₦airaland Forum

,
,

. THe spirit is tormenting her. You see yourself. That you are always going around trying to disprove the existence of God shows how much torment you go through for your perfidy.

Chris Keith was 12 years old when he learned his family didn't die in a car wreck.
His father suffocated his mother and then shot Chris' 8-year-old brother, Mikey, in the back of the head while he slept, his grandparents explained.
The elderly couple had taken the boy to a counselor. As they told him the real story of what happened, they pulled out newspaper clippings from October 1985.
Chris had begun to wonder about the scars on his own head, and he had pieced together other clues from the past. Yet he'd never known the full truth. His grandparents then told him the hardest news of all. Before his father killed himself, he put the .38-caliber handgun to Chris' head and pulled the trigger.

Medics had declared everyone in the house dead, including Chris.
Now 30, Chris Keith visits church youth groups and juvenile justice centers to tell his story. A Christian, he believes God had a plan for him and that's why he survived.
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Headlines occasionally bring back terrible memories, like the recent case in South Carolina where a mother is accused of suffocating her two boys before putting them in their car seats and letting the car roll into a river. When he hears stories like that, especially when a child survives, he bows his head and prays.
At 12, Chris grappled with the impossible: How could my father do something so evil?
"It was almost like going through it again. I started feeling all these feelings again, of anger, of betrayal, of feeling like nobody wanted me. I was angry at the world, and mad at my grandparents for waiting so long to tell me.
"I was mad at my dad. Mad at my mom for taking him back so many times."
Memories flooded back. He recalled being in the hospital, staring at the door. "I was waiting for my mother to walk through or for my brother to come in and say, 'Hey, everything's going to be OK. We're going to get out of here soon.' "
Now, he tells struggling youth that they're not alone in this world. "Even when we feel we have no inner strength left, you can make it," he says.
I have a second chance in life, and I just want to make the most of it.
--Chris Keith
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After he was shot in the head, he crawled to his brother's bed and saw that his beloved brother was dead, he says, citing the coroner's report of the massacre. Bloodied with a hole in his head, Chris then crawled toward the doorway as if he was trying to find his mother.
It was there that a medic saw him move, ever so slightly, after he'd already been pronounced dead. A video from the scene shows a first responder emerge from the front door. "We've got one alive in here!"
"I didn't want to give up," he says. "I firmly believe Jesus had his hands on me, saying, 'Somebody is going to come for you.' "
He says he doesn't know why he survived, while his mother and brother died. He's struggled with that over the years: "What if my brother survived and I didn't?"
Those are questions he'll never be able to answer. "I just know that my life was saved," he says. "Doctors don't know why I'm alive. , I have a second chance in life, and I just want to make the most of it and maybe help others who are internally suffering."
Yet, it took years -- and lots of counseling -- to reach this point. He turned into a recluse in middle school and high school. Sometimes, he'd lay in bed all night, unable to sleep, "just thinking." He was the kid who just wanted to get through to the next day.
"It's crazy to think about -- those incidents were something that my dad did," he says. "My own dad tried to kill me, so who am I supposed to trust?"
Sometimes he struggled with guilt -- feeling it somehow was his fault. "I was always searching for things that I could have done."
Once, somebody asked him: Are you afraid you're going to go crazy like your dad?
"It just hit me really hard, and I don't want to be like that."
He carried a newspaper clipping about the killings in his wallet. At 14, he showed it to his youth minister. Tears rolled down the preacher's face as he read.
"It was amazing to me because I had never seen a man cry before," he says. "It made me realize somebody cared about me."
Chris' best friend walked in at that moment. Handed the article, he too began crying.
Chris credits his youth minister and his best friend, as well as his grandparents and his church, with helping him get through. In them, he could see that "not everybody is as selfish as my dad was. And that helped me cope."
When he would lock himself in his room, he'd often listen to music. The lyrics of one song resonated: "Do not let the world get you down and remember that a bright shiny day comes after the rain. It is going to get better."
"I just clung to that," he says.
He married young -- at 19. "I was longing for a family. That's just something I wanted."
He and his wife celebrated their 10th anniversary this year.
If you need proof that good can come from evil, he says, all you have to do is look at his own son, 6-year-old Dylan.
He says he constantly tells his boy "I love you" and holds him tight. When he sees his boy playing, he sometimes thinks, "Man, how could my dad do that?"
Chris now works at a long-term care pharmacy in Fort Worth, Texas. He's working on getting a degree in computer engineering and maintains his own blog.
He's got many goals in life. At the top of the list: "To not end up like my dad."
"I just want to try my best to see others make it.

