I apologize for the really long post. But I have thought a lot about how I would go about writing this. Personally, I don't really like sharing my testimony, because people are never able to look at me in the same way. After much encouragement, I decided that it's His glory I'm writing about, not mine. So here it goes:
Looking back on
my life, it wasn't more so how I came to Christ, but rather how He made Himself
known to me. It all started when I was 2, my family and me were living in Sri
Lanka at the time. Unfortunately for us, it was during a time when a terrible 30-
year old civil war had been gripping the nation. My dad was an Air Force
engineer and he worked within the headquarters of the Sri Lankan Air Force.
Sadly, during one of his return flights, a raid of Tamil Tigers (a national
rebel group) bombed his plane with a missile, ultimately resulting in his
untimely death. My mother was so distraught after my father’s passing and with
having the sole responsibility of raising two children on her own. So, she
decided to move to Canada, despite having to leave an exceptionally well paying
job at the national bank that she dreamed of working in since she was a young
girl. Canada was our only choice since most of her family lived here.
But when we
moved here, she became very depressed. We all had to live in my aunt's basement,
the three of us, my mom, my sister, and me, all in one room. Often times, the
only words I would hear from her mouth were tension and pressure and the nights
would be even worse when she would just lay crying on her bed. She waited till
me and sister would fall asleep, but we would always hear her and I used to
feel so guilty for being such a burden to her and that I couldn't do anything
to help. Either way, she found work and would work long hours while attending
night classes at the same time. But strangely enough, she never ever spoke
about my father; in fact, she simply just swept the issue under the rug. It
took me years to forgive her for this and whenever she did bring him up, it
would be to criticize me for certain traits she believed I had inherited from
him. Soon, I began to hate my life. I started doing anything to get my mother's
attention. I hated God so much for taking my father away and leaving me with a
mom that saw me as a burden. So I began stealing things, getting into fights
with other students, and I was in detention nearly every week. My grades had
plummeted completely that I actually got Rs!! Although, I loved to learn, I
never felt the motivation to study, because there really was no point in
gaining an education and ending up on streets.
However, it was
through these circumstances that my mother reached out to God. She started
becoming a very devout Hindu and we began worshiping a man, who had claimed to
be a reincarnation of the Lord Shiva (a prominent Hindu god). Looking back, we
had so many idols in our homes, pictures of this man, statues of strange and
erroneous gods! When I was nine years old, my mother and I even traveled to India
on a pilgrimage in order to meet this man and worship the very ground he walked
on. It was then I realized that this was not God. During our pilgrimage we came
into an Ashram (a Hindu temple) and all the members of the organization were
sitting on the floor of the temple to meet this man. I remember this part so
well. A red carpet was laid out for him to walk by the devotees and I was
sitting there holding a letter so tightly in my hand that I wanted to give him.
The contents of the letter is what most Christians would define as a prayer
request and the prayer was to make my mother happy and for her to love me. I remember him walking by as he looked at me
directly in the eye, but then he suddenly scoffed off and went to his officials
and began taking letters from their children instead. I wondered what kind of a
god does this?
Yet God, being
sovereign and amazing, still took mercy on us, despite our worship of false
idols. One day a group of evangelists of a local Pentecostal church came to our
apartment by accident. Actually they were supposed to visit the home of a woman
in their congregation and got the apartment number mixed up. What was even more
astonishing was that my mother invited them in, because she normally hates
these secular groups. But they briefly talked about the Gospel and left. Soon
afterward, they continually began coming to our home and this irritated me,
because how could my mom betray the one god that she was so devoted to and
adhere to the words of these Christians?
Eventually, my mother began attending sermons at the same local church
and she would take us along on some of her trips. But she didn’t want to tell
us of her conversion, because she feared my sister and I would be confused of
the two conflicting religious views. Despite my initial reluctance to attend
church services, I was still interested in the word of God and continually
questioned the Bible. Also, at the time my sister and I were both attending
Hindu religious classes and I began to love Hinduism, even though I never fully
understood it. I wanted to learn more and I even ended up becoming a teacher’s
assistant at the age of 15 to a Hindu teacher and began retaining chants and
praying avidly to these false gods.
