What Is God's Will For My Life?

Hey you!

First of all, welcome! I am honoured that you decided to stop by. Can I start by saying this is nerve-wracking? I write fiction or short non-fiction and most of the time, it’s about what God is saying to me but I’ve longed to write non-fiction for a while―not for a book though―and I figured a blog was the best way to go about it but I promise there’ll be fiction on here from time to time. Whenever I need to get a story out of my system, I know it will most likely end up here.

Let me set the scene for you; I’m in the library at my family house since we’re on holiday. My brother is supposed to be here with me but he’s washing plates and I can hear the music he’s loudly playing so I decided to plug my ears with my own music―Iba by Nathaniel Bassey. I’ve been looking at the blank page of this MS Word document for the past ten to twenty minutes because I don’t know how I’m supposed to go about this. I attempted googling “What does one write in their first blog post?” but I didn’t understand what Google was saying so, I decided to go with what the Holy Spirit placed on my heart a while ago.

Let me introduce myself properly. My name is Uchechukwu. It’s an Igbo name meaning God’s Will. Recently, I’ve heard many other definitions including God’s Wish, God’s Thoughts, Mind of God, etc. but I grew up knowing that my name meant God’s Will. I can remember when I asked my Mama what it meant and she told me it meant God’s will. I didn’t feel any type of way when she told me. Maybe I should have felt excited that my name carried such a weighty meaning but… nothing.

Fast forward to earlier this year, I started to think more about it and I began to understand the heaviness it carried. It is powerful and I wonder why I never considered it like that… ever.

For years, I hated the name and it’s quite a funny story. Anytime someone asked what my name was and I told them Uchechukwu or Uche, the question that always followed up was, “Isn’t that a boy’s name?” And it became like clockwork. Anytime someone asked, I always expected that question in response and it was an unfailing expectation. It made me hate the name because when I was younger, some people also mistook me for a boy because of my looks and I was sort of self-conscious about it. Now, I’m grown and I look like the woman that God made me to be so my looks don’t bother me anymore, but because people thought it was a name that was designated to boys alone, in my head, I was like, “Why am I bearing a boy’s name? And on top of it, I look like a boy!”

I can remember there was a phase that I had where I said when I grew up, I was going to change my name and I think some of my friends knew but of course, I couldn’t tell my parents; iykyk 🫠😅

I can remember asking my dad one day about the name. I really can’t remember what prompted the question or what the question was but I asked him about it and he said, “Uchechukwu is a unisex name you know, just like my name―Ngozi,” and in my father’s nature, he went on to lecture me about his name and our names in general but that sentence stuck.

I don’t know if I didn’t know that my dad’s name was Ngozi (growing up, it was always “My daddy this,” “My daddy that,” or “Yes daddy... Daddy was his name 😅), but it was like a revelatory moment. I only ever knew Ngozi as a girl’s name but him telling me that, I just remember feeling good that I wasn’t alone or weird.

Earlier this year, I truly started to like my name and that came with analyzing its meaning. I discovered God’s Will is such a beautiful and intimate name to bear once you start being in relationship with Him. It didn’t matter if it was more of a boy’s name than a girl’s name. What mattered was the meaning and walking in that.

I have heard stories regarding my birth, but I hadn’t taken them seriously and when I look back on my life, God’s hand has never departed from me, even when I had done the exact thing to Him... story of all our lives, right?