Thursday 23 March 2023

Gospel Musician Pens Powerful Book




Source : Fungisai Zvakavapano Mashavave Page


My first ever lunch gift for the mind to literature lover, I just effortlessly scribble , not a pro but I paint a vivid picture.

Find time to read my mind in just one chapter which is part of hundreds of chapters I have written. Handina Nyaya dzichataurwa ne paside for my offspring. They will hear it from the horse’ mouth.


Chapter 1


The princess opened her inbox which was inundated by heartfelt advice from close people, family,  friends and well wishers. They implored her for silence as an effective weapon in her ministry. If only she could learn silence as an art of war she would not have her gift attacked left right and center always, they begged her. She too, strongly believed she needed to master silence for peace’ sake but her intuition refused to budge in. She could only get relief after she had fully expressed herself and she did not shy away from further explaining whenever there was need. 


This was always her weakness and from way back even in the famous “Sai Sai” Saga she fell prey of every print media content creators who would intentionally misinterpret her for the purposes of creating a marketable new twist to the story. All that happened because of her expressive mind and blabbering mouth whilst the silent other received flowers as appreciation of “hunhu”by the existing societal standards. 


Back then , she was strangled almost to death , buttered into submission left right and center by media houses but surprisingly she went through the needle’s eye alive. A lot more followed as her versatility and creativity triggered mob psychology against her. Society had a template for her and felt it reserved the right to beat her to conformity so she must present their ideal personality. 


A woman and worse,  a Christian must submit to all forms of public attacks and abuses in silence. This is the only way society can validate one’s holiness and guarantee them a seat in heaven.  Without it, one cannot earn respect. If they ask one to jump, a good Christian must ask how high? If they beat them on the cheek, a well nurtured Christian must apologize and give them another cheek for their brutal pleasure. Failure to do so meant condemnation. But she had a stubborn spirit that challenged that kind of thinking hence she found herself at the mercy of a society that justified their unending pouncing on multiple gifted people in the society. Her story was just a tip of an iceberg , just mirroring the microcosm of the macrocosm. 


She too badly needed to fit into the environment and be subtle for a peaceful existence. She wished she could behave , talk, dress, sing and express herself the way she was expected but alas her intuition was full of surprises for her. Eventually she concluded she was a cursed gift and regretted every aspect of her creativity which always made her look like the bad girl of her society.


Just when she was about to throw in the towel, God sent an Angel in the form of a fellow female artist who hadn’t even become prominent. That was her second morning of starving herself from the chronic depression that came with the constant mob cyber attacks she always faced. She had always suffered loss of appetite for days as a result of cyber bullying. This time they had circulated her family picture and were insulting her for her husband’s absence on it. Speculations and anticipation of her marriage demise where exacerbated. They called her names and the most hurtful of them all was an H word that meant prostitute when she was married to one responsible man for eighteen years. So many unfounded tarnishing narratives were being paddled but she maintained her silence until one supposedly “innocent fan” decided to gas light her by bringing the question that had already received so many malicious answers elsewhere on her post. 


So she decided to give a comprehensive reply not knowing the spiritual world had set her up for agony and public assault in the city centre. The world was committed to misunderstanding and torturing her for being honest and behaving human like everyone else. They felt they reserved the right to gaslight , insult and reduce her to nothing whenever they felt like it and she had no right to react. So the tribulation followed but nothing that she hadn’t experienced before.


That morning, she woke up feeling the sad unhappy air in the home. She was always the fault for any embarrassment and humiliation of her dignified family members. She felt sorry to have been in this position and having to drag her family in the hot spotlight. In her view, she was always a disgrace to everyone, her family and society at large. Probably the reason why she would not drag her husband in her publicity for fear of embarrassing him. 


She had been singing Christ all her life but it seemed the paradise was far from materializing. Just an elevation set for a hard fall so she could eventually be ridiculed and downtrodden in style. That was the nature of her society and because she knew them she was expected to tread carefully and employ silence always. Yet her intuition led her anti clockwise. She was just the rotten egg who failed to abide by society’s demands always and she needed out. A whisper in her ears prescribed suicide but she knew better than that.


Instead , she picked her phone and called the “angel” a woman of God that held her hand. She sobbed deeply and cried her eyeballs out. The only other time she ever cried her soul out like this was long back when she threw herself on her mother’s lap lamenting how some fishy house help fabricated events for her character assasination and for unknown reasons. She had only known her for three days and was eventually fired by a family member who had suspected she had been planted, judging by her conduct. 


The angel kept asking why she cried but she got no answer until she just bursted into prayer with the princess’ wailing in the background. At this point all the princess managed to do was cry with no narrative. Later in the day they prayed together but it dawned to the princess that the world was limiting her gift to just music yet music was just one of the many ways the gift expressed itself. The world therefore prescribed silence as the pre-requisite for any successful singing career. But she was not a singer. 


She was a principality and an authority whose word held water and command. This meant if she spoke , sang or wrote anything, it was annointed to become affective substance. History had it that most of the words she intentionally or unintentionally spoke indeed came to pass. She therefore decided to reduce negative talk to minimize unfavorable situations but it was an art she was still mastering. So She believed she had been called to be a mouthpiece of the vulnerable hence could not apply silence in her trade. Along with ministerial calling, came a lot of speech so she found silence torturous.She was gifted beyond measure but was blind to the fact,  owing to a weak prayer lifestyle. The principalities from the opposing world would recognize her in her ignorance and cause havoc in her life just so she would give up on her call and submit to them. She realized she needed to learn how to pray effectively, awaken her spirit and wield the spiritual gift upon her with grace. 


