MIP13: Through Adversity to the Stars
"Are you in the Lord's Army?"
"YES, SIR!"
I always made sure to shout the loudest. SMH.
It's funny how confidently as kids, we answer questions we barely understand.
I remember every Sunday, we would sing it with all the gusto our little lungs could muster. Bro. Daniel - our children church teacher, would ask the question as though he were a commanding officer addressing an entire battalion, and we would respond with a conviction that would have impressed any military General.
"YES, SIR!"
No forethought, no hesitations. We were in the Lord's Army, and we wanted the whole church world to know it. If you don’t know the song, you'll think the next line is some serious oath taking, like a “I hereby declare myself as a…” but no…
"I will never steal from my Mummy's pot..."
Really??
It gets even worse: “Tell lies to Daddy..”
Pfffftt! I hear that's the Nigerian version though. [Leave a comment if you know the original lyrics, please.]
But then, as children, we rarely paused to consider what we were actually singing. We were too busy enjoying the rhythm, the marching, the idea of belonging to something bigger than ourselves. We had no concept of what armies existed for. We didn't understand that every army has a battlefield, every soldier has a season of training, and every "Yes, Sir" is eventually tested by circumstances far louder than any song.
Perhaps that is the curious thing about childhood - making declarations long before life teaches us their meaning. Looking back now, I sometimes wonder if that simple song was less of a nursery rhyme and more of a prophecy.
Because adulthood has a remarkable way of asking the very same question, only in more dramatic scenarios that threatens to reveal the folly of youth.
One of my earliest battles happened in a classroom.
I am naturally left-handed, but one of my teachers had decided this was a specific problem he was created to solve - he made it his personal assignment to convert me into a right-handed writer. Because he believed he was born for such a time as this, he would tie my left hand behind the chair, place a pencil firmly into my right hand, and stand over me with the confidence of a man absolutely certain he was improving my future.
"I. [whip] Said. [whip] Use. [whip] Your. [whip] Right. [whip] Hand. [whip] To. [whip] Write. [whip] My. [whip] Friend!”.
Friend? Friend?? You torture your friends?? Or am I missing something?
He called me said 'friend' but he growls at me with a ferocity that would shame a Tiger. Each word came with the crack of his cane, usually arriving before the word had finished echoing around the classroom. I would hear the sound of many waters and feel the fire of a billion flames shooting through my entire body.
Yet, strangely enough, I never cried. Worse still, I never reported it. Not because I was particularly brave. I wasn't. I was just... determined.
At the time, I couldn't have explained where that determination came from. Looking back now, I think I know.
I grew up fascinated by war films. If there was anything about soldiers that captivated me - it was their discipline. Their resolve to be unbowed, unbent, unbroken - even in those dramatic interrogation scenes where everything depended on one answer.
So whenever he whipped and barked orders to hold the pencil with my right hand, I was somewhere else entirely. I was a soldier who had been captured behind enemy lines and I would never give in nor let the enemy see my tears.
It sounds dramatic now. Children have wonderfully dramatic (read foolish) imaginations.
But somewhere between those Sunday morning songs and that classroom, I had unknowingly adopted a quiet conviction: I was not going to give in. Not easily. Not ever.
Years later, I've often thought about that teacher. I don't celebrate what he did. It was wrong then, and it would still be wrong today. But life has taught me something interesting about God. He has an astonishing habit of redeeming experiences He never authored. There are wounds He did not inflict, yet somehow He still manages to help you draw wisdom from them.
That class was never about changing the hand I wrote with. It was, in ways neither my teacher nor I could have imagined, strengthening the backbone I would eventually write with.
Yes, life has a curious way of doing that - disguising preparation as adversity.
When I wrote MIP4: Per Aspera Ad Astra (Latin for Through Adversity To The Stars) in 2017, I believed I understood adversity. After all, I had lived through what felt like the longest year of my life.
Looking back now, I realise I understood hardship. I did not yet understand formation. There is a difference. Hardship describes what happens to us. Formation describes what hardship is trying to produce within us. At the time, however, I couldn't see that distinction. All I could see was a year that seemed determined to exhaust every ounce of hope I had left.
I had come frighteningly close to losing my life - twice.
Once, coming from work, which felt like a death knell, I found myself thrown into the middle of the Lekki-Epe Expressway with speeding vehicles hurtling towards me. By some mercy I still struggle to explain, I stood up, barely a scratch on my cloth.
Life, however, wasn't done asking: Are you in the Lord’s Army?
Not long afterwards, I fell from a pedestrian bridge on my way to submit an important proposal for my office to a bank, before it closed at 5pm. My phone shattered beyond recognition. I somehow managed to repair it for almost twice my monthly salary, only for it to be stolen three days later. My relationship at the time was an everyday battle royale, we start fighting from sunrise, literally up and fightful.
I lived far away from my friends and family, and on some mornings, my commute included changing clothes in a dimly lit cesspit of a toilet at Ojuelegba underbridge before heading to work. I don’t want to repulse you, but I had to stand on my tippy toes to avoid stepping on faeces while I change my cloth. The stench was demonic!
If life had been conducting an interrogation, I genuinely felt as though I was running out of answers.
Or so I thought.
Because nearly a decade later, what I had gone through this year alone, helped me realise something that never occurred to me while I was living through those days - adversity is a mountain that is indifferent to your ambition. Its only concern is whether the climb - if you chose to climb, leaves you stronger than the person who first looked up.
The last mistake you want to make is measuring this kind of season only by what it has taken from you. Measure it by what it refuses to leave unchanged within you. I’ve learned that before life entrusts us with greater opportunities, it often strengthens the shoulders that must carry them; most times through pain.
There are things comfort can give you, but there are things only conviction can forge. The stars have never belonged to those who merely admired them from afar. They belong to those willing to become someone capable of carrying their light, forging through adversity to carry that light.
And when life - as oft as it will - barks its own version of that familiar question, "Are you in the Lord's Army?".
I hope your answer won't come from the innocence or the folly of youth, but from the firm confidence of someone who has discovered that adversity does not merely stand between us and the stars. More often than not, it arrives one stone at a time, inviting us to build the very staircase by which we will reach them.
So let your response to the invite be loud and your salute, unflinching:
"YES, SIR!"
As for me... I'll be saluting with my left hand.
I leave you with the words from the Holy writ: "If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small."
Think on these things.
Your Superman,
SuperAkerele - by God in whose palms I'm engraved.
01/08/26
T: @Super_Akerele
IG: @superakerele
3:29am / Ontario, Canada.
