The Word Café Podcast with Amax
My unique message to the world is the power behind the words of our mouths. We have made light of it but cannot escape the fruits thereof. For me, words are the unit of creation, the building block on which our existence evolves. This podcast is for everyone who wants to better their living by using words and applying themselves wisely. I will be using the storytelling style fused with imaginative nuances to transport the listener to that place, where possibilities are not luxuries but everyday experiences; movie in voice.
This podcast will emphasize the power of routine, and what you repeatedly do, you most likely build capacity and expertise for what you repeatedly do. My podcast will help the listener learn how to practice success because the same amount of time you use in complaining is the same you can use to plant, build, prune, etc. I intend to draw the listener's attention to the power of their words.
The Word Café Podcast with Amax
S4 Ep. 225 Navigating Life's Deepest Wounds: A Personal Journey Through Loss and Healing
Some conversations reach deep into the soul, exposing the raw places where we hurt most. In this profoundly personal episode, I share intimate stories of my journey through unspeakable losses and physical pain—from watching my younger brother's life slip away before my eyes to holding my mother as she took her final breath.
Drawing wisdom from Jesus's painful cry on the cross, "My God, why have you forsaken me?", I explore how even divine beings acknowledge their suffering. Using an empty perfume bottle as a powerful metaphor, I demonstrate that we have two choices when pain enters our lives: allow it to grow until it shatters us completely, or grow ourselves until the pain becomes proportionally smaller against our expanded capacity.
My childhood was marked by a devastating leg injury that nearly resulted in amputation, leaving me immobilized for a year while other children played outside. Later came the trauma of witnessing death up close—my brother Oliver's accident, losing my childhood friend to a truck accident, and eventually losing both parents. Each loss carved deep grooves of grief, yet each taught profound lessons about human resilience.
What I've learned through these experiences has shaped every aspect of my being—how I write, think, and connect with others. Pain has given me a capacity for empathy that wouldn't exist otherwise. Perhaps our suffering serves to remind us of our fundamental helplessness and our need to anchor ourselves in something greater. The pain doesn't disappear, but as we grow, it recedes to the background, becoming part of our story rather than defining it.
If you're going through darkness right now, hear this truth: you are not alone. Even when it feels like you've been forsaken, remember that sometimes our deepest pain creates space for our greatest purpose. Join me in this vulnerable conversation about finding meaning in suffering and allowing our wounds to become sources of wisdom.
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Whoo Hi. Yes, don't mind me looking at my this. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good, everything, wherever you are on the surface of the earth at this particular instant, seeing and hearing me. So how are you? I know you're fine, I know you're beautiful. I know you're fine, I know you're beautiful, I know you are amazing. Yeah, we've had a lot of challenges. Well, that's what life is all about, you know. We surmount them by his grace. I'm good, I'm fine.
Speaker 1:It's been an amazing season for me within the podcasting space. You'll get to know very soon, maybe before even this episode. You'll get to see it, you'll get to hear it. So what are we going to be doing today?
Speaker 1:Today's conversation is a little bit heavy for me. I've processed it and before coming on set, I was just praying under my breath, asking for the right words, the clear terms to communicate this Pain. Dealing with Right words, the clear terms to communicate this Pain. Dealing with pain. There's a lot of pain, Yep, but before I go into that, I'm going to read.
Speaker 1:That's why I'm holding my phone. I'm going to read this and a scripture. The first is a known scripture, but each time I come upon it, thinking about pain, it teaches me a lot and that's one of the last words of Jesus on the cross. Yes, he said about three in the afternoon I think that's the night hour. Jesus cried in a loud voice Eli Eli lemma sabachthani. Some transcriptions I mean translation would put it Eloi Eloi. He said, which means my God, I mean translations put it Eloi Eloi. It says, which means my God, my God. Why have you forsaken me? It's not a new scripture. Yeah, we are in the season, you know, building up to Easter and all of that. You know building up to Easter and all of that. And I asked myself this question why did he use those words? These words were first used, or rather talked about, by the psalmist somewhere in uh, I think it's some one, two one when he was talking about the coming of the Messiah and all of that. And he prophesied a whole psalm Long, very long, but that's a discussion for another day. But these words, why have you forsaken me?
Speaker 1:I was trying to imagine the pain. This was Jesus Divinity in flesh, and would you say he was scared. For the first time, he was alone, trying to imagine the pain. Those words, they were excruciating. How do you deal with pain? One could say Jesus was traumatized, he was in pain and he cried out.
Speaker 1:So this morning, before coming to the studio, before leaving the house, I was having this conversation with my wife, this, and I told her I have a recording to do today, but I just feel this weight, like it's very heavy for me, but I need the grace of god to like share, to talk about it. So in course of sharing with her, this empty perfume bottle caught my attention. It will be part of illustration. Pain. Now look at this container. Let us look at this, see this. This is a container. So imagine you throw a ball that fits into this container and it drops in and that ball is pain.
