JABAah

I was born in California, but where I was born has never really mattered much to me. The story of my life didn't begin with a place—it began before I ever had a voice.

Before I could breathe my first breath, before I could open my eyes, my life was already being shaped by decisions I never made. I grew up knowing that, at one point, there was even the possibility that I wouldn't be born at all. Before I ever had the chance to choose anything, I had already inherited the consequences of other people's decisions.

My parents' relationship had already been broken long before I entered the world. My father had been unfaithful, and during that separation my mother entered another relationship and had my half-sister. That relationship eventually became so destructive that she later obtained a restraining order against the man, and my half-sister spent all of her childhood under his legal custody.

Eventually, my mother and father found their way back to each other. Whether it was hope, familiarity, or simply the desire to try again, they attempted to rebuild what had already been shattered. Somewhere in that second chance, I was born.

But the cracks were still there.

The betrayal, the hurt, and the broken trust never truly disappeared. Their relationship never became what either of them had hoped it would be, and I grew up inside the aftermath of wounds that had begun years before I ever took my first breath.

As I grew older, I realized I had no real understanding of what a father was supposed to be. My mother raised me for most of my childhood, and one message echoed louder than almost anything else.

"All men are pigs."

I heard those words so often that, as a child, I almost accepted them as truth.

My father wasn't the example that challenged that belief. As I got older, I learned more about the mistakes he had made, including his struggles with drugs and the ways he continually sabotaged his own life. Looking back, I don't tell that story to condemn him. I tell it because it left me confused. I didn't know what healthy masculinity looked like. I didn't know what leadership looked like. I only knew dysfunction.

Yet my life wasn't only defined by my parents.

I grew up surrounded by a large family. Between my parents, half-siblings, and stepfamily, I had seven sisters. I also had my stepfather, Steve.

When I look back now, Steve stands out differently than almost anyone else in my childhood. He wasn't loud. He didn't preach long speeches. He wasn't perfect. But he quietly protected our family. While chaos constantly seemed to swirl around us, he was often the steady presence trying to keep everything from falling apart. Looking back, I believe he carried far more weight than I understood as a kid.

When we were all together as one family, we went to church.

I remember walking through the doors.

I remember sitting in the pews.

I remember hearing people worship.

But I never really understood why we were there.

Then one day, we simply stopped going.

Nobody ever sat me down to explain why. There was no conversation. Church just disappeared from our lives as quietly as it had become part of them. At the time I didn't think much of it. Looking back now, I believe that decision mattered far more than any of us realized.

As the years passed, some of my sisters eventually embraced paths that were very different from the values I now believe God calls us to live by. One became fascinated with Satan and openly claimed to have found him. Another proudly talked about having slept with around fifty different men, wearing it almost like a badge of honor instead of something that left her fulfilled. Another began identifying as the opposite sex, took hormone blockers, underwent surgery to remove the breasts God had given her, and, from my perspective, still seemed to be searching for peace that never came.

I don't write these things to mock them or to pretend I'm better than they are. They're my sisters, and I love them. I write them because I watched people I grew up with search for identity, purpose, and happiness everywhere except in God. The world promised freedom, self-expression, and fulfillment, but what I witnessed was confusion, pain, and a never-ending search for something that always seemed just out of reach.

Watching the people closest to me live through those choices forced me to ask a question that would eventually change my own life: if the world keeps promising happiness but so many people still aren't at peace, then where does real peace actually come from?

At the time, I couldn't explain what I was seeing.

Today, I believe I can.

A life apart from God doesn't just wound the mind or the body.

It wounds the spirit.

When we try to replace God with pleasure, identity, success, politics, relationships, approval, or self-image, we eventually discover that none of those things can carry the weight we ask them to bear.

I didn't only watch that happen around me.

Eventually, I lived it myself.

For years I bounced back and forth, trying to build a life on my own strength. Every time I thought I had finally escaped the instability of my childhood, something would fall apart again.

Every return felt like another personal failure.

Every return made me question whether I would ever become the man I wanted to be.

Yet even in the middle of all that confusion, something inside me refused to accept the message I had grown up hearing.

I didn't believe all men were pigs.

I believed that every man and every woman was created in the image of God. Equal in value, equal in dignity, yet created with unique purposes. I believed men were called to lead with humility, sacrifice, and love—not domination. I believed women possessed incredible strength of their own. Somewhere deep inside me, even before I truly knew Christ, I knew that the bitterness surrounding me couldn't be the whole story.

There had to be something more.

I just didn't know where to find it.

So I kept searching.

I was twenty-one years old and spent an embarrassing amount of money chasing dopamine. Bar after bar. Night after night. I told myself I was just enjoying life, but looking back, I wasn't chasing happiness.

I was running from emptiness.

My relationship eventually began falling apart. The more we learned about each other's beliefs, the more obvious it became that we saw the world completely differently. One day she found out that I didn't share her negative opinion of Andrew Tate, and it was as if I had confessed to committing some terrible crime. The argument exploded. The very next day she asked if I would go with her to a feminism protest.

At the time, I barely understood why politics had become so important to people. I didn't know what being "red-pilled" meant, and I didn't know why so many people were choosing political tribes over relationships. My view was simple: division makes people easier to control, and constantly turning people against each other only creates more hatred.

She didn't agree.

The relationship became colder. The care disappeared. The love disappeared. I felt increasingly isolated in my own home, and eventually I decided to leave.

Then everything collapsed at once.

I lost my job as general manager.

The relationship ended.

The future I thought I had built disappeared almost overnight.

And once again, I found myself doing the one thing I had promised I would never do.

I moved back into my mother's house.

Nothing had changed.

The same bitterness.

The same arguments.

The same message echoing through the walls.

I felt trapped all over again.

One thing I always wished I had experienced was a family united around each other instead of everyone eventually going their separate ways. My experience growing up often felt like every person was expected to leave, build an entirely separate life, and carry their burdens alone. I longed for a household where generations stayed connected, supported one another, and placed family above individual success.

Even then, Steve remained someone I deeply appreciated. He protected our family in ways that often went unnoticed. He rarely spoke about faith, but there was something in his quiet strength that stayed with me. Looking back, I believe he knew our home was missing something that no amount of money or success could replace.

God.

Without Christ at the center, our house had become a place where everyone was surviving instead of truly living.

By this point, I had almost completely given up on Jabaah.

I started working at UPS, waking up in the middle of the night for shifts that ran from around three in the morning until noon. The warehouse was an hour away, and I didn't even own my own car. Every day felt like survival.

I cried more nights than I would ever admit to the people around me.

The girl I thought I was going to spend my future with was gone.

The best-paying job I had ever had was gone.

My dream felt dead.

My bank account was empty.

I honestly believed I had nothing left.

That was when everything changed.

Not because my circumstances suddenly improved.

Because I finally turned toward Christ.