Dear Father

I let go of things that don’t serve me
I give these up and surrender all to you
Lord I pray you give me a garment of praise for this dowdy one of burden
That I rise each day to thank you for all the wonder and splendor you give so freely to me

For I know
I am exceptionally blessed and favored
I know you will turn around what seems hard to a song of beauty simply coz I acknowledge you

And I do!!
You are everything to me….
I stand coz you make me
I sleep coz you embrace me
I walk coz you guide me
I laugh coz you touch me
I’m great coz you love me
And what does that make you?

Awesome!!! beyond description, to beautiful for words, to wonderful for comprehension
Like nothing I have ever seen or heard
Who can grasp your infinite wisdom?
Who can fathom the depth of your love?
You are beautiful beyond description,
Majesty enthroned above

By T. Walmsley

and Lyrics - I stand in Awe of You from Sovereign Grace Praise

COMMIT TO GOD COZ HE IS COMMITTED TO YOU

Dear God

I commit to talk to you when tempted

To walk with you when persecuted

To ask of you when challenged, intimidated and lacking wisdom

To be proactive in your word, prayer and praise

To be still - when every thing in me wants to jump - and get my solution my own way

To acknowledge that I walk by faith and not by sight

To disagree with the lies of the enemy with the truth of your word

To acknowledge that my heritage is special because you adopted me

To not be ashamed of whom I serve and whose I belong

To speak up when you say speak and to shut up when the enemy says freak!

To not act on imp - ulse but on Gods pulse which is of love, peace and righteousness

To know that when the ODDS are against me - you even the score by making me WIN!!

That your word never fails - your revelation word given to me is for direction, selection and celebration

To trust your heart when I cant trust mine

To lay every weight and sin that so easily besets at the cross and trust your word and anointing that destroys every yoke

That I have all and everything in me to be all that I should be

That no more shall I stand in the way of your prompting in my life and that by your grace I will fulfill your call

To realize that I am not forgotten or forsaken - that you know my name

That no trial or test can finish me but that indeed I will come out as gold - to the glory of your name

That I have much to be grateful for because the King of kings and the Lord of lords and the Creator of all is on my side

Therefore enemies of God watch out for God will have his day and his glory will not be denied

By Trudy ... Daughter of the Most High!

EMBRACING YOU - CELEBRATING YOU! The Single You

30 + years and not yet married, the lists of wants and what one gets in life gets hazier by the day for the myriad of women walking the streets. Especially with life being the constant spin to gain an education, a promotion, a nice home in a nice location and to top that, a nice man in tow. Well so much for the list. I guess we all have to reconcile with the list that never came to pass at times. Most often the frustrations compiled with biological clock ticking makes one desperate to check off some items on the list such as a godly man, a man with a good education, with good manners, good looks etc.

Society just seems to be built for two, cars are made with more than two seats, restaurant seats set are for twos and naturally topics of conversations veer to if whether one is married or not. So singles walk around feeling like emotional lame ducks, not quite getting acceptance and often viewed with suspicion. How could you be single for so long, are you? …. you can fill the blanks.
Inevitably one would expect the singles to just fade away to oblivion, the sigma of not understood by the public, deemed as being selfish or unemotionally disconnected to what is happening around them.

They say life is a teacher, and life’s teachers are our peers, parents and providence if you like. Heartbreaks, setbacks, challenges, victories are all part of the masters that teach the soul that life is a journey where one must stop, pause and ask questions or take note.
If one took a road that supposedly led to a known destination, and several attempts later doesn’t get one there, it would reckoned that another route is the option.

So the question to face is that you are single, have been for as long as you can remember, you sister, yours sister’s friends, their girlfriend, their girlfriends friends get married and the cycle goes on and on and yet somehow you don’t get hitched or get the fantastic relationship you yearned for. What happens to the “wish list” and what life eventually gave you.

Life can be a Pandora like gift, you never know what opportunities it brings about, the happy ever endings fairy books and movies often don’t see the single trudging happily alone into the sunset, it doesn’t say and she or he lived alone happily ever after, it doesn’t depict a marriage to self where one conveys promises to be faithful and true to self until death one departs.

