Castleuk’s Blog

Imagine me with long hair down to my shoulder, sporting a full grown beard, dirty. By 10 a.m. everyday, I was already drunk with local gin, walking around half-naked. I soon realized I would find no peace in the slums. In the slums, drug use was still prevalent and immorality was rampant. There was gambling there was alcoholism. Satan was alive and well, even in the slums. I would bang my head against the wall and cry out loud, “What is happening to me? I’m a well-educated person but this is out of control!”

I cursed God. I blamed my parents for the senseless life I was living. I blamed the educational system, the government every body but me.

I had no job and no money. I got sick. My relatives took me to a public hospital where I was put in the emergency ward because I began to cough out blood. I had contracted tuberculosis and was rapidly losing weight. I knew that my life was spinning out of control. If a miracle didn’t happen soon, I would surely die.

I figured I had three options: kill myself, live as a criminal, or sell my soul to the devil in exchange for power. But one Bible verse which my first heard in my theology class in college had stuck in my heart: Matthew 7:7, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” That verse kept me from killing myself or giving my life to Satan because it made me think, “How will I find what I’m looking for if I kill myself?” Whatever it is I’m looking for, I just had to go on.

I finally gathered my last ounce of strength and said to myself,” I have to muster all the positive thinking and mind power I have and beat this. I can’t go on like this.” And i did just that. I straightened my shoulders, cleaned up myself, and looked for job until one day I got myself a job selling expensive cookware. I began to have a measures of success again. I stopped smoking, stopped drinking, and stopped cursing.

About a month later, I said to myself, “I can do it after all! So maybe I can smoke just one stick of cigarette and one joint of marijuana. I know I can handle it. May just one bottle of beer.” And as I began tasting the “prohibited” things I had weaned myself from, I found myself enslaved to them once more. I threw is the towel and said, ‘That’s it! I’m defeated. I’ve tried and I can’t get out of this.”

So one day I woke in a daze. I didn’t want to move, I didn’t want to eat, I didn’t want to talk. I just sat on a chair, my eyes staring into blank space, in the house of my relatives in the slum. As they were talking with me, I wasn’t responding. I felt I had reached my end. I’m just going to waste away in die.

Life in detention was no joke. My only source of relief then was being in the company of men who shared my ideals. Together, we suffered the indignities of being treated like common criminals. For months, I seethed with anger, hatred and bitterness towards civilian and military leaders. They did not understand and believe in me.

But I was not the only one who suffered. My daughter suffered psychological trauma as well. Meanwhile, my wife, who had epilepsy, experienced more frequent episodes of epileptic attack. There was even a time when she had seizures while visiting me. Never had I felt so helpless in my entire life than that moment. I desperately wanted to put a spoon in her  mouth to protect her tongue. yet all i could do was scream for help as I watched her twist and convulse in agony. that day, I swore to myself that when the wheel of life would turn again, I would exact revenge on those who were responsible for our suffering.

In the past, I had always thought that being a Christian meant simply doing good works and imitating other’s goodness or Christ’s life. How wrong I had been. I had known about Christ but never really knew Him until I received Him into my life. Prayer became more than a recital of words. Prayer softened my hardened heart and strengthened me. Through prayer, I offered each minute of my incarceration to God.

When I became a Christian, I learned how to trust God with all my heart and not lean on my own understanding. When my wife and I lost a child through miscarriage, we remained calm and prayed, “Lord, we rejoice in the sufferings You have allowed us to undergo, for we believe that suffering produces perseverance, and perseverance, character; character, hope and hope does not disappoint us because God our Father, has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.”

As God was stretching my faith through trials. He was also surprising me in many different ways. I tasted freedom again after eighteen months and twenty-one days in the brig. I was temporarily released for humanitarian reasons.