Hey MOds, please consider putting this on the homepage so that people that are abroad but do not regularly visit the religion section can contribute.

Why is IK Uche not on the list? Is he injured? He is the best Nigerian striker since Shegzy.

Cest nepa intereste

Mine went way down. I really do not know why. A few days after I arrived I was already smooching. The made me feel like I had really disappointed God, so I refused to ask for forgiveness. I felt like God had refused to help me to overcome sin. I kept going to church and kept praying but I was without the spirit. After some time I stopped being motivated to read my bible or pray or go to church, so I stopped altogether. All attempts at spiritual revival have been unproductive. Sometimes when I think the tide is about to turn for spiritual revival, I am overcome with emotion and I cry but the revival either does not come or does not last. I have now almost lost all hope of finding my way back to the God I used to know. I am beginning to doubt that I knew the real God and starting to convince myself that I have to rediscover a new God who is mush easier to worship/serve. Unfortunately, I now feel like there has to be a major catastrophe in my life for there to be any chance for me retrace my steps for my state of spiritual atrophy. One testimony I have been able to hold on to though is that of baptism in the holy spirit: there is no science that can explain speaking in tongues.

Does any one have similar experiences?

What happened to you after you left home?

How did you overcome or not overcome it?

What does the future look like?

Do you also think you have to rediscover God after getting to Oyinbo land?

Maybe your pops just wasn't very good at it. Why is that Nigeria's fault, or didn't others succeed in that same environment? Businesses fail EVERYWHERE in the world, not just in Nigeria. My dad also lost his job. Luckily he'd saved enough to afford a new life in the US.

@ROSSIKE

Since you cannot eschew insults, its pointless talking to you.

@OThers

I am enjoying the exchange of ideas. I will come back to post my thoughts.

[flash=200,200]http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2010/08/27/purefoy.nigeria.witches3.cnn?hpt=C2[/flash]
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2010/08/27/purefoy.nigeria.witches3.cnn?hpt=C2

Our people are at it again. Notice how the commissioner is more concerned with protecting Akwa -Ibom's image than with the welfare of the children. How do we get ourselves out of this mess?

^^^^^

Haba aunty, I no get disorder ooh. I dey Kampe.

And I am beginnnig to learn to take NL less seriously. Thanks for the advice.

And as for the original poster, I think you're a complete disgrace, although I don't really blame you, since you picked up your inferiority complex and self hatred from other so-called Nigerians.

I had your attitude many many years ago when I lived in the US. There I met a Liberian guy at a party, who'd just fled the civil war there. We began discussing outside the gig. He asked me about Nigeria. I began insulting the country, almost without thinking. Just a stream of negativities, The guy was shocked and looked at me in horror. ''How can you speak like that about your country''? he asked. He said Liberia was a total wreck, having fled from civil war, but he could never speak of his country with such disdain.

I felt so little - me, a pampered middle class Nigerian who'd benefitted from some of the best services an African country could offer its citizens, from a good education at a Federal govt college, to well paid parents living the Nigerian Dream, with two cars and a duplex + househelps, and the odd summer trip to London, and here I was being lectured on love for my country by a guy who was fleeing civil war and societal breakdown of a kind I couldn't imagine.

From that day, I began to love Nigeria, and will always thank God for Nigeria, and pray for its continued progress come what may, and highlight, when speaking to foreigners especially, the beauty and generosity of its people, and the mighty potential of the country.

First of all, the insults are unnecessary.

Second, from reading your reply, I sense that we have very different experiences and perceptions of Nigeria. While your parents were living the Nigerian Dream and living in duplexes, buying cars etc, my father went down form being a a Director at one of the best advertising agencies to runnig a private practice that never showed signs of taking off. With his former job went all his dreams and promises of "American and British education" to his children. To feed per day became a really big problem. While your were thinking about going on vacation abroad, my mother was thinking of what other job to apply to or what other business to set up, since almost every other business had failed due to NEPA etc. To pay school fees became a major financial problem etc. So from my own perspective, my instincts and most ready memeory about Nigeria are negative. And that is why those are the first stories I recall whenever I am asked about my country.

