I have

I have made peace with being different.

I have always known that I was different, that I was unique. Well, at times I hated it; it was easier to just fit in everywhere.

In my growing up years, as a little girl in the big family, I did not necessarily love it, but I embraced it. I was not sure it was a good thing but I just could not conform, I had to be me.

My sisters found it to be something to laugh about, someone to be laughed at, if you dare be different in any way. My brother was the worst, he teased at every opportunity he got, I avoided being around him, because sooner or later, you are the one being laughed at for being different. Don’t get me wrong, I love my brother to bits and at times I am glad we laughed about it. You can imagine; no-one escaped it in my family, the next moment it could be you, so we all laughed at the uniqueness of each other.

My grandmother made me believe that unique is not bad, unique you should be, embrace who you are, be proud of who you are. This was manifested by the language we spoke at home, it was not the village majority’s language but it was ours and we had to speak it. Our proud heritage! So the villagers called us “Magapegape” – a dialect of the Pedi language from the Ga-Mamabolo region. We did not care, we were proud of who we are! I refused to call home “hae”; I called it “gae”. I refused to say “wakela” when you were lying to me but I proudly said “Waketša”.

So I embraced my identity, accepting that being different is not wrong, which helped me a lot with peer pressure. Don’t get me wrong, I still fell for one or two traps of peer pressures. However I was comfortable with being different.

We are all different and we all can be special in our different ways. That’s how I came to love observing people, how differently different people did different things. It became a hobby, I still love it.

But what really stamped my embracing of being different, was when I began a walk with God. He took me to a peculiar level of understanding different. He took me through a journey of understanding that He made me in His own image and that He also made everyone else in His own image. So I learned that not only certain types of “different” were acceptable, but all people are made in His image.

God began to tell me stuff about how when He made a human being, he said it was very good. Stuff about how He knew me before I was formed in my mother’s womb. Mind boggling stuff about me! He told me that His plans are to prosper me and not harm me; they are plans to give me hope and a future. His desire is for me. He calls me the royal priesthood, royal diadem in His hand. He tells me stuff about how He will bring to completion every work He began in my life. He told me that I am fearfully and wonderfully made, actually I still hear Him says all these things over me.

I hope you also realize that you can be You because God has made you in His own image. This is so that a certain dimension of who He is can be revealed. You are to be comfortable with who you are, celebrate who you are and confidently smile and bless the world with a part of God that only you can reveal.

And that is the beauty of being at peace with who I am. I love it.