The very beginning of the wait
Ever since I could remember, I always wanted a friend. No, I'm not trying to be mushy, I am going somewhere with this. My "want" of course evolved, and soon enough it wasn't just a friend I wanted. I wanted my very own designer boyfriend.
His features?
The typical order would do. He must (must here is a keyword): be at least 6 feet tall; love God; be romantic (whatever that means); be a great cook (keyword also); have a good wardrobe (leather jackets and leather boots of course); have a power bike; be handsome (also very very key) and he must be wealthy (notice I didn't say rich, there's a difference).
Unfortunately, it's been 16 years, 5 months and 20 days, and I'm still waiting on God to deliver my order.
Remember I'm going somewhere with this.
I had my first crush when I was ten. Yes, I was still in primary school; and yes, every other girl had a crush on him too (I have a habit of always crushing on that one guy everyone else has a crush on). And that's when I noticed that I could be an obsessive person. (God have mercy on anyone who even dares to breathe the same air as the one I love. I'm kidding. I'm not that bad).
So, I would pray to God every day, asking him to for a sign if my crush was going to be my future husband (it's funny how I still do this). Of course, God said no a billion and one times.
But "no" wasn't good enough for me, so I kept on bugging God just in case he changed his mind.
For most of my life, I was waiting on a day. The day I would fall in love. Unfortunately for me, all the Korean movies I watched made it all worse. I won't get started on all the fantasies I had about relationships that movies influenced. By the end of my primary school education, I still hadn't found him.
So I hoped that maybe I would meet Mr. Right in high school. Did I meet him? Nope. I mean, there were loads of cute guys in high school who could have been the one (I just wasn't the type of girl to attract the kind of guys I fell in crush with).
The trump card
Six years passed, and I was still searching for love. However, there was still hope. I had four years to find him in college. I was 100% sure that at least one man on planet earth could fit my specifications and feel the same way I did about him.
So I came up with a plan. I was going to become the woman guys I liked would fall in love with.
My mom wanted me to get my Bachelor's degree in Nigeria. (She didn't want me traveling abroad just yet. She thought I was going to become a rebel. To be honest, I'm sure I would have been a very notorious child.) I had no issue with that. I just needed to find a school in Nigeria with the kind of environment I was looking for.
AUN (American University of Nigeria) was the school I applied to. It was one school that was quite similar to what I wanted. So, I went ahead and planned what each item in my wardrobe would be. Great goals require great plans, and I made sure every detail of my plan was right.
Everything goes wrong
No! It didn't happen. Life happened instead, and I ended up at Babcock University. I mean, the first time I read the dressing rules. I wept! (No! I didn't cry. I wept).
Earrings and makeup weren't allowed. Pants (trousers) weren't permitted either. All clothes worn were required to be 2 inches below the knees. No! That's not all. Your hair was to be shoulder length. Worse, meat (I mean goat meat, chicken, beef, turkey, etc) wasn't served or sold in the school.
Now you understand my pain. I mean, the rules were outright ridiculous. There had to be a way out because there was no way that this was going to be my life for 4 whole years.
Did anything change
I couldn't find a way out. So 26th of August 2012 I had to go to Babcock. And when I got to school, it was worse than I had imagined. It was so different from everything I had in mind. Like the little things I had found my comfort in were either lies or non-existent.
The first few days in school was lonely and depressing. I hated the school, I hated my hostel, I hated the rules and I hated the fact that I was stuck there. Luckily for me, God sent me a friend who made it less lonely and depressing.
To be honest waiting four years to be happy was quite unrealistic. The truth was I had to stay at school regardless of what my opinion of the school was. I had two choices: I was either going to be miserable for four years or make the best of my stay in school.
Yup, we are finally there
And this is the point of this story. So many times, in our search for things, we forget to make the most out of each moment life gives us. We keep on waiting for school to be over, thinking we'd be happy then; or waiting till we have a job. And eventually, when we find what we've been searching for, it's still never enough. So we look forward to getting married and then look forward to having kids. Till we end up old and wasted, then we realize that we never really lived in the moment because we were always waiting on things we wanted.
Where you are right now is where you were meant to be (lol! Or not).
My point is, can you make the most of today? Can you love your job, can you enjoy walking to class in the sun? Because the only thing the past offers to you are memories and only you have the power to decide what kind of memories you create. The truth is, it's only God who can satisfy you completely.
So stop chasing after mundane things and chase after the One who designed you to be loved by him.
