​I have lost count of how many letters I have personally written to God since I turned eighteen years. Now I am forty (40) years and none of the letters I have written all these years have been answered. So this time around, instead of addressing the letter to God, I have decided to address it to heaven. My hope is that at least someone would pick it up and understand the concerns of a young person who needs to make meaning from his life.

You are always speaking to us about the better day, yet we have seen many pass with a singular story of pain from birth, challenges at growth and the shame of nothingness at their dying bed.

They told us that life is like a walk at a noisy market, until your voice is loud enough, you will go home without anyone knowing what you came to sell.

Truth be told, we have seen many of such people. Those who try to figure out life to make it or change their story. Those who use their smile as a shield from public ridicule and an urge to keep the fire in them ablaze. To whoever is in heaven reading this, I think it is all not worth it. I think throwing in the towel is the best shot at finding happiness and some peace of mind. What can come can come, life should pass me by and I am ready for the damn consequences that comes with it. I have seen the worse and I have concluded that the fight is not worth it.
I have seen what you have not seen and I do not expect heaven to understand, for you always come to us in fine linen and use specific vocabulary to address us in dreams as angels, as if, if you do otherwise, heaven would cease to exist. It has been long, it has been painful and I conclude that it is better to put the fire off myself.
So yes forgive me if I am not interested in your rhetoric and an attempt at consoling me with stories that mean nothing to me. I have trusted God from the first day of my birth and now, that trust is the reason am ridiculed.
This may be the last letter I write to you. I want you to understand that once this is posted, I am done. Do not bother to reply me because I already have an idea of what you would say to me. Do not bother to pray for me when you receive this letter because my hunger does not allow me to lift my eyes to the mountains. My head remains fixed on whatever gives me food and sound sleep. All these I find in the ground and not on the mountain.
This is a letter of courtesy, my decision has been made.
Your Troubled Son
Badmus.

((((. Once the letter was written, it got posted to heaven. Luckily, the letter reached heaven in no time and it was picked up by one of the messengers of consolation. This messenger belongs to a group of angels whose sole work is to console wearied hearts and they who feel life is not worth it. Those angels are many and countless and often times than not, they have work doing.
Because the letter had no specific recipient, this angel decided to reply the letter of Badmus in the same style and diction he wrote.)))). The part in bracket are italicized

