Tosin Oyelakin Featured In #LOV3RZ Magazine September Edition!

August 24, 2018

As far back as I can remember, I have felt like my life was a battle. As a child of about 3 I remember things happening, and at every significant stage or time in my life, major things happened to me that would affect my self esteem and the way I perceived myself, just to cause me to not see anything good about

myself. I will summarize the key times in my life that I have felt the Lord allowing me to go through some heavy crushing, that I may become something useful for him. When I was about 8/9, I developed a skin condition that caused me to be covered in rashes, and we saw all sorts of doctors back then in Nigeria, and they couldn’t really diagnose what the condition was. All the medication and creams recommended wouldn’t work and I remember my mum had to get me tights to wear to school in order to protect my dignity, and even though the weather back home in Nigeria is not such for tights, I had to just wear them, otherwise no one would want to play with me. And then one day, I was in the living room with my other siblings when my dad came back home and yelled at me to leave the living room, he didn’t want me sitting there and infecting his other kids with whatever I had on my body. Now, that from a father to his child crushed me, made me feel oh so less important than the other kids, and like something about me was wrong! This was in primary school, and the memory of how it made me feel lingered. My father wasn’t a bad father. In fact he loved his children and would do anything for us. But maybe he’d had a bad day at work that day, or was under some form of pressure or another. I know he didn’t mean to deliberately hurt me, but it deeply hurt my ‘child mind’ back then. I never held it against him. Loved him all the same. Then I got into secondary school, and all sorts started happening. I had friends who would just come up with fights for no reason, and I always ended up on my own in these fights while they all would all be on the other side. Being a peaceful person that I am, hate fighting, I would seek reconciliation and ask my mum to help mediate and resolve it. They would then see me as begging for their friendship which made it even worse when they started up the fights again. For me as a teenager, that was a very hard time of my life and I began to see myself as just unlovable, by my own father, friends or anyone else for that matter. I struggled with my relationships through secondary.

Then I got into uni and in less than 2 weeks found myself being assaulted by a trusted friend on campus. Now this is a friend I had known from home who was well known to me and my siblings, so I trusted him. Anyway, when this happened I got angry with God, and stopped attending the Campus fellowship which I had started attending. Got involved with some friends who took me further away from God, and started partying and just wasn’t concentrating on my studies. Would miss lectures, etc. But in all these things, I could still feel the love of Christ and His Holy Spirit convicting me each and every step of the way. This went on throughout my first year and a bit into my 2nd year of uni, and then my father who had been ill with kidney disease passed away. Then the reality of life and death hit me, and the Holy Spirit used his death to draw me closer to Himself And somehow, for no reason, no fights, nothing, my friends and I just drifted apart and I found myself on my own. Grieving the loss of my father with no one to confide in or share my grief with. I guess that was God’s way of isolating me so that He could work on me. I had no one else to turn to, so I turned to Him for comfort and returned to the fellowship I had abandoned, and so my healing journey began. Please note that He didn’t stop things from happening to me because even after that, I had all sorts, but from this point on, I began to see myself through His words, and slowly began to regain my self esteem, and renewal of my mind.

Get Tosin's FULL STORY in #LOV3RZ Magazine September!!!