Well Done, Willie!

Hello!

I am pretty excited about this piece, and I’m gonna ask you to read that title again; only this time with a British accent. You could say it out loud or silently in your mind, just to help us fully contextualize today’s piece.

But, first things first 😊 …. That is that as you can see, I made a few changes on color schemes and themes. I hope you like the new look😇😇. I have been discovering new ways to customize the look, and play around with fonts and colors.

About Willie (accent please)

I highly doubt they called him Willie, them that lived with him during his time and were close enough to him to assign him nicknames. Maybe they called Will, his colleagues in the politics of his time, but I wonder whether that would have been short for his first or second name. I stumbled upon his story a few days ago. He is a man who listened to God, and because of his obedience, he changed history. See, the world as we know it today was not what it was during his time. There were neither #hashtags nor terms like “global village” or “Ulcerative Colitis”.

Sorry if I lost you at that last term there that sounds more like the binomial nomenclature terms in Form 1 Biology. Let us just call it “UC”. You see, Willie was no ordinary chap. He had many things that have made his name appear more than the number of days he lived on earth on history websites, Wikipedia, google and all sorts of books. He was a politician, said to have been very humorous and was one who came up with some absurd campaigns if you ask me. One of these was “The Campaign for the Reformation of Manners”. Manners here simply means behaviour.

Something else about Willie that is only mentioned in passing or not even talked about in most articles I have read through is that he was sick. He developed a chronic condition that medical experts today suspect was UC. By the time he died, he never really had a diagnosis, as far as history tells us. He would be bed ridden for days because his digestive system had this severe unexplained flu. He was from a good family, which makes me imagine that he must have seen several doctors.

Pause…...

Here is why I resonate with him; I have been through 7 years of one doctor to the next with each visit costing money. If I am lucky I would get a prescription to ease the pain without being sent for a test that costs even more. These tests, don’t even get me started on them. The amount of blood I have had drawn from me, would have been enough to save a few lives. 

I have consulted with the doctors that are the big names in this country; those whose specialization is tasking to pronounce. Their doors almost always have this metallic gold coated plate engraved in black with a sufficiently long prefix to his name, with the MBChB ....  acronyms.  They are the kind that you book an appointment today to see them in the next 3 or more weeks, because they are ever fully booked. Oh, and they do not take insurance cards (which I do not blame them for, because some insurance companies are notorious for not meeting their end of the bargain.)

Early this year, still on the journey of looking for a diagnosis and cure to my illness, I visited one of these. He is a professor at The University of Nairobi School of Medicine and he is good at what he does. I called to book an appointment with him and was given a date of 23 days later at 16:00 by his secretary. 

Seeing that I had more than 3 weeks to wait, that was plenty of time to meet him in my head before the actual day came. So I typed his name on google and my goodness, he has quite a record. He had made news two years back for diagnosing a teenager with one of the rarest sleeping disorder. Yaas! I would finally get a correct diagnosis, get the right meds and cure then be done with these problems once and for all. I have never looked forward to seeing a doctor like I did this one.

When the day came, I got there in good time but thank God I had good company because time seemed to move much slower for the 2 hours I sat waiting to be called in. He was a fairly quiet man, compared to my previous doctor. I narrated what I had been going through for the past 7 years, at least to the best of my memory. He did some physical examination on me and sent me to get MRA & MRI imaging done on my brain. He did not tell me what he was suspecting, or what he was expecting to find out from the results. All he said was that the result would determine his next cause of action. I left that office optimistic, paid consultation fee at the reception and went home thinking about where and how I was gonna get the tests done. Here is where I thank God for insurance because I would probably not have afforded it.

The following day I had it done, and It took about 40-45 minutes. I have had two of these done in my life. Maybe I will talk about the second one in a future post. If I could describe the machine room in two words, they would be cold and loud. I went back to the professor with the results, of course I had read the report and it was pretty normal. This time I sat in that waiting room for 5 hours. He had probably been held up in some operation room or something. I did not have company this time, so I basically sat there and looked around, observing other patients and wondering what they could be suffering from.

