Bended but not Broken - Pre Order + Introduction
Hello Dear Readers,
My book, "Bended but not Broken" will be fully released for download next Friday 22nd September 2023. It is available for preorder on selar.co (https://selar.co/bendedbutnotbroken). It will sell at N1000 from till next Thursday, then it would sell at N1500. Here’s the introductory session of the book to ginger you.
If you are reading this, it means I finally gathered myself together and forced my procrastinating self to start writing this memoir. God be praised! Today is the Twenty-second of March 2023 and the plan is for this book to reach you on the Twenty Second of September (6 months from today). Why twenty-second September? Because I was born on 09/22 and this year, today, I turn 25! The mere thought of this is crazy! Dan Yaron Jiya, shekaru ashirin da biyar! Congratulations to myself and other ’98 babies who have suddenly hit quarter-life. God help us to maximize the remaining 20s and years ahead.
I decided to write this memoir when I turned 25 several years ago. I must have been 18 or below then. And I made the decision because of the path my life had and is still taking. This book was inspired by the events of my life from October 2012 when my life as I was getting to know it took a crazy turn and still continues on that trajectory. In these years I’ve been bended, in pain and turmoil, in crisis, broken in many ways. I have struggled, but I am here and to God be the glory!
In October 2012, I fought my way through being allowed to follow my parents’ home on a school visiting day. I was in JSS 3(Junior Secondary School class 3), at a boarding school. On that day, I insisted on going home because I had been struggling with a perpetual intense pain in my left leg for weeks. The school clinic thought it was the usual teenage trick to avoid school and I can remember the threats on their faces as I left. I was fourteen (14) and still trying to figure out life as a young person, but little did I know that something was coming - something that would change the definition all over again.
Three days later, I'll find myself in the consulting room of an orthopedic hospital, and shortly after, be subjected to an x-ray. After this my 14-year-old self would hear that I had a developmental condition where one limb had grown faster than the other, and the other in an attempt to meet up, had separated at the knee cap. I would also be subjected to a POP Cylindrical cast – the first of four I wore between 2012 and 2014 – for a six-week period. I like to think that I didn’t know it then, but my whole life would change drastically from that moment.
It's 2023, 11 years later and I still limp. As I write this, I deal with pain in both knees down to my toes. I struggle with pains in my hip and back. I struggle with a body which cannot bear any measure of stress. I struggle with being 25 with the strength of one much older. But I still smile, laugh, serve, work and write, like this memoir, so you could read.
In the course of this storm, and the process of growing up, I have learnt invaluable lessons nothing or no one in this life could have taught me. I have learnt many secrets that even most who live to be 80 don’t get to learn. I have developed a beautiful relationship with the One who literally sustains me second by second. I live a full life with God's joy as my infinite strength.
I have been bended, battered and I have despaired. I have broken down in many ways. But the good news is the Master Artist has neither stopped working nor repairing, not even for even a second. And I am not completely broken – not yesterday, today or ever. My end is not in Breaking or Destruction. But soon and very soon, I would be received in the realms of glory from where my past, present and future troubles will look like the temporal discomforts they truly were, nothing worth comparing to the glory I'll live and revel in.
Welcome to my life and faith journey. Buckle your seatbelt because this is no easy story or journey – almost counter-theological to our generation’s theology of ease and prosperity. But this is a true story that will lift you up in your darkest hours and point you to the one HOPE which never disappoints. See you at the end!
