The First Heartbreak…he he!

I have always loved the idea of marriage. From as early as I could comprehend those inspirational books from the school library; I mentally sketched what I would call the ideal life for myself whenever I was to grow up.

The plan went something like this; I would finish school, get a well paying job, meet my ‘the one’ at work who would be in a higher rank than I was in whatever successful field we both worked in, we would get married, have twins a boy and a girl, live in a white picket fence neighborhood, go to church as a family where both my husband & I would serve in church, but do just the bare minimum to qualify for heaven because, well, doing too much would be too much. 10 out of 10 solid plan.

Needless to say, all this was mapped out in the village just from reading books of women who had ‘made it in life & lived happily ever after’. In my mind, I was so loyal to this plan, although the career preference seemed to change, the general context didn’t change, i,e, if I was to be a lawyer, my husband would be a judge, if I was to be an air hostess, of course my husband would be the pilot and other such ambitious stuff.

I wasn’t even excessively obsessed with the idea of getting married as my ticket to success, I knew I would be successful on my own. Still, I just wanted it to be a part of my story, so I placed it safely at the back of my mind where I would constantly refer back to it to check if it needed adjusting as my life went through different seasons.

Now, academically, I wasn’t even extremely intelligent to be able to achieve some of my most ideal career thoughts & aspirations. For instance, mathematics absolutely bullied me!!! To this day, I still approach numbers with great respect, sometimes I even still resort to counting my fingers for things. Yes, it’s that bad 🙁

I used to constantly try my absolute best to understand these complex subjects but the heartbreak was rather unrelenting. I remember moments I would pay the utmost attention in the math class, & assume I had finally grasped the concepts and would confidently & excitedly write my exercises expecting to ace them. Only for me to get zero out of 20, meaning what I thought I had understood perfectly, I had absolutely missed. Very disheartening, if you ask me.

I wasn’t a complete lost cause though as I used to excel in social sciences, which is languages and the like. I even had an A in Ndebele, a language I had not only had to learn from scratch in high school, but also had to pass in exams. Ultimately, I passed just 5 subjects in my Ordinary level exams, 3 A’s & 2 C’s, & mind you 5 is the minimum number of subjects you need to pass for you to have passed O’Level. I let out a sigh of relief when I went to collect my results although I still felt embarrassed that it was just 5 subjects.

I then proceeded to the Advanced level stage of High School and studied social science subjects, which was English Literature, History, Ndebele & Sociology and I did fairly well, 🙂

I suppose this just cements that analogy that says don’t judge a fish by it’s inability to climb a tree because in the math class, I was quite hopeless, but in the literature class, I lit up! This goes to prove that God has created us to each fill up all types of positions in the earth. Not everyone needs to excel in one thing & certainly, not every animal needs to climb the tree, there is room for fish to swim well in water. So, there is no need judge yourself by your inabilities, because despite those, you actually have abilities too, so why not exert effort in those, instead.

Anyway, in case all this high school talk is gibberish to you, let me explain. A typical Zimbabwean high school timeline is 6 years. You start off studying towards an Ordinary Level certificate, and write exams towards that in your fourth year. If you pass, which is pass 5 subjects in that certification, you can then proceed to study towards the Advanced Level certification, which will take you 2 years and you will sit for your exams in your 6th year. If you pass this stage, then you can be eligible for University/College or other equivalents of tertiary education.

Surprisingly, by the time I finished high school, I no longer knew what career I wanted to pursue despite having planned for this since as early as I could remember. I just no longer had a clue what I wanted to do with my life. Perhaps because most of the career options I had aspired to required a mathematical background that I could not even pretend to have.

Proverbs 16:9 We may make our plans, but God has the last word. You may think everything you do is right, but the LORD judges your motives. Ask the LORD to bless your plans, and you will be successful in carrying them out.

Moving on, do you remember my aunt, the one who took me from the village, and eventually moved to South Africa after a year or so? In God’s true faithful fashion, He sent her again to help me get to university! (God bless her for being so instrumental in my life in the way she has)To cut the story short, she came to Zimbabwe to visit family and by the end of that trip, we agreed that I would go stay with her in Cape Town, South Africa & study Law at the University of Cape Town. Pretty prestigious university truly and also pretty pricey in terms of tuition. I was very excited about this, although I had no clue which law I would pursue, neither did I even know there were more than one type of law one could pursue.

Off to South Africa, I went. Everything seemed better there, from the buildings to the roads, to the accessibility of many things, & even the affordability of most of them. Everything was a wow factor for me. My aunt kept encouraging me to tell her if I needed something but my then reserved, quiet, overthinking & I-don’t-want-to-be-a-burden self almost couldn’t admit needing the very basics like pads so sometimes she had to guess some of the things I needed. We even went clothes shopping at some point. Something I was no longer that used to, if ever. Overall, just wonderful stuff.

However, after a month’s stay in Cape Town, I had to come to a final decision over what I would study, because although we had initially agreed on me pursuing a degree in Law, I didn’t have one of the requirements; my old nemesis-mathematics! So, I could either go back to Zimbabwe and study mathematics for a year and hopefully pass the exam and come back to pursue a degree in law or I would look for another qualification to pursue that didn’t have math as an entry requirement.

