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Really! After All That?

miss_tpa

I remember watching the Oprah show when I was a teen. A popular piece of advice was to find your passion and turn it into a career or job. I thought that was nice and left it at that. I thought that’s something people do out there. In any case I was only 14, those decisions were to be made later in life, a time that seemed to be so far away. My perception as a youngin was to get a good job. A good job was one that allowed you to do something meaningful and live a good life. A good life was one where you could take care of yourself and enjoy life. Enjoying life meant, you could live in a nice house in a nice area, have a nice car (the name ones), be able to do luxury things like go on holiday and you will be good.


Thank God the complex humans that we are, what we feel in theory we need, we come to find is a want that can not give you the satisfaction that you actually need and are looking for consciously and probably unconsciously. The evidence for this is vast. Lots of people in high paying jobs have left their roles in search of a job that gave them meaning or purpose. The luxurious things or job benefits was not enough and certainly not worth the stress and workaholism, although sometimes that was not work related.


At some point in my teen years, I found that the time had come to make a decision about my career. I didn't have the time I thought I had. The career I wanted would require me to attend certain universities, take certain subjects in high school and off course get certain grades. I moved to the UK when I was in my early teens and discovered, the stream you were in determined what sort of grade you could attain. Soon after starting high school in year 10, I told my mom I was being taught things I had learnt in primary school.


I never knew I would give credit to the Kenyan 8.4.4. system, because Kenya is Kenya and UK is this developed country and surely their system must be so much better. I noticed calculators were allowed in Maths classes and sometimes my classmates would be jazzed when I calculated things without the calculator. When we would have written work, I would be asked “how do you spell this” or they would ask the teacher how to spell a word. My mom visited the school and found out I had been put in the foundation classes of my year group. This foundation group meant the most I could get in some subjects was something like a C.


I was moved to another class within my year group and here, the grades were my oyster. If I worked hard, I could be awarded the highest grade possible. This was significant because it meant I was set up to get certain G.C.S.E's. This would then enable me to take certain A-level subjects and that would then allow me to get into university and do the course I wanted. If I continued with foundation class, I wouldn’t be able to do the course. Everything was a steppingstone to the next stage of my education. If I followed the plan, everything would be set.


I did my G.C.S. E’s, and everything appeared to be set, except my pre-results anxiety. I was not myself. I was uneasy, I remember that’s when coyote ugly had come out, I found the movie so boring, not because it was, I was just not present and just so anxious. I’ve been saying for so many years I should probably watch it again and give it its due chance, but clearly the way my procrastination is set up… I still haven't watched it. The results were set and in fact they were so set, that on the morning the results came out, my mom dreamt that I had got 2As, 8Bs and a C and that is exactly what I got! God is Good, God is Great, God is the Best. Next step, A-levels.


By this time, I knew I wanted to do pharmacy. I took Biology, Maths, Chemistry and General Studies or General Knowledge something. Listen, It was a long time ago; I don’t remember that miscellaneous subject. Probably why I also don’t remember, was because those other 3 subjects were really hard. A-levels were not a joke. I definitely saw stars in statistics and balancing equations. I wish they were A*s but they were the stars you see in cartoons, pure confusion and bewilderment despite being a dedicated student. When it was time to read, I would read, I wasn’t playing.


Results day came and I didn’t have the pre-results anxiety I had in my G.C.S.E. That should have been the sign. In my history of education, whenever I have found exams not as hard as I thought, I’ve usually not done well. For the A-level exams, I did find them hard, so I knew there was some hope. But this calmness on results day was suspicious! I went to school to get my results.


I don’t remember anything before opening the results and a few things after. At this point I want to say that one resounding theme that I have been learning in the last few years is that nothing is ever random in this life. There is a divine order of how things are working out or playing out. God is not a God of disorder. Everything is happening in its divine sequence, there is no luck. My favourite movie, The Shack, has a part where the main character is looking at a garden that seems so messy and he censors his description to say it looks wild, but he is asked to say what he really thinks, and he says it’s a Mess! And later on he is told the place is wild, wonderful and perfectly in progress.


Turns out the messy garden represents his life. The movie is about how he gets to work on this messy garden in a particular area of his life that is keeping him stuck and angry. He gets the help of 3 people who love him like no human can and are devoted and committed to getting him unstuck, if he wants to, because in this life we always have a choice in everything we do or don’t do. When I tell you I love that movie, in fact I am going to watch it again for the millionth and two-th time tonight. I wish I could get paid for watching movies repeatedly, I would be set financially.


Anyway, back to A-level results day. I was given a conditional offer by the university I wanted to attend. I needed to get 3 Bs to get in and do pharmacy. I must have opened the envelope that had my name on it. I say must have, because I don’t remember anything up to the time I saw the grades. I don’t remember the colour of the envelope or paper the results were printed on, must have been white paper.


I don’t remember whether I was sitting or standing before opening the results, but when I was crying, I was sitting down, with my head on my hand as I looked at the ground. The other hand was holding the paper inferring in probably black and white, that I had missed the grades I required for this course, I had set myself up for, for the last four years. Just like my G.C.S.Es, my mom had dreamt what grades I had achieved but this time she was very offside, she was not even in the stadium.


