No Time For Sadness...Just RUN!

A couple weeks ago, I was being interviwied for a magazine story and I was asked a question that I never really thought about in the past. The reporter asked, "Did you ever feel like committing suicide when you were running for your life at the age of 8?"
When you are running, you have HOPE...thats why you run. Giving up and not running meant that I had no hope and my life was over. But I had my two legs and so I ran and ran. Suicide, aint nobody got time for that!

I went back in time and remembered myself running with a rug on my head and all I could think was run, run, run, run. I wanted to run as fast as I could from the killings and the chaos. I just wanted peace. So I ran and ran and ran. I had no time to think. So No, I never thought about committing suicide at that time. I was too busy running! 

What Are The Chances?

        

• That a lost 8 year old refugee kid will make it out of a refugee camp?
• That she will be one of the few child survivors of malaria, typhoid, malnutririon, etc?
• That she will ever get proper education and compete in this enonomy?
• That she will eventually speak 5 languages and publish her own book?
• Thats she will earn her Masters Degree in the USA and become and inspirational speaker?

Chances are....Pretty Slim but very much possible....Because I'm all the above and thankful to be alive! Do not lose hope and faith. Nothing is impossible!

Ridiculous Happiness-Part 2

Losing a child HURTS. You never think of burying your own child....and when it happens, and it happens everyday, your whole life shatters and you have many unanswered questions. When I lost my little girl, I was angry, confused, depressed and zombie like all at the same time. I could go through all types several emotional states in a period of 5 minutes. My emotions were unpredictable and it scared me.

A couple weeks after I buried my daughter, I was wondering when the pain would go away. I would talk to a lot of people who went through the same thing and they would tell me that it gets better but the pain never goes away. I was angry at myself for not healing fast enough. I wanted time to go by fast so I can go on and heal already and have a normal life. I'm not a very patient person to begin with. I'm also my worst critic and I expected to get better ASAP. Little did I know that I had no control over such matter. Family and friends would come over to offer comfort and I would try to be strong and smile here and there but as soon as they left, I would sit in my little corner and cry helplessly. No one or nothing could take away this pain. I needed plan B. This heart of mine had been shattered into pieces and I could not mend it on my own. The only way it could be mended was to seek out who made it in the first place. I was born with it and don't know how it got there but I knew someone created it and whoever created it would be able to mend it. And so, just like my son cries out to me when he needs something or when he needs comfort, I cried to the maker, I cried out to GOD!

I started praying and asked God to please take my pain away. I have always prayed every night before going to sleep and it was so routine that every time my head hit my pillow, I automatically started praying without realizing it. For some reason, this prayer that I prayed, begging to be healed and crying out loud to God felt very different. I was very vulnerable. I remember sitting on my bed, clutching a picture of my daughter very tightly on my chest crying to God uncontrollably. My body began to shake and I started getting scared....like I was having an out of body experience. I had to force myself to gain some control over myself so I can perform a mental check on myself. I started asking myself silly questions such as my name, my address, my husband's name, my son's name....just to make sure I'm sane. That's how insane I was! After this out of body, madness, insanish episode, I felt so relieved. I felt like a HUGE load had been taken off my shoulder. I looked myself in the mirror and told myself I will be alright. I was ready for good and bad days but I knew I would be just fine because now I knew...God was listening. This relief that I felt was too beautiful, too calm, too tender and loving, like someone was holding me in their arms saying ' don't worry about a thing' and I was safe. I longed to feel more and more like this because I had never felt this good in my whole life. At this point, I felt way happier than I was even before the death of my daughter!

Did my daughter leave us so I can get the chance to taste this comfort? This level of happiness? The kind of happiness that takes virtually all the worry from your life and feel like God got your back? Yes, my daughter was gone, but I was happy. Happier than ever before. I would see tears of joy in my eyes day after day, night after night. I was broken into a new whole. I know the journey is not over but I know God got my back....through the loss of  my beloved baby girl, I was and still am ridiculously happy!

Until next time.....