Can one embrace ones life, for all its worth and accept that ones status is just the setting one has in the plot called life, and the main character is more important than the scene? Embracing ones life is self accepting and that includes the good things and not so appealing areas. Embracing self is very rewarding, it is a gift society will not often grant but it’s the one gift that refuses to dwell on efforts to belong, efforts to be in the right books, efforts to be the part… whatever that is.

This is a love story with self. It’s not a call to be perfect or politically correct, it’s a simple realisation that the master of the universe painstakingly took his time to create you, to him the work of art is a masterpiece. Situations and challenges do not negate the fact that his principle object of love is you. Celebrating you is being kind and accepting of ones greatness and limitations, it’s about allowing adventure and finding out what truths and joys lay latent awaiting expression. It’s about self love which is not selfish or indulgent. It’s a humble acceptance of self for even the good word says that one can not love a neighbour without loving self.

Therefore embracing self is also letting go of depreciating self evaluations imposed from whatever source. Perhaps another list ought to be drawn, a list where self appreciation and gratitude for anything and everything that pertains to you. This list can easily be checked day by day because positive things can and are perceived. Developing a heart to go to a mirror and embrace the creation before it. Embrace the scars, embrace the wrinkles and embrace the life that is yours and agree with the master of the universe that you are indeed a singular sensation.

By T. Walmsley

CELEBRATING YOU! The Single You

HARNESSING NEW STRENGTH

Arrogant is the one whose strength is measured by brute power
Young sinewy muscle straining against the current
Forging on, bulldozing the opposition
Brute strength negates that wear and tear will some time take its natural toll
Plying the mind to wonder why the frame will not hold up as usual

I want to speak about the eagle
I want to share its golden paths with you
I want to soar the clear open skies and ride the treacherous storms
Beholding the flight of an eagle
Appreciating its long talons, its wing span, its sharp eyes …. Its cry

My heart is captivated by its flight
My breath almost mingling with its heart beat, as its soars, my spirit rises Above the clouds, darkening now, thundering and how
No fright for me, the smell of the storm, sends excitement through me… beholding the eagle
I hear its cry…mingling with mine
As it heads for the sun, like a warrior on the run
Bravery builds up in me, as it flies the clouding skies

I am not afraid, I hear its cry, within me…my spirit echoes
Higher and higher it climbs... it beckons, my spirit to arise

I want to speak of the strength of an eagle, broken by choice in its sunset years
Naked and dejected alone in its own dross
Shedding weighty feathers, that once faithfully took on the heights
Now piled around like filth, dashed against bleeding skin, what was known torn away to allow for the new Failed strength, wings that can no more take flight, broken beak, voiceless cry, watching the skies while others fly...

I want to speak of the heart of an eagle, a choice not to live again in worldly pursuit
A choice not to grope with the mundane, the irrelevant the temporal
A heartbroken, with new sprout of feathers, new strength, new resolve
To fly once more, a broad back to carry a loftier load, to carry the creators original code
To forge on for better grander far nobler things
That to which the creator desires

As the eagles soars
I fly within

 By T. Walmsley

Standing in titles?

Standing by the Jordan banks was a man - the Messiah
God amongst us, He humbled himself
Walked with humanity understood human calamity
Yet graced with divinity
Did not clamour for fame nor publicity....

Standing at the brink is humanity
Cordoned by sins propensity
Man eat man, hate man conformity
Displaced from grace all creation's misplaced
He died to give back hope to a lost people... The Christ
our Saviour, our safety , our sanity

Titles for free, some paid for
none truly of merit
Perception of mans worth
Rendered from man to man
Yet God has through Christ titled believers Co heirs, beloved, seated on high
The very righteousness of God

If one was to stand in titles, may it be in this
Blood bought, written in the book of Life
Jesus our Kingsman Redeemer
No title can rival

Spirit of our Nation

Spirit of our Nation
Just who are you

Where do you reside
Is it in hearts you hide?

Where can one pin point your location?
Are you a corporate hope of an inner vexation?

