Unexpectedly

This is how you call us home -
Wheels on ice and blazing lights,
ten thousand killer cells and
exploding planes that
interrupt this wakefulness called
Life.

This is how you call us to
Wedding dresses in coffins

Why didn’t you do that to your Son?
This unexpected business
You prime and prep him
You utter ancient words of prophecy to precede him
You engineer his mission before you fashion the stars
And number his days down to the very hour

You let him live his life knowing
Exactly how you call him home ̶
His crimson stains
The cast lots on his clothes
His lost cast of disciples
The way he would beg you up in Gethsemane
Take this cup away but have your way.

Lord,
Why do you do this for your Son,
but gift us this unexpected shortness of breath?

How to Lose Weight (the stuff that really works)

About 4 months before my graduation, I decided that it was time to shed off the freshman 15 I had gained over the course of 4 years. I wanted to lose 13kg in 4 months so that I could weigh the same as I did when I first matriculated – which was 51.5 kg. My final weight the week before my graduation was 54kg, a whooping ten kilos less than what I had weighed at the beginning of the year. I’m not sure how much inches I lost off my waist – I never got round to buying that tape measure from Amazon – but I know certainly stopped looking pregnant (!).

I lost weight through REGULAR exercise six times a week & an overhaul of my diet. There’s a lot of info, tips & tricks online on how people lost weight (some of which are great, read them). Here’s my spiel on what I did that changed it all for me i.e. moving from I want to lose weight to actually losing weight.

1.  I set a goal – set a goal of how much you want to lose e.g. I want to lose 10kg or 1kg. It’s not enough to say you want to lose weight. It’s like that SMART acronym they tell you during motivational speeches. Let your goal be specific, measurable, action-oriented, realistic and time-based. I aimed to lose 13kg in 4 months i.e. roughly the rate of 3.5kg a month or 7-8 pounds a month. That meant I wanted to lose almost a kilo a week. A kilo is roughly two pounds, and a pound is about 3,500 calories, which means I wanted to reduce my caloric intake by 7,000 calories in a week – both through exercise and my diet. That’s about 1,000 calories a day, and you can do half & half – 500 calories from your diet and 500 from your exercise. 
2. I educated myself – The Bible says, “My people perish for lack of knowledge.” And the same is true when it comes to losing weight. I gained extra weight out of ignorance. Exercising irregularly for only 20 minutes at little resistance will not make you lose weight. It’s a question of simple system dynamics. If you burn more than you take in, you will lose weight. Otherwise, the scale will never move. I googled for tips. I calculated my BMI and BMR i.e. how much calories you burn at rest. Mostly though, I relied on the advice of my good friend Shefali, who introduced me to Blogilates. I modified many of Cassey Ho’s workouts so that I could do them at the gym. I heard cardio is the only thing that burns fat, so I did cardio for 30 minutes six times a week – running, walking, sprinting, staircase-ing. Whatever it takes to get your heart thumping. I got rid of my main snacks (cheesecake, kimchi rice & mozzarella sticks), replaced whole milk with fat free milk or almond milk, regular yogurt with fat free yogurt or greek yogurt. I had mostly salads for lunch. I don’t take sugar usually so that helped. I researched on calories and knew the basics e.g. one egg is 70 calories. You don’t have to use this method (counting calories) but whatever you do, educate yourself. 
3. I motivated myself – I was sharing with my best friend recently that we have to have learnt by now how to encourage ourselves – intrinsic motivation! The same applies to all that comes with attempting to lose weight. You have to learn to motivate yourself. Do whatever it takes. I went to the gym first through the motivation of two friends (bless your souls), but I eventually realized that their stamina could not sustain me. I had to own the process. You have to own the process and you can’t do it until you decide to get up and go to the gym, do twenty push-ups instead of ten, run at 6mph instead of walking 4mph. I would motivate myself by imagining that I had become so fit I would instruct the older women in my church on how to lose weight. Yes, dream! :-)
4.  I allowed myself to fail (but not too often and don’t compare yourself and get back up ASAP) – In April, I didn’t lose any weight. I knew I had eaten dessert a lot and failed to watch my calories. I cheated on too many days. I was saddened until I realized that the process had consumed me. I was weighing myself every other day waiting for the scale to move. I was looking at myself in the mirror too much. I was testing my core for strength too much. I had increased my cardio to 45 minutes and had begun running for an hour every Monday. I thought I had reached a plateau until I realized that I had overdone the process. Yes, I had cheated, but more importantly, I had let losing weight become an ingredient to my happiness. You don’t want to become obsessed with your weight. You don’t want to think your world will end because you gained kilos. Throughout my weight loss journey, I reminded myself that I was out to achieve not just a healthy body, but also a healthy mind, heart and soul. Never ever bash yourself. You are not your weight. You are not your weight. 

