A New Life

Identity Crisis

I was seventeen, just out of the Junior Seminary. Everything around me looked so rigid, so set, and I didn’t want to fit in. I felt I needed to change something. I had to upset the status quo, to make a difference, some sort of statement. I guess this is what they call identity crisis.

All my life, I had been brought up in accordance with the Pentecostal tradition. Sunday schools, children’s classes and programs, church services, revivals, crusades, scripture topics and memory verses?and the list just goes on.

Then I went to an Anglican Junior Seminary with its first and second lessons, Ash Wednesdays, canticles, Easter processions, morning and evening chapel services. They were quite intolerable! Sunday was a bore, the worst day of the week.
But nothing was more horrible than the morning and evening family devotions at home. They used to be fun but suddenly I couldn’t stand them anymore, and I couldn’t stand those rowdy undignified Pentecostal services anymore.

And so started my first steps towards independence.
Being from a strong religious background, my attempts at independence naturally erupted from the religious sphere. First of all, I turned my back on my Pentecostal background and decamped to the Anglican services, much to the concern of my confused parents. After all, I rationalized to my troubled mind, it wasn’t my fault that I was sent off to an Anglican Seminary for my Secondary School education. Six years there had made me an Anglican in faith and I would rather go there on Sundays than face that Pentecostal ‘jamboree.’

So finally I had figured it all out. At least, I thought so.
But then I couldn’t fit into the new faith anymore than the old. Here we were all old pals of the Junior Seminary, outside, beside posh cars and beautiful flowers, we took photographs while inside the priest led the worship services. For sometime, it looked like it was fun and I felt I was having a good time.

Depression

Back home, however, after the services, the photographs, the jokes and little talks about girls, after it all, I found myself all alone. Then the emptiness and loneliness would come flooding in at me. Suddenly, I would become a helpless victim of depression. Sadness that had been crammed deep inside of me would engulf me and I’ll experience choking feelings. It was all so confusing. I couldn’t understand myself anymore. I needed something I couldn’t define. All I knew was that I had to be different, I had to stand out somehow. There was a hunger for some sort of relevance to my world, a relevance that would finally bring eternal fulfillment and an unending excitement.

I had to face it, I finally decided.
“Your parents, the church, the society at large,” I thought, “?these are the real problems, the obstacles to your happiness. Get away from them all! Move! Run away and never come back.”

And I did.

My dad was on leave and both of us were home alone that day. I had made up my mind, I wasn’t going to tell anybody and nothing would ever change my mind. I thought of so many things. Stow away in some ship, journey to some far away land and begin a new life. Finally, I decided to get away first and then decide on my next move. I ran off to the village without anybody knowing where I went off to. I only dropped a note telling my parents not to look for me.

Confusion

Then began my adventures with mysticism and the occult.
I turned my back on the bible and all of my religious upbringing. Maybe I could find some peace and lasting answers for my anguished mind in those esoteric articles and digests. I read, and I read, and I read?astral projections, hypnotism, meditation, mind stimulation? Hungry and thirsty, I stuffed my mind with all those ideas.

Loneliness

But my confusion lingered.
I was a restless soul, searching, groping in the darkness of human philosophies for answers and, sadly enough, I wasn’t getting any nearer to any solution. I was rather drifting further away. I found myself sinking deeper into the dark pit of depression. My nights were full of frightened cries, I felt trapped in the prison of my own dark moods. Shut off from everybody, I was very very lonely.

I then resorted to manual labor!

Each morning, I would go to our farm in the village, work myself to exhaustion, and come back completely tired in the evening. This helped for a few days. In fact, I felt better perhaps because I was doing something productive and, most importantly, I was helping my family in a way. I did not know it fully then, but we are designed to love and none of us can ever be fulfilled unless we discover some way to give tangible expression of caring love to humanity, to contribute to the overall well being of people around us.

