Today, when I think of the reasons why I came to God, I remember my early childhood. I was around 10 years old, and my step-father was an alcoholic. He had previously been through several unsuccessful treatments.
My two step-sisters, me, and especially my mother, had constantly suffered terrible abuse. Police visited our home frequently, and ambulance even more often. My step-father tried to kill our mother many times. Once he pushed her over the balcony, but she somehow managed to hold on to the fence and avoided falling down. Once he tried to hang her in the attic. At that time I wasn’t fully aware, or I just didn’t know about many of these things. But I did understand that my step-father is a person with a damaged brain, and that my mother’s psychological stability was seriously damaged.
I remember how, wandering aimlessly through the town once, I had come to one crossroad and stopped there not knowing in which direction to go. I couldn’t make up my mind even after ten minutes. I was so helpless and sad, that I just sat down at that crossroad and started to cry. I terribly missed my father; that thought was constantly going through my head.
After dark period of childhood and growing up, I married a very young girl, not so much because I wanted to become independent, but in order to gain certain stability in my life.
It seemed that finally a lucky star was shining upon me, lighting up thick darkness which had followed me through my whole life. I started breathing with full lungs. Maybe from the perspective of a more mature person, this may seem funny, but we were truly in love.
We rented a tiny room in the attic of one house on the outskirts of a city. We used half of that small place as a kitchen. Roof above us didn’t have any isolation; bare tiles placed on rotten boards. My wife cooked on a miniature stove. We had one closet, one bed and one night stand; old furniture which my wife kept rearranging every two to three days. We also owned two plates, two spoons, two forks, one pan for pancakes, two pots, some clothes…and I think that was pretty much it. But, we were delighted with what our future will bring. And, we were happy.
Although I had a good and very well paid job, and we became parents, I still felt completely empty. I constantly had a feeling that I wasn’t achieving anything.
Was I still passionately in love with my wife and taking proper care of my child? No. I felt almost nothing for them. I used to go to some other town, sometimes even abroad, alone or in company, and wonder from bar to bar and come back home after a couple of days, sometimes the whole week, totally drunk. I used to do some other, even more terrible things.
One day, when I came home, I had to face everything that had been accumulating in my wife’s soul, in the past three and a half years of our marriage. She had, of course, decided to end this agony and leave.
To put it shortly, I suddenly found myself in Zagreb, with a one-year old child, in my mother’s house. She was living alone at that time. I don’t probably need to mention that my mother took all care and responsibility for my daughter. I continued my old way of life in Zagreb – from bar to bar, from pub to pub; my whole days were pathetic, empty and meaningless.
But at that time, wondering through empty city streets and wondering: “Wouldn’t it be better to end this miserable life?”, I met a young man at a certain tram station, where we started a conversation. A moment before that I was swearing a driver, angry because he had closed a door in front of my nose. I was expecting for this young man to agree with my “righteous fury”, but he just looked at me in a friendly manner and said: “Don’t worry, the other one will come.” Intrigued by his calmness, I started a conversation with him. Not really knowing why, I spent 15 minutes talking to him about my miserable life. But some events I colored pink.
He carefully listened to me, and after my whole story, told me roughly this: “But… I see you are not happy, after all. There is someone who can change that.”, he added, “Jesus Christ. Maybe this will sound strange to you, but the truth is that God had sent his own Son to die for you and to be resurrected so that you can become a new person, a different man. God loves you. He really cares about you…”
While I was listening to him talking about how there is someone who cares about me, that Jesus Christ, that man who had never spoken a lie in his life, died so that I can ask to be cleaned from my filth, my anxiety; hot tears were flowing down my cheeks. My heart twitched because of all I heard. In my soul I knew this was the exact thing I had been searching for and expecting my whole life… I knew that these words were not coming from this young man, but from God himself. It was as though God was saying: “I’ve been trying to tell you for a long time. I let my beloved Son die, so that you could live. But you are here now, and these words about you are true. If you give me your heart you will have eternal life. Do you believe in that?”
I was unable to utter one single word, but my heart kept repeating: “I believe! I believe!” I was longing for a change so much, and these words echoed wonderfully in my heart.
Light-bringing new chance – live a life from the beginning!
After a short time I gave my life in the hands of Jesus Christ, and my mother accepted Christ as her personal Savior, as well. Christ became the source of her strength, health and enormous joy. My daughter is now a big girl, and she serves the Lord in the mission field. I am a happy man. I am not dead; I live and want to declare what He has done. I know: all I live, all I am, and understand today- He has taught me that. “Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying: “This is the way; walk in it.” (Isaiah 30:20,21). Darko Glešić
