Is it really not my portion?

Have you ever said "I’ll be this or that when I grow up"? I bet you did. Today I’m going to take you to my journey of discovery, a very uncommon topic for those who are used to my blogs: "leadership"!

If you are a Burundian and grew up there, you probably have been told these words when you were a kid "uri umusoda, ntiwababaye" (you are a soldier, you are not hurt); "reka kumuraba aca arira" (don’t look at him/her so that he/she doesn’t cry), "uwo arifyinisha arizwa n’ubusa” (he/she loves to cry for nothing), etc; this was a way of weak-character-proof kids.

I, myself, have been told these words but little did I know at that time, that it was way far from raising a strong character. I’ll come back to this! 

Let me confess something to you, I’ve always believed leaders to be people with that so-called strong character, those men and women who are not sensitive, who do not acknowledge their weaknesses or failures, who do not feel strong emotions. Those "basoda" (Soldiers) who don’t cry when they fall.

Never have I considered myself to be a leader because artists are just artists and not leaders since they are known to be driven by their emotions.

I am a young Burundian woman in her mid 20s and a passionate artist. You can guess that growing up in a culture like ours was somehow unbearable since I have always been bullied to be emotional and highly sensitive. 

This made me believe that I was weak in character and the devil really won me on this for so many years. I was so convinced that being melancholic is the cheapest thing to be. I was so insecure to live everything fully.

Bill Hybels in His book "Courageous Leadership" said: "Leadership at its core is about influence”. I started to recall how I have been influencing, unwillingly, not a few people in a positive as well as negative way. Yes, shocking enough to me, the highly sensitive girl in me has been influencing some people. What a shock!

And one of my favorite pastors, Murithii Wanjau, once said: "When you are a leader, you influence people even in a bad way, so when you are not trained to use your leadership gift for God’s purpose, you will mislead people". I summed up all the definitions of being a leader to only discover that I too, a highly sensitive person, known to have a weak character, have a gift of leadership (even while typing this, I feel some types of way because in our culture, acknowledging your strength is looked at as being arrogant).

Since our culture makes us believe that strong and mature people are not supposed to show emotions because it’s a sign of weakness, leaders are known as such people, in their suits and high professional clothes; I could never identify as such.

Back to my third paragraph, you might as well have been told words to convince you that you can never bring influence, that you can’t be a leader. And this has maybe built a very low self-esteem in you, but my conviction is that whether you believe it or not, God has created you with a great purpose that is higher than yourself. You have a gift that can change the world. 

You don’t have to be a President, a CEO, etc to be a leader. For example if you are a parent, you are the leader of those little creatures and your great mission is to lead them to become the people God created them to be. If you have influenced even one person, believe me, you can be a leader.

Now, being aware is one thing and acting on it is another. Welcome to my journey of discovery and let’s learn together how we can be God-honoring leaders/influencers. Let’s develop our gifts so that the world will not remain the same. 

For the next few months, I’ll be sharing with you my journey to being a godly leader, so put on your belt and let’s go.