My Life Story
Big greetings to everyone. First, the introduction. My name is Kent hailing from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I am hitting my thirties and is of Christian faith attending the Logo Presbyterian Church. Secondly, the purpose of this blog is clear and simple – to glorify and honor God by offering real-life testimonials from all over the world. The testimonials are aimed to inspire you, renew your faith and belief, encourage sharing of our individual experiences with each other so that we can rejoice together in our faith.
Being the role model, let me roll it out with my very own testimonial; and because I clearly see in my head that my life is divided into two parts, this is how I will present my testimonial. The first part is about my life from the time I was born till the age of 26….that’s because that was the time that I embraced the Christian faith and welcomed God into my life.
Lesson 1 : In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.
King James (Ephesians 1 : 11)
Ipoh was the small town that I was born in but within months, my family moved on to the thriving city of Kuala Lumpur, which is now the capital city of Malaysia. During my early years of childhood, memories rang of a peaceful family environment with a pair of loving parents and three kids, one son and two gorgeous daughters.
All in all, this part of my life, the memories and the basis of my formative years were shaped around the Heroine of my life….my mother. Strict as she was about school work, she was the basis of my existence back then. Despite being one of the strictest persons I have ever known to exist, who would met out a punishment in the form of banishment if I did not get AT LEAST 95% in all of my work I was not permitted to go home, she is one of the most amazing people I have ever known. I remember very clearly how I threw my exam papers (of me scoring between 80% and 90% – below mark) out of the school bus window because if she saw them…that was it.
The irony is that I threw them out of the window a little too late, too close to home, so my neighbors found them, picked them up and sent them home….to my mother.
So, you can imagine the harshest form of punishment permitted on a kid my age.
Lesson 2 : God loves me even before I know Him. My mother is and was the best gift that God has given me, without her, I would not be what I am today.
You would think me crazy to think of my mother as a Heroin in the face of the fact of her demands on me as a kid but the truth is that she is a gift from God because of all the things that she has had to sacrifice for her kids and the emotional turmoil that surrounded her marital life.
When I was young, I often sat down in my room wondering why it was that my mother cried so much assuming only that a petty argument must have occurred with my father. The reality of which, the torment of this relationship, was only unveiled to me when I reached 13 years of age.
That was when my parents got divorced and the door of truth was finally opened.
Due to financial problems, the four of us, my mother, my siblings and I, moved back to Ipoh….from the big town….when I was eleven. The big city, without my father’s financial support, was too much for a young mother with three extra mouths to feed…and we stayed there for two years where my mother endured the most.
There isn’t much to say about my father because his values and principles weren’t exactly in tandem with mine, my mother’s nor my sisters’. He was a compulsive gambler, smoker and a drinker. What could a housewife like my mother know about making money to feed her kids and besides, she had to take care of her kids?
There is a significantly unforgettable incident that I would like to share with you. My delight of being selected as one of the privileged few to join the Scouts was quickly dashed when financial constraints held my mother up. I rushed home from school selfishly happy that I was one of the two students selected for the coveted spot…only to meet with the anxious looks my mother tried to hide. RM3 was all I asked for….RM3 was all she had left. I found out that luckily the club was disbanded the same day because it was all there was left for the entire family….RM3 (USD0.85).
Forced by circumstances, my mother had to go out to look for some work while trying to care for all of us at the same time. She juggled three jobs in a day and yet, it was not enough.
Two years of struggle later, my mother made a choice that made a mark in my life….she moved us all back to Kuala Lumpur, the city that we can ill-afford, and requested for a formal divorce from my father. Three utterly scared children huddled together for support in a room while the negotiations went on outside….my mother, father and grandmother. My grandmother asked for her to stay but my mother was adamant.
The voices and argument that went on outside rings clear in my head till today….and I can still hear my sisters crying in the room because we didn’t want to lose our mother. She was going to leave us all behind with the divorce and fight it on her own and come back for us later. She was going to leave us all behind….how unthinkable.
For months on end, crying was the only outlet for her. Every single day, she cried and it went on for three months simply because she was worried about us and yet, she trudged bravely ahead, knowing full well that it’s what she has to do….the unimaginable pain that she went through was all worthwhile because she did it for all of us.
As a growing teenager, the cries of disappointment were quickly replaced with muted joy because suddenly, there was ‘freedom’. I could do whatever I want now….and there’s no one to stop me. It was a dream. Little did I know, from the moment my mother left, it was the beginning of a very big nightmare.