Speaker 1:Like I told that either of two things will happen. The more we f dwell on the pain, it grows. The container does not grow. But because the container is dwelling on the pain, the pain grows. And as long as that is happening, you know what will happen. It will get to a capacity, a limit and what happens? The pain overcomes, overtakes, overpowers the container and boom. So you hear things like misery loves company and I say the energy that comes from that company is undesirable because it destroys you. But now look at it from the other way If the container you know pain doesn't go away like boom disappears. So what happens If the container begins to train itself, begins to mature, the container begins to mature, the container begins to grow and the pain begins to disappear to the background, not the foreground. The container is growing, the pain is reducing. The container is growing, the pain is reducing. So that is how I have come to view pain and I'm going to share some intimate stories with you.
Speaker 1:I grew up in pain. Pain, yes, I did. My earliest memory of pain could go as far back as when I was one and somebody said how do you say that that you remember? Yes, because that is what pain does to you. It gives you this mark or scar. So growing up, I had this accident A child playing in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1:I'm going to tell you a series of stories, true stories of pain. I had this injury. How did it come about injury? How did it come about? I was playing and I put my legs into this. You know hollow blocks For those of you who live in some part, even it's everywhere you know these fanciful blocks they use in beautifying houses, hollow blocks. As a child I put my leg in one of them. And because of playing, yes, and I forced my leg out of it and had an injury which I kept to myself. I didn't tell my parents. The injury festered and became cancerous and when they took me to the doctor I was made to understand as a child. Yes, I still remember it.
Speaker 1:In pain, my bones began to fall apart. I could see them A big sore. For the sake of camera I won't expose that those of you who have seen me physically. When I work, I strike, if you don't know, you think I'm moving like swagging or something. No, it's because my, my legs are uneven, one is longer than the other and when I stand I lean. For one full year I was immobilized and they said the doctor said my legs one of it, my right leg to be precise, would be amputated.
Speaker 1:And my mom, prayer for woman. She said no way. So we kept praying. She kept praying. Oh, for a child. I could still remember. I see children playing. I can't play. I can't go out and play with them. I lost time. I lost time. All I could hear when I am in the room. I could hear the children playing outside, my mates, but I couldn't go out. So pain gives you this psychological, emotional, physical scar, but I came through by the help of my mom, through God. She kept praying. Another one that happened to me was I have lost people in my life that I witnessed them translate before my eyes. Yes, watch them Loved ones.
Speaker 1:The first of it was my younger brother, my immediate younger brother, oliver, oliver, ours his name. And that day, what happened? One of us was going to dispose refuse in the neighborhood. You know, we grew up in this neighborhood where refuse disposal is not what it is today. You have this like something like maybe a Borough Pete or a garbage truck, a mobile garbage truck, somewhere around the street where you go to dispose. And he was going to dispose refuse and Oliver, without his knowledge and the knowledge of any adult, followed him and he was hit by a bike, a motorbike, and it was really bad.
Speaker 1:For the first time in my life I could see blood. As a child, he was rushed to the hospital nearby. For the first time in my life I could see blood. As a child, he was rushed to the hospital nearby. I still remember that hospital. Don't ask me how that's. What pain does my mom crying and the doctors were like. So we all came around him, the family, and I could still remember those eyes looking at everybody, one after the other, and life living his body. I didn't understand it so much then, but I could see somebody leaving. My mom was crying, my dad as a man trying to compose himself, but you could see it. He left us. It was painful, he left us, it was painful.
Speaker 1:Then another one was in primary school. I think I was in primary four, I think so, three or four. We were going home. Then the school I attended, St John's Primary School, rumeme in Pothahakot. We used to walk to school and back, even when they provided a bus for us. But you knew children and adventure.
Speaker 1:For those of you that know Pothahakot so well, the Ikwiri Road, one of the longest roads in Pothahakot, ikwiri Road it used to be narrow. Now it's like a dual carriageway, pretty narrow. We used to work and that particular day it was in December, I think around December, because it was Hamatan myself, my younger brother, my kid friend, childhood friend, all of us I think about 10 or more of us were walking home. Somewhere around after the OCC Park there's a place called OCC Park on the Quarry Road, the room you may access A little bit after it we have these stores of furniture makers. I can still see them and at that point my younger brother was on the other side of the road.
Speaker 1:We were all on the other side of the road, or on one side of the road. Then I had to cross and he was there and when I crossed, just like I was beckoning on him to come children that we are he was pretty younger than me. Children that we are, he was pretty younger than me and in trying to come across in 9-1-1 Mercedes Benz truck picked him up, threw him across the road. In trying to swerve, the truck hit my childhood friend. Instantly he passed out. He died. I was looking at him. The place became chaotic. It was a chaotic scene.