I have retired from my weight loss journey and I am now on a toning and lifestyle fitness journey (one day I will write about that journey). To read the only two posts I wrote about losing weight (I was too busy losing weight to write), click here.

Resources for you (in their order importance to my weight loss journey)

FRIENDS (!) - Neil who first motivated me to be serious about the gym, Tamu who joked about the gym but is a serious gym superstar, and Shefali who taught me more effective cardio and stopped me from harming my joints (ouch)- she knew everything I didn't know. A friend who knows her stuff is invaluable. 

BLOGILATES BLOG & YOUTUBE – A woman you will say you hate but you will love her deeply when you can do ten burpees without straining (too much). I used printouts of her videos in the gym and modified her meal plans. 

SHAUN T’s FOCUS T-25 - Fast 25 minute workouts for the days you can't make it to the gym

BMI/BMR CALCULATOR - Get to know your stats

He calls me Jero

He starts calling me “Jero” right from the start
I tell him my name is Miriam Jerotich and I emphasize the “J” the way I like to 

so that no one misspells it. But he still pronounces it the right way:

The “J” melts into a “Ch” and I become “Cherotich” and then “Jero”.
And when he calls me Jero it sounds almost like the way Tai used to call me,
“Chero”
When he asks where I’m from the anger doesn’t burn in me like it did at 

Malindi Airport when the security guard asked me where I come from, the way 

Kenyans ask you where you come from so that they fit you onto their 

ethnic map
It doesn’t hurt when I tell him where shags is
It doesn’t hurt when I let him call me Jero.

Sometimes,
it’s okay to break the rules.

The Dance

When you come the horns blare and the dust scales the air thick with the perfumed harbinger of your dance

You come sheltered in the cocoon of shadows

Your feet floating on the savannah coloured grass

You are the kid that I carried in my arms in the goat pen as it bleated for the milk of the mother whom we slaughtered that night

You come now dancing covered in that goatskin that we left in Baghdad when

the bullets killed the last of your kin

Your back bent 

Your knees keeling

choking the life out of the grass 

Your spirit resurrecting as I clap to the tune of your dirge

One- two- one-two

What happens when we forget the names of the dead?

When we call the living by the names of those who are gone?

Do we acknowledge that the living exist?

Are they only alive because of those who are gone?

Are those gone only remembered through the life of the living?

Do they retain the lives that they lived before the living came along?

What happens when we call the living the names of the dead, in love?

When we remember their own names yet insist on calling them by the departed?

Is it that we see them like I see you now?

Do I bury you again when I remember you like this:

Dancing around me,

within me.

A spirit in the robe of the goat that we slaughtered that night in Baghdad

Like I remember you in my own memories because I have forgotten you too and 

I am now calling the living by the names of those who are gone?

#CantSayGoodbye

It’s one of those nights that I stay awake past 1 a.m. Not because I am expecting a call from you but because my heart is aching. The kind of nights when tears will come to my eyes and I will realize that the answer will be to write, and I will write a stream of words and sounds, the balm for my heart, the price for not journaling enough or not writing at all and realizing that the pain of not connecting with you is a night when I stay awake past 1 am with a heart that’s beating too fast and a runny nose and tears that weld dark mascara lines down my face.

They lied when they said we never say goodbye. Because we do, everyday, like the blue flame of a dying gas burner. The moments when we are not breathing the same air, and I am remembering how right now I would be trying to sleep over in your apartment instead of going back to my own room, moments when I wish that I were fighting sleep so that we could stay up till 1 am, together. The coffee talks when we drank tea instead and you asked me, “How was your week? How can I be praying for you?” It’s the night when I realize that living out this 'goodbye' is a process that one holiday will not complete. I will not realize that I am performing goodbye when I am finally stepping out of the house, and a new life comes to me unbidden, crystallizing in your place, black and white faces in a new congregation, old old friends. Why is my heart aching, then? Why do I feel like I’m tearing you out of my heart so that I can make a place for them? Why do I think before I speak like I am striking out the thoughts that coursed through me when I was still with you?

This is not heartbreak because it was never love. It was life. It was too many its, too much for words to fathom into meaning. So it comes like too many sentences that mean #cantsaygoodbye #imissyou #ILoveYou. Like an aching heart and a night when sleep won’t come.  

