BE PREPARED

I heard a story once of a guy who was very ready to be married and every time he would wake up and pray telling God that “You are God, I need a wife, Send me my wife”. One day he stood outside his house and saw a very beautiful lady passing by and he said to his friend that will be my wife! His friend asked him “how come?” His response? “Oh God will speak to her for me!” Very funny isn’t it?
Well that is the way we are most times we find it difficult to actually get down and do the work, most of us have become so dependent that living our own lives has become a burden of sort for others to carry. Everyone is blessed with the gift to make choices and to live but in most cases we fail to do so, instead so many people will live our lives for us. We grow up as dependents and graduate from one level of dependency to another.
I’d like to tell you a story.
A young lady grew up having everything she ever wanted, from having the best parents in the world who were willing to give her all she needs and to respond to all her calls, to a husband who was willing to carry on been a parent to the lovely lady. She left the decision making to those in her life. So much so that when misfortune stuck she was not prepared. She went to the best schools but was never a student; she was born to money but never knew where it came from or how to work for it, she was a wife who actually was still a daughter to her husband and parent, she was loved but saw it as a right of privilege.
In one single year, the grim reaper came calling; it took away the parents, the parents who had been the main reason for the husband been loving and nice. Suddenly the husband became who he really was, an opportunist. At the end she was out in the cold with no skills and no way to fend for herself.
Her story is common to a lot of beautiful ladies in our society. They are young and beautiful and they come with a high income as enticement for marriage, yet they have failed to equip themselves for the rainy day and leaving the choices to parents and or their husbands. They have become dependent on the people around them not giving themselves the opportunity to live.
With life we ought to be prepared for whatever might come out way, you never know it might not be a pleasant surprise! The lady was not prepared the man with whom we open the story? He was not either. Preparation is not praying, not at all. Preparation entails much more. It means you have to be ready, been ready does not mean something bad will happen but it means if it does you would have the resources to overcome and pull through. Preparing means that you have to provide yourself with the necessary equipment or skills for any phase of your life. It means in the case of the man above that he should have had the confidence to meet with the lady and get to know her, and maybe they would have truly gotten married. It means that the lady even though she was born into wealth, she should have equipped herself with skill that would enable her survive in the outside world.
In both instances they left for last what should have come first. What is that thing that you should have done a long time ago? That equipping that would have prepared you for this stage of your life? Should you have read more, learnt a trade, learnt how to cook and keep house, maybe you should have worked for a while before getting married, or you probably should have gone to school like you were told? It is quite something you can still make up for. Remember that second chances will continue to come until it becomes impossible to make use of them. It is never too late to prepare. Don’t be left out in the march to responsibility.
Finally, put yourself in that position where you are of use to not just yourself but your society at every given point in time. This puts you at an advantage, a place where you have a say because you know where you are coming from and where you are going to.