@ Mama-gee

What does that mean?

What are some of the products of your initiative?

Abi oo. I go dey take am easy in the future.

@Ileke-Ido

We will also remember you in our prayers. All the enemies that have used your brain and ability to makes sensible statements for dinner in their witchcraft covens, may they fall down and die. Unfortunately, if these prayer is answered, they will be punished but you will still have no brain. O mase ooh. What a pity. This life is wicked. See what they have done to Ileke-Ido. Despite all the money and parental care lavished on her, look at how she has become a candidate for the psychiatric hospital at Yaba Left. This life is really wicked. Ileke-Ido, please despite the pain of knowing you will never be able to make sense in your life again, pity mankind and also extinguish your gene pool. Abeg have mercy on us and don't procreate. Thank you. We will continue to pray for you, peradventure by divine intervention you will regain some grains of what used to be your brain. But it is going to be tough.

@Ileke-Ido

We will also remember you in our prayers. All the enemies that have used your brain and ability to makes sensible statements for dinner in their witchcraft covens, may they fall down and die. Unfortunately, if these prayer is answered, they will be punished but you will still have no brain. O mase ooh. What a pity. This life is wicked. See what they have done to Ileke-Ido. Despite all the money and parental care lavished on her, look at how she has become a candidate for the psychiatric hospital at Yaba Left. This life is really wicked. Ileke-Ido, please despite the pain of knowing you will never be able to make sense in your life again, pity mankind and also extinguish your gene pool. Abeg have mercy on us and don't procreate. Thank you. We will continue to pray for you, peradventure by divine intervention you will regain some grains of what used to be your brain. But it is going to be tough.

Thank you for the encouragement, sista.

Lol

I was just saying rubbish there. I don't even remember what I was trying to say.

o you want to be pampered by the very Nigerians you have been badmouthing? What an incredible plonker! No, I have no kind words for your wretched type.

You were just born a fool and you are the type that makes life abroad difficult for your fellow Nigerians, all because you are a micro di *k whose knee's knock so hard at the sight of white people, that you forget who you are and where you are from.
When you are instictively slagging off Nigeria, you forget that your friends, parents, brothers, sisters and other loved ones are Nigerians, or perhaps they mean nothing to you, so you open your fcking sewer and let garbage flow freely. Well, there’s got to be tons of garbage in your soul for it to erupt that easily from your mouth.

People like you go abroad and become weak kneed low lives that spit on their own country for the cheapest white puzzay or a nickel. They frame and scheme against their fellow blacks to prove to white passersby that they “belong,” regardless of the cost to the black person and the family.

You know why Nigeria has a bad name? It because there are thousands of motherfckers like you, running around town and slagging off. You live in the UK so you must have come across “legal” magazines like exchange and mart that are packed to the brim with scams; yet you will never come across a Briton that will confess to a Nigerian about how “corrupt and wicked” their society is. Similarly, Italians don’t go about “confessing” to Nigerians, even though they run the mafia (and naturally, their country is NEVER listed as on of the most corrupt).

@Beaf


Since we have tried our best to save you from yourself to no avail, we will continue to remember you in our prayers. We pray that the Almighty will have mercy on you and save you from the canker worm of a malfunctioning brain. We know it is not your fault. If not for those wicked people in your village, you will never have turned out to be such an slowpoke. This should be a lesson to all Nairalanders: Be careful who you relate to; if not, you could become cursed and lose all ability to engage in a rational conversation with normal human beings. O mase ooh. I really pity our brother Beaf. Please let us all remember him in our prayers so that the hands of the evil ones will be removed from his brain.


*Shakes his head in pity*

Please Beaf, if for some reason our prayers do not solve your problem, pity mankind and do not procreate. Abeg. Ejo. We lost our first chance when you were not used for stem cell research that is why we plead with you to put us out of our misery by extinguishing your gene pool from humanity.

