Living Without Neat Answers While You Wait

How do you live when life refuses to make sense and the answers never arrive on time? We start with a simple question that can change the whole day: “How are you… really?” Not the polite version, the honest one. Then we slow down, soften our shoulders, breathe, and practice mindfulness as a way to come home to ourselves when we feel tempted to hide. 

We also celebrate three years of this podcast as more than content: a shared healing journey built on showing up, even through silence, surgery, and seasons when surviving takes more energy than speaking. I reflect on what I expected at the beginning versus what actually happened, including the surprising truth that this space has been healing me too. If you care about mental health, emotional resilience, and faith that can hold complexity, you’ll feel the heartbeat of this conversation. 

From there we walk with Sarah, not to defend her or judge her, but to keep her company. We explore the grief of waiting, the pain of holding a promise without evidence, and what it might have felt like when Hagar became pregnant. Instead of tying the story into a neat bow, we honour the silence in the text and the messiness in the human heart. That leads to a deeper takeaway: safety is not always found in certainty. Sometimes safety is found in capacity, the ability to hold joy and grief, faith and questions, hope and disappointment, love and hurt, and still keep walking. 

If this resonates, share it with someone who needs permission to be human while they wait, follow the show wherever you listen, and leave a review so more people can find mindful living that’s honest and grounded. What’s one place in your life where you’re demanding certainty when you might be invited into capacity?

Transcript

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A Real Check-In

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Hello my people. Partners in healing as a journey and not a destination. Partners in showing up even when life has invited us to hide. Partners in understanding that mindful leaving isn't about getting life right. It is about remaining present while life unfolds. So how are you? No. Really? A minute. How are you? If you're listening with someone, you can pause this episode for a moment and ask each other that question. Not a polite answer, but the honest one. You might not be able to be totally honest depending on the kind of relationship you have with this person. But make it as honest as possible for this moment with the person you're sharing this moment with. And if you're listening and known, perhaps this is one of those rare moments you can see to ask yourself that same question. How am I really? Now, before we go any further, allow me to do something I don't do very often. Let's celebrate. Three years, three years of conversations, three years of uncomfortable questions and conversations, three years of unlearning, relearning, and discovering that healing is far less interested in perfection than it is interested in presence. When I began this podcast, I dreamt about it one way. Naturally, every beginning comes with some sort of imagination. You imagine the conversation you'll have, you imagine the people you meet, you imagine the lies you touch, you imagine yourself teaching, you imagine yourself given,

Three Years Of Healing Together

SPEAKER_00 3:37

you even imagine yourself arriving. What I did not imagine was that somewhere along this journey, this podcast would begin to heal me too. Over the last three years, many of you have walked with me through stories I never thought I would tell publicly. You watched me speak openly about leaving with bipolar affective disorder after years of trying to understand what life inside my own mind felt like. Some of you came out of curiosity. Maybe many of you stayed because of community. However, why? Thank you. I mean it. Thank you. You also worked with me through seasons where the microphone became strangely quiet. There were two surgeries in between, five months of silence. Moments when surviving took more energy than speaking. Moments when showing up looked like recording an episode. It looked like resting, healing, beginning again. And every time I returned, you were still here. Thank you. Not for expecting perfection, but for making room for presence. Thank you. If if we've been here from episode one, I say thank you. If you've just joined us, welcome! Wherever you join this journey, I am grateful we are working together because that is what this has become. Not a podcast, a pilgrimage. One episode at a time, one story at a time, one breath at a time. So you know what is coming. Before we continue, let's arrive. Relax your shoulders, notice your jaw and relax it if it is clenched. Allow it to soften. Now take a slow breath in through your nose. Hold it gently and breathe out.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Let's do that again. In slowly out.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Notice the chair beneath you, or the steering wheel in your hands, or your feet resting on the ground. Just notice. Nothing to fix, nothing to perform. Simply arrive.

