I’ve recently gone back to Church. It had been a work in progress for a few months, catalyzed by an itch to be in a worship experience with hundreds of other Christians. I’m sure you know that verse about where two or three are gathered in my name, there among them I shall be. During Rona period, i’d become an online Church human, watching worship experiences from my living room. And they were great, no question. If you are looking for an online worship experience to get your Jesus juices going I reccomend you check out Elevation Church or Transformation Church, both US based, both super eccentric, but boy do they invoke the Spirit.
I was born and raised a Roman Catholic. I did them all, the sacraments, serving as altar boy, leader of Young catholic association, went to Strathmore Uni, joined Opus dei, aspired to be a priest, I did it all. In retrospect, this Christian foundation is the reason my latter year mistakes did not totally destroy me. There always seemed to me some anchor keeping me away from jumping over the cliff into irredeemable oblivion, be it drug addiction, STDs, estranged kids, financial ruin, physical harm you name it. As a parent, i’m doing my best, with all my limitations, to ensure my girls get a Christian foundation. They may not fully embrace it, and become Sunday christians like I was for many years, but I know, from experience, this little light will be the thing pulling them out of some pretty dark moments later in life.
I’m a smart, charismatic chap, and the world was quick to pick up on this and hoist me on pedestals from an early stage in my adult journey. I’ve never applied for a job, and i’ve had some good ones. I built companies, killed them, and somehow came out of the ashes with nothing but minor burns. I’ve heard entrepreneurship stories of people going bankrupt, getting auctioned, suffering depression, losing families you name it. Not me. Like the proverbial donkey in a hole, I seemed to have a way of shaking off the dust, stepping on it until i climbed out the hole i’d created for myself.
It got into my head. This illusion of infallibility. This ability to take risks, win some, lose some, but still come out stronger. I wanted to align myself with people ‘like me’. You know them. The good looking, articulate, charming types who seemed, or claimed, to be on the way to the top. I wanted all the girls’ attention, even though i’d gotten married at a relatively young age, or maybe because of it. I wanted to be the guy who dropped the names of so and so, the guy with direct access to the who’s who of this city. I wanted to be the smartest guy in any room. Guess what, for most of my mid 20’s to early 30’s, I felt like I was all these things. I travelled the world, I was in the media, people knew my name long before I met them, i spoke at conferences, going even as far as starting to pick and choose speaking engagements. I was that guy.
I say WAS, because my story, probably one that you may be able to relate to, took a dramatic detour when Covid came to be. Overnight, or so it felt, I had no access to the rooms I dominated, the crowds I loved to mingle with, the trips I used to take, the cool kids i used to hang out with. Confined to my house, I was lost, a stranger in my own home. In pursuing the ‘high life’, i’d lost touch with my wife and kids, i had no relationship with my siblings, and I had no idea who i was without all the glamorous environments and admiring faces.
But worst of all, here I was, facing the prospects of an early death from this invincible hit man, with absolutely no clue what that would mean. I knew the theories; heaven and hell, reincarnation, karma you name it. I had no affiliation to any particular beliefs, but i was still traumatised by the thought that my life could amount to this. I felt so, untapped, like i was a grown up who’d been riding the kids roller coaster at a theme park. Meaning, this is something i’d totally lost. Who i’m I, and why i’m I here? I had no answers to these questions. All around me i was watching my friends and ‘friends’ falling apart like dominoes. Marriages were failing, relationships ending, businesses dying, people losing their jobs, getting auctioned, folks evidently getting into depression…one person I knew of committed suicide, another one went on a drinking binge and got into a fatal car accident… it was like dooms day all around me!
So here I was, having my own tu-issues, but never really going off the rails. I endured a brief period of separation from my wife, but even that felt like a force was pushing me to shed off my scales so my relationship could be better. Money was tight, but we made do. Heck, at the height of Covid, Vera, my wife, who had already been tapped for redundancy at her job, actually got a better job. Through the sheer randomness that Covid seemed to be, two years on no one in our home had fallen ill…what was happening? What good luck charms were we benefitting from? Surely we were not any better than any of these people we knew who were going through hellish situations?
Faced with my mortality, away from the distractions, feeling a loss of control i’d never felt before, the question of a higher power became more potent. Through many, many moments of reflection, many many therapy sessions, many many conversations with mentors and coaches, I started unearthing the answers to who and why I was. I found myself praying more, discovered the worship experiences (sent to me by one of my Mentors no less), embraced silence, and boredom, and meditation, and meaningful relationships. I’m still a work in progress, but I can tell you in the last year or two, God showed me that he’s not just a footnote in my life, but literally the center of it. I’ve experienced physical and mental healing, i’ve experienced financial provision, i’ve experienced what i used to hear people call peace that surpasses all understanding, i’ve experienced forgiveness, a rare human commodity. A good friend of mine says that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. She’s right. For months now my existence has been driven by faith based decisions, often when there’s no physical evidence that what i believe will come to be, but it always does, 100%. I tell my friends this and I can see it’s still a strange concept, and that’s ok, coz God is working on us all in his own time.
Making God the headline of my life, his rightful place all along, was the best gift Covid could have given me, and ironic as it may sound, i’m truly grateful for the difficulties of the last two years. That’s my story.
