My father was a cobbler before he later sent himself to school. By cobbler, I mean he had an outlet where he was making shoes for people and also had apprentices training under him.  Later on, he decided he wanted to do more with his life, so he went to do his A levels and eventually study accounting at the University of Lagos.

By the time I was born, he was already a chartered accountant and was not into the shoe making craft again. However, he still had one of his machines, different materials and tool boxes which I loved playing with and of all the tools he had, one of the items that fascinated me was a wooden block shaped just like a shoe.

I remember asking my dad what it was used for, and he said it was used to stretch a shoe if it was tight, so it could accommodate the feet of the owner. My mind at that time could not really understand how that was possible and I would try to figure out how a wooden block could stretch a shoe that already looked formed. As is my desire with a lot of things, I wanted to know not just the what or why, but the how, I wanted to know how the wood could stretch leather. However, it wasn’t until I got older that I understood that leather was pliable and so with time it would yield to the wooden block and stretch in areas the wooden block needed it to.

I remembered my dad’s shoe stretcher when I was reflecting on our human capacity and how life works to increase our capacity. We can be likened to the leather shoes and our purpose in life can be likened to the feet that needs to wear those shoes. Our capacity determines how much we can take in, which in turn determines how much we can put out and so when we get to points in life where we need to take in more so we can put out more, we are faced with wooden blocks.

These blocks represent hard unyielding situations that do not resemble what we look like, they come into our life, sometimes forcefully and at first it looks like we are going to be ripped apart from the pressure these blocks create. We want to scream and say why? this block is painful. We may get to a point where we want that block taken out of us but what we do not understand is that the wood does not yield rather it is the leather that yields. In other words, our purpose does not conform to us, we must conform to it or live an unfulfilled life.

When we understand that the goal of the block is not to tear us apart no matter how painful it is at first, we become proactive in yielding. When we understand that the block is there to stretch us beyond what we can currently take in so we can put out more, we start to look for spots in our leather where we can make room and hence we discover that where we thought we were already fixed, there is space and room for growth.

However, if we do not understand the process and the reason for it, we prolong our days of having the wooden block stay in our shoe. We fail to realize that the owner of the shoe will not take that block out till they get the desired extra room that they want. We fail to see that our purpose will keep inserting those blocks into us because it needs us to contain more and thus yield more or worse, we do not understand that if we forcefully eject that block out of our shoe or close off our shoe from allowing the block in, our capacity is stunted, and we do not produce beyond our current level. Taking such rigid stance against growth only makes us suffer longer or waste our time here on earth.

It can be difficult, but something amazing happens when we totally yield to the process of transformation, when we welcome growth, welcome growing pains and do what we can to make our leather pliable to change and growth. The joy in the pain is discovering a place within us that we did not know existed, discovering our potential to be and do more, discovering how much more we can take and how much more we can put out there. The thing about the stretching experience is it never leaves our shoe size where it started, rather it elevates us to a size bigger. It increases us, sets us along the next part of our path and causes us to operate at a higher dimension than we were used to. When we understand this, we can take the blocks for the increase set ahead of us.

For this reason, I want to encourage everyone who is currently going through blocks that look like they are being ripped apart from the inside, to come to a place of different understanding about what those blocks represent. It is easy to identify blocks because they usually do not make sense or feel right. It is the feeling of hard solid wood against soft pliable leather so they rub every part of you in a way that is unimaginable. However, if you begin to see them as opportunities to be more, you change the game. You know that no matter what happens during the experience, no matter what you feel or go through, the outcome is one; increased capacity. In fact, if you have that mind switch, you can become excited about the prospect of becoming more that you are able to stand firm during the stretching because you know that one day, the blocks will have to come out of your shoes and then you would have increased in a manner that shocks you and people around you, you would have been equipped to take on what is coming on next and much more, you would have learnt how to be resilient when you face another stretching experience.

SHALOM