God is faithful, they say, and that He never lies.
Well, I do not believe so.
He lied to me. He betrayed my trust in Him. He left me when I needed Him the most.
February 15th, 2015
I got a call from my elder brother. Daddy was sick and taken to the hospital at Abeokuta, He said with an underwhelming voice. I was both saddened and surprised. Saddened because of his health, and surprised because he has never been to the hospital in the last 30 years as I’ve known. I had to take permission from the company I worked with which produces soaps, detergents, and toothpastes. I rang my fiancée to join me on the way to the motor pack where we would board a bus to the hospital. It’ll a journey of about 2 hours 30 minutes. She’d been with me for three days and I’d left her in the morning for work. Our relationship started just two months earlier and since we lived very far apart, she comes around at any chance she gets in school.
I had just introduced her to Daddy two days earlier. We traveled to his place, one of our family residences, for that purpose. He had always longed to see who I would decide on marrying. We were more than close. He was my best friend.
We journeyed together, my cold hands in hers. She was emotional in the bus. She couldn’t believe the man she saw just 48 hours ago, fit as a stallion, suddenly lying somewhere in a ward. I had to help her feel fine. Everything is fine, I would say. I was sure he would be fine in no time. The worst I’ve seen of his health was mere headache, cold, or minor injury sustained from farm.
He was in a ward of about eight. He was smiling. He felt I should have stayed at work that he will be out of the hospital in no time. He looked very fine, but was physically frail. There were few Elders from the church with him. We laughed and further discussed about my dreams, his expectations of us, and my plan to leave for Canada to study two months from that time.
Six hours later. I watched him as he struggled to stay alive. He went cold right in my arms and my fiancée’s. We cried to God, prayed all our hearts out, shouted on the doctor in charge, but nothing happened. He was gone!
I lost all my strength. I couldn’t cry again. I joined the guy in the mortuary to strip him off his clothes and we pushed him together before he took over from me at the door.
Just like that!
I watched my fiancée weep like a kid. She had come to love him passionately.
A part of me died that night.
On May 7, 2016
After daddy died, I resigned my job. It was traumatic for me in a way indescribable. I developed a habit of being absent-minded unconsciously. I was an electrical supervisor in the company and it would be dangerous to work in such state. We had to remind from all the stress and exhaustion of the burial. So I took my fiancée out to the beach. We cooled off and had a nice time together. She had stayed over for more than a month even though work have resumed back in her school. She did everything to be there for me.
I was intimated of a position in an old mentor’s Real Estate firm in the city where she was schooling. It wasn’t difficult to accept the offer. It wasn’t a job really. It was a managerial role but with a meager pay. But since it would aid easy integration into practical entrepreneurship, something already planned to be my next phase, I picked it up. So, I was right in the city where she was schooling, and we saw almost daily.
She lost her father too at a very tender age and since we met we have stuck together as a single entity. She was all that remained in my life, something that made me shutter between a mix of happiness and enthusiasm. She was my elixir.
On May 7, she died.
It was the most tragic day of my life.
Two days earlier, I had hugged and pecked her while she left my place to join her friends. They were all going to attend the wedding of a classmate in a not-too-far city. The bride was one of her best friends and she had taken the job for make-up. On their way coming, a truck ran into their bus by the side where she was sited, asleep. She lost so much blood and died before getting to the hospital.
My life was shattered.
Within a year and few months, I’d lost the two most important people in my life to the cold hands of death. I was empty, naked, stripped, and mental.
I would cry for hours till I lose all my strength and sleep off on spot.
Why would God allow this? Why would he treat me so badly and unfairly?
I lifted the coffin of my best friend and father just few months back, and again, I carried the coffin of my best friend and fiancée five days after I had hugged her.
When I remembered that she asked me to sing for her before she slept and I didn’t the night before she travelled, my soul was tortured.
When I remembered she had a strange feeling about an impeding danger before she travelled and had prayed and fasted for two days before traveling, I felt God was wicked and a liar.
When I remembered my prayers and commitments, and hers, especially in the place of prayers and involvement in church work where I always know she was more committed than me, i doubted all I ever believed about God being a good God.
When I remembered my father’s devoted and exemplary Christian life, I questioned if God was ever real and if He ever gave a damn about the life-preservation of his faithful worshipers.
When people sang in church—anything about the goodness and magnificence of God, I felt lost and strange among set of disillusioned and disoriented people.
When I remembered my pains, torments, and traumas, I could only see that God was far-fetched, and had no regards for my feelings, and my pains.
Yes. God is a liar. He lied to me.
I was sure my dad would live to see his children. I was sure he would be there at my wedding. I was double sure that my marriage would be the best and all the promises God has proclaimed in His word would come to fulfillment over our lives. I was sure because the Bible says that God respects His words (promises) even more than His name. But, for my case, He lied.
Yes, he lied.
What happened to all His promises on long-life, peace, blessings, preservation from danger, life-protection etc. as written in the Bible?
What happened to all the beautiful dreams we had together, all those fantastic prophecies we have received from God about our future?
What happened to the love we enjoyed, the business we have started to build together, and the life we shared?
Few months later, after I had taken a break from church, a brother I have known for some time before the occurrences, especially my fiancée’s death came to me and answered all the questions in my heart. I believe God sent him. Now I know that God doesn’t necessarily need to defend Himself. But in my case, that was how I saw it, then.
Everybody had been very emotional with me. Everyone had identified with me. But it was only him that came to me in strange way.
He sat before me, looked straight into my eyeballs and said: Do You Know You Are Very selfish?
That was the beginning of my transformation!
I want to make this a series. Maybe later I could make it more conversational or bring out a bit of serial non-fiction from it. This and the next/final post is just a summarized version of that experience. I plan to do something comprehensive later. Let me know your thoughts!
But I can guarantee that you are going to learn a great deal from my story.
This is my first post on Steemit. In few days’ time, I will do my official introductory post. I want to touch many lives here.
I Am Apollo