Arrive With A Guided Breath

SPEAKER_00 7:03

Two episodes ago, my inner child find a compliant, and I've been listening actually, been listening, and I am still listening because one of the gifts of growing older is discovering that the younger versions of ourselves never truly really disappear. They simply become quieter until someone or something invites them to speak again. Mine had something important to say. She wanted to talk about purpose, but somewhere along that conversation, she quietly handed me another question, one that has followed me ever since. Not what is my purpose, but how do I live when life refuses to make sense?

The Question That Would Not Leave

SPEAKER_00 8:06

You see, for the longest time to Michelle Mokbaile struggled to understand the world. Not like I understand it still, not because she wasn't intelligent, not because she wasn't curious, because she was very curious, but because her mind only knew how to live in absolutes. Things either worked or they didn't. People were either safe or they weren't. Faith either made sense or it didn't. Hope either arrived or everything was over. There was no middle for me. No tension, no paradox, no waiting. I didn't know there was anything called in between. Looking back now, I do not think I was simply looking for answers. I think I was looking for certainty. Because certainty felt safe. If I could explain something, I could survive it. If I could understand something, maybe it wouldn't hurt so much. If I knew how the story would end or ended, I could finally excel. Life. Life had other plans for me. And perhaps that is why I have found myself seat with a woman I have come to affectionately call Mama Sarah. You know her. Trust me, you do. Not because I believe I understand her. In fact, the older I grow, the less certain I become that I understand anyone, including myself. One of the things I've learned over the last three years is that healing has made me suspicious of neat answers. You know those ones? The explanations that tie every loose in into a perfect little bow. The ones that make complicated people sound uncomplicated. The ones that make suffering sound like a lesson that should have been obvious. Those answers make me shorter on the inside. Not because I disrespect knowledge or faith or wisdom, but because life has been too honest with me. Perhaps maybe too honest. And honest lives are rarely need. When we open scriptures, we often do so with the advantage of hindsight. We know who eventually has the child. We know who becomes king. We know who survives the wilderness. We know the ending. They didn't. They were leaving it. We read the story in 20 minutes. They lived it one uncertain day at a time. And uncertainty always, always feels longer when you're the one living inside of it. So today, before we judge Sarah, may I invite you to let us walk with her? No, I'm not asking you to excuse her, neither am I asking you to defend her. I'm simply asking for us to keep her company today. So arrive. Are your feet still on the floor? Your hands still on the steering wheel? Can you still fake your bum on your chair? Let's continue. Imagine growing up in a world where your worth is quietly measured by what your body can produce, where people speak about your beauty but whisper about your barrenness. Imagine hearing that God has promised something extraordinary and then waking up every morning to see the same empty reality. Now, imagine a loving husband who himself is trying to understand the promises bigger than both of you. Imagine waiting and waiting and waiting. Silence. Perhaps, and that might be true, but I wonder if impatient is too tide a word.

Sarah And The Grief Of Waiting

SPEAKER_00 13:46

I wonder if grief is closer. Not the grief that follows death, um, the grief that follows absence, the grief of holding a promise without holding it to evidence. Yeah, you know that the grief of watching time move while nothing else appears to be moving, and then Hega becomes pregnant. Like, well, the way it read was like on the first try. Really? Like, really? Oh, silence again. Every time I read that passage, I always pause, not because I'm questioning the scripture, and maybe I am, but because I am questioning the human heart, what must that have felt like? Not what happened, what did it feel like? When Hagar got pregnant, what conversation did Sarah have with herself that night? Did she regret the decision immediately? Did she convince herself it was the right thing? Did she quietly resent her own body? Or does she wonder if God had changed his mind? I don't know. The text doesn't tell me, and perhaps that's the invitation today. Not to invent answers, but to or in a silence. Silence when we do not understand. And as I sat with Mama Sarah, something uncomfortable happened. She stopped being a historical figure, not Sarah, not Sarah. She became familiar. Not because I had ever given my husband to another woman, please. Let's not create another Bible story here, yeah? But because I recognize something else. I recognize the desperate need to make life make sense. You see, for years, Tumisha Makwale believed that every story should eventually explain itself. If I suffered, there had to be a reason I was suffering. If people made certain choices, I needed to understand why. If my parents loved people outside our home with such generosity, then surely there had to be an explanation I could leave with. Because if I couldn't explain it, I couldn't settle inside of it. Growing up, I watched my parents, and I'm sure like 60% of those listening now would have watched their parents pour themselves into other people, sometimes at the expense of their own immediate nuclear family. The irony, those same people often believed my father wasn't doing enough for them because of us. Imagine that. So, as a child, what do you do with a contradiction like that? Giving was