Regardless of my
resistance to listening to the word of God, He continued to shower us with His
grace. Finally, we were able to move into an apartment with my grandmother. In
the beginning it was great. My mother had finally gotten a job that she
enjoyed, where she was an assistant manger of an apartment. This meant that she
was able to stay at home on the weekends and I finally had someone to talk to
at home, my grandmother. I stopped picking fights with kids and actually
started putting my head in a book for a change. Through my grandmother's
support at home, I was actually able to get my grades up, talk to her about my
day, listen to her stories, and watch her sew or even cook. I actually began to
feel loved. But nothing lasts forever and along with her diabetes, she
eventually got pneumonia and passed away. This was a major breaking point in my
life. I could not even handle the loss, because she had meant so much to me.
But like all things, my mother did not want to talk about it and even made us
go to school on the day of her death. I soon went into denial and pretended her
death didn’t bother me. I never shed a single tear, not even in her funeral. Instead
I started to bury myself in work by making quotas of how much work I should
achieve in a day. This began the second low point of my life. One summer I took
an accelerated biology course and ended up losing 20 pounds in a month from
constant studying! I didn’t eat anything expect for vitamin shakes and I
couldn’t even finish a box of chicken nuggets from MacDonald’s. But I didn’t care,
there was no point to living a life where no one really loved you or needed
you. I didn’t want to live anymore, especially without my grandmother. After my
constant denial came the depression. I continually had thoughts of suicide and
anywhere I went I looked for ways to kill myself, like hanging myself on a
noose from the ceiling fan or sharpening knives that I could stab myself with.
At the same
time, God was changing me. He was calling me back, because at that point my
grades suffered and my work was and still at times, continued to be my life. So
I started praying to a God that would hear me. My mother always asked for me to
pray to my Heavenly Father. But I would always retort back with, I had only one
father and his ashes are probably floating a million kilometers away in the
ocean. I continually asked God to take
my life, that I wanted to come back home and I would pray or cry aloud for Him
to do it. I always wondered why He never answered it. So again, I went back to
starting fights with other kids, not on purpose, but I just got involved in
them through defending my sister. Regrettably, at the same time, my sister also
had a hard time coping with the loss and soon became notorious for
fighting with girls in her grade. I
realized I was setting a bad example for the both of us, so I had to make a
change, at least for my sister.
When I got into
university, I had learned a little bit about the word of God, but I had never
read the Bible. Yet, little did I know that God was just beginning His great
plan in my life. In first year, I had such a hard time. I was studying so hard
for midterms and exams, but my grades always failed to reflect my tireless
efforts. I was exhausted and bitter all the time. I avoided spending time with
my family and I tried to limit my friendships. I just wanted to be alone. But
one day when I working on a calculus assignment, I met a girl named Bethel.
When we spoke to one another, we realized we had so much in common, like we
were the same person and had the same ambitions too. I was always so stressed
out, but despite all the stress, she always seemed so composed and I would ask
her how she did it. She eventually started talking to me about God, but she
never impressed her beliefs upon me. This sparked my curiosity in God again,
but I was still hesitant to believe. When I finally got through first year, I
was so angry, because I didn’t do as well as I hoped. One morning I had this
huge argument with mother, because she knew how hard I had been working and
with no avail. I told her I was tired, angry, frustrated, and exhausted and
she said to speak with God about this. But I argued with her and stated how can
a man cannot be a god and I remember I slammed the Bible so hard on the ground.
When I got to my computer screen to check Facebook, I saw this message:
I broke down and cried by my table
and I realized I wasn’t alone. He had been here all the while, listening to me,
counting every tear, feeling every pain. I felt like someone actually paid
attention to me and despite my continuous tangents to reject Him, God still
loved me enough to send me this as the first post. Later that same year,
blessings began to pour all around my family. We eventually were able to buy a
house and the deed to the house was even given to my mother on her birthday!
After spending nearly five years, as a night-shift employee at the bank, my
mother was finally was able to get a full-time position as a mortgage
consultant during the day. As for me, my grades began to pick up and I finally
enjoyed what I was studying. Moreover, I was even able to find work in the university
that helped me give back to my community. Soon afterwards, I met Belinda in my
third year and we became very close and thankfully she knew Hannah who invited
us to ACF. From there my faith just soared and I loved God so much for taking a
chance on a person like me who really had nothing to offer Him but praise.
