Growing up as a Pastor's son: The struggles and expectations.

Two things no child would want to be; a pastor's child and the son of a teacher. In my case I was both and before I knew how to spell my name, the world I was born into had already defined who I was and their expectations of me.

One of my worst days in my adolescent years was Sunday. I hated everything about Sundays, about church and above all, about what church meant to me. My father was a pastor, or what we called a Lead Pastor. He had his own church with a mammoth congregation numbering about five thousand per Sunday morning service. There were senior and junior pastors under him.

I grew up a pretender. I loved and wanted many things my father used to describe as "worldly" and "profane".
But those things gave me so much joy.
One of my fingers is bruised. My father hit me with a belt the day he found out I went to the Masquerade Festival on a Sunday evening instead of the Children's Bible study I was supposed to lead.

Growing up as a pastor's son, whose father was also a secondary school principal, I was defined, assigned roles and given ranks, none of which they sought my consent. For the junior pastors in my father's church, I was always used as an epitome of an excellent youth on days my father wasn't the preacher. Those junior pastors felt idolising me would win them my father's favours. It seldom did. I remember one Sunday after service, my father said to me, "Elomat, you heard what Pastor Dan said about you in church today, you cannot afford to derail from the true path".
I remember the first time I failed a subject in secondary school, the first thing my Chemistry teacher said to me was, "I used to think you're a teacher's son". Those words felt like a stigma I had to live with for the rest of my life. I had long embraced my shadow. I read overnight at home, or pretended to read just to pass well. My pretence had served my needs at home.

I felt a sense of freedom when I left home for the university. I was finally freed. I could go to clubs, drink, smoke, have girlfriends like my mates did. But I knew I had to maintain my rank at home. So I had blocked my father and all my siblings on my WhatsApp from viewing my status and I posted only Biblical contents on my Facebook. My father always commented on them. But he ignored post about my experience during departmental nights or my experience during an excursion. I didn't have friends from the home church, I hated intrusion and those church members always had a way of coming into someone's life oblivious of your unwelcoming attitude towards them, or they simply pretendes not to notice knowing you couldn't or wouldn't revolt publicly. What would your father say if he heard you did that?

How would Pastor Dan look at me? In school I failed courses, had girlfriends and finally had enough reasons to leave school. It wasn't meant for people like me. I was intelligent and I didn't need any lecturer or some Vice Chancellor to confer such status on me. I knew it. Some of the lecturers confirmed it in class too, even though they often put a caveat, "...but you're too lazy, Loveday". The worst was when Dr. Henry discovered my father was a teacher and a pastor. "Going by your results, no one would think you're a teacher's son and by your association, no one would think you ever heard of Christ or given your life to Him.

Tomorrow is our 15th Anniversary Youth Convention. Dad said I must attend. Pastor Dan wants to be promoted to the Head of Youth ministry. My father would attend the inaugural service. I am expected to be there. And I know Pastor Dan would want to use me as a model of a Christian youth. My father would nod from his seat when he does and he would go on and on oblivious of the expression on my face.

But tomorrow morning, I shall tell my father that I was none of those things his ministers and junior pastors in church said I was. I didn't finish school even though I lied I had. I was not who they wanted me to be, I was a free spirit floating in my own world, finding meaning in nothingness. I am just a young innocent boy who wanted to change the world, but the world eventually changed me.

My fear is not how to tell my father I was pretending all these years, my fear however, is how I shall keep my face to tell my father that I had impregnated a girl in my third year and that we had been living together since then and tomorrow the boy would be four. #fiction