He can do it for us too.

He gives good gifts. His timing is perfect. His ways are not my ways, but He has the whole picture and I don’t. Until things become clearer, I’m going to trust and know that hope is not the stuff of fairy tales. It is for me too, and although I may not yet see it, something beautiful will come out of this dust.   

Gratitude

After losing John and becoming a Mumma, I find diving into others' pain much easier. Tears come easily and I'm able to feel other people's stuff in a way I couldn't before. I am both thankful for this and wary of it, as it has made crying in public kind of the norm for me now. At first it was awkward, but I've learned to become ok with this.  I struggled in the early years with Kyle to be ok with crying in front of him; just two days ago I met a couple who had recently and suddenly lost a son and within five minutes of meeting them we were getting all teary together. I've come a long way.

In earlier days, Kyle would tease me calling me "Stone-Cold Steph" because my temperament was usually pretty even with few notable downs and fewer notable ups. Before the fall of 2011, I would rarely feel emotion worthy of being labeled as 'excitement'. On the other end of the spectrum, unless I hadn't had enough alone time (I'm a closet  introvert - growing up in a house with six kids made 'alone' time hard to come by), was completely exhausted or it was my time of the month, tears were also rare. Perhaps it was the flood of hormones after Sophie was born or lack of sleep that unleashed this new Steph, or maybe it was just being thrown into the painful experience of losing someone you love. Whatever it was, it seems that letting myself experience grief has also opened some doors to tasting some extra Joy as well. For this I am thankful.

I had not been my intention to leave this blog untouched for two months. Really, it hadn't.  I've been struggling with what to write about in the last while. The Joy Project took a bit of a blow two minutes after I finished typing my last post. I was about to hit the 'Publish' button when Kyle called to let me know that the 10 year old daughter of a friend of a friend who had been struggling with cancer had passed away that morning. As I found myself diving into the pain of Sarah's family I found the Joy Project getting side-tracked as I began wrestling with the question, Is it possible to experience Joy through the rough stuff?

I recently worked my way through a book by Brené Brown, "The Gifts of Imperfection", her "Guide to a Wholehearted Life". She tackles the concept of Joy as it relates to Happiness. She says Happiness is an emotion, whereas Joy is "a spiritual way of engaging with the world that's connected to practicing Gratitude." (77). Aka: no Gratitude = no Joy. Much like my discovery that the newly experienced emotional dips clear the way for some wonderful upswings of Happy, you can't chase Joy without practicing Gratitude. Maybe I'm alone in this, but this was a new idea for me.

So yes, I think it is possible to experience Joy despite crappy circumstances. Sadness displaces happiness, it doesn't have to displace Joy. I think Paul knew what he was talking about in 1 Thessalonians 5:18 - In the midst of all the muddy waters of this life we can't always be thankful FOR every circumstance, but we can be thankful IN every circumstance.

So here's where I'm at... after pondering this for a week, I've decided that Gratitude is definitely a 'growing area' for me. I'm not talking about thank-you notes (although I really need to get better at that too), but setting aside my mental to-do list, my worst-case-scenario thinking, and my busyness and just taking some time to run over a few things in my mind each day I am thankful for.


I'm going to be honest - this is a bit of a tricky week to start. In the last week, our car was done in, Kyle's grandma died and Sophie got over a nasty cold in time to pick up a fever and vomiting bug from an unknown source. However, I think I can still find some reasons to be grateful.

So here's the goal for this month. I'm going to try to come up with five unique items for my Gratitude List every day this month. Today is the first of February so I'll be working on this for the next 28 days. Here goes Take One...

Today I am Grateful for:

1) Extra cuddles from my clingy baby today - Sophie is definitely not herself, but some baby Tylenol, apple juice and some extra lovin' from her parents will take care of that. I'm going to ignore the gross bathroom and enjoy this snoozing baby on my shoulder. 

2) The generosity of my mum and dad in law - Kyle is using their second vehicle while our little Echo is at the garage recovering from a run-in with a Dodge Ram and its trailer hitch.

3) We have a grocery store within walking distance. We could definitely use a visit to said store, but our need of food has a whole lot  more to do with schedule coordinating than distance or funds.

4) My Mum and her 'Fridays with Sophie' - Almost every Friday my mum drives 3 hours to spend time with Sophie, help me out around the house and free me up to teach music lessons. Especially in the early months, knowing I would have extra help on Fridays helped to keep me going during days I was particularly sleep-deprived. Thank you Mumma, Thank you!

5) Kyle's unexpected drop-in today "Because I missed Sophie" - I'm so thankful that Sophie is going to grow up with a dad who communicates with his words, his snuggles as well as with his time that he loves her. This is just so important. This is going to play a huge role in her self-esteem and sense of self-worth as she grows older. I am thankful for how much Kyle loves Sophie.

So welcome February! I'm glad you're here. Attitude, get ready for a face-lift.