.
19M I just don’t get it. My life is just plainly boring and meaningless. I always felt like every thing that I did was pointless. Every stage of my life felt like it came, passed by, and is never coming back. That I’m there just to watch all of it and finally die. I live only to make others smile and myself cry. I sin often because I’m trash. Having to wait for nothing and hurting God is just the worst thing ever. If He knew that I would be such an idiot then why would He create me?
.
Let me begin by sharing an example from my childhood. My mother, bedridden with illness, gave birth to me as her last hope. But just seven days after I was born, she passed away. My father blamed me for my mother’s death and treated me like an enemy. Thus, from a very young age, the abuse began.
My stepmother would vent her anger from frequent arguments with my father by beating me until I was covered in blood. Still not satisfied, she would strip me down to my underwear, grab me by the hair, and parade me through the neighborhood, screaming curses and rage-filled words so horrifying and venomous they would chill the spine of anyone who heard them.
After that, she would often throw me out the front door in just my underwear and lock the door behind her. My father, a schoolteacher and a public official in education, always used math as his excuse for beating me. If I couldn’t solve a problem, he would beat me as many times as the number of mistakes I made. He would often flip the dining table over in a rage, so violently that the table legs would break, and we’d have to eat from dented bowls that couldn’t even sit straight. Most of the time, I was forced to wear only underwear while being whipped across my entire body with leather belts or long, flexible fly swatters.
Sometimes, I was even beaten with a club harder than a wooden bat made from solid birch. When people said, “You beat him like that because he’s not your own child,” my stepmother would argue back, “Didn’t you yourself tear into him with a belt till his back split open? I didn’t beat him that badly,” and thus, the days of fighting between the two of them continued. Not once in my life did I feel like my father saw me as his son. He always treated me as a cursed child who had killed his mother—an enemy.
Even now, past the age of sixty, he once said to me, “Do you know why I didn’t kill you when you were just a nursing baby?” He was an educator who lacked even the basic decency one should have as a father. My stepmother, who was my mother in name, blatantly discriminated between me and her own children from an early age, using all sorts of petty excuses—even when it came to food. Since I was a child, I never received a single penny from her, not even once. To her, I was nothing more than a tool for venting her frustration.
There were so many terrible things that happened in our household, I could never list them all. But in that home, where “it’s all your fault” became the daily norm, each day felt suffocating, and even breathing was difficult. If my younger sibling fell ill, my father would say, “Why is your sibling sick when you’re healthy? Isn’t it because you didn’t guide them to stay healthy?”
Even the pain others experienced was blamed on me—I was a cursed slave. If my sibling’s room was messy, it was my fault. If my stepmother lost the family fortune through secret investments, that too was my fault. Every misfortune in the household was always blamed on me. When I was thrown out after being beaten bloody by my stepmother, kind neighborhood ladies would take me in, wash me, and give me snacks.
All the local adults knew her reputation as a cruel, insane stepmother. No one in the neighborhood could ignore the screaming when she grabbed me by the hair, dragged me through the streets, and hurled outrageous insults in a voice that echoed through every alley. There were times I was beaten so mercilessly that my nosebleed soaked through my clothes and even into my shoes. Dozens of sticks would be broken as she continued hitting me relentlessly, like someone slaughtering an animal.
Even as a child, I sometimes thought, “It would be better to just die from this beating.” Living under a father who could say things like, “I should have killed you when you were born,” even when I had grown into an adult past sixty years old, was a life full of unbearable hardships.
I still remember trembling in the cold, hiding inside a water jar, crying out to God. The tears I shed while whispering, “God…” are memories of pain I will never forget. No matter how much I try, I cannot fully express in writing the depth of the abuse and suffering I endured. Yet now, this miserable, cursed life of mine— is more precious and dear than any other. To anyone looking from the outside, my life may seem cursed, a complete failure. But I see it differently.
I believe my life is more precious than anyone else’s, more meaningful than any other life, and more valuable than any possession. Through my life, I’ve come to understand the tears of the abused, the sorrow of the poor, and the loneliness of the abandoned. And for that, I am truly thankful before God. Yes, there was a time when I had no room in my heart even to resent God— because my days were filled only with sorrow. But the only way for our lives to become lives of gratitude, joy, grace, and value is to receive the power of love that flows from God’s love.
There is no such thing as a life that is not precious. We just fail to see the purpose that God intends for us in His providence, and so we only see sorrow, despair, and pain. People often seek God’s grace only in joy, comfort, and happiness. That’s why they fail to learn about the deeper love, compassion, patience, and gratitude of God that can only be found in sorrow, in tears, in pain, and in suffering. When our plans, desires, and expectations don’t come to pass, we fall into sadness, discouragement, and despair— this is the life of someone who follows the desires of the flesh.
God gives us suffering so we may understand the pain of our suffering brothers. God gives us sorrow so we may understand the tears of our sorrowful brothers. If you want to understand the root of your life and the center of your being, read the book “Moses’ Burning Bush”. It will guide you to find deeper value and divine providence.
.
.
.