A man’s belief dictates his perspective to life, his perspective determines his response to life and so he mirrors life through the eye of his beliefs. Our beliefs are formed by series of event that goes on from day to day…

Michael Adebiyi

www.michaeladebiyi.com

…FROZEN Right in the mist of the crowd, I spotted this young lady who was obviously unique and I bet everyone in that gathering will agree with me. Somehow, I found myself drawn towards her, as I gently walked down the corridor to reach her. I bet some folks understand what I’m talking about; I mean some guys would have felt something related to that. You know when you suddenly find your eyes continually drifting towards some creature that appears God has obviously spent extra time with and it seems you can’t control your eyes from staring and your feet from moving in her direction, if you know what I mean. Well the uniqueness of this particular lady was quite different from what I guess you’ll be thinking about now, because she had burns all over her face with no smooth portion, which was most likely from a fire incident, I thought.

Well I finally got to her and said hello, she responded and staring straight into her eyes, she had this shy look, whether contemplating to smile or not, or either trying not to smile fully or just a little. Like “wow!! Someone finally noticed me well enough to say hi but I wonder what he wants”. She looked like a young lady that she was but with great tales of pain to tell. We got talking, as I watched some form of ease settling on her face. In a short while we broke the thorough into another phase of relationship with an outburst of laughter which was driving attention of people around.

Like “wow!! Someone finally noticed me well enough

to say hi but I wonder what he wants”.

Sincerely, I can’t remember the exact words that we shared as we laced our conversation path but I remember our conversation drifted towards the issue of love and she promptly responded that there was no such thing as love at least not in her world.

Shocked at her response, I thought to myself that there must be a story behind that thought line so I pushed further to understand her. We broke into yet another phase of relating as she suddenly busted out into the long story of her short life. I’ll just paraphrase it.

She was given birth to out of wedlock so her mum had to live with the pressure attached to single parenthood with help from her own mother. Sometime in the early eighties, a beautiful lady with a unique touch of beauty to the world was born just like every normal child is born. No special ceremony involved, just compliments from a few family members and neighbors. The young girl was growing and received lots of attention from her grandmother since she was her first grandchild. The young girl was left in the custody of her grand ma as her mum was out to work. Unfortunately, the beauty of that day was smeared with a fire outbreak.

The house where the young girl was playing went in flames just as her grandma stepped out to get something. She came back to see the house on flames and people running around to quench the fire with buckets of water. She just kept screaming my baby!! She dashed through the inferno with absence of fear or danger on her mind, and paved way to save her grandchild who at this point had walls of fire surrounding her.

She just kept screaming my baby!! She dashed through

the inferno with absence of fear or danger on her mind…

Well, to cut the story short, she walked through the walls of fire, grabs the young lady who at this point had fire burns on her face, held her in her embrace trying to prevent more burns and hereby became the subject for the fire to find expression.

They made it out fortunately but the grand mum passed on after a few days having secured severed injury from the burn and the life of the young girl was spared but the incidence left a permanent scared face as a story for years to come.

This point of her life marked a freezing point for her life. Although, as a little girl, she had no control over the painful event life threw at her, yet she received constant blame from her mum for the death of her grand mum. As simple but yet complicated, told with few words yet carries great weight, her life was frozen in time by this phase of her life. Although, she grew in years, she was literally stuck on this point of her life. In other words, she was in her twenties when I met her but she was frozen back in the past.

Sitting on the rug of my living room with the cold morning breeze blowing at me, it’s as if it blew the thought of this game, I use to play as a kid where we do hide and seek and one gets caught and try to escape, the other party on the search team yells freeze!!

As simple but yet complicated, told with few words yet carries great weight, her life was frozen in time…

And once you hear freeze, you have to stay in a frozen position. You know that there are always events or circumstances in life literally still yelling same words at you in different tones.

To someone with the same fate like my dear friend who faced life in the form of rejection, her pains remain, freeze!!! You’re the reason your grand mum died, freeze!!! U can’t experience true acceptance again…………… freeze!!!

Different people with different circumstacial (I bet there’s no such word in the English dictionary but guess what, I just invented one to buttress my point) freezing points in life and indeed they are frozen in time from a loss of job, hurts from a relationship, failure in business or academics, physical deformities …………………(fill in the gap). But guess what?

Life could throw things at you due to no fault of yours or even if due to your fault, you always have the final say because you give meaning to every circumstance around.

In other words, life will always take the form of your thoughts and not what it actually appears to be. If your thoughts take the form of the happenings around then you then life is as such. No wonder people go through similar circumstances in life and have different attitude. Hmmm!! ‘As a man thinks in his heart so is he’.

It’s exactly 4:00am now and I’m thinking instead of typing out the conclusion of this article, I’ll just dash down to my friend’s place who the above story was based to tell us in few words how she found her way out of this frozen state of her life. I’ll try to take a little nap now. Later!!!

But guess what?

Then something great began to happen to me, the words I was now hearing began to conflict with those I grew up with. Names like the burnt face, ugly chick, words like she can never become anything, who is ever going to marry her. The words went on in my mind for so long until I asked myself the big question. “Who am I”, I got no answer until I asked myself another question “who do I want to be”. I began thinking up all I wanted to be, imagining things as though I was watching a movie. That was the season; I had the greatest discovery of all, realizing I could be who ever I want to be under God. My thoughts became words and words became actions until I became a changed person then I knew who I was. I am a woman with a message that will move many from their lower state of mind to higher grounds.

I am a now graduate of mass communication, I run an NGO of my own (Crystal vision for the visually impaired) , a caterer and a public speaker and will be married in less than 4 month from when this article was put together. All things are possible. Don’t you think so?

I appreciate everyone that has helped me pulled different phases of my life, especially my friend who’s putting this article together and above all, all glory be to the father who knows the end from the beginning. I am who I am today by the grace of God.

Hmmm! From the horse’s mouth... I realize that people and circumstances need your permission to make you feel good or bad about you. It’s not about what life throws at you, it’s about your response or perspective of it. I hope that someday, we’ll meet again on the pages of this magazine or maybe somewhere else great. May good things be yours? There is greatness in you.

Michael ADEBIYI

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