Without a doubt one of the most promising and anticipated musicians of 2013, KenyanGospel.com sat down with Jaya Awinja just before her "Tulia" single shoot for her debut album. Check out what she had to say...
A deep and un-ending sorrow, tears that can’t seem to stop flowing, despair/hopelessness, worthlessness, helplessness, pain, self pity – no one understands.
You want it to end. You’re looking for hope in all corners and can’t find it. You’re searching for peace all over and it seems to have gone on vacation, never to return.
You probably now want to give up. It’s just TOO MUCH TO BEAR.
You want to give up on your search for peace and hope. To give up on ever getting out of this very yucky place, and you choose to end all the pain by taking away that which God so beautifully and specifically breathed into you.
I know because this is MY story.
“Tulia” is a Swahili word for “rest /be at peace/be easy”.
This one was written for you who is in that dark and very lonely place and all you need is a deep sense of peace that no man/woman, money, sex, drug can give – because you (may) have tried these and they haven’t worked. Truth is, they don’t.
Only the creator of the sea knows how to calm the sea when the storm is raging.
“Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you REST.
TAKE MY YOKE upon you….and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (paraphrased)
I stopped believing in God during my time of the depression, but years of trying to bring the pain to an end on my own brought me to the point where I had no other option but the same God I had refused to believe in. The creator of the sea. The creator of me.
Replace 7 and a half years of deep and un-ending sorrow, tears that can’t seem to stop flowing, despair/hopelessness, worthlessness, helplessness, pain and self pity with peace that I couldn’t have gotten from the things that I searched for it in.
And all I had to do was go to Him and ASK.
(pause)
This is what I believe for you who are going through that darkness right now:
Whether you believe in God or you don’t, the truth is that, that peace actually exists and HAS BEEN CUSTOM-MADE FOR YOU AND FOR YOUR SITUATION.
It is yours. You deserve it. You deserve peace from all this yuckiness.
And just like it came around for me (and still continues to do so), it can and WILL come around for you!
Here’s another thing that I believe:
What doesn’t kill you only makes you…a source of hope for those who suffer the same thing after you.
I made it out. You can too, and you will.
Your peace is on the way. Utatulia.
