Gratitude is an essential attitude we must all possess, especially as a believer and a faith-oriented individual. There are several things happening in our lives that we tend to take for granted or underappreciate because we feel like they're normal or they're bound to be so; for that reason, we don't see the privilege we're benefiting from or how much safer our maker is making things on average for us. I'm no exception in this regard, and something happened on Easter Sunday that opened my eyes to my shortcomings when it comes to showing gratitude and the need to do better going forward.
So it happened that on Easter Sunday I traveled down to Ogun State from Lagos to pay a visit to a relative, with the intention of checking up on them and as well celebrating Easter together. At the end of the day, while going back home, I boarded a vehicle, and during the course of our journey back to Lagos, I noticed the phone screen of the person sitting beside me was completely shattered, and yet his phone kept ringing, and I watched him struggle to pick up the call. Even though he couldn't see anything on the screen, amongst the calls he was lucky to pick up was how I found out how his phone ended up in that state.
It turns out that he was coming from Oyo to Lagos, but the bus he boarded in Ibadan was involved in an accident, and fortunately for him and unfortunately for the rest of the other 17 passengers, he and the driver were the only ones who came out of that bus alive; others sustained life-threatening injuries, while the majority, alongside the person sitting beside him in the front seat, died instantly. Immediately I heard his story, I was gripped by fear and touched by how God saved his life almost from that accident. And it reminded me of how God once saved me from an almost similar situation years ago, and yet I didn't even deem it fit to give testimony in the church for the unique way by which I was saved from that incident.
So years ago, around 2021 or so, I was traveling from the same Ibadan but heading towards Ilorin, and when I got to the motorway park, there was just one space left, which made me excited, but unfortunately and at the same time fortunately for me, the person I was supposed to sit beside where the available seat was body-shamed me by saying I couldn't sit there because I was too fat and would inconvenience her throughout the journey. I remember how God helped me to hold my peace without getting angry or arguing with her, but Peaceful went to sit in the next available bus and wait till it got full.
I can vividly remember that when the second bus I later went to sit on got full and we moved, I had totally forgotten about how someone body-shamed me until we were about an hour away from getting to our destination and we saw a bus that had been involved in an accident, with many people seriously injured inside the bus. It was after our driver parked at the church and sorted the situation out that I realized it was the same bus I would have boarded had someone not body-shamed me. Looking back at that event, I'm really grateful to God for his protection, guidance, and sustenance over my life, because I can't really do anything on my own; he's my anchor.
Showing gratitude isn't just good because when we show gratitude, it'll help us get more from the person who gave it to us in the first place; it's also good because other people can, via our experience and story, learn and take action that would help them partake of such. Most importantly, we should show gratitude because it's the right thing to do.
All photos are mine.