Like most ostracized men who’ve been spat out by society, I don’t have much of a reason to continue fighting a deep battle internally for a rotting society that sees me as another number. Being a cog in a burning machine and fully adjusted to such a sick and perverse society is not the most rewarding or enticing path in a man’s life.

My walk with Christ hasn’t always been the most faithful, nor the most glamorous.

I grew up as a pastor’s child in a Pentecostal Assemblies of God church on a tall hill in East Oakland, California split between the Oakland Hills and the hood on 98th just across the freeway. Before I was formally diagnosed as Bipolar 1 with Psychotic features in adulthood, I had gone through a plethora of symptoms and false diagnoses that changed throughout my adolescence. A breakthrough in my early teenage years was with an Oakland clinical Psychologist–Dr John Gibbons–a specialist in listening and not judging, but challenging self defeating and intrusive thoughts that go about in a tormented young mans mind. But before I came into contact with him, I had plenty of abuse and exploitation as a child that twisted my view of the world as I grew into adolescent, with a violent furious rage.

I wanted to fight offenders and opponents and land a decisive victory over them. I had a no survivors and no prisoners mentality, with the goal–you mess with me, you are down on the floor with me posing over you like I’m Chris Bumstead at Mr. Olympia. I didn’t give a damn whether I went to jail or not–the depth of fury and rage made my first order of importance–vengeance and violence by any means necessary with whatever means necessary.

But I couldn’t carry through without the proper MMA training my parents denied me as a teenager, advising me to stay out of trouble, thinking I’d grow out of my funk. But one night there was a crisis involving a suicide attempt, that exhausted all of my parents options and we began to look for a LMFT for healing.

Unfortunately, many conventional therapists were not skilled or qualified to assess the pain and intensity I was living in at the time. After many misdiagnoses and visits around, I finally got into contact with a psychiatrist that knew his worth–Dr. Andrew Giammona from the Children’s Hospital of Oakland.

Right off the bat, he referred me to Dr. Gibbons, where after listening to my early life history concluded that schizophrenia was off the chart–I was abused and neglected–and changed the diagnosis to Major Depressive Disorder.

For a year, I looked forward to seeing him each week as I processed a lot of hurt and suffering at the hands of the world: fights, bullying, mockery and humiliation and being cast away by my peers throughout my time at Castro Valley High. It was the first time I had felt safe in that office with him as we unwound layers of my personality like you peel the skin off an onion, examining its contents thoroughly, until one day, unfortunately, I felt betrayed once again regarding self defense.

I walked into his office one afternoon to process an incident of physical violation and my boundaries being crossed. I panicked when I was groped around my waist and torso, and I struck down her arm with the blade of my forearm, changing from initial panic to deep rage in an instant. I had tunnel vision, got into a fighting stance, and was ready to fight to secure my body, when my dad had flipped out and strongly corrected me for defending myself. I felt scared, terrified once again no one listened to me, not even my parents took my side, as I went into a hot van in the parking lot at Costco down by Davis street in San Leandro, California. When I was in the front passenger seat, I convulsed and arched my back–I didn’t even know what was going on, like I had a devil in me that was being expelled–who knows? My little sister and her childhood friend were there and I nearly exploded, but my mom shut everyone up and we went home in silence, with me in tears, my heart pounding, my spirit crushed in shame.

The following week, looking forward to process what happened in what I thought was a safe place by a safe man, I gave an account of what happened that after noon in the parking lot as we were loading up groceries, and the first thing was I was reprimanded because I used the blade of my forearm to strike the arm of my offender away. And I’ll never forget those words, “You could bruise someone.”

I felt the blood raising in me, the hypertension as my vision narrowed and I wanted to slap him in the face for the dismissal of my abuse, panic attack, and humiliation and abandonment. But I kept it in as I yet again slowly died internally. I couldn’t recall most of the conversation afterward since I walled him off and closed access to my heart yet again, and left when our meeting was over, canceling future appointments, no longer trusting him.

