As a young male I always thought if my daddy could come home I would have some type of protection whereas with my family I felt an easy target to gangs and couldn’t protect myself from anything. My world was formed through pain and hurt. That was my reality. I thought life was all about inflicting pain on to the next person because if I think back, as far as I can remember, that’s the first thing I experienced as a child. Not having my father in my life was my first encounter with emotions that made me feel empty. At the time I never realised that it brought an emptiness. It was normal not to have a father figure in my life because all my friends went through the same thing. In every house hold that I ever set foot in, there was no male figure in the house.

The lack of a father made me want to be rebellious not towards my mother but everything else. I became a selfish person not allowing anyone in, pushing everyone out, feeling the need to protect myself from the feeling of emptiness or betrayal. That’s how I inflicted my pain on to the next person not allowing them in, projecting my feelings onto them. I realise today that there were people that genuinely loved me and wanted to be loved by me, but because of my fear I didn’t open up. The fact is, I know it wasn’t my fault, I never chose what happened to me. My life started to spiral out of control even though I had a mother that loved me dearly. It’s like she could not control me or the person that I was becoming.  I was formed through survival and trauma, pain, hurt and betrayal. That is what I stood for and lived for. I made that choice at the age of 14 when I started using drugs to numb everything and soon after joined a gang. That was my life from 14 to 25 years old. A lot happened.

At the time I began to believe that other people loved me better than my own family. Love was coming from everyone except my family – so I thought –  but what I never knew was that the love I was receiving all came with conditions. Even though life had become very hard, I believed it was fun because I loved the rush drugs and gangsterism gave me. I didn’t know then that there was a God looking out for me. There were moments in my life that I was pulled into danger and I got out not knowing how it happened. I feel now that it was God who got me out because he made a way when there was no way, kind of like he opened my own sea to cross. Even when I didn’t know it, there was a withness.

I always felt over looked when I was younger maybe because I was the small one or maybe I just never felt seen. I now know that’s why I joined the gang. The first few days, because I was new, I did feel seen. But it wasn’t enough. I wanted to be feared and I did everything that I had to so that I could be seen and feared. A few months down the line I lead the gang and I led my own crew. That’s how badly I wanted to be seen, not knowing that there was a God who was looking out for me and that he saw me for me, not for what I can give or do for him but loved me for me. I guess it’s hard to know that when you’re blinded by what the world has to offer. My life was all about give and take, giving my life to take what did not belong to me. If a child doesn’t receive what was intended for them to get from their heavenly father, they get dragged away by what the world has to offer them which is pain.

Have you ever screamed in a silent voice so loud that the inside of your  body starts to vibrate knowing even if someone had to hear you that they would not take note of you? That’s why I choose to scream in my silence. At least I could hear myself. I didn’t realise all that time there was someone listening to me. Jesus. But I did  have the strange feeling that someone was there. I later realised that the vibration in my body was the spirit of the Lord all the time. I can see that now and say with confidence that it was the spirit of the Lord because he still holds me today. Even in my greatest pain, his withness was the vibration in my soul.

Eventually I realised I wanted to change. I had hope as small as a mustard seed. But it was enough. Yet, change was scary, especially when you have no idea what to expect. In the gang I knew exactly  what I was doing or getting myself into. But the life I live now is not easy because I have to unlearn everything I have become over the years of addiction and gangsterism. Addiction turns you into someone else. The hardest thing to unlearn was that I no longer had to live in survival mode which I had learned as a child and become an expert in response to trauma. Now that I’m safe, I have to feel every emotion I ever pushed down.

I now know that sometimes you pray for things and you receive it but you don’t realise it at the time because it didn’t  come the way you expected it to. It was only as I drove closer to God, allowing him to mould me that I was able to see God had given me what I needed a long time ago. The Lord says seek and you will find so look for him. I know you will find him.

Sometimes I long for innocence. But in losing my innocence I now understand the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the mercy that he has for me. I now understand that his love is truly unconditional. And where I could not see it, I was blinded by my own pain and projecting it onto God. Because his love never left me. His withness was present my whole life, even at my worst. If you feel alone, I would really challenge you to sit and think what makes you feel like that and be honest with yourself. How can you feel distance from  someone that love’s you unconditionally? It’s impossible. I believe the problem lies within ourselves. As I have healed the wounds of fatherlessness, trauma, addiction and gangsterism, I have realised something.  When you feel distance from someone it’s because you don’t find or feel valued in some sense.  But your value lies with the Jesus.  If we turn from the way of destruction to the way of everlasting love, we open our eyes to the withness of God and how much we are loved, valued and seen. The hole in our hearts heals and we realise that we have always belonged.