Look Up by Ayokunle Adedipe

Between May and October 2018, I wrote something I didn’t think would be relevant at that point. I never posted it or edited it. I just left it there. Hoping for the day I would need it again, and on the 3rd of January 2026, while listening to Apostle Emmanuel Iren preach in WOFBEC’s afternoon session, he mentioned the words. Purpose and pain. I recognized it and in that moment, I looked for it in my OneNote app and I found it.
Here is a rewritten and completed version of the thought process. I hope you not just feel it but also understand it.

This isn’t one of my usual stories.
This actually is an uplifting article. Something I feel I should share with you all personally.
I will try to be as simple as possible so here it goes.

Finding purpose through pain is something most people experience but few talk about openly. I think everyone has gone through a form of pain. It could be physical or emotional or both. My point is we have all gone through pain. It reminds us that we are human.
Purpose. Purpose is something everyone should have. Not everyone has realized it but everyone has it.
I recently went through an emotionally painful season in my life. It was a series of painful things that happened within a period of time and because there was no time to deal with each of them individually, I had to compartmentalize and then I went through something psychiatry calls “isolation of affect”. I detached the emotions from the situation and had to move on, to act.
When I first wrote this years ago, i remember the circumstances surrounding it vaguely but I know it wasn’t compared to what I have gone through over the years.

At the same time, my purpose wasn’t really revealed to me. I had an inkling of the things I would do and become but I wasn’t implementing anything and I felt waiting for a relationship would be my starting point. It was then in 2018, I made the decision to heal and accepted that everything else will fall into place as time goes on. I didn’t have much clarity but I just knew I had to grow and to keep going.
I am glad I made that choice because I am still single even now. Imagine I had waited to live😂

Back to the healing journey. I discovered I had layers of pain hidden, well tucked within me but I also discovered my purpose. You can say the pain gave me a probe to look within. It gave me a reason to turn inwards and find out what was missing.
Jesus came and began the process. I became more serious with my spiritual life and I opened myself to Jesus to take away the pain.
There was shame at first and regret, and at some point, there was a rock bottom that I thought couldn’t go much deeper, but it did. Oh it did.
Then light came on that road. I stopped looking within, and I looked up, and I saw light.
Light made me see.

Many times, we get consumed by our own burdens that we cannot see anything else and I get it. It feels like you are literally drowning.
But something happens when you let go and look up. Looking up here means looking to Jesus.
Looking up here means taking away the focus from that which plagues you so badly.
Look. Up.
It is when this happens that you finally see your pain in a different lens. There is a change that occurs.
>A change that forces belief. A change that forces faith. A change that makes people question your sanity because you start to smile genuinely even in the midst of hurt.
If you want to allow pain to change you, let it be that you become a better version of yourself.
Do not let it mould you into a model that is supposed to be outdated.
When light comes, you realize how closely tied that pain is with your purpose. With your destiny.

I wrote this originally in 2018 and looking back, I survived and even thrived. It seems so minuscule now and that’s what it will continue to look like.
Just imagine a space craft leaving earth, the farther it goes, the tinier earth becomes to it. Even an airplane in the sky, the higher it goes, the tinier things look on the surface.
Pain gives you perspective. It gave me perspective.
I still don’t know why some things happened to me, I may never know but I know a fact; that all things work together FOR GOOD to them that love God and are called according to his purpose(Rom 8:28).

You must also be brave. Deciding to rise higher means looking inwards and then looking up. The Ayo of 2018 wouldn’t have been able to handle what Ayo of 2025 passed through but it is by Gods grace I am who I am today and who I’ll be tomorrow.

To end this, I comfort you with the same comfort I have received. Like Samson’s riddle in Judges 14:14: “…Out of the eater, something to eat; out of the strong, something sweet…”- Honey was found in the carcass of a lion.

Look up and be carried up.
Yours with so much love,

Ayokunle.

P.S: You can also read one of my posts here