16/01/2021

Dear diary,

Ighiwiyisi Jacobs was the first person to call me, “Bright Light.” She said it in a way that showed that she wasn’t just describing me, she was revealing a new identity. It took me some time to understand that though but when I did, I began to think of it as one of the names I would like to answer to. What I didn’t realise until a few days ago though, was the reality that light is only bright when the environment it’s in is dark.

I had finally launched the 2021 journals I’d created with my team a few days ago. AB sent me a message encouraging me to post it to twitter as well to encourage people to buy so I decided to take that advice. I don’t use twitter anymore – I stopped a while ago because the daily dose of toxicity that abounds there had become too much for my heart to handle & besides that, I don’t think human beings were designed to have access to so many opinions and people at the same time:

I would read things that would leave weights on my heart and sometimes I would withdraw, feeling heavy and weighed down the entire day. This was what happened when I logged into my Twitter account to post the journals I’d designed. I stumbled on more darkness and I couldn’t believe some of the things I was reading, pouring out of people.

“A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. What you say flows from what is in your heart.” (Luke 6:45 NLT)

I was so distressed by the tweets I was reading: the anger, constant disagreements, insults, vulgar words, praise for sin, blasphemy against God, pride, ego, ignorance celebrated, gender wars. I could see that not only was darkness increasing, it seemed as if it was winning. I felt helpless because it appeared to me as if no matter what I did, my efforts at soul winning were a single grain of sand compared to the vast rampage of a summer beach that sin and darkness is waging on the earth. I put my head in my hands and whispered to God, “what else can I do? How can I make a difference in this big, wide world? I feel so small.”

My husband saw me in that position and he wasn’t happy because he had mentioned sometime ago that I may be struggling with a God-complex, thinking that I’ve got to save the world. He said to me, “do your part – the small part that God has given to you and be content with it. No matter how much you try, you cannot save the whole world. Pray instead to the Lord to send more labourers and what can we do about this heaviness? Because you cannot be feeling weighed down every time you see how broken human beings are. Was that how Jesus Christ was walking around on the earth feeling weighed down by all the darkness and sin that he was seeing?”

It was a lightbulb moment – how exactly did Jesus Christ deal with all the darkness and sin he encountered daily in people? I mean, He could even read everyone’s thoughts. And as if I’m answer to my thoughts, my husband said, “He (Jesus Christ) simply light every day and it was enough to push the darkness back.”

Yes. But of course. Bright Light. It started to come to me:

Bright Light. You are Bright Light. Push back the darkness every day – not by hiding your gifts or cowering in fake humility because you’re afraid of people accusing you of being too much, but in presenting to the world what has been deposited on the inside of you. You are enough and whatever part you will play in this Kingdom, big or small, it is enough.