My daily RM5 (USD1.40) pocket money was enough for me as a secondary school student because my school was only a stone’s throw away….until my 16th year, I realized that it was no longer enough because there were stuff that I needed to purchase for school. There was also no ready-food on the table when we reach home because no one was there to cook for us, so, the RM5 was clearly inadequate.
When asked, my father told me that he did not have any more money….but if truth be told, he gambled, smoked and drank it all away. Doing the homework for the ‘rich kids’ in the school was the only way I could earn some extra cash and I can’t say that I am proud of that but it’s the truth. The dark truth is….
….I turned into a cheat. Sure, I joined CNI Enterprise (M) Sdn. Bhd. when I was 16, a multi-level-marketing company but it didn’t work out because nobody believed that a 16-year-old nobody could sell nutritional products in Malaysia. So, without an avenue for financial support, I turned to cheating. I stole books (yes, even indecent books and magazines), CDs and anything I could get my hands on.
I didn’t care because I was blinded by hatred and indigence….I NEEDED money. You could say that I was selfish and angry but I say that it is self-preservation of the lowest degree. I cheated customers by using used parts and telling them that they were brand new. On the receipt, I would up the price so that I could make a profit.
And then one day, when I thought I have escaped out clean stealing a bunch of books, the owner caught me, chastised me and then set me free.
Lesson 3 : He that walketh uprightly walketh surely: but he that perverteth his ways shall be known.
King James (Proverbs 10:9)
I was burning with hatred….a very deep and dark form of hatred. Incomprehensible, really. That’s because one fine day, in the middle of the month, our water supply was cut off and when approached, my father’s lackadaisical reply is that he could pay to reconnect the water supply to our home next month and for me to carry empty buckets to our neighbors house and ‘borrow’ water from them. I was so deeply ashamed of what I had to do that I promised myself that if I could, I would kill him. Each time (there are more incidents, thereafter) something like this happened, the hatred deepened.
Since I was already 16-years-old, I thought that I would rather my father handed me a one-lump-sum payment instead of the daily pocket money…I requested for a one-shot payment of RM150 (USD42.00) a month. He agreed but one month down the road, the RM150 (USD42.00) quickly turned into RM100 (USD28.00) a month. The meager RM100 (USD28.00) a month is definitely not enough and I could feel and smell trouble right up ahead.
True enough, one day, a sales person approached our home and told me that there is a big concern for the safety of those living in this home because there was something wrong with the gas stove. Concerned and in agreement, I paid her the RM50 (USD14.00) she asked for (out of the RM100 (USD28.00) my father gave me) as deposit, it was all I had left. When my father found out, he told me that I should return him RM50 (USD14.00). I couldn’t see the logic behind that because it should have been the other way around.
In rage, I refused my father. He called me a liar and rushed off to the company that the lady worked for and got the deposit back. Did he give the RM50 (USD14.00) back to me? No. He did not. Because of this incident, I am ashamed to admit that I was completely consumed with abhorrence; I am not proud to admit this but I did say I wanted to tell the truth so, here it is.
I made a pact with myself….if I work hard enough and managed to save enough money, I would buy him a coffin. In our culture, I don’t know about others, buying another person a coffin is equivalent to wishing that person ill-health and early death.
Anyway, surprisingly, by a miracle of some sort, I managed to save up a huge sum of RM2500 (USD700.00 – it is a lot of money back in those days…for a teenager). I had it all in my hands now and then remembered the pact. But was it worth it? Did I spend all that hard-earned money for a coffin? I searched inside of me for that anger that fueled the promise…but it was gone. In fact, it would have been rather stupid of me to work so hard for the money and to spend it on my father.
The RM100 (USD28.00) I got from my father was not enough for me because I lived quite a distance from school. The traveling meant that I had extra expenses that the monthly RM100 could not cover. I reverted back to my old habits of cheating. I told lies about having paid up the tuition fees, I cheated my friends and I cheated and cheated and cheated all I could so that I could have enough money to survive. Driven by only my instincts and no conscious, it was all that I knew I could do without begging or shaming myself or my family members.
Just like in a movie, it takes very little for things to snap around and suddenly, you see the big picture. It was like that for because one night, my father had asked money from me claiming that he wanted to get dinner for my younger sister. I handed him the money and waited, and waited….and waited. We waited till it was 3am in the morning by which time I was murderously mad. Not only was he willing to let my sister go hungry, he came home drunk.
