Text:

Kò ì dé là rá ò gbà.
“You don’t know how strong you are until being strong is the only option.”

I’m the kind of person who achieves everything. My WhatsApp chats are backed up. My emails go back over ten years. I value documentation, not just for nostalgia, but because I believe memory matters.

But one day, everything vanished. A decade’s worth of emails stored on our company server disappeared, not just the inbox, but the backup too. When I called the IT manager in a panic, he muttered helplessly, “Sir, I pressed one button, and everything was gone.”

That moment felt like destruction, irrecoverable loss. But as the Yoruba say, “Kò ì dé là rá ò gbà.”

A few years later, my three-year-old son got hold of my phone and deleted nearly eight years of WhatsApp conversations. More recently, I was locked out of WhatsApp because I couldn’t remember my encryption key. My chats, backed up in the cloud, were visible, but unreachable. Disruptions, again.

Then came another disruption, not digital, but deeply human. I woke up one morning with a full to-do list and my day completely set. I had appointments lined up, tasks prioritized, everything was in order. But a single phone call shattered that order: one of my brothers had been rushed to the hospital with a sudden kidney issue.

What initially seemed like a passing illness quickly turned into a prolonged medical emergency. He couldn’t urinate or pass stool for days. For him, it was a total shutdown, body, dignity, life as he knew it. For me, it became the center of my days, emotionally, logistically, and financially. What began as a momentary interruption became weeks of disruption. By divine mercy, he was miraculously healed, but our lives had already been rerouted.

These may seem like isolated incidents, but they point to a deeper truth: life is defined by disruptions. To expect a life without them is to desire a life without adventure, growth, or faith.

Now in my mid-50s, I have lived long enough to know this: peace is not the absence of disruption, but the presence of understanding. We live in an imperfect world. No matter how strategic, prayerful, or prepared we are, we cannot anticipate every twist and turn. Hubris, the belief that we can predict it all, often humbles us.

Life is built on disruptions:

✅You sit for a university entrance exam several times, only to pivot to a diploma course as an alternative route.

✅You plan to get married by a certain age, but it doesn’t happen.

✅You desire children early, but wait 15 years into marriage before your first child arrives.

These are not signs of failure. These are disruptions.

Take astronaut Scott Kelly, for example. He planned to spend six months aboard the International Space Station but ended up staying 340 days as part of NASA’s Year in Space mission. The plan changed. His life and the lives of his loved ones had to adjust.

Or consider the creation of Post-it Notes, the result of a failed experiment, an adhesive that wouldn’t stick permanently. What looked like failure became a global success. Disruption turned into innovation.

In Scripture, too, we find disruption woven into destiny:

✅Joseph was betrayed, enslaved, and imprisoned, yet rose to power through those very disruptions.

✅Saul went in search of his father’s donkey and returned as Israel’s first king.

✅David took food to his brothers on the battlefield and ended up defeating Goliath.

✅Mary, betrothed to Joseph, was visited by an angel with the news of a virgin birth, an interruption that brought the Savior to the world, but not without public shame and persecution.

✅Paul was repeatedly disrupted, shipwrecked, imprisoned, beaten, yet those prison walls birthed epistles that continue to shape the world.

And then there’s Moses. A prince in Egypt turned fugitive overnight. He fled into the wilderness, carrying the weight of failure and fear. For forty years, he lived far from the center of power, tending sheep. And there, in a burning bush, God disrupted his exile with purpose. Disruption became his ordination. (Exodus 3:1)

And David again, not even invited to the anointing ceremony by his own father. But God said:

“Send for him; we will not sit down until he arrives.” (1 Samuel 16:11) The oil waited for the forgotten. His anointing disrupted the expectation.

So when I lose years of data… when my brother is rushed to the hospital… when we prepared for 15 years to have our first child…when life reroutes me completely… I remind myself: disruption is not destruction, it is direction.

As a person of faith, I recall Paul’s words:

“I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty.” (Philippians 4:11–12)

And the words of Jesus:

“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

Jack Hayford once said:

“We are receiving an unshakable Kingdom in a shakeable world.”

That Kingdom lives in our hearts. It is not the world’s peace, it’s God’s peace.

I now build my daily schedule with margins for disruptions. A loved one may call. A child might need me. My day must allow room to respond. Otherwise, what is the point of planning?

But more importantly, our worth, effectiveness, and peace in every relationship, intimate or otherwise, personal or corporate, even in our relationship with God is measured by how we respond to disruptions.

Any relationship that does not factor in disruption in behavior, expectations, or engagement has no root. It is, in essence, a dead thing. It simply awaits the day of adversity to reveal its lifelessness.

“If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.” (Proverbs 24:10)

When we buckle under the pressure of disruption, it doesn’t mean we’ve failed. It simply means that disruption is doing its deeper work, revealing the gaps, the soft spots, the places where growth is still needed. That’s not judgment. That’s grace.

Children, too, must learn this. Disruptions aren’t enemies, they are invitations. Invitations to grow, to reframe, to adapt, to mature.

Real peace is not the smoothness of life. It is the wisdom to live through the unexpected, and still find joy, hope, and purpose in it.

Our faith isn’t tested by how well we avoid disruption, it’s revealed by how we respond to it.

Our faith conquers the world. And the world, as we know it, is disruption.

A faith that is not built in the uncertainty of disruptions lacks adventure. It is not only the definition of weak faith, but of failed faith. It has no reference in the Bible.

So we do not pray for life to be easy, we pray to be strengthened to go through.

Because nothing good comes easy. And if it seems too good to be true, it often is.

Do have an INSPIRED week with the family.

#MinistryofClarity

…Generational Impact Propelled by Love for Humanity