Speaker 1:On one hand, I was looking at my younger brother bleeding, his head broken in like four, five places, because imagine a 911 truck and I had to carry two of them to the nearby clinic. My hands, because we used to watch movies those days. They tell you when you have a broken whatever, don't let air get into it. So I used my hands as a child, thinking it would stop the bleeding. I covered his head for the other person who was gone and my hands were stained in blood and I ran. I ran, excuse me, I ran for hours. I ran to hours, ran to my father and when he saw me, what happened? I could barely speak. I can still remember his face. My brother didn't die, but my friend did. He's alive today. His name is Nimi Nimi Amakri. It taught me so much about pain, sorry guys, and each time I go back there in time I come to appreciate life more.
Speaker 1:The next one was the death of my father. That happened when I was in my final year in school, writing my final year exams. That weekend we had a program in school but I couldn't place it. I was uneasy, so I had to go home. And when I got home I was told he took ill and they rushed him to the clinic. So I dropped my stuff and I just went to the clinic immediately. My older brother was already there when I got there. It's like you see in life, leave another body.
Speaker 1:My mom was behind me when she got there. We had to keep her outside the word as in the room, I beg your pardon. My older brother was. He couldn't contain himself, so I had to come out of the room, lock the door behind me or close the door behind me and told my mom he's fine, he's good, they just asked that we get some food for him and all that. So I took her home and told her I need to go back to the clinic. I actually lied to her. He was dead all this while.
Speaker 1:I had to go and inform, according to tradition, and all the family members elders. So I took a vehicle with the thought of him dead with me. I went around informed everybody and it was at about five, six in the evening when I got home my mom looked at me and said so your dad was dead all this while and you didn't tell me. She was so cross with me and I looked at her. I don't know, maybe because I've experienced this a lot so I could handle her. I just held her and she was in pain. I could feel it. I didn't cry Because I've come to understand tears are the lubricant of the soul. When you cry, your soul is lubricated. You see better, you hear better, just like Jesus said, why have you forsaken me? It was 12 am that night. I sat down and I wept. I couldn't contain it anymore. The one that each time I think about it hits me was the day my mother passed. She died in my arms. So that day I think it was in March my birthday is 17th. My mom died on the 15th. My elder brother's birthday is on the 16th of March.
Speaker 1:So that morning my house as in, when I left my dad's place and started living on my own. I did it in such a way that, because I have this sweet thing that I have with my mom, I don't like staying far from her and she would not let me go too far. So I stayed like two miles away. It's a walkable distance. But that day I drove through the house on my way to the office because my workplace was just in the neighborhood. Also, don't ask me how all this, that's how it's been with me.
Speaker 1:So she called and said bring my son. That's her. She doesn't call him grandson, she calls him my son and my daughter. So I called home and I said to my wife your mom said you should come with her son and all of that. She saw them. She was playing from what I was told, laughing, running around the house with him. And in the evening, at about 9, 10, I heard a call. My elder brother was on the phone. He was shouting and I got into the car, drove to the house and I walked up to her. I held her. They were calling her name, so I held her. She meant a how to pray. She taught me how to connect with divinity. She taught me how to fight, and she was gone. I called her name, she was gone. I saw her in the morning of that day. That evening she was gone.
Speaker 1:So why am I sharing all this with you? People are going through stuff, people are going through pain. But listen, you're not meant to be overpowered by pain. You are not meant to be overpowered by pain. You are to lean on God's grace, grow and overpower, or rather grow, learn from it, grow, learn from it. Do I understand it all? I don't. That it has helped my sanity. It has helped my writing process, thinking process, relating with people. So when I hear things like you don't understand, I smile because I do. It only shows how frail we are and helpless. How frail we are and helpless.
Speaker 1:If Jesus could cry, why have you forsaken me Like I need you now? But his death brought about our salvation. Maybe that pain is to open you up to greater things. Maybe that pain is to remind you of your helplessness and how you should anchor yourself on God. You should anchor yourself on God. I didn't mean to bore you today but, like I told you before we started, it's heavy on me and I just said I need to share this with you.
Speaker 1:People are going through stuff. People are, but I just want to let you know you are not alone. If Jesus was forsaken for a moment, it was because you and I to save us, to give us a future. His word says I will never leave you Nor forsake you. He has gifted us with the gift of his presence. So whenever we go through stuff, we should remember we are not alone. He knows that we can't handle it all by ourselves.
Speaker 1:That's what I came to do on the show today. Wherever you are listening to me, remember this you are not alone. No matter what you've gone through, listen, you are not alone. No matter what you've gone through, listen, you are not alone. All right, guys, I hope this helps. Before I go, I will leave you with this. The pain doesn't go away, but you can grow, like the container. As you grow, the pain disappears to the background, it becomes insignificant. Its memory only helps you to know how far you've come and how far you've grown by his grace and how, when your life is opened like a fragrance, that sweetness feels the atmosphere we are. I have to go now, but you know how we say it on the show Go ahead, follow us. We are there Instagram, tiktok, facebook, youtube. We share wholesome content here Till I come your way again. My name is Amakri. Amakri is away. Bye for now.