Arise!

By Paul Kisakye

Four years ago, I went on a diet and lost weight and got healthy. Then life threw a couple of curveballs my way that erased all the work I had put in and I ended up with almost 20 extra kgs. But the biggest change that has happened in that time is the loss of my community as I knew it. And I want to tell a little of the story.

The way this loss sneaked up on me still amazes me. Sometimes life changes instantly, like when my wife’s niece passed away just when everyone thought she had won the battle against the disease that had ravaged her body for months.

Other times, life changes so slowly, you don’t notice it until it is too late. Like when the loving church community I had called home for over ten years slowly became too toxic for my mental health.

In hindsight, I can see where it all started. I can see all the red flags that I dismissed. I can see all the subtle changes that led me to the bad choices I made, that led me to finally give up my once loving community.

But today, I will tell just one story. The one that was the tipping point.

We were a few months into 2021. The lockdown had been eased a little and we had started going to church again. I was especially excited about being able to meet for in-person gatherings because it gave me the opportunity to serve, something that brought me a lot of joy and fulfillment.

My wife and I had just gone through a very trying few months of raising our first baby girl after she was born very prematurely. We still had to go to hospital every week to see her doctor, and she was still less than two kilograms, but we were now more confident of her chances of living.

We craved fellowship. We needed to feel normal again.

And going back to church and serving other people felt like the answer to our prayer.

Until one Friday night in March.

We were coming from a Friday night service, and just as we joined the northern bypass, the check engine and oil lights on the dashboard of our car lit up. For a few days, we knew our car had an oil leak somewhere, and we were going to work on it as soon as we got money. But that day, the oil leak got too bad. It was no longer a leak. We were losing oil very fast, but we needed to get home to our baby.

And we didn’t have any money on us. It took us a lot of faith to keep driving that car with no oil until we got home. It was very stressful.

The engine died as soon as we got home.

I kept hoping to get some money on Saturday to get the car repaired so that we could go to church on Sunday. In the evening, when I was sure there was no way for me to get money in time to fix the car so that it could take us to church, I texted our pastor and told her we wouldn’t be able to serve on Sunday because we had no means of transport. I thought it was prudent of me to inform her in time so that she would find a replacement for us.

“Where is your faith?” she texted back.

I almost wanted to tell her how I had used up all my faith praying for my daughter to live in the past five months. How I had used up all my faith believing God for the money to afford all the medical care she needed. How I had used up all my faith on Friday trying to drive a car without engine oil from a Friday night service.

“We expect you guys here tomorrow by 6 am,” she texted. “Do all you can to be here. We are counting on you.”

Now, if it had been any other season, we would have made it. Before Covid, getting a taxi or boda boda early in the morning was possible. But on Sunday morning at 5 am, there were no taxis near our home. And boda bodas still had a curfew that was lifted at 6 am, and even after being lifted, they were banned from carrying passengers. There was practically no way for us to make it to church that Sunday without our car.

On Sunday morning, I got the text: “I am still hopeful you’ll be here today.”

I had no response to it.

My wife texted her back: “Good morning. We tried but failed to get transport. We are however catching the service online at home with two other people.”

In those days, it was important to report how many people you watched the service with online because the church needed to keep updated on their attendance numbers. Their obsession with numbers was one of the red flags I saw too late.

The pastor texted again: “I know without a doubt you’re watching from home. What I wanted for you to overcome is anything that will keep you from serving God. I didn’t want transport in UGX to defeat you. If transport is still defeating you, you won’t be able to catch flights. You need to ARISE and you need to ARISE now.”

My wife: “It’s actually the first time this is happening. It has been a series of weird events happening over time. But we are overcoming.”

The pastor: “Fight the good fight of faith. This should NEVER happen at all to us as ministers. NEVER!”

Later that day, she asked that we meet to discuss our finances which, according to her, had to be in disarray for us to fail to fix our car in time for the Sunday service.

Two days later, she asked us about our pledge for the church building fundraiser.

Even with the emotional turmoil and financial hardship we had faced for half a year, we had sacrificed and kept showing up to serve and give our best to our community. But our community’s leader kept asking for more and more. Nothing was enough.

A few months later, my wife and I gathered the courage to leave the community. And no, it wasn’t because of this one incident. This was just the one that opened our eyes to the myriad of abuses we had suffered but explained away. And it wasn’t the last. But once we couldn’t take any more, we left.

Today, I realise how much I have lost. But my loss has opened my eyes to all the blessings around me.

Like when we were getting ready to welcome our new baby in 2022 and didn’t have all the money we needed for hospital bills. Before, I would look up to my church community for support. But my brother came through and paid half of our bill.

Like when we had a death in the family and we had no friend around to mourn with us, but a new friend I had just made a few months earlier came over with her sister and visited us.

Like when our pastor finally decided to come visit us after we had told her we were leaving, and she left us feeling worse. And then a few minutes later, we got a call from my childhood pastors, telling us they were in the neighbourhood and wanted to visit. They comforted us with their presence, words and prayers, without knowing that we were mourning the loss of our community.

Like when our income dried up because we were depending on word-of-mouth from our church community for our business and it was no longer coming through. But then my mum kept sending us food until our pantry was overflowing.

Now, I feel ready for a new community. Whether I will create one or join an already-existing one, I am not yet sure. But this one thing I know: when your community stops having common unity, don’t fear looking for a new community. You don’t have to be alone.