The Parent Trap

I didn’t see my dad much when I was growing up, but I still counted myself sort of lucky.


If you know exactly who your dad is, never saw him hit your mom, never saw him waste away in a drunken stupor right before your eyes, always knew that he would make sure none of you starved to death and that he looked so mysteriously cool and aloof all the time that you could tell everybody that he’s a secret agent (and they’d believe you), you were like me… Lucky. You just couldn’t count on him for much else though.

He had a wife and kids when he met my mom, left them to be with her (to bring me into this world) then recently met someone else and now he’s gone. Pretty simple, if you look at it like that. Just a string of broken homes in the wake of one man’s pursuit of happiness.

These days, more and more young people just like me, find themselves staring point blank in the face of the scariest thing since being a teenager… Being a teenager with broken parents. Whether they’re constantly at each other’s throats, they’re separated, they’re filing for divorce, one of them has an addiction or has to serve jail time, your whole world seems to fall apart because only then do you realize how much of it they really held up.

It’s always good to talk to someone about it, but at the time, I really hated talking about it with people like Chloe, whose parents were so happily married. I couldn’t help visiting them all the time though. It’s a lot like being on the Cosby show and all the characters got replaced. It kept me from thinking that all marriages are doomed to fail and that disorder was the new natural order of the 21st century.

Take it from a girl whose been there, done that, got the t-shirt and sold it. The most ALPHA way to handle the situation is to:

1. Understand that this is not a declaration of war amongst family members. Know exactly what it is you’re fighting and I’m telling you it’s not your mother or father, it’s their problem. (Ephesians 6:10-17)

2. When you can’t find it anywhere else, the best comfort is in the Lord. (Psalm 121)

3. It may be difficult (and trust me I know) but you still need to honor your parents because strife and enmity works against you in the end. It’s like you gulping down the poison and expecting your enemy to drop dead. (Ephesians 6:2-3)

4. Decide that you will learn from this and then cut off whatever the issue is from occurring in your own family one day by deciding to do things completely differently. Don’t live out the same tragedy that scarred your childhood in your adulthood because these are the makings of generational bondages, legacies of pain and a heritage of misfortune. You have been set apart. You are a new creation. You are ALPHA. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

5. Know that you WILL get through this and you will come out of the other end better than you were when you came in! (Romans 8:37-39)

Chloe’s Testimony

In the year 1996, I got saved. I was four years old.


I was a pastor’s kid and my parents taught me how to live life according to the word of God and biblical principles, but at the age of thirteen, I began to question this life that my parents MADE me live. Slowly but surely, I started sliding away from those Godly principles.

Now don’t get it twisted. I didn’t go emo; I didn’t drink nor smoke, nor get tempted to do so. The only weakness my faith had came when a boy called Ray came into my life and I thought I was completely in love, that we were going to have kids and get married and have the good life. But turns out, that was far from what really happened. He ended up backsliding and I just watched in disbelief that he was so far from the cool boy I once knew. I wasn’t exactly heartbroken or anything, I was more confused as to why I was here, what I was going to become, and who would love me.

At that stage in my life, I had insecurities that ruled me almost completely. I had braces; I had glasses and didn’t exactly look like a model. So I thought: “now what?” and answered: “let’s live!” So that’s where all the chips fell.

Again, don’t get it twisted. I wasn’t having sex, drinking, or smoking, but I was fooling around and having what the world would call a “good time”.

In the year 2008, I kissed too many guys to even remember. Guys from church, malls, restaurants… I just look back at it all and think: “what the heck?!” Anyway, it got to a point where I looked for them and found them obviously waiting for a girl like me to come and “entertain” their lives.

Then in October 2008, I met a girl named Lindi and we “clicked”. We claimed to be BFF (Best Friends Forever) practically from day one. She was one of those cute, innocent people I happened to have met. I didn’t think she was, I don’t know… a girl with so much baggage! I also met her “man” at the time… We shall call him “Letter D”. Oh Lord, help me now. He was cool, saved, tall, black as coal, but apparently “very sweet”. Then I found out that these two were not as close as they led on… They were closer. Yes folks, intimate close.

Now all this was happening while I was strung out on this dude called “Letter W” and I was a hot worldly mess, to be honest. No tears, just thoughts of worthlessness and chronic depression. My friends would help, particularly Lindi, but I knew something had to change. I knew kissing random guys was wrong, especially if it was three guys in a day!