At 8pm, my name was called. My heart was joyful, I said a quick prayer as I walked into that consultation room. I handed him the huge envelope and he took the images, held them against the light and took a quick look at them. I anticipated two things, either he would see something the imaging guys missed, or he would send me for further investigation. I remember him turning to me as he handed me the results, only to say “you are fine Sylvia, nothing is wrong with you. Your brain looks normal to me, your brain blood vessels are okay.” I felt my heart break, or sink literally. Then he took his prescription book and scribbled two lines that I could barely read.

I wanted to ask him many questions like “What do you mean I am okay? I am in constant pain. Do normal people live in pain?” or “so what are the drugs you are prescribing for if I am fine?” I wanted to yell at him about how much money I was about to leave at his reception for being told I am okay. But I couldn’t. Not because I lacked courage but because I had this big potato stuck in my throat. The one that comes with a bucket of tears behind the eye sockets. If I said a word, tears were going to flow, and I was not gonna cry in his presence. I nodded through the rest of the conversation which I do not remember because I was having back and forth conversations in my head.

I remember leaving that building alone, it was dark and was raining outside. I did not have an umbrella, I walked in the rain to the matatu stage crying. The rain was a good disguise for my tears.  People who knew I was going to see him called me to ask how it went. I remember swallowing my tears and composing myself so I could talk well over the phone. They were all happy to hear I did not have some tumor growing in my brain or something. I mean any thing wrong with my brain could have been worse, right? Sylvia should have been lifting up her hands in worship and thanksgiving at this point. I was really trying to be thankful genuinely but no, deep down I was really disappointed and crushed.

I felt I was back to square one, where I look perfectly healthy on the outside and everyone agrees, now even the best of doctors says I am fine, but the pain never went away. 

I barely slept that night, I did not want to say to anyone how disappointed I was because everyone was thankful my brain was okay. I toyed with the idea of wishing he found something because then I could actually confront what I was suffering from. I had been a good girl, I was actively involved in ministry, i had pleaded with God about this time and again and was confident that this time He was doing something. Why did He raise my hopes of getting well only to crush them? 

Willie

When I read about William Wilberforce, I could not help but imagine him going through a similar or even worse situation. His was worse because he would get these attacks that would have him confined in bed for a month. However, how he deals with it is something I have learnt from this week. Despite his health issues, he kept focus on what God had laid in his heart to do. On Sunday, 28 October 1787 Wilberforce wrote in his diary: ‘God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the Slave Trade and the Reformation of Manners’, by which he meant the reform of the morals of Britain. He works so hard to have slave trade abolished and it becomes his life’s mission.

He could have made excuses, and chosen to use his illness as a reason why he cannot do this or that. His ill health would have been a justified reason to choose to focus on getting better, or finding a cure. Willie made a different choice, one that is not always easy to make. That is listening to God no matter what challenges are on the way. It does not have to be illness, it could be anything. 

I know that I have done this time and again, make reasonable excuses. I see that as him having done what Romans 12:1 (KJV) says...  “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” Like this guy in the parable of the talents, as their master he apportioned responsibility to each one of them. One was given 5 talents another 2 talents and the other got 1. The first two made something out of what they had been left with, however, the last one made excuses that sounded reasonable. Matthew 25:24-25 (ESV) ²⁴ He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, ²⁵ so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’  

What strikes me is what the master says to the first two servants. He says in Matthew 25:21 (ESV) …. ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little….’ I read William Wilberforce’s story by various authors, historians, Christians, anonymous, and his own journal entries. There is so much more about his life and walk with God that I contemplated doing two parts of this post. I could not help but imagine that when he meets with his master, and presents what he did with what he was given, he will receive a handshake accompanied with those words. “Well done Willie!” Maybe with the British accent too 😊

May it be said of us in the end that we have been good and faithful servants, no matter what. Now I know different, that even when our master does not take the storm away, he provides strength through it all. 🙌

Stay blessed, and do well!