In the shadows where they stand, Unseen by most, in a forgotten land, Society’s judgment, harsh and cold, But within their hearts, a story unfolds.
Misunderstood, their journey unseen, By those who know not where they’ve been, Yet in the darkness, a transformation brews, From the pain and struggle, strength ensues.
God’s hand, a sculptor in the night, Molding souls, turning wrongs to right, Squeezing them tight in trials so deep, To awaken the beauty they’ve yet to reap.
They too yearn for a brighter day, For the weight to lift and fears to sway, Hold patience in your heart, my friend, For their healing journey has no end.
Empathy and sympathy, let us embrace, To lift them up, in this trying space, For beneath the pain, their hearts do yearn, To break free and finally learn.
With love and understanding, we’ll impart, The strength to mend a broken heart, And as they emerge from the darkest night, They’ll shine with newfound, radiant light.
This is Miss Lakeisha Zadi Bongo. She is a now 8 and and 5th born in a family of 7. when she was 4 she loved playing Elsa and her favorite food wasn’t even a food! It was ice cream.
When you happen to be born child number 3+ in most families, you may get overwhelmed in the numbers. And its possible that your talents and gifting’s may not be picked up by your parents and the society like they would a first born or an only first child.
But not in this Family. Each child is unique as they were packaged from heaven. And I hope this goes to you too…even to the mother of two.
There are never two children who are alike, even identical twins. I see parents making a mistake of doing corporate parenting. Raising kids as if they are a heard of goats. No kids are human and very intelligent at that
One of the biggest mistakes we as parents make is using the rules that we raised number one for number two with. It simply never works. With one discipline and firmness works with another rewards and incentives is what works. You just have to learn your child as if its a unique project, of which it is
I am always amused at kindergarten teachers. How they are able to deal with a class room of 15 children raised in different families and yet birth the best out of them. This is what every parent must be able to do.
I wrote this blog four years ago and I thought it would add value to you seeing how far we have come.
Speaking Life!
So today I had an early morning Gahunda (Kinyarwanda for meeting) with Baby Lakeisha. I told her we needed to talk quite some deep stuff but she had to remove her trousers first. She had wet herself again. Immediately she started walking out of the room.
I repeated
“No, I want you to come back back, sit hear and we talk”
“Oh okay” she said.
She started coming back and when she was going to start getting up the bed I repeated
” But you have to remove your wet trousers”
She looked down dejectedly. I knew she had not understood. And she started walking away again.
I wanted to know why she thought that removing her trousers meant she needed to leave my presence. I explained much more slower that she can just remove the trouser in my room and come up the bed.. This cutie has a beautiful gap and it melts my fears whenever she smiles. Her smile got me pulling her to myself and cuddling her. By the way I don’t do that a lot. As in the way I was raised us ‘Amerucans’ are not touchy touchy especially for me that grew up in the village.
I dont know if you understand the gravity of my non touchiness. As in for me to hug, I have to tell myself. It has to be intentional. You should see my hands crashing onto people’s belly’s as they try to hug me and I try to greet them as I extend my hand cluelessly! I know you will think its funny but its embarrassing😠
So at that huggy moment I re introduce my topic
“Baby I want us to talk”
“Okay” She says looking at me. And repeating that killer smile. It melts every single ice ranging inside my chest cavity. Okay. I am being a bit dramatic there from the effects of over watching Elsa! But the point is; I realized how much she has grown and I have not spent enough time with her. She was still a baby but sometimes concentrating on her baby sister had costed us some valuable ‘Mummy daughter fellowship’
So I started
“Tell me baby. Whats your name?”
“My name is Lakeisha” She answered confidently with that smile. Again.
“Oh Great. And what are your other names Lakeisha” I prodded on.
For a moment she didn’t say anything. It looked like she was wondering since when she got another name!
Nevertheless I pushed for my question and she answered.
“I am Lakeisha Lulu”
I was amused but taken aback. My baby girl did not know her second name. How is that even possible?
By the way Lulu is a name of one my daughters, but not Lakeisha’s. She had decided to adopt her older sisters name. Waaah. This is bad, This is Bad
I took time to make some corrections. “Your name baby is Zadi. Zadi, you hear me?”
Now, by the way. Let me humor you. I think George and I had either run out of creativity or were just to rhythmic such that our last two daughters have names that sound very similar. They all start with L and Z. You have no idea how many times I have written one Childs name as the other in School, In hospital, again: Its embarrassing!.
