When I stood at the altar for prayer eyes and the prophetess’s locked. Without blinking an eye, she made an impassioned appeal: “Pray! The Good Lord has never stopped listening to you. He has delivered you, but He promises to do even more if you keep trusting him as you have done so far.”

I walked to the altar when I was in a state of dereliction. My entire being felt like a heap of rubbish. Mentally and physically – even emotionally – I was haggard. It then occurred to me that I was hurtling through a flashback of my formative years as a derelict in Moi’s Bridge town in western Kenya, waiting for the end of my life.

Then the prophetess’ voice trailed off. In the ensuing silence – or what felt like loneliness – memories of my past came back in a gush that was difficult to shove aside to permit the Holy Spirit to commune with me through the prayer. Yes, prayer is the master key that unlocks the heavenly resources. I knew. But the agony of living with migraine was a torture that had ravaged my entire childhood to the point I regretted – like Job in the Bible when he was being tested by God – the day I was born!

“Keep trusting God. He has stood with you and promises to be with you in whatever you do,” the prophetess persisted. Her tremulous voice swung from the mellow to the dry and faint, which to me signalled the emphasis the Holy Spirit put on the message of deliverance and healing.

Although she was less than a metre away from me and her voiced was amplified by the public address system, she sounded distant. So faint that I hardly grasped what she was saying. What I was experiencing at that instant was a throwback to years gone by. It was throwback to my pre-teenage when the world appeared to have caved in on me and it felt like I was just marking time before the worst happened. I always expected a smack-down that would terminate my life. It gave a feeling of relief and terror.

I dreaded a holocaust of a kind. Personal. The head pounded daily. Every hour was agony. I dreaded every minute of my waking time. Life was a torture and wanted to be freed from the daily hell.

While I longed to die, I was in equal measure terrified of the unknown – be it Heaven or Hell. At least I know life on earth was an unending agony.

As I went through these transitions, the prayer brought back a gush of memories. Memories of the time I felt my end was nigh and it would be painful. I wished it happened to terminate the suffering. For most of my early life, I walked with pain as an unforgiving and ruthless companion.

From childhood, I experienced sharp and recurring headaches that had an established a strange, tormenting but familiar pattern. Whether it was a Monday morning, Thursday noon or Saturday night, I always knew I was going to be under attack. It would begin as a bad dream, then explode into a pounding that threatened to split my skull. The forehead would feel like a gaping hole that welcomed the searing pain that pushed its way through the head to the nape it was predicable but I lacked the power to rid myself of it. Week after week, year after year, the migraine tormented me. I went through my primary and secondary education in constant agony, often sitting for examinations with tears in my eyes and pain in my head. In my mind, my fate was predetermined. It was sealed and I was just going through the motions of life before the expected end arrived.

I was destined to be an academic flop as my going to school was only intended to buy time before the lights went out of my eyes – forever! Every day, I expected it. Many times, I found myself wetting my schoolbooks with tears, overwhelmed and broken, waiting for the end-times.

There were moments when I questioned everything. Sometimes I could ask myself if God was real. There were other times I was emotionally crushed by the feeling that I was bewitched. I prayed, cried and even ‘screamed in silence’. I found no relief in all these.

I often went down on my knees to plead with God for healing, yet nothing happened. I had heard of miracles and every time I was on my knees I asked God for intervention. I had a verse read in the Bible about how lepers were healed instantly, people possessed being freed from the clutches of demons finding liberation; a woman who had bled for twelve years being healed instantly. But for me, that instant coffee moment never happened. As I questioned my communion with God, doubts gnawed at my conscience. Did my prayer ever rise beyond the ceiling of the house? Doubts quashed me. I was devastated. The headache ravaged me. I felt like a wretched of the earth. A scum.

On several occasions, men and women of God laid hands on me and prayed, but the pain persisted. The spiritual intercessions never yielded anything tangible. Gradually I began to lose faith. The secular world was beckoning. There was a fissure in my faith as my wretched life led me to wondering if God truly existed. I had on foot in church and the other in the secular world. After all, non-believer lived a better life than I did. The desire to quit church was gathering pace.

“Hear me God, if you truly are there for the wretched of the earth like me. Talk to me, oh Lord. Lead me not into temptations. I need you now. Visit me at this hour of need.  I need a miracle as testimony of your being. Do not forsake me, oh dear Lord. I have been waiting on your to perform a miracle. Her I am. Take me and forge into whatever you desire. Use me to communicate to those who have lost hope that you are the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,” I often implored the Good Lord. Nothing happened.

