Take it from me, in many ways that I have come to understand and accept, that may even be beyond what I understand; in ways that I may never understand and may never be able to explain, I am a dysfunctional adult, who found God’s grace to fight and win my many battles of life.

What I lose to my dysfunctionality or dysfunctional state is unquantifiable…Take if from me, I am not a normal human being and it is not a cliche…Daily, I carry the cross of my truncated childhood…As I advance in age and understand how this life works, I continue to discover that the foundation of my dysfunctional adulthood was laid and solidify in childhood…My fate, having been sealed in childhood in the hands of unschooled, but sincere caregivers, who were themselves victims of their own childhood, I arrived at adulthood totally unprepared for the enormous responsibilities thereof…

20 years ago, I encountered Christ and began to learn on the job of being an adult… I hope we know that any time someone tells you he/she is learning on the job, someone is paying the school fees. I, with the help of Christ have been paying the school fees of learning on the job of life and I tell you my dear friends, no school fees can be more expensive anywhere in this whole wide world than this…The curriculum is also a very difficult one, if not seemingly impossible…It is mainly to unlean the programs installed by truncated childhood and reinstall the serenity of spirit,
sanity of mind and innocence of intent, which were gratuitously bestowed on me by my perfect Maker…

I have been in the laboratory of change in the last 20 years, a sacrificial and self-inducted guinea pig, trying to cooperate with God to undo the impact of wrong upbringing… It has been a great work and walk with the Lord and these days, I hear Him whisper to me that MY STRENGTH IS MADE PERFECT IN YOUR WEAKNESS…

Why does He say this to me? It is because He recognises that the impact of an abused childhood is eternal. His intervention only helps the one who carries the cross of abused childhood to be all that He created him/her to be despite the cross he/she carries…The one who carries the cross of abused childhood must first find Him and accept the albatross laid on him/her by his/her childhood before he/she can access this help…Many are today, who never find my Lord and many are, who find Him but never bring themselves to acknowledge the damage done to their humanity from childhood and therefore remains in Him and with Him but never seek His help in the dimension, I explained above.

What is the basis of my reasoning in the foregoing paragraph? Well, I think from my personal experience and careful study of God’s value system, He did not create any man or woman to experience childhood abuse or any form of abuse at all…Imagine that when by injury a mark is made on the body of a person that such mark can never disappear, irrespective of the expertise of the one who treated it…As it is with the physical body, so it is with the soul of man, the seat of his mind, will and emotion… Once it is tampered with negatively, the scars are forever…The best of therapy is not designed to return an abused man or woman to status quo ante…It is designed to help man to make the best of his/her existence despite the impact of his/her childhood abuses… There is no emotional intelligence promptings that can replace damaged emotions from childhood…There are no spare parts to replace damaged emotions, truncated self esteemed and lost personal identity…It is only in God that there help and it is gradual…As it takes time for physical wounds to heal, it takes more time for inner wounds to first be properly diagnosed and begin to heal… Matters of the heart are often deep matter whether unto joy or unto sorrow…I guess that is why the Holy Writ says, ‘each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can share its joy.’ Proverbs 14: 10

It is my irresistible conclusion that any solution to human problem, irrespective of its category, which doesn’t take into cognisance his/her childhood experiences will never be complete…We are today a sum total of all that our childhood offered us…That is why I say, ‘childhood is forever.’
Who we are today is our psychology and the author and the finisher of our psychology is our socialization. Thus I often say ‘socialization is superior to psychology.’ Yet we have so much respect and concern for what people do and how they bless or hurt us but we have little or no concern for how they were raised or erased…What a classical case of a world burried in its own self-inflicted illusions, demanding from itself what it did not invest in and seeking rigorously to reap where it has not sown or the futility of hoping not to reap what it has sown…

This is the world in which the dysfunctional Preacher lives and tries to make sense of the mess created by his truncated childhood. As The Preacher, looking face to face at age 50 and embarks on another pilgrimage of seeking meaning and bringing the impact of a troubled childhood under yet more control, attending yet another destiny fixing meeting in the mountains of Colorado Springs, United States of America, he remain sober and resolute that no child shall be abused under his watch…

He remains resolute that the greatest gift our world can give to a child is to preserve his/her childhood…In fact, it is the greatest gift we can give to humanity, now and yet unborn…His story remains his greatest motivation…

Do have an INSPIRED day…

I am Taiwo AKINLAMI, The Preacher, sober and reporting from the place of pilgrimage and spiritual retreat. Do have an INSPIRED week.

C) 2017 by Taiwo ‘ODINAKACHUKWU’ AKINLAMI (The Preacher) All Rights Reserved T: 2348033620843, 08056979605 W: http://www.taiwoakinlami.com B: http://www.taiwoakinlamiblog.com T: @taiwoakinlami