I felt like a sojourner–a lurker and transient soul with no where to go. I hid myself from families and friends yet again for years as I didn’t trust anyone to take care of me and advocate for my well being.

As I became more bitter at the world and those around me, I started to sink into the occult, practicing witchcraft, thinking that if my efforts in doing right resulted in nothing, I might as well turn to the depth of evil, which turned out to be a lie. I started to believe I had to fight creatively when my trust in authority, family, and institutions vanished, all while speaking of a gospel that pointed contrarily to how I was abused.

But God wasn’t done with me. Though I was unfaithful and my choice to sin grieved the Lord, the Lord’s mercy and love for me couldn’t escape his Spirit.

I’m reminded of Psalm 139, where David contemplates:

Psalm 139:7–12

[7] Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? [8] If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! [9] If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, [10] even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. [11] If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” [12] even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. (ESV)

Even though years followed of unrepentant sin, turning away from the Lord, and living a prodigal life, the Father never gave up on me or turned his back away, and it was only a matter of time before I hit rock bottom and had a crisis in my life, where my only option was Christ or the grave. . .

To make an exceptionally long story simplified and compressed, one night, during a fit of psychosis, mania, rage, and harassment from demonic spirits, I collapsed and fell flat on my face in my bedroom alone, without even my cat Katerina to comfort me, as she was sleeping in a box, most likely awoken from my commotion. The entire studio was silent, absent of human presence, except for my near comatose body lying on the floor unable to lift a finger, unable to help myself get up. I had truly given up on life.

As I was in the spirit, I encountered the King of Kings and Prince of Peace, seeing a vision of Christ himself. I saw his face, radiant like the sun, a purified body clear as glass yet worthy as refined gold, a composure and countenance inviting me to him, not throwing me away. And instead of him condemning me and sending my sorry self to Hades which I was anticipating giving my history of betrayal, I felt a loving presence, like something a long lost beloved friend feels when you see them in sight. And I was reminded of Christ when he proclaimed,

Revelation 3:20

[20] Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. (ESV)

Jesus Christ had every right to examine the good and evil I did in my life and to send me to a pit of lake and fire and throw away the key. But instead of condemnation and a sentence to eternity in pain, I had encountered for the first time in my life, the resurrected Christ–the one people proclaim they believe and live for yet show contrary character and behavior.

And then I had this vision of me as an infant, crying and being comforted by mother in her arms, like I was watching a film of my early birth. And as I was living in this vision, I felt tears and an inability to form words or coherent thoughts in my consciousness, like my holistic life was being cradled in the arms of Prince of Peace.

This is what David was speaking of when he spoke,

Psalm 139:13–16

[13] For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. [14] I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. [15] My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. [16] Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. (ESV)

As I regained my consciousness and composure, I was filled with awe and a desire to seek and answer this question: Who is this man, Christ? And why did he save me?

I couldn’t let the encounter go to waste. But I was going to be tested and refined.

The following years of tribulation and hardship began to mold me and develop me into the man of God Christ wanted me to be. Suffering taught me obedience, and endurance birthed hope. For I no longer could keep my mind occupied with things of this world, but had to set my heart on the face of the Lord, and my mind occupied with things above.

Still, even with consistent confrontations of conflict and hardship, the word of God proved itself to be the final authority in my conduct and composure.

Paul writes and challenges us in 1 Timothy 6:12, to:

[12] Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. (ESV)

Previously, I occupied myself with themes of vengeance and vindicating myself from the unfairness and unjust life I have lived, through all my suffering. But I realized that emphasis is on the eternal life that Christ called me to, by his act of grace and mercy in giving me salvation.

Tying back into the rottenness of modern society, I don’t get platform attention or public affirmation for the sacrifice I make towards my local body of Christ, my day job, or at my local gym where I train on the mats. Now going forward, the suffering I live through as I carry my cross isn’t for myself anymore, but for the Kingdom of God, as Christ called out in Matthew 3:2,

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (ESV)