After the prayer with the “angel’ she could vividly see the walls imprisoning her gift. It was time to take prayer seriously. She had not been called to suffer in God’s Kingdom but the lack of knowledge tormented her. She had always been a literal dreamer and she shuddered at how weird and incomprehensible her dreams where. The most weird of them was when she dreamt of the then National leader’s passing away. In her dream, she saw his family clamoring around him as he coughed up blood. They brought a cup for the vomit and he vomited until it was half full  then he breathed his last. They handed the cup to the princess for safekeeping. She asked why they handed it to her and it was said because it would be needed in the future. 


In the dream, there were attempts to torment his family but she helped his widow and children escape. “What a weird Tsuro naGudo dream?”, she wondered. The princess concluded it was her madness since she had no connection with the first family whatsoever except for just a couple of times she had been invited to perform at their private events. When the princess woke up from the dream, the social media was buzzing with condolences and news on the passing of the leader. She was shocked and narrated her ordeal to one of her pastor friends and it just went down as one of her weird dreams.


So on this day she knelt down and made a conversation with God. She made her mind to stop the art of wailing and fainting before God just so he could feel sorry for her and sympathize. This time she was going to imagine God was in the opposite seat and speak to him directly. She was going to name every familiar spirit, every generational curse, every spiritual attack, every enemy by name. She was going to list the presenting problems by name and address them personally out of her life. She acknowledged the power she had to command issues her way and the spiritual ball was set in motion. By the time she retired to bed, she was feeling light and expectant.


 That night another weird dream involving the late National leader played up. In the dream, she had presented late for an exam and had to write it seperately from others. When done there was another exam set  and amongst her fellow candidates was the leader. Everyone was expected to answer at least one question but also allowed to answer as many questions as they could. The rest of the class answered only one but the national leader kept on taking more blank sheets to answer more questions. The princess followed suit and everyone wondered if she even knew the answers at all. 


There was one more clean sheet left and she grabbed it before the National leader who was already reaching out had picked it up.  She  answered her third question as the leader looked on with awe and approval. She  wasn’t sure of her answer but just reading the approving gestures of the leader gave her peace of mind. It was indeed an entertaining dream but unfortunately she had to wake up from it.Todate she still couldn’t interpret the dream but it just gave her a rejuvenated feeling. 


The social media drama was still ongoing with others still inundating her inbox with demands for a public apology for what they termed a “rude answer to an “innocent fan”.  She smiled at their innocence and lack of insight to what was surrounding them. It was never their insensitivity but rather the generational curses in the princess’ life that had teamed up with evil principalities and familiar spirits to mob her to her demise. The world was made up to beat her up till she had retracted into her shell. 


Go had chosen to adorn her with so much multiple gifts, would justify everything in time.  


Giving satisfactory replies was her natural weakness but it gave her so much inward peace yet she shivered at how anything she said was received with so much prejudice and malice by those who were committed to misunderstanding her forever. Sadly everything might get twisted, misinterpreted and launched back against her. So she asked God to deal with her weirdness. She commanded out the spirit of rejection and contempt that hovered around her. She had opened her eyes to how she was easily held with contempt, publicly shamed and reduced into a laughing stock with any public post,  appearance or any initiative. 


 Her every attempt to influence the world positively often resulted in daggers towards her and this had become her pattern of existence.The world had no eyes for the spirits behind the trauma and she had to be strong in order not to appear disillusioned. By the way when society feels one has lost touch with reality they simply send them down to mental health institutions. The princess therefore did everything she could to maintain her sanity against all odds . She was only worried this was how she would end up ignoring the instructions she was getting from the Holy Spirit for fear of being disqualified from the real word.


This reminded her of the weird feeling she had during worship the previous Sunday. The Spirit of God manifested in her hands as usual. She felt like stretching them and had the need to lay them on someone, anyone in need. But then she was seated next to her husband who is not a fan of drama around himself. Taking that into consideration and her responsibility to create a conducive environment for his dignity, she just bend forward and endured suppressing the feeling. 


As she struggled with the emotion, alas ! The keyboardist in-front collapsed on fits and he was carried away by some of the choir members. The voice commanding her to get up and follow them just so she lays her hands on him became louder. But she was afraid of the shame that would follow if nothing happened and if her instincts where proved wrong. She had never laid hands on anyone and worse before an audience. “Hell no!”, she argued.  She wasn’t going to embarrass herself and her husband and attract ridicule from onlookers. On that note, when the service was over, she grabbed her bag and joined her family home. Was she losing touch with reality?, she wondered .……….. to be continued


F. Mash  is a renowned Gospel musician with many accolades. She is married for 18 years with 3 children. She holds a Marketing Management Diploma, a BSc Sociology, an MSC in child sensitive Social Policy and is currently studying a Post Graduate Diploma in Social Work. She hopes to explore social phenomenon and shade light to vulnerable groups experiences and asks questions no one dares to ask in the Christian society.

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