But trials came to test this
faith. One thing that I have learned over the years about God is that following
Him was not easy and He wanted to make sure we are in it for the long run. Later
that year in the summer, my mother had been diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer,
the most aggressive of its kind and she had leave work for a year to undergo
chemotherapy and radiation treatments. There would be times when my mother
would have to get surgery on her breast and I would be writing a midterm at the
exact moment, I couldn’t even concentrate. Again, I would wonder what was the
point of all this, why did I have to take on such a burden of caring for my
mother and being a mother to my younger sister. I couldn’t take the pressure
and I felt like a coward, because I wanted to run away from all of my problems.
So to deal with the stress I would hide away at school and get more work done. While
my sister resorted to drugs in order to deal with her problems and I admit I
was tempted many times to try it myself. At the time, we both wanted to forget
our problems and to seek a place of refuge. I never treated my mother with
respect and I hate myself to this day for making her cry through her
treatments, because I didn’t have the courage to face her as her hair was
falling or when her skin would peel off from the radiation therapy. I
questioned God all the while, why me? What had I done to disgrace you and why
were you trying to take the sole parent I had left? But God I know saw my pain
and tried to make me realize the benefit of this circumstance. I finally had a mother to pay attention to me
and He reassured me that she would be better, despite the fact the doctors said
that this cancer was hard to beat and that even if it did dissipate, it would
definitely come back again later in her life. She eventually came out of
chemotherapy and was deemed the miracle patient, because she had not lost a
single pound and never had any of the nauseating symptoms from the treatment.
She was even able to make me breakfast and dinner as well as do chores around
the house. I praise God for her swift recovery and how the bank had paid for
her treatment through disability payments. Through her
cancer, God showed us what was missing in our family and my mom was soon able
to realize that she needed to discipline us, even as old as me and my sister
were, we still needed her guidance. Though it had just been the three of us in
one family, we were each living three separate lives.
I realized that this trial gave me an opportunity to be closer with God and I knew in my heart I needed to
give back to a God who has and continues to give me everything I desire. Thankfully, I
was given the opportunity through ACF to participate in JAW week and be apart
of a small group that helped edify my knowledge in Scripture. I actually began
to take out time to pray as often as I could and attend church regularly at the
Church Without Limits. I finally began to put God first. However, His test
wasn’t over, because later that week during JAW, I began to have severe
abdominal pains and I went to a physician who diagnosed me with an autoimmune
disease, called Crohn’s or ulcerative colitis. She said the disease was
incurable and it was genetic, so I had gotten it from my father. Also, the only
way I could continue to live was through treatments, which were intravenous
injections. Where, I would have to sit in a chair for 3 hours while a needle
injected me with a protein that would take place every 2 months or so. I would
also have to take medication that suppressed my immune system and cause me to
have weakened bones, persistent joint pains, and muscle aches.
But Praise God because even with
my dire diagnosis, He still delivered me and used me to glorify His name
again. Anytime I went into the clinic, I
prayed that He would protect my veins. In fact the site of my injection is in
the middle of my hand, similarly to place where the nails were placed into
Jesus’s hand. Usually I’m the only one awake doing school work, while everyone
is asleep from the medications and are feeling nauseous from
the medication. I’m also the youngest patient and even when everyone stares in
disbelief at my age, I just smile, knowing God’s sitting there right beside me.
He saved me from the pain and hair loss that comes with these treatments. I
still can work out, study, and do all the hectic things of life, regardless of
my illness. I am so blessed to have a Heavenly Father like Jesus to watch over
me. He truly is Amazing and I can’t thank Him enough for all that He has done
in my life and will continue to do. I thank
Him for every breath that I take and for saving my family and me from the
calamity of our old lives. I know some people may pity me, but don’t. I praise Him for every trial
and tribulation that He has placed before me and how He has revealed Himself to me through it all. I apologize if I may sound proud, but I say this humbly with utter
respect for God. I can honestly look back on my life and pinpoint moments where
He has given me wisdom, strength, humility, and sanctification. If it takes a
million tears, countless failures, and a few broken bones, I am willing to give
it all up to a God who has given me everything.
As it is written in Pslams 71:5:
“For
you have been my hope, Sovereign LORD, my confidence since my youth”.
I know this testimony was long and I
hope one day to share it with ACF, but of course it will have to be the
condensed version of this. Thank you for taking the time to read it, if you
were able to get to the end. I’m so blessed to have brothers and sisters in
Christ like you and to be apart of such an amazing fellowship!
God Bless and to Him be all the Glory!
God Bless and to Him be all the Glory!