Thankyou jesus, I know it was your doing!
Right after my 5th grade exams were over, I immediately knew i was gonna flunk, I'm serious about this, i remember how badly i wrote my exams and there was no way i could've cleared my annual exams. This was such a huge headache for me because i knew for sure that i was gonna flunk and my mom was gonna kill me.
So i spent my entire summer vacation under extreme fear and anxiety of how i'm gonna deal with this and things were tough at home at that time, So i went on to spend the rest of my vacation not knowing what to do and i remember the day before the exam results were out, I was in my Aunt's House and just before bed she always prayed and she was an ardent believer of jesus and that had a bit of influence on me aswell, but even before that i was exposed to christianity as i did my first grade in a residential school named ST. Joseph's, It was run by nuns and you know people who were clergies and believers, they used to sit me down and talk about all these things related to jesus and on sundays they'd take me to the service which was conducted in a church inside the school campus. Anyway all of this naturally made me to believe that jesus would help me overcome my struggles and being born and raised in a hindu culture i was allowed to pray to millions of gods, So the concept of praying to some other god from another religion never occurred to me as i saw them all as one and had a fine distinction between GOD and RELIGION!
So i used to join her for the praying every night before going to bed and i so remember she has never asked me, Not once if i had any particular wish, like anything specific that i want. She had me in my prayers, the general well being of me but that day she asked if i had anything specific and i told her “Athai naliku pass aganum” Which means “Aunt, i just wanna pass tomorrow” and i prayed along with her too but i opened my eyes after a while and she almost prayed for half an hour. I remember this so well because i still remember how scared i was and you know 100% sure that i was gonna re-do my 5th grade.
The next day when i went to school along with my mom with all sorts of possible scenarios of what would happen if i failed was running wild in my mind, We went to our classroom and the only thing i remember now was that i passed and that was just unbelievable, i mean how the hell did i clear this off ? because i knew how badly i wrote my exams and there was no way i could've cleared this but i did, Either i thought i did very poorly despite of an average performace or this was a miracle but for me it was a miracle, I straightaway with no single solitary doubt in my mind thought this was jesus's doing!
He was the one responsible for this because i had no other logical explanation but all this stayed just within me and i never told anyone that it was a miracle, i was patient till the end and just wanted to figure out what i was supposed to do after they've declared that i have to re-do my 5th grade but my dumb head dint think about the re-exam i could've done. It happened the way it happened and i just went back home and thanked jesus for this miracle and i strongly felt it was 100% his doing. Looking back at it now, it just feels like such a childish thing for one to feel, that god was the reason why he cleared off an exam!
A few weeks after this, I went into 6th grade and it was a huge classroom, possibly the biggest classroom that i've ever studied in during my entire schooling. Much bigger than my 11th nd 12th grade classroom even. The students were the same and even the class teacher was the same, there was no shuffling done and i was lucky to be in a class which had lots of guys interested in sports and i remember we got off to continuing over games from day 1 and that slowly started improving my speed and for the first time in my life i started participating during these P.T period. Football being the main sport of our school, our boys were always at it and played no other sport, our school had a huge ground and a proper 90 Metre post to post. It was perfect that we conducted our own football tournaments within the school and sports days every single year.
I actively took part in playing football, even though I knew nothing about the game, the game had a lot of running and that's all mattered to me. I was able to catch up with guys who were running away with the ball and disrupt their momentum and I did nothing else. For me that meant so much because for the first time I was participating and I din't try anything else because I was scared of competition or end up looking like a loser. So this continued and one day a good friend of mine approached and asked me what's the matter with you? All you do it is to catch the guy running away with the ball and you immediately pass it if you get it. You don't do anything else, Why don't try to control the ball, go for a goal and all that?
I replied "You know I can't, I'm just too scared of you know looking like a fool and moreover I think I'm incapable.
He just smiled back and said “One day you'll hit a goal, Wait and watch!”
This was coming from the best footballer in the class, infact the whole of 6th grade. His name was Tharun Srinivas, he was an extraordinary cricketer too. The guy topped almost in all the supporting events like Cricket, football and Athletics
We both were in the same team aswell, infact years later he went on to play for the “LYCA Kovai kings” in the Tamilnadu premier league (TNPL), He was a star athelete even as kid, so this guy really boosted me up and I don't remember how long after this but one of the days where we were playing a football match, we were getting beaten and I remember the goalkeeper was audaciously standing near the mid line because they were so dominant that day. Someone hit the ball so hard it flew across the keeper and was flying towards no man's land😂
There was literally no one between the ball and the goal past, I sprinted so fast that I comfortably reached to the ball before the goalkeeper did and I for the first found myself running towards the post and there was literally no one so it was an easy goal and forever it was the first goal ever and Tharun was jumping around he came straight to me laughing and said “I told you, I told you that you'd hit a goal one day”
I was so freakin elated and happy that I scored my first goal, infact I guess that was one of the only three goals I scored in that entire academic year😂
But for me, a kid who'd sit under the tree and watch other's play. It was such a big deal. This guy really backed me up and then I was super confident about myself, I wasn't sure if I had the goods to be an athlete but you know I was pretty confident that I could be good at sports because I had the speed, being faster than most of the guys gave me that confidence and it was this confidence which made me continuously play those games which involved lots of running whenever I had a break and eventually I decided to compete in my first ever race. A selection race to represent my team for 100 meters dash finals on the biggest day of the school in an academic year.
The sports day!
