God please… wake me up!
"God please… wake me up. Wake me up" but there I lay, unable to move or wake up. Immediately, warm tears stream down my cheeks making its way to my lips but I couldn't even taste it. In a rush, I wipe it off my cheeks with my palms saying aloud with conviction.
"No! I reject it! Daddy will not die. He cannot be dead! I refuse to agree! I refuse to believe it! It is not yet his time! God, you can't allow that to happen!" I reminded Him of our covenant that my father so believed in. Always reminding us that we serve a covenant-keeping God.
Still, in denial of my new reality, the front door burst open; mummy came in, fell heavily on the cold tiled floor and continued weeping. We all rushed out as we heard the large woman hit the hard floor screaming.
"Papa Uche come back oh! You can't die and leave us! You can't just leave me with these children?"
We all stood, staring and weeping as nobody could console anyone. Soon, she was rolling from left to right on the floor, going naked yet none of us noticed."
"I am really sorry dear" Omo consoled him further.
"They say 'Time heals everything' well, it wasn't true for me. It only made me forget the event but not the pain. Forgot his face but not his words. It didn't turn back the light in my heart, neither did it fill the emptiness in my soul. It didn't take out his jokes and advice from my head. I held on tight to his memories because it is the only thing I could keep forever.
Sometimes, I catch myself thinking about what our lives would be if daddy had not embraced the cold hands of death. If he had chosen to be with us and not God. The more I thought about it, the angrier I became at God."
Still, in her embrace, tears stood in his eyes. The hurtful memory of that day crawled into his heart and rocked him all over again.
"He broke his part of the covenant. Not only did my father die at fifty-eight not getting to half the covenant age, but he was also the first person to die during the ambush. Daddy was long dead before we began praying. He was shot at the side of his head, stomach, and arms. His blood split all over the car and road; breaking another covenant. The third policeman came out from the car alive, with only bullet injuries and he is very much alive to this day.
Why wasn't that my father? I wonder sometimes. Why would God fail someone who spent all his life believing and preaching Him? Why would a covenant-keeping God break a covenant? Daddy read Isaiah 55: 6 and marked it with his pen that very morning, he anointed his head for wisdom, and legs against accident but yet… it just didn't make any sense…"
"I know… I understand your pain" Omo whispered, still consoling him.
"First, I stopped praying, saw no point in continued doing it. It felt like a total waste of time; like I am talking to myself. Maybe, He stopped listening or there was never a big man seated above, listening at all right from the beginning of time.
Second, I stopped going to church. I began second-guessing everything that was said by the pastor. It just didn't feel like the ultimate truth anymore. I could now see through the fabricated stories, so-called miracles, prophecies, and fairy tales.
'Is there a God?' suddenly became a question that puzzled me, and I went in search of an answer to that question." Uche's voice accelerated in anger.
"The more I studied, the more questions I had, and the more confused I became. I started to question God, God's motives, and judgments. Why would an all-loving God send people to hell simply because they picked the wrong religion? Why would an openhearted God who asks me to forgive and love my enemies, throw His enemies to burn in hell for eternity?
Bucked up and fueled with curiosity I set out to study and learn all I could about religions, all of the religions, including some dead religions. There I discovered major errors. I began to see the fallacies with all of these religions, including the one I once preached and held dear. If an all-knowing God was the one behind these religions, why do they have so many loopholes? Why are there so many conflicts between religious groups and even within some of them?
Why is it cloaked in so many mysteries? Why does it contain many unexplained events? Why do believers and religious leaders go a great length to prevent people from uncovering the mysteries? If there is really just one true God, why do we have over two thousand gods? If there is God, what is the odd that yours is the true one? If religion is so authentic, why are we asked not to seek for evident, not to question anything rather just believe and have faith? To see with our spiritual eyes and not physical.
"Religion must be a joke, and the concept of hell and heaven a tool used to control the masses" Uche concluded.
Lost for words, Omo pulled him in and squeezed an inch tighter. All she could do was imagine his pain and grief. She tried placing herself in his shoes, what would she have done if it was her father that was killed in such a manner? It was really touching but certainly not enough reason for one to give up on God.