I have always believed in God. Even when I didn’t believe in religion, I still believed in Him. I prayed to Him—not just in formal prayers, but by talking to and praising Him. I grew up Muslim and was taught to pray in Arabic. My family didn’t speak Arabic, yet we memorized Islamic prayers in a language we didn’t even understand. That never sat right with me. It bothered me that I didn’t know what I was saying when I prayed.

I often questioned Islam. I didn’t agree with many of its teachings. A lot of things didn’t make sense to me—especially when I saw people around me who claimed to be Muslim doing the opposite of what they preached. For example, my mother would praise Allah, but go to a Voodoo priestess to do work for her. She was so afraid of Obeah, yet dabbled in it, opening doors for all types of evil to enter. To me, it felt very contradictory, and I didn’t like it at all.

I struggled through Saturday and summer school at the Mosque, I didn’t fit in. Everything about Islam left an unsettling feeling in my spirit. I even got into trouble when I was caught skipping school at the Mosque.

So, it was no surprise that the minute I left home at 17, I left Islam behind as well. I tried hard to find a religion I resonated with, but nothing felt quite right. In my mid-20s, I came across the book The Secret and began studying New Age beliefs and Eastern philosophy. That phase lasted a long time. Although it wasn’t as uncomfortable as Islam had been for me, I still didn’t fully resonate with it.

When I decided to go to college at 31, I took several classes in Eastern philosophy in an attempt to find myself, but I came up with nothing. I believed in God—not Buddha nor did I believe in multiple gods. Christianity crossed my mind a few times, but I brushed it off because my experiences with Christians were similar to those I’d had with Muslims. I found them to be judgmental and hypocritical; they went to church on Sunday but gossiped, treated people harshly, and often acted horribly. This was the main reason I didn’t care for religion at the time.

It wasn’t until I was 39 that events began to unfold, pushing me into the arms of Jesus. In March of 2019, things became extremely difficult for me. My uncle passed away unexpectedly. It was the beginning of what would become one of the most difficult seasons of my life.

At his funeral, I saw my estranged mother for the first time in years. We hadn’t spoken for about four years prior. Despite me trying to call her and try to get her to love me, she always rejected me. It was a game to her and I was done playing it. I was at the point where I was done begging. I had put too much effort in trying to get her to talk to me. Every time she rejected me, it would deeply hurt me and I was tired of being hurt. She got pleasure in watching me beg for her attention and when I stopped, she could not believe it.

At the funeral, she expected me to come up to her and beg her to love me like I usually did, but I was done with that. I ignored her the same way she ignored me my whole life, and that made her very angry. She did not like the fact that I finally had an upper hand in the situation, so she started to spread lies and gossip about me to anyone who would listen. It was her payback.

My uncle had lived with my grandmother, and after his death, I began visiting my grandma more often since she had one less person to look after her. This irritated my mother, who began telling the whole family that I was just visiting her to steal from my grandmother. My grandmother had nothing for me, and I always brought her groceries I paid for with my money. My grandmother even asked me for money at one point. Yet, my mother spread this lie and made everyone look at me sideways. No one questioned why would I do that, but went along with it treating me horribily. I would go into detail, but I will leave that for my book. They were all just looking for a reason to turn against me. I had always been the black sheep, the one everyone disliked and didn’t want around. Things hadn’t changed as an adult.

Though I had told myself I was done with my mother, at this point, I felt a deep hatred toward her. Just when I thought she couldn’t hurt me more, she’d find a way to reopen almost healed wounds. Every time I felt I had healed from the abuse she put me through my entire life, she would swoop back in and undo all the progress I had made. I hated her so much that I wished she were dead. I was hurting deeply and desperate to heal. I thought that if she were no longer on this earth to cause me pain, I could finally move forward and completly heal.

About a year later, I got exactly what I wished for.

Click here for Part 2