Are you buried in the ground?
Sons and daughters whispering from a secret mound

Are you daily pounding on the streets?
Reciting Wananchi’s inner conflicts

Are you in the breasts of Fathers and Mothers?
Resounding prayers from different hallowed quarters

Are you in the slums?
Tired of waiting for hand outs, tired of being described the so called hoodlums

Do you speak from the rural enclose
Are your opinions and purpose a threatened recluse

Who hears your voice, does it whisper or shout
Does it have choice, merit or clout?

Mama Mboga, Jua Kali Hawker
Are you in the breathe of the Casual Worker
Construction laborer, Farm or Dock hand
Where do you stand?

Spirit of our Nation
Just who are you

Are you just a phantom voice?
Having no shape or poise
Are you extinct?
Having no abode or precinct

Are you past, present or future
Perhaps speaking from our culture
Are you enshrined in our constitution?
Are you recognized in our young men’s visions?
Are you good and fair?
Or do you break and tear
Is your cause just or is gain your thrust

Spirit of our Nation
Just who are you

No More Shame

NO MORE

No more a picture of someone else’s imagery
No more introspective dichotomy
No more decried daughter of eve
No more answer to laced venomous peeve
No more shame within

No more relegated to voiceless existence
No more regarded as object of circumstance
No more imputed and marred
The title of Woman scorned and scarred
No more shame within

No more playing caricatured description
No more victimized by Medias prescription
No more flustered by worldly depiction
No more open to self prophesied infliction
No more shame within

No more secondary in intelligence quota
No more illusionary in leaderships rota
No more discounted in corporate functions
No more embarrassed as a specie of emotional unction
No more shame within

No more belittled indeed daughters of God
No more tossed aside like creatures of worthless sod
No more, for in Christ women are chosen in the beloved
As partakers and heirs of his Kingdom
And in him are truly honored
To have no more shame again

NO NOTHING TO SEE HERE

Whitewashed edifices
Like grand elephants
Purported to be of
Public benefit
Files mysteriously appearing - disappearing
Hushed conversations, hushed con versions
Siphoning monumental colossal sums
White collar hoodlums
Say
No Nothing to see here


Amazing maize maze
Evasive maneuvering like quick haze
In your face, like household secrets
Known yet not known, Said yet not boldly
Boundaries taken
Minorities forsaken
Voiced! Braying on microphones
Insist
No Nothing to see here

Churning emotions misleading the masses
Strengthen “the party”
The masses cry why?
We have been compromised
We have no say, no pay, no way
Justice wears a cast
Dubious is its light
Whimpers
No nothing to see here

Blinded masses like poisoned rats
Aimlessly running from the prey
Careening to laid out traps at bay
Caught in the seams of intrigue
Not realizing the players are the major league
Notoriety dons cloth and collar
Innocence in pretentious demeanor
Clamors
No nothing to see here

Surprise

Surprising how much my heart keeps opening to you
How you have it
How you move it
Like a fissure in a mountains terrain
My heart split open
The molten lava within brews hotter and hotter
It makes me warm at times it frightens me
Mother Nature has her calm
But sometimes her banks of untamed emotions erupt
Unreined
Frightening
How do you tame the heart, when its crack keeps widening
Engulfing you – engulfing me

So I pray,
Father you built… made… created this, created you, created me
Be that third string, that thread that holds us together
Safely
Reining us in and reigning within
His form of love, that rules Mother Nature… says when the tide must roll in
Love like a calm, budding like the spring, growing stronger daily, flourishing
Flowering, nourishing ….
Water brooks flowing, its sounds calming, its song restoring
Yes my heart keeps opening to you … though now… it’s calling for its maker to propel it fall or rise
That the Maker makes his mark in us… his love our daily Sunrise surprise….

You do it well

Play us the court jester
Tell us that same old joke
No play the usual smart aleck
With answers for just about everything
Wait no do your usual routine
Mr. PolMagician where everything keeps disappearing
Oh let’s not forget the man of cloth thing
Make us believe you care deep within
That performance you keep doing
Dancing and prancing warrior like ...is quite fluid
Entertain me some more, sing me a song, tell me a quip a riddle
Oh man do a back flip
That’s why I keep you there
You prank while I flounder
Notwithstanding I laugh till I cry till my seams split
As your midriff gets rounder