You are born and given a name by your parents or the society depending on the dictates of their ethnicity or culture. Everyone is informed of the name, and as you grow up they call you by that name and you grow into the name; it becomes your identity!

Just as most of us had no choice on the names we would grow up to be known by, so goes the unfolding of our life story.

The ethnicity and culture we inherit, the friends and associations we have, the high and the low moments and all that we go through in our lives seem to be unfolding from an already written script and ours is just to memorize the script and act it out the best we can. It is later in life that issues of Identity crops up. We ask the question, who am I?  This is the question that goes beyond your name and will not give you rest until you have answered it.

When life gets us asking ‘who we are’, it is because we realize that all the experiences in our past that looked independent are actually intertwined.

They are part of a beautiful big picture. We then appreciate the need to unearth the experiences of our lives from the earliest memories and piece up our jigsaw puzzle. The endeavor to dig out these jigsaw pieces may turn out to be a very emotional task especially for those who due to pain, shame, anger or any other negative energy buried them too deep. But it is a course that must be done to completion in order for one to answer the question “Who am I? in totality. It is at this point that one realizes how much they need the enigmatologist of their life’s puzzle in order to place the pieces from the past in their rightful place.

Yahweh God is the Creator, and as Saint Paul confirms to us:

From one man he (GOD) made all the nations (people), that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they (I) would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘for in him we (I) live and move and have our (my) being.’ (ACTS 17:26-28).

This process is done, with the help of God: The Enigmatologist of our lives. He helps us to place each piece from the past in its place and continues to help us place each piece that the present and future will present us perfectly in its place, eliminating the tasking burden of discovering that we could have placed some pieces wrongly and hence redoing the task in future.

I am excited to know of God’s willingness to help me place all the pieces from my past (however dark), present and future (however uncertain) in order to reveal the beautiful big picture. And that I can testify that all is working for my good and for God’s glory!

This post has been written by Vivian Kitum, a member of the 2019 Cohort, Hesabika Mentorship Program