Some stories take time to tell. Some memories sit quietly in the heart until God gives them purpose. This is not my whole story, but it is part of the story God has been writing in me—a story of loss, longing, healing, and discovering the Father I had been searching for all along.
A Childhood Marked by Absence
I was two and a half years old when my father divorced my mother and left. My twin brother and I were too young to understand what had happened, but his absence left a space I carried for years. I grew up moving from village to village in Cameroon, watching my mother endure rejection, hardship, and grief while still trying to care for us.
There were places where we were not welcomed and seasons when love felt far away. Even as a child, I noticed the pain in my mother’s eyes. I remember crying when she cried, trying in my own small way to comfort her. Those early years taught me that a person can be surrounded by people and still feel unwanted.
Growing Up Between Worlds
At nine, I started school. A year later, I moved to the capital city to live with my aunt, and that is where I met the woman I now call my grandmother. I arrived from the village speaking only Kom, my native language. School was confusing, humbling, and sometimes funny. I was older than many of the children in my class, and being called “grandmother” was not funny then, though I can smile about it now.
God was already making room for me. He gave me a mind for calculations, and by the end of my first term, I came second in class. Education became one way God reminded me that my beginning did not have to define my ending.
The Ache for a Father
Through my teenage years, I longed for a father. When friends talked about their fathers, something inside me hurt. I wanted to be treasured, protected, corrected with love, and chosen. I wanted someone to stay.
God placed people in my life who helped shape me, especially my grandmother and my uncle. My grandmother and I had to learn each other. We came from different cultures, misunderstood one another, hurt one another, and slowly learned how to forgive, laugh, and love. My uncle was firm and sometimes difficult for me to understand, but looking back, I can see that both of them helped rescue me in different ways.
The Prayer That Changed Everything
At sixteen, after years of wishing for a father, I lay on a bed and spoke to God. I told him I had heard about his love. I told him I wanted to change but did not know how. Then I asked him the question that had been living in my heart: “Lord, I do not have a father. Can you please be my Father?”
That was the day I found my Father. I did not change overnight, and the journey was not easy. I experienced spiritual battles, fear, and nightmares. But as I called out to God, he met me. He rescued me. He surrounded me with light where darkness had tried to remain.
What I Know Now
At eighteen, I fully gave my life to God. I began to understand that the love I had been searching for could not be fully supplied by any human being. God became the Father who did not leave, the One who knew me completely and loved me still.
He has taught me to love my family, to see people with compassion, and to carry a burden for children who feel forgotten. There are many children walking through life without anyone to remind them that they matter. I know what that ache feels like, and I believe God is calling me to love others with the love he first gave me.
If You Feel Forgotten
If you feel unloved, abandoned, ashamed, or unseen, I want you to know that God has not forgotten you. There is a place inside each of us that only he can fill. People may disappoint us. Life may wound us. The world may tell us our worth depends on success, beauty, money, status, or approval. But God speaks a better word over us: loved.
Call out to him. He will meet you in your pain, walk with you through your healing, and fill the empty places with a love that does not fail. That is the love that found me, and that is the love I pray you come to know too.
Goody'Nglish 