Dear Agatha,
I am 20 years old, an undergraduate who has been denied by his wealthy father over choice of career. My father can’t reconcile himself with my desire to become a successful musician or my course, Theatre Arts. He is also very angry with me over my decision to covert from Islam to Christianity too.
The fact that I am the first child of the family makes his anger very intense. My problem started when my mother died. Had she been alive, I won’t be having this kind of intense disagreement with my father. She had always understood my passion and person.
I actually became a Christian when my father took the decision to disown me. It was for me a kind of rebound since his attitude left me with no choice at all.
When he found out I had gone to church on a Sunday, I thought he was out, the kinds of adjectives he used in qualifying me brought the anger in me to a boiling point. It got me beyond the point of no return. I was irritated immeasurably. He simply ordered me out of his house forcing me to squat with a friend in school who shares my passion for music and entertainment.
Since leaving home, only my maternal uncle has been in touch with me. None of my father’s relatives have bothered to call my phone or even look for me. They are happy at what is happening to me because it would factor them into inheriting my father’s vast property.
I laugh at them because despite what is happening between my father and I, I remain his heir. It isn’t as if I am after my father’s wealth in the first place. I want to make my own money. Before she died my mother always told me to believe in myself as well as follow my dream.
Right now I just want to talk to you as I battle to settle down with the choices I have made.
Abdulrahman.
Dear Abdulrahman,
There is no victory in life without overcoming challenges. You just must find a way of staying focused if you intend to show your father that you know what you are doing and that being a musician or in the entertainment world doesn’t amount to failure in life.
That you can be as important a person, if not more than those in the profession he wants you to go into.
You won’t be the first to be rejected for following in your choice of career and religion. Ask those who are today household names in the entertainment industry, their experiences aren’t different from what you are going through now.
Your father is reacting in this manner because he doesn’t understand the value of the entertainment industry to the society, and thinks like most people that only dropouts go into it. It now behooves you to change his mind by applying everything you have to your dreams. In his shoes too, you would do the same if not worse.
Right in your hands, you carry the power to make or mar your dreams as well as helping to make your father more broadminded about most things in life.
To get it right, you must first let go of all those pent up anger against him. Don’t lose sight of the fact that not only have you told him that his religion, the one he has known all is life isn’t good enough for you but also taken on a career that he considers to be for children of the never to do well in the society. In more than one-way you have not only hurt him, but disappointed him too as well.
Don’t also forget that you are his first child and son, his pride and hope for the future. Like every father, rich or poor, you are expected to carry on in the family tradition and in his case, continue with the empire he has built. From the day you were born, he has it all mapped out for you, hence the bitterness, sense of betrayal and frustration at your line of action.
If you understand where he is coming from, it would be very easy for you to appreciate him as well as forgive his conclusions as well as decisions concerning you. Even though it is not expedient for you to go to him now given the intensity of the disagreement, but learn to keep an absolute opened mind about him. Use his rejection as fuel for your ambition. Don’t ever give him the chance to say I told you so. If you fail, you would not only be giving him the chance to laugh at you but all those family members who out of greed and quest for relevance in his presence will laugh at you as incapable of being able to care for your heritage.
And if you really want to concentrate on your studies and interest, please forget what and who your father is. Ignore his wealth or those you think are angling for privileged share of it. It would certainly spell doom to your dreams of moving on in life if you allow the vanity of your father’s wealth or the bother of who gets what at the end of the day get at you.
As a Christian, you should place all your trust in the God you now serve as well give Him the absolute authority to direct your life the way He planned it long before you were conceived in your mother’s womb. If it is His wish, those things that belong to your father would come back to you and what more, you may not even need them by the time he wants you to come for them. God who has set an agenda for you would have blessed you beyond your imagination.
At 20, you still have a long way to go in life before you come fully into your dreams. What you should ensure is that this dream of yours isn’t a fleeting one, done on impulse but one you embarked on after a lot of thoughts and interest. God may have pulled you out of that house to enable you focus, to train you in the task of self-dependence and actualisation. Your father’s wealth may be for now a major hindrance to your dreams as well as the job God has in store for you.
The purest of gold emerges only after enduring the intensity of a very hot fire. To make it and stand out, you just must endure hardship to climb the ladder of success. Being a pacesetter to this new field in your family, rejection comes with the package.
Being a newly converted Christian, you must learn from this early stage to depend absolutely on God’s directives alone. So forget who you have been to this point to what you will be from now on. God never begins something He wouldn’t finish and from my experiences in life, the best destinations in life have unwinding, thorn fields, frustrating, and painful sacrifices routes. You have to make very painful sacrifices, be patient and submissive to the God’s will to get it right. Most times, along this road, you will feel like turning back and giving it all up, but not ever, your joy is waiting patiently for you to come at the end of the grueling journey. If you read the story of Jesus Christ from birth to death and even to resurrection, you will have a clear idea of what you are expected to do at all times as a Christian.
This time is also meant for you to immerse yourself with the words of God and getting to know Him better.
Make good use of every opportunity you have to come out best in your dreams as well as in your relationship with God.
Your key is prayer. With prayers, open heart and faith, there are no mountains you cannot overcome no matter how difficult the beginning could be. At every point, you must also strive to forgive from the depth of your heart. God doesn’t bless those who habour any resentment or find it difficult to forgive. This you must hold dearly to, because He is a God who forgives us every second of the day.
From time to time, send your father constructive text messages asking after his health and well-being. He may not reply, but keep it up to send the message of your love, respect and appreciation of who he is to you. It is important you do that because one of the most important laws of God says we should honour our parents so that our days on earth may be long. No matter how impossible one’s parents are; one must know that God didn’t make a mistake in making us pass through them, and not through others.
Good luck.
Lonely Heart
Dear Agatha,
Thanks a lot with the way you proffer solutions to our
various love needs. I am a graduate from one of the eastern
universities and also reside in the East, Anambra precisely. I’m 24 and still a virgin. I need a God-fearing girl for a healthy relationship.
Please really need your help. Interested ladies should get in touch with me through this phone no, 08181362200
Peter.
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