I know it sounds dramatic but this is the truth, I felt a very strong urge to pick up a knife and plunge it into his heartless chest cavity. I bet my bottom dollar that there would be no heart inside his chest for me to stab into.
Lesson 4 : He that is soon angry dealeth foolishly: and a man of wicked devices is hated.
King James (Proverbs 14:17)
This is where positive-thinking comes into my life. No, we did not have seminars, talks, conferences, shows, how-to books and all that back then, but this was what I rode on to the next phase of my life.
The first acknowledgement is that….there is a serious problem revolving around my family…but more importantly, there was a problem with ME, the man in the mirror. I didn’t have the words for it back then but at the very least someone else did and her name was Ms Helena. She was a counselor in my Secondary School and she called it ‘depression’.
Through the many sessions with her, she prepared a detailed plan to help me release the anger and stress from my system but it wasn’t enough; she wanted me to see someone more professional. I agreed and headed off to Hospital Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (HUKM).
The initial feeling of happiness and relief that washed over me earlier dissipated little by little with each visit. The answer they gave me was….pills. There was no actual counseling per se because all they asked was how I felt and if I’ve recovered. If I said that I have not, then they would give me prescription drugs to keep the depression under control. No consultation was provided at all because in my mind, my head and heart was yearning for it, thinking that it would be the cure.
I went there all but three times and by the third visit, I was frustrated beyond words, so, when they asked me if I was alright, the insurgent side of me took over and told them that I was going to take my own life if they didn’t stop giving me the medication without any form of consultation.
It must have shocked the lot of them because they sent me straight to the Emergency Unit (EU). Did I get consultation then? No, sadly. I had a male nurse, though, but it didn’t count. In complete frustration, I issued a final blackmail in order to get consultation….I was REALLY going to kill myself. Not only did it not work, they prescribed me stronger medication….the depression must be really bad now, they must have thought.
I threw all the pills that they gave me away and they happily saw me off.
I knew I had to find the solution myself and I looked everywhere, including many motivational books. I was in the second year of my Business Degree from Northern University of Malaysia. Through reading, I found a solution because I felt so much more confident and informed in front my friends. I held my own whenever topics that I knew came up.
But it was also when ANOTHER problem cropped up. Due to the shadows of my parents’ divorce, I was afraid to talk to the opposite sex. No, let me rephrase that….I was afraid to fall in love.
Divorce is a bad idea. The divorcing couple is not the only two persons involved in the turmoil. Think of your children, they are the ones who would bear the brunt of brutality.
Lesson 5 :
6 But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.
7 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife;
8 And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.
9 What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
King James (Mark 10 : 6 – 9)
The problem was more serious that I thought it was because whenever my roommate went back to his hometown, I found myself cowering under the blanket after dinner until things were….safe. Regardless of whom it was that knocked on my door, I refused to answer. The shield that I formed around myself was literally impenetrable as I dove into more books to hide my insecurities. I comforted myself with the books, learned more and more so that I could parade the information in front of my friends.
Did it really solve the problem?
Not at all. Now, I know that the problem could not be solved until the moment Jesus Christ came into my life. I was a very industrious and an entrepreneurial person, even back them. I worked hard to earn and save money while working as an insurance agent with a local insurance company. Unfortunately for me, the company collapsed just as I graduated from the program.
Forming a company together with my friends did not materialize either because they were heading into the dark alleys of money laundering….it was something that I wasn’t very pleased with joining up with them for so I said ‘no’ to them.
Like a lightning strike, one fine day, a book struck me. The title of the book is ‘Jesus Christ – The Best Leadership in This World’. The book, I found, was placed under the ‘business’ section of the bookstore instead of the ‘religion’ section…which was odd. But it was, perhaps, God’s way of reaching out to me and lending me a hand because I got very curious about this ‘magnetic leader’.
I bought it, read it and a deep hunger for knowledge and more information gnawed at me and it grew like the lick of fire over wooden buildings. The hunger was quite insatiable. Through my request, another journey opened up to me because this was when my aunt started taking me with her to church.
This, my friends, is when the bigger part of my journey to finding myself and the Lord began.
Lesson 6 : For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
King James (John 3:16)
Continue to After Accepting Jesus Christ