There was no response – in my humanly judgment! God never hears me, I began to be convinced as the fissure in my faith widened. Likely Ishmael in the Bible peeling away from his father, Abraham, there was a niggling feeling in in me to drift to urban life that was full of cheer and mundane things. This is because I had developing the feeling that God only listens to the clergy, not low-downs. I was just a dreg that could be swept into following water and forgotten within seconds. So frustration welled up in my heart as I imagined God had forsaken me. I am a scum on face of the earth – material only good enough for the rubbish heap, not humankind.

I had lost the sense of community. So why was I holding onto a painful, wretched life? The thought would creep back into my mind as often as thought God had abandoned me to the vagaries of life. I was a vagabond being tossed in the storms of life. In the stormy weather, I would someday hit my head on a stone and in an instant be gone after years of suffering.

I wanted that day like yesterday.

It was during this moments of hopelessness that suicidal thoughts swamped me. On several occasions, I thought of going to bridge of a big river and lofting myself into the river underneath. Or tying a rope around my neck and hanging on a tree to end my life or drinking poison to end my life in a flash. The final decision, though, was difficult to make.

Without realising it, I dreaded death.

An inner force often dissuaded me from taking such a drastic decision. Something – an inexplicable inner power – goaded me into holding onto life as I thought of my father, my mother and siblings. At such moments, the will to hang on overwhelmed the push to die.

In all honesty, life chose me.

There was an even bigger inner vault in my psyche. My father! The absence of my father powered me into the wish and prayer to see my mother live a happy life. She had been pushed to the brink of life. Looking after me and my siblings was no easy task. She is a living testimony of the strength of a woman. Because of her, I quit the thought of taking my life. She need me to rekindle hope I decided that I would live for her in spite of the ravages of migraine.

The long lingering suicidal thoughts evaporated. The misty eyes I had worn for years begun to clear too.

My late father – may he forever rest in peace – never gave up on me. He took me to every hospital he thought I would get help. Such singular determination to see me lead a happy and healthy life made him spend every cent he earned on medication that never made a difference. The sacrifice, however, was an invaluable gift he bestowed on me when he died. Because of the immense sacrifice, I vowed to take care of my mother as if he was alive.

I would take drugs my father bought for me for a month and on the last day, like clockwork, the migraine would return to torment me with uncasing fury. It felt like the medicine only intended to postpone the torture. At some point, I feared I had a brain tumour – torturous cancer. Death felt close, not because I wanted it, but because I had seen others with similar symptoms die.

In 2022, I joined the University of Nairobi, hopeful that campus life would usher in a new lease of life. Instead, the agony intensified. I visited Kenyatta National Hospital and was prescribed spectacles to reduce light sensitivity. They cost 6,000 Kenya shillings, but even that brought no respite. At this point, I was on the cups of surrendering to unknown force. Death!

Then, something divine happened. I started attending Jedidiah Church in Kasarani, where my sister worshipped. The church had a prophetess who delivered divine communication every Sunday. One day, like a searchlight in darkness, the Holy Spirit located me and spoke to my mental and emotional anguish. She prophesied over my life a few times but none of the prophesies came to pass. The Holy Spirit encouraged me to keep praying, but I was tired and heartbroken. I had been through the throes of suffering that I did not want a revisit of the frustrations had been living through for years.

Life had become meaningless. The lesser I thought about it the better.

One Friday, overwhelmed by the pain, I knelt in church for two hours in complete silence. I uttered no word because I had none. My mind was empty. I decided that the next Sunday – July 7, 2024 – would be my last day in church. I had had enough of it.

On that very Sunday, God spoke directly to me for the first time: “Do not get tired of me. Do not give up on me. Do not lose your faith in me. It’s me, Jesus, who heals my people. It’s me, Christ, who leads them. Healing comes from me.”

I felt a breeze envelope me. Then I felt a gush of lukewarm wind around my head. An icy, gentle rub. The headache vanished!

That was the turning point. That day, Jesus healed me. After more than three-quarters of a life of pain – at the age of 20 – I was healed. Here was the power and the glory.

I was not going to follow Ishmael. God lives. He is real.

To God be all the glory. Jesus Christ, my saviour, my healer. I will never stop praising your holy name. Amen.

• A Tell Media report / By Brian Mukhwana