Our parents would leave us home alone so they could get a life. It was every man for himself. Everyone had to make decisions for their own future. At that time, we knew God not. Talking for myself, I did not know Him and neither did I believe He existed. I was just like any other kid, praying only at school and that was it.

Hope for provision and a brighter future went down the drain. It just faded away like footsteps washed away by winds on shore. Everything was going wrong. I remember for a year we moved to Mpumalanga. In my mind I thought things would change for the better. That was a big lie to myself.

Though we never slept hungry, we all did not go to school that year. Though we were with both parents in Mpumalanga, I don’t recall getting new clothes. Poverty was always following us. I remember I would go to places where people threw away their garbage, including clothes they wanted no more. I would pick them up, choosing the ones that were not too worn out for me to wear. I was more like a street kid. The only difference was that I had a home.

The following year, we went back home to resume school. We were chased out of school in the middle of lessons for school funds. That’s life of the poor. And after all, gap years were never that much of a problem because they were better than becoming a school’s laughing stock, being sent home every day before lessons were over for a mere R20. Though gap years were not benefiting education wise, they were benefiting emotional wise. Being at home when your age mates are at school is never a fun thing and neither is being chased out of school in the middle of lessons.

Life can be too much of a pain, especially when one is living in poverty. You would even find yourself wishing you were a kid from that family or this family. A family you envy. And envy is a sin I have been committing for quite a long time. Discontentment also. See, the Word was right when He said money conquers all. But what exactly can one be content with when they have nothing?

But hey, who can blame me for being discontent? I did not know God then. In my perception, I had nothing. I did not know that being content is being satisfied with what you have whilst also having room for more. I did not know there was an extravagant God. I was living my own life, my own way.

But a time came in my very life, where I started believing that God existed. And right there, an argument about which church to attend arose. I started praying once in a while and finally met the real Master Himself who took over my life. Jesus Christ. The question remains, is it life that is a pain or the circumstances we are finding hard to handle? Who knows? But that’s where life began.

It wasn’t a life without storms or a life with everything I ever wanted. But life as living with, and, in Christ. I entered a life of possibilities. A life of the impossible becoming possible, for with God, all things are possible. But my entering into a life of possibilities did not take away my problems.

It instead made everything worse. I believed that I made a huge mistake by confessing that Christ is Lord and by inviting Him in my life. And that is because in my own thinking, because He is God, ruling over everything, my problems were to fade away after I had accepted Him as my Lord and saviour.

Why did I believe that? Nobody knows. But that is what most of us thought before meeting Christ. In the midst of trials and tribulations, we fail to realise that it is God working behind the scenes to make us what He wants us to be.

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Tell us: What do you think of the way they lived?