The Butterfly Effect

A Man is still a Man no matter what his purpose on earth and his major duties are to nurture his family, to take care of them, to provide, to guide. This is the weight that every man must carry.

Daddy went into “full-time ministry” as they call it when we were still young. The early stages of the ministry journey were tough as there was no sufficient income for the needs, yet this family of six had to be fed, roofed, schooled, clothed and many other needs met. He soul-searched and identified a tent-making venture that kept us going and met some of the needs. Wants back then were a luxury, they were only satisfied at the “wanting stage.” Having tasted a life of plenty earlier on, this was a culture shock of sorts, from enjoying a gated home to a place where we had shared amenities. We have had days where we asked Mama what we would have for dinner and the response would be, “The Lord will provide.” A sure thing though was that somehow, somewhat, God always provided for the meals. It would have been very easy for Dad to quit on the Call and go back to secular employment, but he didn’t.

The fulltime ministry journey saw our family traverse the land of Kenya from Kitui to Mombasa, to Nairobi, To Mombasa again, to Eldoret, to Turbo, to Eldoret, to Nakuru then to Nairobi! Wow, what a journey! Fast forward and we are in Nairobi, Mama got a job and in an old-school fashion as you call it, would bring the full quid home to Daddy, for co-planning and utilization. Mama was happy, Daddy was happy, everyone was happy. This was the norm for the period that Mama worked and still is.

“My money is my money, but your money is our money”, “I can’t date a broke man!” These female adages have intimidated, isolated and unsettled the men who fear the day the broke season will knock the door. I was having a chat with some friends at work and we talked about one of our family rides only for one lady to quip…” Is this your family ride or your wife’s ride?” I could tell the sarcasm in her voice. I asked naively “What’s the difference?” A male colleague’s response? “You can only know the difference if you get broke!” That is what the society has become; individualistic and materialistic even within the family unit, where true happiness is defined by what you have, and family headship is determined by who brings what. The broke man has become a broken man.  This defies the divine order for the ultimate success of the family. With these mentalities dominating us, compromise on firmly held virtues sets in, strife, pain, bitterness, disunity, anger, discordance, and immorality become the order of the day and the more we experience them the deeper we sink in them and the harder it is for us to come out of them. All this because of one thing; defiance to the divine order on family governance.

In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state. The term, closely associated with the work of Edward Lorenz is derived from the metaphorical example of the details of a tornado (the exact time of formation, the exact path taken) being influenced by minor perturbations such as the flapping of the wings of a distant butterfly several weeks earlier. Lorenz discovered the effect when he observed that runs of his weather model with initial condition data that was rounded in a seemingly inconsequential manner would fail to reproduce the results of runs with the unrounded initial condition data. A very small change in initial conditions had created a significantly different outcome.

The defiance of the divine order to family governance assumes the butterfly effect, and as they say, the buck stops with the man! Men must take their place and not allow themselves to be dominated by fear, intimidated, Isolated and broken. The place of a man in the society should not be defined by what a man has but by what a man is! That’s his space. If a man places his worth in what he has, it becomes difficult for him to be who he is designed to be. Women generally have a desire to be ruled and become frustrated by the broken man who is inclined to material worth as opposed to identity worth. When a woman challenges a man’s authority it’s because they want you to rise the occasion to be the man you are supposed to be, and it must be creatively so, not forcefully so! We must as men restore manhood to the “butterfly effect” it was designed to be, so that in our right positioning, at the right time, with the right mindset, we will flap our wings and cause tornadoes of positive change in our societies and families.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Three weeks ago, on the 25^th of April 2019, I received a call that bore bad news about the demise of a friend, the spouse to a brother of mine from another mother. My heart raced, I went into an indeterminate state, I froze, couldn’t believe what I was hearing. How and why were the questions that kept ringing in my mind. I composed myself, took my phone and dialed this brother of mine with the hope that he will tell me the contrary to what I had just heard. After three rings he picked up his call and with the calmness of voice greeted me and we talked briefly before I bluntly asked:” Is what am hearing true?” “How did you know?” He queried. “News travel fast bro,” I quipped. Well, he confirmed the worst, my heart sunk, and I retreated into a dojo and that’s where I have been since, reflecting on life, on seasons, the sad side of seasons, the ugly side, the tough side, the painful side. Reflecting on the fact that we are all sojourners and one day, we shall undertake a journey never to return. So today, I pay tributes to a beautiful daughter of the King. She brought joy to our hearts with her warmness, her kindness, her joy, her smile…she showed us love, but she Loved her heavenly Daddy more and her Daddy loved her back and called her home! In her own words before she slept, “Do not mourn for me but celebrate my life.” I celebrate you Caroline Nduta Mutiso. Rest in Peace.

Jamo