Ask and you shall receive?

By William ~

"Dear God, please grant me a brother or sister and a loving father."

This was my prayer for every single day of my life in my elementary years.

I had to learn the hard, painful, unnecessary way that the answer was a flat out "no".

Back when I was grade one, I wanted a sibling more than anything else. Unfortunately, my father wasn't around to breed another child with my mother. Whenever I told my mom about this, she would just shrug it off and say, "You just want a playmate". Sure, I did have friends who I liked to hang around with, but I still wanted a sibling. Despite not fully understanding my feelings, my mom together with me prayed about it. My biological father never lived with us, and when I was told that he wasn't married with mom, I suddenly felt like I was left out from the other kids. Not only that, it was very natural for a child to desire for both parents to be around. Having memories with my father is something I've missed out in my childhood. Imagine all those graduation ceremonies when he was completely missing from the pictures. Imagine him not actually giving a shit about us except when he gives a little gift whenever he thinks of visiting us. Imagine having to fill all those application forms leaving most of the information blank on the father's part.

Imagine never hearing the words "I love you" come straight out of his mouth. Ever. I indeed missed and am missing what is "normal" in a family.

At the back of my mind, I was hopeful that God would someday grant me a "complete" family. I waited. I waited so long until my patience started burning out little by little. Neither a sibling nor a father came. At all. I remember that those were the times when I sank into a mild depression for the first time in my life.

My mom tried to console me, but what she said to me didn't help. Once she read to me those verses in the book of Job where God was saying "Who are you to question me? Are you the one who created the world?". I hated this answer the most, but I pretended to accept it.

Years passed.

I didn't want to go to church during Father's day. I knew I was supposed to get over it already, but that wasn't the case. I hated seeing people who had loving, caring, FAITHFUL fathers. Why the heck did I have to be part of the unlucky batch? The worst that happened occured only recently when we moved to a new church, and during that time I already deconverted from Christianity but told no one. The pastor was talking about how many criminals grew up in fatherless homes and I couldn't bear it any longer. Then he said something along the lines of "You may not have your earthly father, but up in heaven is your almighty father". This made me SO angry. I could not ACCEPT THIS as an answer. Okay, so my earthly father is already a jerk, and you tell me that your abusive, egocentric, fear-mongering, narcissistic, "heavenly" father loves me. What can be more insulting than that? I was already hurt knowing that I'll never experience any father figure in my life. Please, prove me your invisible nonexistent daddy is way better than my father who never actually attempted to abuse me the way God did it.

I used to even wonder why I was born in the first place when I couldn't even be given something that an "all-powerful" God could give. Something I actually NEEDED. The scenes of my mom fucking up in her relationships played over and over again in my mind, with her ending with "There is no love compared to Christ". Well, is it why "there are no more good men"? I hated that this stupid belief was used to make up for all the pain she's been through instead of learning to love herself.

I used to even wonder why I was born in the first place when I couldn't even be given something that an "all-powerful" God could give. Something I actually NEEDED.All those "God will provide" bullshit don't help at all. I mean, it would be better if my mom had a nice job instead of others to depend on. If only my mom would get to realize that she needs to take action instead of depending on some invisible being on what she needs to do next. It would have been better if I were aborted and went straight to heaven. No, I still needed to go through this agony to fulfill God's plan. It's useless for God to let me stay here anyway because he is supposed to know I'll leave the faith someday. Oh wait, isn't he supposed to laugh at me while I burn in hell?

"You just need to trust that his plan will be the best for you" Christians would say. What a load of baloney. This "plan" in the end, is to glorify his ego. No points for me. So I'm told to suck it up for now because there's going to be paradise when I die anyway. If this plan was the "best", why did I have to go through a spiral of self-loathing, depression, and meaninglessness?

Spoiler: the opposite happened when I deconverted.

I left Christianity back in 2018, and I swear that I felt much, much better than when I was a Christian. I was able to manage my mental health because I wasn't being constantly told to trust God's ways and not my "sinful" ways. My dad still isn't around, and no siblings for me at all. Well, I guess that needed to happen for me to realize that God doesn't answer all prayers no matter how good they may be, even though he is supposedly powerful enough to make things happen. It was ridiculous to be asking for something over and over and not get it because God says it isn't right (but he still wants you to pray! Wow!). I learned that my prayer for a father and sibling was just as valid as a prayer for curing amputees. Yet apparently, people still praise God for letting him find their car keys.

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