The story of filling the hole in my heart

I had a huge hole in my heart which no peg seemed to fill.

I tried them all. Square pegs, circular ones. The ones of self righteousness, and doing all the right things, being ultra religious and denying the very existence of God. Being the coolest kid, the nerdyest one, the most obedient one. I tried intoxicating my soul, and using drugs to silence the pain, money to fill the void and friends to keep the loneliness away. Nothing worked.

I was the boy character in C.S.Lewis’s “Voyager of the down trodden”. I had been transfigured in to a dragon. In order to turn in to a human, I needed to trust someone else to pull my ugly skin away. I could not do so myself.

And then, I found rest.

Have you ever lost your keys, and looked for them at every spot other than where they are? Your eyes glazed over them until a kindred soul slapped you upside the head and pointed straight to them? That is my story….

This is my story….the hardest battle I ever fought… against myself.

My story begins in a city in Pakistan in a typical muslim family. That is where my struggle with God started as well.

I wanted to punch God as a child! We did not get along at all! He came across like this snoopy character that was out to get me. Anything I did, He was supposedly watching me. He also had 2 sneaky angels sitting on my shoulders, documenting every good and bad deed I did. As a 6 year old I decided to beat God in his own game. I started carrying a notebook around and noting all my good and bad deeds. I remember it being super exhausting.

I started hating God when I turned nine. All of a sudden, more rules were applicable to me than my heart could bear. I could no longer hang out with friends because they were boys, couldn’t watch my favorite cartoon because it was always during prayers time and was so hungry during fasting. The list of to do’s, out of obligation were very burdensome, and didn’t make any sense at all. And the whole time, all I felt was a sense of hopelessness, like no matter what I do, it is a loosing battle. I was struggling for freedom.

The God I knew allowed for discrimination. It was all works based. I saw the poor and under privileged mistreated, non Muslims compared to animals, and women considered second class citizens. The day when I saw an angry mob beat up a christian guy because he touched the quran (he is considered unclean), I gave up on God.

Life in the United States presented another turn in my life. I decided to give God a chance, blaming all the ugliness I saw in my past on culture. Joined the mosque in town, started doing activities with them. It never did give me peace. Falsehood, ugliness and pettiness kept on rearing their ugly heads.

The last straw was when I detected a pattern between what I had seen in the past and my present group. It was all so shallow, all in a race to beat the other, all trying to win this competition of doing more things for God. It was about business transactions rather than worship. We were all hypocrites, pretending to be so perfect. It was not a cultural thing. It was the result of wrong teachings. I gave up on God.

Life without trying to impress a God, or believing in him was pretty fun at first. Everything started going well. I started hanging out in the cool “non religious” circles, believing that this life was it! Greed and money became the driving forces. I was angry and seeking revenge against all the characters in my past.

However, I still did not have peace, rest or comfort. I was living a life of dichotomy.

I started to hang out with a friend who had different opinions on life. She followed this other God who was about love, and caring and forgiveness. Her relationships were different, it was almost as if she had wisdom of generations, was guided by a super natural “spirit”. It was no longer about buying a spot in heaven; it was about worshipping God because he deserved it.

My friend invited me to attend this bible study at work. Initially it was an intellectual exercise, but soon it became more than that. Things which had previously seemed weak to me, such as praying and asking a higher power for help, being open and honest around each other and interpreting verses became important. The day I was convinced that the Christian God was not the same God as the Muslim God (different characteristics), I decided to search for this “New God”.

Lots of searching, questions and tantrums followed. It was all super uncomfortable. I did not want to abandon my “so assumed” freedoms. I started having night mares and sleepless nights and restlessness, as if I needed to make the most important decision of my life. Nothing I tried, no drugs, no amounts of alcohol, or “intellectual” books could shut these voices down. Life in this limbo was wearing on me; and I was getting hopeless. I was fighting social pressures, the dreaded thought of hurting my family and friends if I told them that I was abandoning the faith they had held on for generations, and scared of being abandoned by everyone and being more alone than ever. I hated those days.

Ultimately however, it was not my choice. It sounds weird but I felt this change in me. One I could not define. The more I studied about this stuff, and read books, and heard lectures, I started to kind of like this God. He did not seem like someone I would want to punch. More like someone I would want to hang out with and talk to. The bible had more wisdom in it, than all the books I had ever read put together! I met some folks who were really in love with Jesus, who did not claim to be “religious” but were actually trying to follow his life style. My entire moral, religious life outlook was crumbling before my very eyes.

I went offshore around that time, and it was different. I felt so sad and exhausted initially, just wanted to give up this entire responsibility to someone, someone smarter than me. Who cared about me more than I did. It was then I realized that I just needed to trust God. I didn’t know what the future held at that time, but that I needed to give over the reigns of life into His hands. My brain knew this, but once my heart realized it, things were different. I was no longer scared or sad or lonely. I felt a little bit more whole and complete.

Lots of things have happened since then which have kind of strengthened my conviction. I have had the best times ever with friends, when I have felt acceptance and love beyond belief. The burden of proving myself through actions has been lifted. I have had epiphanies which I know are beyond my brain’s grasp, and had the courage to stand up for things I know I couldn’t have alone. I will never forget. The day when I officially prayed to God about how I realized that I was messing up continually and asked for his forgiveness and grace, at a park, in a car with my mentor.

I won’t say that it has all been great since then. I struggle every day, and have become even more aware of the sickness in my soul. I have become more sensitive to stuff I would have usually shoved under the table, and though the happiness is happier, the sadness is sadder. I have caused people who care for me lots of pain with this decision and regret that every day. I have become aware of how my actions which hurt others, and that itself is painful. I have lost about 99% of my friends because we can no longer do the activities we previously used to perform; we no longer live in the same universes. Some of the rules still offend me, I am yet to reconcile everything with God, but now it is no longer a battle. It is more of acceptance of the fact that my intelligence is not able to grasp everything, that things which I want to do may not be the best for me, that I can actually trust God. It is no longer the burden of obligation, but the labor of love. There are actually more “tough” things I feel convicted to do, a different way I want to constantly act (as a representative of Jesus) than any of the legalistic rules I witnessed in the past. Instead of physical and public 5 times daily prayers, it is more about a continual mode of living. I feel more drawn to give and share and contribute to those not as blessed, not because it is my duty, but because I was actually given so much grace by God that He forgave me.

I think that God is finally pulling my dragon skin away. As the boy said in C.S.Lewis’ book says “The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was jut the pleasure of feeling the stuff peels off. Then he caught hold of me and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again. . . .”

I don’t think that all the pain is gone yet, but it is getting better.

Slowly I think, the hole in my heart is getting filled.