TW grew up in a very average family. He is very aware of it.
Not the wealthiest, nor the worst of its kind. Poor foundation rendered the
first few years of his formal education a big struggle, often inviting
misunderstanding and reprimands. In the eyes of some educators, this boy might
have a future, albeit a very limited one.
He never quite dared to make any upward comparison because it
had once seemed distant, almost unreachable. He could never fathom himself
breaking the invisible glass ceiling that his peers would one day ascend
beyond.
He has not known God then, but God knew him already. Good
teachers who came along, and plenty of opportunities only point toward the
abundant grace and favor. Under such an environment, he gradually grew in
confidence and his character was slowly being shaped. He shone, in a way beyond
any predictions that his history could extrapolate.
Slightly more than a decade on, the inability to perform
returned. But he has grown used to the abilities, that position of envy. Once
being labeled a “high flyer”, he continued to live in that illusion, albeit the
shrinking of his ambition- a cardiologist, a pilot...
However hard he tried, the dampening downward spiral felt like
an insurmountable impossibility. It never felt like paying off. The academic
performance took many plunges, despite bold claims about his abilities to grasp
any concepts, results in black and white suggest otherwise.
More than once, he questioned. Why- the decline only seemed to
have begun at the end of J1, coincidentally also the time when he gave his life
to Christ. Clearly aware of the kind of implication, he tried to divert the
blame away whenever he talked about it, but deep within was a deep resentment,
having forgotten about how he had come to where he is today- the grace-filled
and favor-filled 10 years that had just gone by.
Non-English speaking, barely surviving on bursaries and aids,
frequent loans from relatives that never seemed to ever have been repaid,
uneducated parents old enough to be grandparents- even this was part of a
divine plan- one which viewed back from the halfway mark reveals a clearer
picture, albeit an incomplete one. Yet,
the abounding grace of my God permeated through.
