November — writing my thesis, emotional intelligence, and being a better steward

Remember how I likened October to those kinds of visitors who only stand by the door to indicate how brief their visit is? November didn’t even come in at all. November said I don’t have time for frivolities and shenanigans. I’m here to do the Lord’s work and head on out.

9 years late to the party, but don’t throw tomatoes at me. I spent the beginning of November watching How to Get Away with Murder.

Such an intense show, that one.

It had me thinking about lies, the problem with half-truths, loyalty, doggedness, selfishness, guilt, being labelled as something you’re not, being so bad to the point where the only thing you are good at is being bad, and how, quite ironically, nobody really gets away with murder at the end of the day.

It had me thinking about life and chance; life’s fragility and just the chance that the stranger you come across today could end up being a friend for a lifetime.

Or not.

At the end of the day, we are only colliding with people very briefly. Some of them will only be longer than others.

I never thought a time would come where I would say this, but your girl is writing her thesis and that had me thinking of how God prepares you for certain things even when you are not aware of it. Matter of fact, this month, I grasped the meaning of how all things work together.

Last year, I had an insane feeling of homesickness. I longed for Nigeria; its beauty and dirt. Nothing here reminded me of home. I would have paid to hear two people have a whole conversation in pidgin. I would have paid to hear music blasting from across the road. I would have paid to see the danfo buses. Anything. And so, I began to seek comfort in Nollywood films.

Now, people who are close to me will tell you about my love for Nigerian movies, but I began to search deeper. I watched films on YouTube, and I binged on the Nollywood films I could find on Netflix. I followed the official Netflix Naija page just so I could know when a new movie was coming out.

For a year straight, I avoided anything that wasn’t Nollywood in the same way I would avoid anyone who likes sparkling water. I immersed myself into it to the point that by the time Netflix Naija put out a checklist of sixty Nollywood films , I had seen fifty-seven.

I watched the remaining three.

Fast forward to today where I am working on my thesis with the primary object being the Nollywood industry and its films. I make references to different films and their directors in at least every two lines, and it blows my mind how acquainted I already was with all their titles, story lines, and years of production. I can’t imagine what it would have been like if I hadn’t seen them in the first place.

My friend revealed to me that I am emotionally intelligent. To be honest, I never thought about that. All I know is that as I grow older, the ability to understand, perceive and identify the emotions of other people has become a lot easier. I have also become very in touch with my feelings; naming them, framing them, and eventually learning (and still learning) to tame them. It isn’t exactly something that I learnt, but I just remember feeling some type of way, pulling out a piece of paper, writing how I felt, and identifying the reasons why I felt like that.

The feeling was jealousy.

After talking to God about this ugly feeling, the next thing I did was sit down again to write the actions and Bible verses I needed to take in order to tame it.

To the one who finds it hard to understand what you’re feeling, this is one way to go about it. Frame it by trying to understand what you’re feeling. You’d have to approach this with honesty (a lot of people will rather chew jeans than admit some things to themselves, but hey, don’t delude yourself). Name it by identifying what it is that you might be feeling. Call it what it is. Finally, tame it. Taming it is the hardest part, and on some days, I still struggle with it. It’s the part that needs work. Taming doesn’t mean ignoring or denying what you’re feeling. It is also not being non-confrontational. It’s not about letting it go (so because you’re not speaking about what upsets you doesn’t mean you’re taming how you feel). Taming is about control.

Emotions are interesting, and it’s perhaps one of the things that make us wonderfully complex. I saw a tweet during the month stating that anger is such a useless emotion, and the first thing I thought was oh no, no, it’s really not. I remember when I started learning more about purpose, my friend asked me, what’s one thing going on in the world that makes you angry? For example, mediocrity makes my cousin, Stephen, angry, so he is committed to helping believers realize that there is always more in God. I think anger could direct you to the place of purpose.

But yes, I also know how dangerous anger is. I once watched a man angrily reach for a knife and stab another man in the neck. In that context, I could understand why anger is a useless emotion because at the end of the day, the man who stabbed the other man had only calmed down when he said I didn’t want to do that, I was just angry. It’s like he was saying, there was no need for me to do that.

And that’s where taming comes in, because at the end of the day, these are just mere emotions. However, your actions thereafter depend on how well you can tame those emotions.

I was praying and the word scribe sprang up in my spirit. I’ve always said that one way I know it’s God speaking to me is that what is being said sometimes is too wise for me to have come up with it.

Scribe? Ha.

I looked up what it meant: a person employed to make written copies of documents and manuscripts. I quickly made the connection to the word escriber which is to write in French. The disciple of Jesus, Matthew, pops into my head, and my mind travelled to scenes from The Chosen where Matthew followed Jesus closely, asking him questions and writing Jesus’ answers down. The Chosen aside, one of the things Matthew did was to share the life and words of Jesus, blessing us with the first book of the synoptic gospels.

I was transported again to few days prior when I got nervous to preach Jesus to my Bolt driver. The only thing I knew to do was tear out a page from my notebook and write him a short note about Jesus which I handed to him right before getting out of the car. Notes are special, too. They can go with you wherever.

It’s why I love writing dreams, prayers, words from God, and nuggets from spiritual books in journals. I can take them with me anywhere and go back to them to seek hope and comfort. They serve as an instrument to measure my spiritual progress, and they remind me of God’s faithfulness when I see that I’m living in answered prayers.

I doubt my ability to write more times than I acknowledge it. Sometimes, I wish I wrote about more complex things; using big vocabulary to back it up. Maybe use more metaphors and all those literary devices I learnt in Literature classes. But in all, I hope to be a better steward with this writing gift I think I have.

November taught me faith. And it made me realize that we often practice hope instead of faith, because while hope is in the future tense, faith is in the present tense.

Hope says: I’ll have it sometime. Faith says: I have it now- Kenneth Hagin, New Thresholds of Faith

Faith is not denying what’s happening; that pain or that rejection. It’s looking beyond that to what God has said. That’s why the Bible says faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. There just has to be something that comforts you. Something that reminds you that no matter what you’re seeing, God’s Word is still the most important.

I pray December is a lot softer than November. A lot softer.

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