A tangible expression of caring love

I came back one afternoon from my farm trip to find the house open. Someone was in the house. I instinctively knew it was my father and I was ready for a fight. I entered the house and greeted him under my breath. He didn’t say much. As a matter of fact, he simply asked how I was faring, told me my uncle’s wedding was coming up in a weeks time and informed me that he left some money for me on the table in his bedroom. His visit melted my heart to a great degree. I believe God used my dad’s tangible expression of caring love to touch my heart more than all of his scolding or preaching would have done. It did the magic. Let parents realize that sometimes, practical display of unconditional love towards their children is all God needs to work the miracle of transformation in their lives.

“Ok,” I decided within me, “let me do just one more favor for these people before I finally leave them for good. I will clean up the entire house for the wedding guests and prepare the rooms for the comfort of my parents, siblings and cousins. After that, I would leave forever.”
I spent that week cleaning up the house, dusting the rooms, washing the curtains, making the whole place habitable and strangely the more I labored for the comfort of others, the better I felt!

Everybody was home that weekend; the atmosphere was festive and full of celebration. I fought hard not to be taken in by all that but it was a losing battle; my siblings were around, my cousins, distant relations I hadn’t seen in a while. It was good anyway and I finally allowed myself to be borne along by the mood of the period.
Of course, I retained my self-consciousness. I was scared of abandoning it.

Spiritual Crisis

The wedding ceremony was beautiful.
The next day, Sunday, we all went to the church for the thanksgiving service. I was very uptight, cautious, and guarded. I was very uncomfortable. For the first time in several weeks, I was again in familiar surroundings – a Holy Ghost charged Pentecostal service!

“Our text today will be taken from?My topic this morning is ‘The Touch with a Difference’?”
On and on the Pastor preached.

I can’t remember anything about that sermon except the topic because from the moment that man began to preach, I was transported to another level of consciousness, completely oblivious of my physical environment.
My entire life began to pass before me in panoramic dimensions.
There were my childhood days?I started fasting around the age of three and could receive revelations and visions at three. By the age of four, I could read the bible in my native language and my parents bought a copy for me. It was mysterious. I followed them to all-night prayer meetings and by the time I was six, I was preaching in such meetings and in our church. I had a beautiful relationship with God as a child, it was so lovely.
I could see myself at thirteen praying my dad out of death; confronting and subduing the powers of darkness?I could see all those periods in the seminary where I was surrounded by my classmates asking me questions about the spiritual world?I could see myself ministering God’s word to them.

As scenes upon scenes of my past rolled by in my mind, I heard God speaking so tenderly to me, “what has gone wrong? What have I done to you? Why have you turned your back on me?” The tears flowed profusely down my cheeks as I wept. I felt I had betrayed someone who really loved me. I tried to control the tears but they just kept pouring forth, such that I had to bend over where I was sitting and covered my face with my hands.

I guess no one around me in that service knew what I was going through. It was a spiritual crisis.
All the while, the pastor continued with his sermon; I couldn’t hear any part of it; I could only see the panoramic scenes of my past and the heart-melting words of God.

A new beginning

“Go up in front of the pulpit and let’s get reconciled with each other,” the voice continued, “you know we have something going on together. Let’s begin again.”
That sounded ludicrous. I wanted to start all over with God, but definitely not by getting up in the midst of a sermon, before a hall filled with hundreds of people, walking down the aisle to the platform sobbing and shedding tears! That didn’t go down well with my ego. How could a cool guy like me, wearing my jerry-curled hair, how could I do such an embarrassing thing. I felt it was rather more than I could do; so I sat right up and wiped the tears off my eyes.
Suddenly, the scenes came back, the voice returned and the tears began to flow again!

I finally gave in.
I quit struggling.
I simply surrendered, got up and walked down the aisle, right up to the platform. I couldn’t care anymore about what the rest of the congregation would think of me. Significantly, though, my move coincided with the ‘altar call’. So I found myself surrounded by others who were giving their lives to Jesus Christ!
I couldn’t talk. I just shed tears but I knew that God understood it all. I felt months of tension unwinding, fears disappearing. It was a very soothing experience, like having a refreshing bath or shower. Into my restless, wandering, and troubled soul, there crept an all pervading peace. It was beautiful. I felt like a new born baby and at that moment I knew it?
I was born again.
A new life had begun.