One day, during our holidays in March, Lindi and I got into our first fight. My dad’s church was having a youth gathering that weekend (a slumber party) and I went without her. Unfortunately, I was not prepared for what was going to happen next. Ray was there, and in my vulnerable state, he decided that he was going to toy with me, and he did so very well, initially to a point of rage and then to a point of brokenness. I hit rock bottom.

My parents and I were fighting. My friend and I were fighting. My ex and I were done. My God and I were completely out of sync. And I knew I felt empty.

Then this guy from our youth wanted us all to pray for some silly reason, something about Rihanna and her “evilness”. So we started praying. I didn’t feel like praying, but I dug deep for the energy. Ray was a part of our prayer circle, so I avoided all eye contact and looked up to God. As I opened my mouth and prayed in the spirit, I wept like I’ve never wept before and dropped to my knees. God had unplugged my drain and was letting all that pain and anguish flow right out of me. Then I sang for the first time in tongues and when our youth leader translated it, it said: “Lord, deliver us. Lord, come.”

When I looked at the clock, it was 2am on Easter Sunday. God had changed my life, my heart, my mindset, within just two hours of sincerely seeking His face and surrendering it all to Him. From then on, to this very day, I’ve been on fire for God.

Signed, an apostle’s child.

Lindi’s Testimony

I wouldn’t say that we were completely atheist or anything (and most people would call this normal), but my parents’ reality has always been based on practical logic. In other words, I was taught that the only faith you’ll ever need to have is in your own works and nothing else. That’s what promoted you. That’s what got you somewhere and made you a somebody.

The only people who were on a different wavelength altogether were people like poor old Grandma, who walked through the icy-cold grip of winter and the glaring heat of summer on a dusty little township dirt road to sit for hours in a church while some delirious preacher cried out about things I’d never seen in my whole twelve years of life. I was perfectly convinced that I would never let anything that silly get to my head. Not unless I knew for sure that it was all real and Grandma’s God proved it to me Himself.

Then when I was in high school, there was a boy I wouldn’t give the time of day for how he spoke of preaching the gospel to the nations and he was supposed to somehow put the fear of God in me. A boy I resented for those silly verses he offered as a solution when I was down. The boy I ridiculed when he told me that I was fearfully and wonderfully made, through the awkward zits and flat-chested phase when nobody seemed to noticed me. The boy who remained a friend when everybody hated who I was becoming, with all the dodgy company I kept and the even dodgier things I did to keep it. In truth, I hated myself for being a stranger to myself.

It took him five years, but by the end of high school, we were planning a wedding and I was so desperate to walk down that aisle that I was willing to fall pregnant just so he would marry me before he lost interest.

But when broken and purposeless united with saved but willing to do anything to fit in, it culminated in the most jaw-dropping backslide on his part and utter despair on mine, because I believed that I was the reason that the little light I once saw in him began to dwindle and disappear into the same darkness that I was in. We were both searching for way more than the other could possibly offer… Wholeness.

As I was walking home from school one day, I noticed that a shady character had been following me for quite some time. I knew that I was in trouble when I found myself running for my life on the lonely stretch of road that pointed towards my home. Then a car suddenly stopped in front of me and a lady that I had never met before offered to take me home. Surprisingly, we lived in the exact same neighborhood and she was on her way from church. She was one of those praying women. She introduced me to a girl named Chloe who lived right next door to her.

Now an apostle’s daughter, whose parents were sent from America to minister here in Africa by God Himself, couldn’t be more different to little old me… But in the desire for a real encounter with God and a real answer to the questions: “Why am I here and why do I feel like something is missing in me”, we were exactly the same. Now that I think about it, the day I met that girl was a Divine Appointment. It took only a few weeks of hanging out with her before I started convincing my boyfriend to re-connect with God again before it’s too late. Little did I know, that it meant we would have to break up before any of us could do that. Little did I know, that I would be sneaking out of bathroom windows to attend church services because my parents had concluded that I was stark raving mad. I let go of everything I knew and practically dared God everyday to take notice.

By April 2009, God answered that prayer and I knew that without a shadow of a doubt, I would never be the same again. Nothing ever would.

It’s not really about what was preached that Sunday that convinced me to accept Jesus Christ as my personal savior, but when I first believed, nothing was more real to me at that moment than feeling everything that ever tormented me begin to lift from my shoulders and nothing else remained but the sweetest calm sweeping over me.

It’s been exactly a year now since that day and it’s still happening. If you’re truly willing to diligently seek His face in all honesty, just as you are, it can happen to you too. That’s a promise.