Tabitha.
Living a life of impact.
Hi my loves,
It’s been a whole month! I actually realized randomly that I missed the last time I was supposed to write to you some days afterwards and I just decided to wait, hoping I’d have something to write to you about today. Do I?
How have you been? I genuinely imagine that you read that and just skipped through it. It’s not supposed to be a rhetorical question 😗. Or maybe we could talk about that today and change things up a little bit around here. I for one would love that. Well, maybe we will sometime soon but I definitely want to write to you about something similar.
I was reflecting this week and I realized that a lot of people who know me or engage with my content probably just see me as that person who is kind of just always around but they really don’t know what their point is or what they’re around for. You might think I’m being unnecessarily harsh to myself but I rarely ever see it that way😂. It’s just the way my brain carries out self awareness. I thought about it when I was speaking to a few of my bosses at work. One of my colleagues is currently working on her PhD, and I was just thinking about how I’d love to get one too. Then we started talking about potential research topics we’d all be interested in, and I just told them,
“I don’t really think I want to do all that work. I just want to be called Dr. Wura though.”
They laughed, and then we started talking about honorary degrees and I said I really wish an institution would give me a honorary degree one day. But institutions don’t just give honorary degrees, as I’m sure you must know already. They only give them out to people who have made a great impact to the community around them, and honestly, I barely feel like I have the charisma that is required to impact my community right now.
I believe you don’t just randomly start impacting people. Being an influencer also doesn’t mean you’re influential in people’s lives. Thousands of friends or followers are not exactly the proof that you’re impacting lives as well. Let me tell you about someone whose life I think really embodied impact.
“There was a believer in Joppa named Tabitha (which in Greek is Dorcas). She was always doing kind things for others and helping the poor. About this time she became ill and died. Her body was washed for burial and laid in an upstairs room. But the believers had heard that Peter was nearby at Lydda, so they sent two men to beg him, “Please come as soon as possible!” So Peter returned with them; and as soon as he arrived, they took him to the upstairs room. The room was filled with widows who were weeping and showing him the coats and other clothes Dorcas had made for them.”
Acts of the Apostles 9:36-39 NLT
Imagine someone is dead and people come with their testimonies of how much this person has impacted their lives. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s really desirable and it’s something I want people to be able to say about me, dead or alive. At the end of the day, the works of our hands do not save us, but they should be good ones borne out of our salvation. I heard someone say something as well, and I’ll paraphrase what she said.
“If something is free, it’s definitely because someone paid the price for it already.”
I mean, take salvation as a case in point. It’s free, because Someone (Jesus) chose to die the gruesome death that was necessary to save each and every one of us and even the generations unborn. If you ask me, that’s what true impact is.
“For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And it was not paid with mere gold or silver, which lose their value. It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God.”
1 Peter 1:18-19 NLT
In a world that seems to glorify the wrong things, I hope that you remember to strive for true impact, and be a blessing to those around you in every way you can. Call friends to check up on them. Try to help those in need around you as much as you can. You never really know what people are going through, and you won’t know if you don’t ask. So please do. Sometimes, just the action of asking and caring is all people need.
God bless you.
Working towards my honorary degree,
Wuraola❤️.
P.S: The song that comes to mind is “Remember Me” by Fireboy. I think the lyrics are pretty applicable.