My Testimony; How I Came to Christ

PART 1

They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. And they did not love their lives so as to shy away from death.

Revelation 12:11

Hey guys! I hope y’all have been well! Happy new month btw! Can’t believe it’s December already!

I’m sorry I did not post last week. I was a little bit under the weather, had to take care of some business and spend some needed quality time with my family, and experiencing a little bit of creativity block, if that’s a thing. However, even though its been just a week of not posting, I’ve missed you guys, and missed being here and I’m glad I am back.

Today, let’s get cozy and have a chat. Today, I’d like to share with y’all my testimony of how I came to Christ, part of my process to getting to where I am today and just the whole journey of my faith. The me that you see now is honestly as a result of God’s work in my life, I could NEVER make it on my own and I did not start here, it been a journey and process.

Let’s start from the beginning…

Ever since I was young, I had always believed in God. I knew that God existed and believed that He is mighty, powerful and beyond our human comprehension, and we all ought to have a fear of Him, in terms of deep respect and reverence.

However, I never knew what it meant to have a personal relationship with God. I just thought the ALMIGHTY GOD, wanting to have a relationship with little old me was impossible. I had always tried to live a somewhat holy life, according to what I thought was being holy and good. I said my prayers like morning prayers, before I slept, before I ate, I went to church, I participated in church, went to Sunday school and just did good things and thought that I was a relatively good person. On the outside.

However, behind closed doors, I always felt like I was falling short, like God’s standards were too high. I kept on falling back into the same sins and just living a lie. I struggled with depression, anxiety, loneliness and low self-esteem, lust and impure thoughts. I tried to get out of these things off of my own efforts, maybe if I just try to be good, then the depression will go away, then the lust will go away, then I won’t have impure thoughts anymore. But it was only through Christ that I could overcome these things.

When things began to change…

It was 2017.

I had just cleared high school the previous year and just trying to figure out what the next step would be.

Before we get to what happened in 2017, lemme share a bit about my high school experience,

So, my high school experience wasn’t the best. I honestly did not enjoy most of my high school. You know when you’re in that adolescent stage and you’re still figuring yourself out. you want to fit in, you want to be popular and as a girl, you want to be pretty, beautiful and get people’s attention. Honestly, in high school I would NEVER say that I was beautiful. I had acne and I was insecure about my height and just felt like I was an awkward person. So, I just delved into my books and equated my worth to my performance in academics, because I didn’t have anything else to fall back on.

In my final year of high school, when I was in form 4, I WENT IN in my academics. Not only because I wanted to get good grades and join a good university to do the course I wanted (btw, I wanted to become a nutritionist y’all!), but a big part of me wanted to prove to people and myself that I was worthy and good at something. Also, in the previous year my family had gone through a lot, and we were still recovering and trying to navigate through life, so at times it was tough being at home.

So, you can imagine being at home and dealing with a lot, plus pressure in school from teachers, peers and parents to perform well, I just had my books. I studied REALLY HARD y’all, like to this day I don’t think I’ve ever worked as hard as I did that time, to the extent that I wasn’t taking care of myself. By the time I was done with my final exams, I was so burnt out, exhausted and over everything. I think that’s why I’m so keen and passionate on self-care and encouraging people that inasmuch as you work hard, to take care of oneself, cause nobody is at their best when burnt-out and exhausted.

Anyway, when the results came out later that year, I was so disappointed :(. If you remember, my fellow 2016 candidates, Mr. Fred Matia’ngi had come in as the cabinet secretary of the ministry of education. And due to the massive cheating in 2015, he put up some very strict rules that would ensure such a thing would never occur again, and that affected everything, including the results.

In case you’re wondering, I got a B-mean grade, and I was disappointed in that because I thought since I had put in so much work, to the point of abandoning myself, I ‘deserved’ to get like an A or A-. Well, there went my dreams of becoming a nutritionist. Anyway, after sometime I got over it and decided to move on with my life. I decided to do computer classes and just learning to be independent. Looking back, that time was dark and boring and dull, and things kinda only got worse.

Depression

This was around April or May 2017. But, I vividly remember that day.

It was during the night and something happened in the house that made me super upset because I felt that I took the blame unnecessarily. Looking back though I think I was a bit dramatic and immature but yea. So, I went to bed but I could not sleep. I felt a heaviness in my heart and all these thoughts came flooding back from the past. Like the time when I felt left out, abandoned, ugly, like I didn’t fit in, or the struggles that my family had been through. Like it was just a huge wave of these thoughts and what had just happened in the house was a trigger to the moment I was having. And all of a sudden I just broke down. I cried. I wept. I hadn’t cried like that in such a long time. In fact, I had become very hard-hearted and thought crying and feeling was being a weak person. But the truth is, bottling up your emotions, your pain and the moments that you were hurt, or someone betrayed you or you lost someone, and not having a healthy outlet to process through those emotions, it will come biting you back in the booty. You’ll end up blowing up on people who had nothing to do with your pain.

After that crying session, I thought, “ok, that was intense, but by tomorrow I’ll be fine, right?”

nope.

It felt like things became worse. It’s like this cloud of deep sadness and heaviness had just encompassed every aspect of me. I wanted to cry all the time and felt sad all the time. I was no longer enjoying the things that brought a little joy in my life. I had never been in such a space in my life. Of course I did some research, and my symptoms were in alignment with what someone with depression would exude.

I reached the end of myself.

Ok guys, I’m going to stop there for today.

I know I know, such a cliffhanger, but I realized that if I was to write my full testimony on today’s post, it would be super long. So part two will be coming out on Saturday, so stay tuned for that :). I wanna give you time to absorb all that I have shared as you create expectation for part two.

I love you guys, I appreciate you and I’ll see you on Saturday’s post :)

Till then,

Xoxo. BK.