Thought of the Day:

How do you feel when you buy your child a gift and he ignores it and is not thankful for the gift? Maybe s/he starts complaining about the gift. Don't you feel discouraged? Maybe you don't feel like getting them a gift again. Think about the opposite, you give your child a gift and s/he thanks you profusely and rejoices! You feel good and you are more inclined to give him more, because he appreciates the gift.

No matter what I have gone through in life, I thank God for everything I have because HE is the one who has provided. I lost my daughter but I have so much blessings its amazing. I thank HIM for all these gifts HE has blessed me with and I know HE is not done taking care of me. HE got my back. So Thank You God For Everything!

Let The Breaking Begin....

This photo found on Google shows an image similar to what I saw. 

A few weeks before my family and I left Rwanda, I was sitting on our porch inside our big compound on a sunny beautiful morning. I hadn't slept well the night before. My sleep was full of nightmares which were constantly interrupted by chaos and screaming outside. I was happy that the morning had came.

I quietly stared at the ladder that lay against the compound wall. If I climbed that ladder, I would see for myself what the chaos overnight was about. I would have a view of the street. My parents had forbidden us from climbing the ladder but the curious 8 year old I was would not let me. I wanted to know what was outside the protection of our compound wall.

I quickly scanned my surroundings to make sure no one was watching and decided to climb the ladder. One step at a time, I climbed with my anticipation rising the higher I got. I finally made it to the top of the ladder and FROZE!

I couldn't believe what I saw. The street was filled with blood and dead bodies. Some machetes that were used to butcher my fellow citizens were still laying on the ground. I saw the body of a neighbor,  the head was in a ditch and the rest of the body was in the street. Some of these bodies must have been there for quiet sometime because the stench was unbearable.

Why did I go up the ladder? Why didn't I listen to my parents? How am I supposed to get this horrible image out of my head? Why is this happening? What is going on? Where is God? WHY?? These were some of the questions that were running in my mind as my tiny body trembled while slowly descending the ladder in tears. No one was to know that I went up the ladder, I would be in big trouble. I sat down at the same spot I was sitting before I forever scarred my innocence and just stared at nothing. I felt like a zombie. My life had forever changed. The breaking had slowly began...

Ridiculous Happiness

This summer has been THE summer that has changed me and how I view my life. I have had a lot of people tell me that my life is "interesting" and I always ask them why? Because I survived a genocide/civil war that left over 800,000 people dead in a period of three months? Because I speak multiple languages? Because I'm LOUD? I don't know...I just always feel like people really do exaggerate when they say how interesting I am. But this past summer, starting from the month of July, I began to see that my life is indeed somehow interesting. Probably not the most interesting but maybe just a little. I started really examining my life and all that I have gone through and thought...wow, what a journey I'm on....What a Life!

So, what exactly happened in the month of July 2014 that made me rethink my life? Well, from the title of this post "Ridiculous Happiness" its obvious that the summer ended well....it led to ridiculous happiness on my part! So, let me tell you just a snapshot of what exactly happened within a period of 5 weeks during the summer.

On July 23rd of 2014, I went to the Labor and Delivery room and found out that my baby girl who my family and I were looking forward to spending thanksgiving with had died in my womb. She was 28 weeks. She just stopped breathing....just like that! Her name is Clarette Belle. As we were finishing with the funeral and grieving, my father-in-law passed away. 2 Weeks after my father in law passed away, my grandmother passed away. We were grieving the loss of 3 deaths all in one....but I was still hang up on the death of my daughter. Going through labor and childbirth and the usual body changes that take place in a woman's body after childbirth like milk production were taking place in my body even though I had no child. This was the hardest part of grieving. 

After all this, I'm happy to say that 5 months after, I have ridiculous happiness! I'm ridiculously happy! Matter fact, when I returned to work after my medical leave, we had a new hire who had just met me who looked at me and said...."Clementine, you are happy all the time, you must go to church all the time"! Can you believe it? I was surprised because at that moment in time, I felt the opposite but I was happy because that was a big compliment at that time. I wanted things to just get back to normal!

More to come.....