To note is that at this point, I had become like the ten spies of Israel (refer to Numbers 13) who were sent to spy on the promised land only for them to focus on the negatives; both imagined and real. I had heard so many stories about how unsafe South Africa was, how students could carry guns or knives and potentially stab or shoot whoever, whenever. I had also heard how violent Zulu men supposedly were and how xenophobic South Africans could be to Zimbabweans, how they did not like using English but rather preferred native languages that I obviously didn’t know how to speak. Also, back home, some close family members had also voiced doubt in my ability to become successful as a lawyer, considering how quiet and reserved I was. All these thoughts flooded my mind. Plus, hey remember the plan? Who would marry me here? The supposed violent Zulu men? No, thank you. Also, who would be my friend here? All of these thoughts made me think studying in Cape Town would not be ideal.

At that time, my aunt had also done a bit of research from her colleagues on what some lucrative degrees were at the time, & had come across one called Development Studies that I could study even in Zimbabwe. This same degree in particular ‘coincidentally’ was the one my best friend had just gotten a university placement for back in Zimbabwe. I was quite keen on that ‘coincidence’ and how it answered some of my concerns for studying at the University of Cape Town!

Speaking of spouse, within that month I had gotten closer to this other guy back in Zimbabwe (over the phone) that I used to vaguely talk to, prior to coming to South Africa and he seemed like a good enough candidate. His family was Christian meaning I didn’t need to try and arm-twist him to go to church. Secondly, he was quite kind and respectful so I thought he would possibly treat me right. He also was in the same level as I was, academically, meaning we could ( emphasize on could) end up in the same university and become college sweethearts who would get married after school. Perfect perfect story line. He came from a small immediate family as well, with just one brother which I thought was ideal because I was just awkward in my people skills so the less people to deal with, the better. HOWEVER, he had clearly pointed out that he would never be in a long distance relationship so that meant I would either move back to Zimbabwe, or else someone else would get my ideal man he he.

Collectively, all these little factors brought me to a rather questionable decision to want to go back to Zimbabwe to study Development Studies with my besty and eventually get married to this my so-called ideal man. My aunt was concerned by the realities of going back to study in Zimbabwe and quite hesitant, but I insisted that I wanted to go back to Zimbabwe.

EVERYTHING was better in South Africa, so the decision sounded very stupid, which it probably was. But ultimately, I went back to Zimbabwe despite my aunt asking me repeatedly to carefully consider the decision I was about to make.

Here is the spoiler alert, it didn’t take that guy a month to dump me because well, life is not a fairy tale. As life would have it, he couldn’t immediately go to university as we had thought and I ended up going to a university far from home. So, in essence, it still became a rather short-lived long distance relationship which he had vowed to never be a part of. And yes, as a result, miss ma’am had bloodshot red eyes for days. To add to all this, this was my first semester at university. Everything was already new and confusing like being given an assignment during the very first lecture, even before the first lecture.

At first, the heart was really broken. I would constantly leave lecture rooms to go cry in the ladies bathroom. I mean, if heartbreak could kill, this was its chance. I was depressed and heartbroken. ‘How could he dump me after I had come back to be with him’, I thought. Looking back, that was the most hilarious phase of my life. I even had one Chris Brown heartbreak song that I played over and over and didn’t want to eat and dragged myself through life because a boy I had ‘dated’ for just a little less than a month had dumped me.

Sigh!

Proverbs 19:3 TPT People ruin their lives by their own stupidity, so why does God always get blamed?

Firstly, what you might have noticed in all this is that not once did I ask God for His opinion. I didn’t ask Him if He wanted me to become a lawyer or development practitioner. I also didn’t ask Him if He wanted me to go back to Zimbabwe or if this Mr right was even in His plans for me. I even went as far as going back to Zimbabwe without bothering to find out His will for my life. No wonder it momentarily ended in tears.

As humans, we do this most of the time. We carry on in life making all forms of big decisions without consulting God with the unspoken arrogance that seems to assume we know best. The truth is we don’t know enough about our futures to be qualified to make the most significant decisions of our lives without Him.

Quite frankly, we don’t even truly know what we really want for ourselves. To give the most basic example, there are times I have wanted a clothing piece so bad in the store only for me to buy it & look at it two months later and think, what was I even thinking when I bought this? What business then do I have making life-defining decisions without consulting the one who created me? The one who actually planned out my life and wrote a book that detailed each day of my life.

Psalm 139:16-18 a “Your eyes saw my unformed substance, and in Your book all the days [of my life] were written before ever they took shape, when as yet there was none of them. 17 How precious and weighty also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! [Ps. 40:5.] 18 If I could count them, they would be more in number than the sand…”

Secondly, what you focus on in life also matters. Those ten spies I mentioned earlier lost out on their destiny because they chose to focus on what was wrong with the promised land and exaggerated everything to be doom and gloom. Exactly what I did. I meditated on what could potentially go wrong although none of it had even gone wrong yet. I meditated on the horror stories I had heard and saw myself as a ripe candidate to be in one of them as a victim, although the probability was pretty slim.

Here is the deal, what you pay attention to grows. This is why God encourages us to renew our minds.

Ephesians 4:23-24 And be constantly renewed in the spirit of your mind [having a fresh mental and spiritual attitude],
24 And put on the new nature (the regenerate self) created in God’s image, [Godlike] in true righteousness and holiness.

Train yourself to pay attention to what you pay attention to. You could be aligning with God’s plans for your life or doing the opposite based on just what you are giving plenty room in your thoughts.

Let’s close in prayer.

Heavenly Father I acknowledge your Lordship over my life. You are the One who created me so You alone know best what I need and what is good for me. I surrender my life to You. Guide me in paths of righteousness and protect me from myself so that I don’t go around ruining my life in stupidity. Holy Spirit, I pray for an intimate relationship with you. I cannot do life on my own. Guide me, teach me, warn me, intercede for me and point me to Christ in every day of my life. All this I sincerely pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.