Dear Badmus,
When I found your letter on the streets of heaven, I was glad and simply overjoyed because it is a joy to always hear from the earth when you are in heaven. Imagine my surprise when I opened the letter and my joy was stolen by your first paragraph.
Well, I am replying your letter even though you asked that whoever receives it should not bother to reply. The reason for doing this is not to change your mind or persuade you to do otherwise than you want to but I just want you to know a little bit about me as an angle and give you an idea of how things work here in heaven. Since you are certain we will not be hearing from you again I will intentionally be a little detailed so you can appreciate what am about saying. Before I even end my letter, I want to assure you that it would be the last you receive from heaven. It would be on record for everyone to see that at a point in life you took matters into your own hands and needed no guidance or support of God.
I have not always been an angle, and even now while I rest from the many months and years of being human, I realised that in life many a times we take things from an unkind perspective until we find ourselves in the cold bossom of mother earth. Every day we learn and unlearn. Some days you are a total stranger to your own principles and other days an event proves to you that it doesn’t matter how old you have advanced in life and years, you still remain a child of life and your story can only have a pause and not a finish.
So, forgive me if I understand what you are going through, or appreciate your anger and tantrum with which you wrote the letter. I think hunger has a good taste for awful words and giving up is a relative of hunger and frustration. I am certain if you had written the letter after that meal you planned having, you would have sounded a little more different. You may not have even written the letter at all. But as I said, I can understand.
You see, when you spend nine months in the womb of your mother and everything is provided for, there is the likelihood to think that once you are out, all the things you need until you are called to the cold bossom of the earth would be provided for you and placed at your door step for you to go and pick up when you are ready. Once you are out of the womb, everyone is patient with you until you learn to walk and do other things. While you learn to walk, everyone is eager to carry you in his or her bosom and encourage you to take another step, but once you learn to walk, that desire to carry you is translated into allowing you to carry yourself with your own legs and the support of your shoulders.
You see, the sharp contrast between being provided for and providing for yourself as you carry on in age is not a story one man can tell. So whatever is eating you up, you have to figure it out yourself and remember the world is not like a pregnancy situation and you will be on earth for pretty longer than 9 months so definitely, pain like yours coupled with frustration is expected.
When I was human, there was a man who used to tell us that ‘The first thing we are taught from conception is Dependency Syndrome’. When I heard this from him, I wanted to challenge this assertion but he was smart to explain that Dependency Syndrome is for children, once you start walking and you are seen as old enough to reason on your own, the next thing you have to learn is the Warrior Mentality.
This is learnt and not taught. Being a warrior means there is a constant fight every day for something. A life, a dream, an ideology, a way of doing things. The warrior mentality comes with torture because everyday has its own war and the fight is never over. While it sounds uncomfortable, remember you fight or you sink with the fallen.
Remember wars are not pretty. Someone dies or something in you dies forever. He added another lesson that is also taught but it’s not relevant to this letter so let me spare you the lecture. Do not forget many warriors bleed from unseen wounds until the fight is over and time is not always available to heal the way you want before the next fight.
You see I have not come this far, because of my own wisdom. While I acknowledge Grace and the role it has played in my life, I also add that I have borrowed wisdom from they who have proven to have it and I have tried to add up to mine places where I know I need help.
One of such is what I heard at a gathering of elders I was privileged to be because I was called to serve them drink and by so doing I had to stay to listen to them talk. One of them mentioned that there is a time in life when the ones who stand in the light to cry thinks that the people in the dark have no tears and those who walk in the rain do not cry either. They said everyone has a story to tell and in that story you can call yourself anything, so why not call good for your own story and set out to make it happen. There was a man who wrote before the gate of his house the following words.
Hated and despised while I lived. Upon my death and burial, they wrote in loving memory of a son who was a brother and friend. Now I know that love unending is for the dead but for those who live, love remains a dream. Even if it was promised by God, men would make Him break it. Find rest in the bosom of the friends at the other side, where eyes judge not and ears detest gossips.
These words were the inspiration of one who wanted a better future for himself, but these were the words that greeted him every day until his death. Truly, he was not loved and he died thinking all men were after his downfall.
Mr Badmus, there was a time heaven was glad to hear from you because your letters started with appreciation and concluded with the prayerful request for grace to face the hills and valleys of your life as they come and go. There was a time you prayed every morning and asked God’s will to be done throughout the day but one day you just stopped. You started putting faith in beliefs you do not understand. You started upholding what has not survived the test of time. You suddenly ignored grace and the ways of the divine. You forgot with God all things are possible and you professed faith in what you want and how you can get it by any means necessary. Now that things have proven to operate at a level and a wisdom larger than yours you feel heaven must treat your case at the emergency unit?
Let me not prolong this letter, after all you are not even willing to listen to what heaven has to say. You have made your mind and you need no second opinion even if it comes from a power and source better than yours. Let me conclude by saying that you have learnt so many things that you have to unlearn and accept the simple facts of the gospel. Beyond those facts many lies have been quoted in the light of the truth and the truth has been lost in the dark of lies. So you have to be ready to unlearn all those lies and hold on to the truths below.
• Do not fight everything that comes your way with disdain and bitterness.
• Do not put your life on hold until everything works out because things not working out in a manner you prefer, is also part of life.
• Do your best even at your worse, accept what comes when it comes and do not tell God how to be God.
• Whatever you do not understand, commit to a personal prayer to God and if you have friends who care enough about you, ask them to pray for you too.
• Always remember that God is with you until the end of time.

I wish you well Badmus, whatever path you choose to follow today, make sure you are proud of it tomorrow.

Yours in Heaven.