“How far, come. Let's go and eat lunch together. I'll pay for you."
Mabel was already standing when she said it. She had picked up her handbag and was waiting for me to close the file I was working on. It was Friday, 5 June, and the office had settled into its usual lunchtime rhythm. Chairs scraped against the floor. Someone laughed from the next office. A courier had just dropped off a document at the reception.
I looked up and smiled.
"Chai, I'm not hungry. I'll eat later."
She laughed as though I had just told the day's best joke.
"All the stories you tell about how much you love food, I barely see you eager to eat."
She wasn't wrong.
Over the months we had worked together, I had told her more than once how much I loved food. Anyone who knew me a few years earlier would have agreed. I used to eat without ceremony. If food was available, I wanted it. If it wasn't, I counted the hours until it would be.
Mabel shook her head.
"You're not serious."
"I'll eat later," I said again.
She insisted once more before giving up.
"Fine. I'll bring you something."
When she returned, she placed a takeaway pack on my desk. I thanked her and continued working. The food remained there until much later.
That evening, while making dinner, her words returned to me.
"I barely see you eager to eat."
She was right.
When had that changed?
I still liked food. Yet hunger no longer hurried me. Sometimes I would look at the time and realise I hadn't eaten since morning.
The memory that came back surprised me.
There was a time when hunger arrived with questions. Not because I enjoyed food more then, but because I never knew when the next meal would come. If I was hungry at noon, noon demanded an answer. There was no money tucked away for later. No transfer I expected to receive. No quiet assurance that I could always buy something before the day ended.
People said, "You'll eat."
I wanted to believe them. I simply didn't know what they knew.
Hunger spilled into everything. Conversations became shorter. Work became slower. Even prayer became difficult. It is hard to linger over gratitude when one question keeps interrupting every thought.
What am I going to eat?
Standing in my kitchen years later, I realized that question no longer visited me with the same urgency. I couldn't remember exactly when it stopped.
Two days later, on Sunday, I stayed home and streamed the service from Doxa Commission Global on YouTube. Throughout the service, one name kept returning to me.
Boma.
We hadn't spoken in a while. After the service, I opened WhatsApp.
"What's up, Boma? It's been a minute. Are you alive?"
His reply came almost immediately.
"What a coincidence. I was just about to text you."
We exchanged a few messages before he wrote:
"I'm fine... but I'm not fine."
He had applied for a Web3 role. From everything he had read, he believed he stood a good chance. He met the requirements. He prayed. Then the response came. The position had already been taken.
Near the end of his message, he wrote: “I'm angry with God right now, and I'm impatient for anything."
I read the sentence again.
It stayed with me long after our conversation ended.
Later that evening, I found myself thinking about Friday's untouched takeaway. At first, the two memories seemed unrelated. One was about lunch while the other was about disappointment.
Yet I couldn't quite separate them. I wondered what had made it so easy for me to postpone eating. A few years earlier, I would have opened the container almost immediately. Waiting would have felt unnecessary, perhaps even foolish. Now it felt natural.
What had changed?
The obvious answer was money.
Not abundance. Just enough to know that another meal was within reach.
That answer explained something. It did not explain everything.
I remembered how easily I had told myself that I had grown in faith. It sounded like the kind of conclusion that made sense. Growth should make fear quieter.
But another possibility lingered.
Maybe certainty had simply become easier to live with.
I wasn't sure.
Boma's disappointment seemed to revolve around a job. Mine had once revolved around food. On the surface, they belonged to different worlds. Yet both of us had been reaching toward something we hoped would hold.
When it did, peace came easily.
When it didn't, something inside us shifted.
I found myself wondering whether peace reveals what we trust, or whether it merely follows whatever feels most secure at the time.
I still don't know.
Maybe that is why his message unsettled me.
I wanted to reassure him. Instead, his words became a question I could not answer for myself. A few days have passed since then.
Sometimes I think about the takeaway Mabel bought. Sometimes I think about the younger version of myself who could not imagine leaving food untouched for hours.
Both feel like me.
I don't believe planning is the enemy of faith. Savings, opportunities, and preparation have their place. Life would be much harder without them.
Still, I find myself returning to that quiet difference between having something to lean on and believing you can stand without it.
I don't always know where one ends and the other begins.
Perhaps I never will.
Now, whenever I hear myself say, "I'm trusting God," another question quietly joins the conversation not to accuse, not even to answer. Only to ask:
What am I holding on to?