Growing Up Chasing Certainty

SPEAKER_00 19:25

supposed to be a virtue. That was what my parents taught us. Service was supposed to be beautiful. Oh, you could not avoid that or escape that in my home. Yet, sometimes the people closest to the giving carried the deepest confusion. Ego to Michigan. I didn't know where to put that, so I did what many children do. I looked for sentencing. Someone had to be right. Someone had to be wrong. Someone had to be the victim. Someone had to be the video. But life refused to cooperate. Then Sarah looked at me and quietly asked, Really? Of course, not with words, with her life. How do you arrange her story neatly? Was she faithful? Yes. Was she fearful? I'll say yes. Does she trust God? Definitely. Does she try to force the promise? Oh yes. That she love Abraham? I would like to believe so, because she was willing to lie and live in Pharaoh's harem? Not once, twice? So I'd like to believe she did. Did she also carry resentment, confusion, grief, and disappointment? How could she not? And then something inside me shifted. No later. Once, slowly, painfully, beautifully, I realized I had spent years asking life to choose a side. When perhaps life had been inviting me to hold both. Of course, you know I'm gonna say, Tibi Tiri Ladaye. That has probably been one of the greatest changes in my own healing. So Mishiko still love answers. Let's not lie, let's not steep. If you ask a question, I genuinely hope you answer it. But you see, Tsumishamakwale needed that certainty. She believed certainty was the same thing as safety. Healing has been teaching her something different. Safety is not always found in certainty. Sometimes it is found in capacity, the capacity to hold joy and grief, faith and questions, hope and disappointment,

Capacity Over Certainty

SPEAKER_00 22:33

love and hurt, the promise, and the waiting. That is a very different way to live. Not easier, just gentler. These days I no longer imagine healing is finally arriving at a place where every question is an answer. I imagine healing is learning to walk a tightrope. One foot rests on what I know, the other reaches carefully toward what I do not know. Some days I wobble, some days I stop altogether, and some days I wonder whether I'll ever make it to the other side. But I keep walking. Not because I've mastered uncertainty, I do not think I'd ever master it, but because uncertainty no longer had to be my enemy. So maybe what Mamasera gave me was not answers, but permission. Permission to be human while waiting, permission to grieve without assuming God had left, permission to stop demanding that every chapter explained itself before I could turn the page. Of course, you know not to answer immediately. Just carry it gently. Where in your life are you still demanding certainty when maybe life is inviting you into capacity? Maybe, just maybe, the opposite of fear isn't certainty. Maybe it is trust, not trust that you'll understand everything, trust that you can survive not understanding yet. Until next time, I invite you to keep showing up, not perfectly, just honestly, because healing has never asked us to know everything, only to keep walking. Good luck. That was deep even for me. So, before I say my final goodbyes today for this episode, I need one small tiny favor from you. Could you help share not just this episode but the whole mindful Ritu experience? I would also love for you to raise the show and follow anywhere you listen to podcasts. Thank you. Also, if you need to share your thoughts or just want to answer the how are you questioned in the judgment free zone, just click the link below that says send us a message that is in the notes description. And a special thank you always goes to Toby, who makes production easy these days and bringing them to life and making it quite fun and well, a little bit, huh? So love yourself, love your neighbor, love your country. Above all of this, love God, He is the essence

Closing Reflection And How To Share

SPEAKER_00 27:02

of your being. Stay mindfully.