My father told me to stop wasting my degree. I almost believed him.

My father sat me down one evening in 2019, after I told him I was leaving my NGO job to go into full time ministry. He removed his glasses, cleaned them with his wrapper, and said one sentence that stayed with me for years. "You went to UNN for four years so you can carry Bible and beg for offering?"

The thing about life is, our parents measure success with a ruler they inherited from their own suffering. My father was a civil servant for thirty one years. He knew what a salary slip looked like. He knew what pension meant. He did not know what it meant to wake up at 5am and drive to Nsukka to pray with a boy who was planning to drink rat poison that night. He could not see that kind of salary.

I am not saying I was right and he was wrong. I am saying we were both blind in different directions. He could not see what I was building. I could not see what he was afraid of losing for me. We argued for two years. Then one Sunday he came to my church in Enugu, sat at the back, and watched me counsel a young couple for forty minutes after service. He did not say anything on the drive home. But he bought me a new Bible the following week. Chineke, that Bible is still on my shelf. Sometimes the people fighting you the hardest are just scared for you in a language they don教 know how to speak. Has your parent ever opposed something you knew God was calling you to do?