I came to find myself in the step called clearing. This was not one of the straight line stepping stones I mentioned earlier and I had not heard about it before. The devil has lied to us, and we believe life will always go in a straight line. In my last 9 days in this decade of my life, I know guaranteed! that life will never go in a straight line and more than that, the guarantee of guarantee is in my favourite verse that says “Fear not! For I am with you, Be not dismayed for I am your God, I will help you, I will strengthen you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.” When life doesn't go in a straight line, that is where miracles are set to happen.


At this time in my late teens when it seemed my world was crumbling from a piece of paper, I did not have this knowledge or mustard seed faith. I believed in God yes, went to church yes, read the Excellent Book, yes-ish as I read it only when the pastor said “Church turn to the book of ___ chapter ___verse ___ to ___.” My reliance on him had not been set up, but now I can see it was loading so that some 24+ years later, I can sit and write and say God is Good, God is Great, God is the Best, because he has been ordering my steps and making me victorious when all I knew was God is Good, but didn’t know God is Good because of the full extent of his love, which none of us will ever understand, his kindness and his favour. My mustard seed faith may have still been in the plastic packet that you buy seeds in.


This is why Believers say any blessing we receive is because of WHO God is not Who I am and most importantly, nothing to do with what I have done and praise God for that because it means even if I do raggedy stuff, because God is God and he can’t change his generous, victorious nature, even though I change mine, he doesn’t refrain himself from blessing me. He can’t, it’s just his nature. Hallelujah! When I say his blessing has nothing to do with what I have done, I mean nothing because here I was, unsuccessful in important exams that were supposed to be the steppingstone to the next level and take me to the only career I had set my mind to for years.


I had wanted to be a nursery school teacher so I could write on the board with chalk (revealing my age), then that switched to primary school teacher because I could see nursery children may be difficult, then I watched the Cosby show, saw Clare Huxtable be a fabulous lawyer, mom and wife and I decided I would do law, then I saw the movie Dante’s peak and decided I would be a geologist. All over the place and highly influenced by my surroundings. Please leave me alone, I was just a teen. When I landed in pharmacy, I stayed there for a long time and never left. But lets put an asterisk on never left for now, I will come to that in part 2.


When I saw that I had missed the pharmacy flight, I was devastated and distraught. The clearing process meant looking to find a university that was willing to take you on your desired course with the grades you had achieved or one that would take you on for any other course. I was on the phone to my uni of choice, telling them, I didn’t get the grades and it looked like pharmacy had sailed away on a paracetamol boat, far beyond the distant horizon. The person on the line, I can’t remember whether it was a man or woman, told me about pharmacology. I asked them questions upon questions about this pharmacology, that I had never heard about.


Would it land me in pharmacy, do they do a pre-registration year like pharmacy? The person could tell I was clearly set up for pharmacy and had done a lot of research. I went home and received a phone call. In that moment my red sea was parted before my ears, a miracle in itself because your red sea should be parted before your eyes. I was offered to do pharmacy with the grades I had achieved, 3Cs and I still don’t remember what grade I got in that miscellaneous subject. Pray for my selective memory.


When I tell you I jumped! This time the tears were not just of joy, tears of your dream that was buried now being quickly resurrected. Who is like God! Your dream can not disappear on his watch because With God nothing is impossible. God is not like a man that man’s criteria is far from his reach. Most of all is anything too hard for the Lord? Another favourite verse of mine that is reiterated by the fabulous sister Michelle Williams who sang when Jesus says Yes no one can say no! God has the final say always. This is especially true for me in my career transition and in fact my life in general.


Tracy, what do you mean career transition when God pulled the strings and got you in the path of your dream job when you clearly missed it and possibly didn’t even deserve to get in because you didn’t get the grades? How dare you? Well, when I say God has the final say, he really has. He takes you where he wants you to go, and I can look at my 17 years in pharmacy and say it was the right thing for me and I am glad I did it. If he says move, he knows why he is saying move. The trick is sometimes you don’t realise he is asking you to move.


The trick is sometimes you don’t even know where you are moving to, ask Father Abraham who had many sons later in his life. First of all, he would tell you I only have one son so how am I going to have many sons in my ripe old, distinguished but not yet extinguished age. But we know his story, a lot of his life was God asking him to make moves, illogical and sometimes “Wait, What?”, kind of decisions. But look at him now, some over 2,000 plus, plus years later we recognise him as the father of all nations. Meaning great things happen, things you can never dream or think of, when you move when God tells you to move.


Let’s move to part 2 in a few days’ time and see what happened when it was time for me to move from the dream that nearly didn’t happen and for goodness sake why I would move from a job that would give me a good life as brother T-pain says, and also answer the question, really Tracy, are you going to give pharmacy up?


Next post: 11/05/2023


Related verses

Matthew 6:8

Jeremiah 29:11

John 14:12

Psalm 77:11-14

Exodus 34:6

Psalm 25:8

Psalm 23:6

Mark 10:18

Psalm 145:9

James 1:17

Matthew 7:11

Psalm 27:13

Matthew 17:20-21

Mark 10:27

Proverbs 15:29

1 Corinthians 1:9

Proverbs 28:20


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