@ OP i do hope i can meaningfully contribute to this topic. i work in an environment where im the only black person in the whole organisation. from time to time you get the odd question like, 'will you relocate back home one day'[my answer is always yes], or 'i saw this documentary on nigeria, is it true? as we are in a digital age there is no point lying about anything as it can undoubtedly be verified at the click of a mouse. so i tell the truth and remove EMOTIONAL SENTIMENTS when discussing the issues that affect nigeria. i can say for example that although nigeria is corrupt, it also contains millions of hardworking, decent and honest people who just want to move to the next day. i can say the people are warm affectionate, generous and funny. i can say the food is awesome, i can say the weather is good, i can say the clothes are beautiful, i can say we have fantastic art from the nupes, to the hausas, to the Binis, to the yorubas. great art work [all true].

infact on dress down fridays i wear traditional attire to work. since i have been wearing them i have been receiving compliments from both sexes, from managers to fellow colleagues. i dont usually receive compliments when i wear the usually shirt/tie/trouser combo. in my own small way im repping nigeria. my best advice to you is be yourself. from your dressing, from the words that come of out of your mouth, from the quality of your work[if in a work capacity], a foreign national already knows you are a good ambassador of nigeria. we have to be positive always and embrace even when the negatives far outweigh the positives. in this respect i admire the jamaicans, whether they reside in the US or the UK they talk about Jamaica with utmost respect and pride though it is glaring they also have a lot of imperfections. what you say about your people and its environs subsciously reveals the real you. think about that when answering the question from any foreign national. i do hope i contributed and feel your post is a most welcome addition. almost all nigerians will be faced with this dilemna in diaspora [whether you like nigeria or not]. thank you

@Beaf and other Neanderthal knuckle-heads

Look at the above for what it means to have a brain and maturity.

@ Ladej

You definitely made a very meaningful contribution that I have learned from. Going forward, I hope to focus more on positives. I guess that is the problem. My instincts are to say a negative story, and it probably affects the way I view other aspects of life. I probably need to do more to be positive about the Nigerian situation and life in general.

You are a bad citizen
I feel like slapping you
Though we are a slagging nation be a patriot and support your country
You need to see some americans and turks how they love their country sadly this is not the case in nigeria
As for me i always say positive thing about nigeria and even show they some nice projects
Well you can complain and think we are a bad nation why not come back to nigeria if you aren't here already and try make a change
Remember Its what you can do for your country not what it can do for you

I have almost zero positive memories of Nigeria. I am sorry for being unable to lie. Can you teach me please?

They say if I tell it to myself often enough, it will become true. So this is me practicing the power of positive speaking.

You did not answer my question? Plus, where did you get that map from?

I think the right question is, should your embryo have been used for stem cell research?

@muggle, SA Goddess, and Inked Nerd

I am alive and kicking, although busted now. And i was definitely sitting and laughing while all these evolved. Sorry for making you guys anxious though. It is part of the fun of NL.

How much does INEC pay peeps to contest an election? That may tell us why she is contesting.

@Mama-gee

What don't you understand, my dear?

@ others

So people see NL as a from of recreation and are intellectually-inclined in real life? But then we need creative and critical thinking to solve real problems. How do we achieve this by being anti-intellectual?

@Travelista, Cow, and Ileke-Ido


https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria?topic=503511.msg6647451#msg6647451

Can the three of you pool your brain-power and collectively say something that makes sense since you seem incapable individually.

@travelsita

Don't worry she does not have a daughter. So I am scheming on how to handle her personally. *Smacks his lips*


Oh I cannot wait to finally taste her fruit. Three of us could link up for a party and if things go well, I could marry you both, although you will both be over-age. But then we understand Nigerians and being over-age is like bread and butter.

@ Beaf


https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria?topic=503511.msg6646415#msg6646415

The above thread was referring to peeps like you. Now cool down, put down the crack you are smoking, think carefully, and say something intelligent that we all know you are capable of saying. Please make us all proud by not insulting, so that we will not wish that the embryo that made you had gone for stem-cell research instead.

Even the only book say it, a man are not without honor, except in his home town. Look at me. I am not at Nigeria but I am yet wildly celebrated. But where-ever I come to my own peoples all I hear are insult. Too many bad belles. Say somethings good very quick, the world are coming to a end.

@ dani-luv

I likes your picture. How old were you at the time? Has your bow-legged (or is it k-legged) became healed? Or has it become transfer to your brains?

Cheer.

@dani-luv and mama-gee


Your responses just proved the crux of my position. Read slowly and carefully and you will get it.

[size=5pt]Or maybe I just have a problem with writing in a way peeps can understand[/size]