The latest being booking a ticket with Lyra as Zadi instead of Zuri. I didn’t even have the guts to tell the ticket agent I had made the mistake. I pretended someone else had done the bookings🙈🙈 Don’t Judge me!
After a minute or so we had mastered our new name. And we went on to other topics of the day. Like why she had a third name that was the same as her sisters. I explained that we all use our Daddies names.
Then I decided to take a few minutes to teach her some kingdom matters.
“And do you know we all have two Daddies” she looked at me like i was an alien. “Two daddies?”
“Yes, I answered knowing I had captured her attentions. Do you know who is your second Dad?
“Yes” she answered a bit unsure of her self “its mummie”
Okay. I did not see that coming! We have to correct this rather quickly😬
So I remind her that there is someone else that lives in heaven. And I introduce this new Daddy to her. We make a Daddy prayer to him. Something like.
“Hey Daddy, how are you doing up there. What are you doing right now by the way?…..”
We finish the prayer and we start discussing the critical issue at hand. Her constant wetting of herself.
Suddenly her countenance drops. She tries to keep on smiling. Because am still holding her tightly. She tries to get out of my arms. She is just too embarrassed clearly.
It confirms what I have been fearing.
Last week we were to visit a friend on Saturday afternoon. We had a delay. She called me back and asked “did you shave Lakeisha’s hair?” I answered No. And wondered why she had asked that.. I got to learn that she (my friend) had a dream that the kids had gone over to her house and Lakeisha’s hair was shaved. I believe in prophecy and I believe in dreams. They capture what’s happening in the spiritual before the actual deed manifests here on earth. If you don’t you better start looking into what you see while you sleep
I didn’t tell my friend but I took that dream message seriously. God speaks to us in codes in dreams. Sometimes he shows us the actual things. But like Jesus shared insights of the Kingdom with parables, he shares with us insights of the unseen with dreams and visions. As I prayed that day, I un coded the dream. Hair stands for Glory. The Bible says that a woman’s hair is her crown of Glory. If my babies hair was shaved in the dream, it meant that her glory was being cut off.
So I started praying to God to show me how this was happening here in earth as at now. And it suddenly occurred to me that her wetting herself was what was being used to bring her shame and consequentially low self esteem.
Before she would would only wet herself when pressed, now she wet herself all the time. These were no longer accidents it seems my baby wasn’t even aware the water was running out.
I asked her questions. I wanted to know why she didn’t go to the toilet when she needed to. “Every time I have an headache, susu comes itself” she said.
To be honest I think she may just have coined that up in her cheekiness. But what if it was true? What if there was a connection with her constant headache complains and the constant wetting?
We prayed again and booked an appointment with the doctor for the next day. I would take her through with all medical tests. And see if there was anything medically wrong with her.
I keep telling mothers, the devil is not after our kids lives. He is after their destiny. He kills steals and destroys for one purpose. To stop our young ones from getting to great destinies.
I call upon us mothers to pray. To see beyond our every days kids misbehavior as just bad character or that they have inherited bad traits from I dunno who. Look at the eyes of your loved ones and recognize that you can be a supportive driver to their destiny, or the Herod that will terminate a great little persons destiny.
I was okay with my daughters wetting, I know kids that have had the problem even when older. What I had missed was how much it was killing her self esteem. confidence was one of the biggest traits she is going to need in the future for her assigned destiny. of which God had already been gracious to show us when she was still in the womb.
If she loses confidence when she is young when her sisters and other children mock her for wetting herself one more time, when we scold her severely for being caress’s again…She may never have confidence to express herself.
She will stop believing in herself. And the works of evil will be completed. One more great destiny down.
So listen to me mothers. Learn to read into every habitual change in your kids. And go above basic social, psychology or scientific explanation there could be about it. May be just maybe by understanding that its a symptom. You will be able to understand the case and change your Childs life for good.
Meanwhile pray for us that this wetting thing will be a thing of the past…and our little girl can enjoy being held in a lap one more time.
Epilogue
4 years later we have seen the Lord build up so much confidence in this girl especially in the art of performance, She no longer has daily accidents, But at times if she drinks a lot at night she does have night time accidents. We have made it our purpose to make sure she doesn’t focus on the accident. She still looks so embarrassed and will look down with shame. But we are not allowing the enemy to build trauma around this one aspect. None of us parents is perfect, what we have is a perfect God that created our young ones that helps us