Dedicated to my Dartmouth family. I miss you my friends. #livingoutagoodbyefrompeopleyoulovesomuchishard

The Stories I Tell about Myself

We lunge back to those memories one day and begin to trace connections about our lives. We see the recurring themes and tropes, the narratives we tell ourselves about ourselves, the stories we tell others about ourselves. They become such an inherent part of us that the stories become a life unto themselves, till we can’t recognize the stories we tell about ourselves. We don’t realize until we have told it enough times and it hits us that we are saying the same thing over and over again, feeling the same emotions, pursuing different dreams with the same motives, that the doorways keep opening through the stories we cannot stop telling about ourselves. And our lives becomes projects that stretch across decades, processes of investigating more about the stories we tell about ourselves, the facts, the evidence, the theories. We seek to understand the stories so that we can understand ourselves, comprehend your humanity. Our purpose for living.

I have two stories that I tell about myself. The first is the story of my mother, the second the story of Kenya's 2007/2008 post-election violence. When I look back at my college career, how it began and ended, I see how the stories I tell about myself carried me through. In these stories my life became encapsulated in a way that I do not yet fully comprehend, that I only slowly discover as each year folds away.

When I tell of my mother I tell of the courage that she has taught me. You must remember that I grew up with my mother, so I took it for granted that women could do anything. I say that she taught us English by reading the Bible with us every morning. I tell of how I cried when she travelled to Kisumu - I was just a few months old and longed for the warmth of her bosom. I tell of how I am like her, because I can out-speak everyone but she’s the only one who can out-speak me. Mostly though, I say of how she ran away from being circumcised, how she gave up the traditions and mysteries and belonging that would come out of that because she yearned for something more, a future that she could not yet see, a dream beyond the valley she was born into.

When I speak of the post-election violence, I tell of the fracture of ethnic identities. The shapes of the violence feel like blocks in my head, a myriad colors that I do not fully understand, why I would hurt so much from something I never directly experienced, why I feel it to the core of my soul, why identity matters so much and I begin to notice the little ways that we set up boundaries between us and them, between me and you. It becomes a question that keeps me up at night, and when I write research papers in college, I draw from the shapes and colors and begin to explore the webs of meaning, the clouded confusion. I want to make it all black and white, to say, “This is the way you should live,” and yet the more I search the less I find. It becomes like water slipping through my hands.

We tell stories about ourselves because we are searching for meaning in our lives. And we recount them because we are seeking for purpose.

I have two stories that I tell about myself. But greatest story I want to tell about myself is the story about You, this unchanging love that I am still comprehending. This overwhelming sense that I cannot bear to fear for the future if the story will end the way it started. With You. When You formed me in my mother’s womb, when I will see You after I have finished telling the stories that I tell about myself. I want Your story to be the best story I could ever tell, the way that the ache in my heart dissolves because I have One in whom I can place my trust. I want to tell the story of how You loved us so much that You let Your Own Son redeem us, how He died a shameful death and even in that promised to never leave us alone. 

I want Your story to be my story.

I Graduated!

My journey through Dartmouth in too few pictures and the amazing Never Once by Matt Redman.
This is the song I sang to myself in the last few weeks of my time in college.

Thank you, God, for a beautiful four years filled with Your Grace.

watch it also on Google Drive (it's clearer)

If I should live my life again

If I should live my life again

Be born in the hospital of fallen soldiers

In the skin with a caramel hue

If I should run away from the crazy man of Jokam

And have only one photo of a past I cannot remember

Still I would choose you.

If I should go back to that stretch of wilted grass

Sit on a rock under the sun in a green winter coat

Braid the Barbie doll and cook up mud ugali

If I should cry because they wouldn’t play with me

And not know yet how much you love me

Still I would choose you.

If I should find myself in class five

Have mum go to theater for the mistakes of a past doctor

Want nothing more than to be number one to make her heal

If Mark should tell me “this is your last warning”

And the girls call me black mamba

Still I would choose you.

If I should attend the high school that walks in the light

Feel that I could finally find the light to start this life anew

Find friends to give me attention – yes, not yet knowing how much you love me

If I should spend the nights hidden from the weight of the world

And have “wrong motives” that make me seek your hand rather than your face
Still I would choose you.

If I should cross the oceans to search for knowledge

Worry that I would fail, that it wouldn’t be worth it

That I should have stayed and studied something sensible like law

If they should call home “a poverty-stricken war-ridden country”

And our black skin the dearth of all mankind

Still I would choose you.

If I should be here, in this moment, now

If I should live this life again

Through the memories that I do remember

And the thoughts I consider when I thank you that I am twenty-three

If I should think about the photo Mum sent me:

The egg among the whistling thorns -

The “competition between the writer Jero and her clever mother”

Still I would choose you.

The clever Mother has already won -

She taught me to choose you.

You.

The strength that keeps me from falling.

Yes, still, I would choose you.

The prompt of this prose, from my mother, was:

 "Have a look at this egg amongst the whistling thorns. Relate to our spiritual journey,our protection from all harm by God. Think outside the box and let us see what story you can make out of this. It is competition between the writer Jero and her clever mother."