During my service year, a friend of mine came to visit me at home and I was wearing shorts and a tank top.
In the course of our conversation, he asked me what I used to shave my armpits that made them so neat and really clean and he was surprised when I told him I’ve never grown a strand of hair there.
He went on and on about how lucky I am not having to deal with shaving and all. That conversation took me back several years.
One of the things I looked forward to as a little girl was growing hair under my armpits, I looked forward to buying shaving sticks and shaving off the hair that will grow under my armpits.
I enjoyed watching my elder sister shave off her armpits. I’ll watch my big sister with so much envy anytime i see with a new pack of shaving sticks.
Little did I know that puberty had a different plan for me where armpit hair is concerned.
Puberty came with mood swings, menstruation, breasts, hips, small ass but forgot to bring armpit hair along with it and till date I’ve never grown one strand of hair under my armpit.
It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that I’ll never have any hair under my armpit as long as I live.
At a point I was feeling like I was physically challenged as hair refused to come forth under my armpit.
It took me a while to also realise my not growing hair under my armpit was a real blessing. While some of you have to worry about buying roll on, I can go without one for months without worrying about my armpits smelling because of sweats.
Some of the things we count as losses are most of the time blessings we have refused to acknowledge. Be grateful for every little blessing God has bestowed on you.
You got a flawless skin? Be grateful, there are some who can’t step out of their rooms without make-up just to cover those flaws. It’s not their doing but it just happened.
You don’t have pimples? Just keep being grateful. You don’t have to worry about eczema? What a grand blessing that is!
Be grateful for the very little things, start from there and you’re on your way to a fulfilled life. Thank God for that ₦5 or the garri and groundnut you had as dinner last night, some can’t even afford that.
You had a child outside wedlock and you feel it’s a disadvantage? You better be grateful, some women are legally married and they’ll give everything to have that child you’re seeing as a disadvantage.
You admission came late? Be thankful still, it gave you opportunity to become more mature and prepared for life in the university.
You lost a job opportunity? Well, be grateful someone out there has not even been invited for a job interview since they graduated from school. I’m not saying you should be cool with being in a bad situation, I’m just saying some of these things are blessings in disguise.
They may not actually be packaged as blessings and it becomes our responsibility to peel off the cover and see the blessings in the unpredictable package left outside our door.
I know someone is asking ‘how do I find something to be thankful if I missed a bus while going for a job interview?’ Or ‘what’s there to be thankful for because I’ve not gotten a job, have my own child or even failed an exam I paid thousands of naira/dollars to register for?’
Let’s start from here, you missed a bus on your way to a job interview and it may actually result to your getting late for the job interview but how about you being thankful that you only missed a bus not that the bus ran into a truck or skidded off the road resulting into a fatal accident?
Try to believe what happened may have been either worse or it’s bringing you something better than what seems to you like a loss.
Can you attend an interview while battling for your life? Did I hear you say ‘No’? Good, so you understand why you missing a bus could actually be a blessing in disguise, right?
At the point where you’re in that seemingly bad situation it may be difficult to start thinking of how it’s a blessing or how it’s working for your good but accepting the fact that the bad situation has happened and there’s little or nothing you can do to fix it will make it easier.
We say everything happens for a reason be it good or bad, so just accept that the bad situation you are in happened for a reason.
Here’s a quote from American actress, model and singer Marilyn Monroe:
“People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right, you believe lies to you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”
That loss may be a blessing wrapped up in disappointment, hurt or pain but you just don’t know it yet.
The bad situation may just be life’s way of teaching you how to challenge disappointments. It may be life’s way of teaching you to find joy in your disappointments.
Abraham Lincoln wrote this in 1841 when he was going through series of disappointments, maybe after losing another election I can’t say for sure
“I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth, Whether I shall ever be better I cannot tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.”
Guess what? Abraham Lincoln became president of US 20 years after penning this down.
I’ll round this off with this quote by Thomas Fuller:
“It is always darkest just before the day dawneth”
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