‘Narrowed’ by my roommate to deeper faith
Work brought me back to Kumasi, and I was lodged in one of the guest houses on the KNUST campus. Yesterday, the city paused—no work, no bustle—out of reverence for the final funeral rites of the Asantehemaa. In that quiet, I felt a pull, a kind of nostalgia laced with unfinished emotions. So, I got in my car and drove down to my old hall of residence, the place that held the echoes of my first year.
I walked past familiar corridors, now softened by time. Our old room—once a chaotic haven of youthful exuberance and exhaustion—was now occupied by females. I smiled at the irony. Just four doors down was the chapel, the place I used to escape to when life inside that room became unbearable.
I sat there, alone, letting nearly three decades of life wash over me. And then the memories came—uninvited, vivid, and loud.
We had this roommate. Let’s just say he had a very active social life. “Narrowing”—that was our code word. It meant you had to vacate the room so a roommate could entertain his female guest. And he narrowed us a lot. It got so bad that even when I pretended to be asleep, hoping he would take the hint and go elsewhere, the next thing I knew, the bunk bed would start moving rhythmically. The moaning, the creaking, the sheer ecstatic audacity—it was like living in a badly scripted soap opera with no escape.
I was studying medicine. Sleep was already a luxury. But thanks to the narrowing, I found myself spending more and more nights in the chapel. At first, it was just survival—somewhere quiet, somewhere sacred, somewhere I could breathe. But slowly, something shifted. The chapel stopped being just a refuge. It became a sanctuary. A place where I wrestled with my frustrations, my fatigue, my fears. And in that wrestling, I found prayer. I found peace. I found a deeper walk with my Maker.
Reflectintrospection
🙏Funny how life works. What felt like an invasion, a violation of my space and sanity, ended up laying the foundation for my faith. That roommate, unknowingly, pushed me into a deeper relationship with my Maker. And that made all the difference.
🙏So now, sitting in that same chapel, older and hopefully wiser, I realise something: life doesn’t always come wrapped in comfort. Sometimes it shows up in chaos, in moaning roommates, in sleepless nights. But if we lean in, if we ask what it’s trying to teach us, if we reposition ourselves, even the messiest moments can become a sacred message for advancement. What the enemy meant for evil, God will use for good. Every trial designed to break us becomes a tool to build us. The storm that was meant to drown us will carry us to our destiny. What was sent to destroy us will be transformed to strengthen us because their intention was harm but our response transformation. Truly, our Maker can turn our pain into gain.
With this confident assurance, know that all things really work together for our good—if we learn to let go and let our Maker handle it. Yours is not an exception!
Serenity Prayer
Dear Lord, grant us peace when life feels unfair,
Strength when we are stretched beyond our limits,
And wisdom to see Your purpose in every detour.
Let what was meant to break us, build us.
Amen.
