Like a lamb to the slaughter

“He is a big joker! So he wants me to be all lovely dovey but when it’s time for him to give me emotional support he will be missing in action! He can’t have it both ways, only emotionally present with happy me, but missing in action when I’m down. Just thinking about it makes me so mad! I really needed him, but he really just couldn’t be bothered. I mean, if I can’t expect this of him, then who can I expect it from?”

I could hear the pain in her voice and I knew her question was meant to be rhetorical, but I had an answer for her, so I pulled her into a warm hug to calm her down which I hoped would make her more receptive to the lecture I was about to give, one I’d received not too long ago myself.

Yasmin had been married for only a few months, but had come to an emotional impasse that threatened to destroy her marriage. One I was trying to get to the bottom of. Her husband had recently started complaining that she was suddenly emotionally distant. It didn’t take me long to figure out what the problem was, she was dying to open up to someone- anyone, just not him. At least not anymore.

Source: Pinterest

An old friend of hers recently lost his son, and it hid her hard. Even though they hadn’t been in touch for a while, she’d never heard him sound so broken. She tried as much as possible to be there for him and his family, but it was emotionally draining. She’d reached out to her husband for comfort, but hadn’t gotten the response she felt she needed. It wasn't the first time, or the second, and frankly, she was tired, so she switched off.

Pulling away, “What I’m about to say may not be what you want to hear right now, but I’d like you to give it some thought. Can you do that?”

Taking her slow nod as a sign of cooperation, I began my story.

Before Charles and I got married, I'd had lofty dreams of what my marriage would be like. He would be my indestructible emotional rock! God forbid I was ever sad, he would never let a single tear drop from my eyes but would always be there with a warm hug and listening ear. The wedding day came and went, and reality quickly set in. Needless to say, I was an emotional wreck. Mind you, i’m not what one would call the emotional type. For years I’d done a good job- an excellent job actually, of hiding my feelings well, so a part of me was looking forward to sharing them with someone I felt I could trust and allow myself to be vulnerable with. It was a really difficult time for me at work but it was like Charles was completely oblivious to my needs and incapable of providing the emotional comfort I needed. When I needed a hug, he gave me a pat on the back. When I needed him to just listen, he gave me 10 ways to resolve the issue. So I started to slowly shut down. It wasn’t intentional. I just didn’t know what to do with this new me. I hated been vulnerable with someone who I didn’t feel was supportive, so I began to revert to the old me. But the more feelings I held in, the more I began to resent him. What was the point being married to someone if they can’t meet my emotional needs? But I hated who I was becoming. Something had to change, and change they did.

Ben was all that Charles wasn’t. Attentive and affectionate. So it was easy to.....

 To be continued

I told you so

Her constant pacing was making me uncomfortable. “Umitta, please sit down. This isn’t helping.”

“That’s easy for you to say.” She snapped. “I’m sorry. I know you are only trying to help.” She said sinking into the chair opposite me. “But it’s just soo frustrating. I told him this would happen, but he wouldn’t listen. He never listens!”

I knew I had to calm her down when she got up and started pacing again.

“Let’s go for a walk.” I said walking towards the door. The fresh air would do her some good.

Her husband had just lost his job. He’d gotten a job offer from a rival firm a few months earlier, which he had turned down against her advice because he was expecting a big promotion and bumper raise at work. Instead, he was sacked!. So even though I knew she was dealing with a variety of very different emotions, i wasn’t entirely sure which Ummita I was dealing with per time. Was it sad, mad or scared Umitta?

“What are we going to do? We just bought that land in Sango Tedo, so don’t have much in savings. How are we going to survive? I warned him this could happen, but he just wouldn’t listen. He never listens!”

Source: Pinterest

“Why did you come to me?”

“Huh? I don’t understand.”

“Out of everyone you could have spoken to about this, you came to me. Why?”

“Errr....I don’t know.”

“I think it’s because you thought I’d see things your way and possibly side with you.”

Her mouth opened as if to deny it, but was quickly shut because she knew I was spot on.

Ummita and I are very similar. We have the same “gift”- a gift which was a borderline curse during the first few years of my marriage. You see, we are able to tell the future. No, not in some mystical or psychic way, but…. It’s hard to explain. Just think of it like women’s intuition on steroids. We have this funny way of playing out a million different scenarios in our head, and somehow instinctively knowing what the outcome of almost all situations will be.

“Humor me a sec, I want to show you something.”

“Ok”

“Imagine I want to give you this key” I said holding out my car key. “But you get it under one condition- that you catch it when i throw it”

“Ok”

“I think if we both close our eyes when I throw the key, you have a better chance of catching it.”

“That’s utterly ridiculous” She laughed. “Both our eyes need to be open so you can throw it in the right direction, it’ll give me a better chance of catching it”

“Trust me. This will work. Now just close your eyes”

Watching her reluctantly close her eyes, I took a few steps back. Closed my eyes, and threw the key.

“Did you catch it?” I yelled.

“Of course not!  I told you it wasn’t going to work.”

“Yeah you did, but do you have the key?”

“I already said I don’t”

She didn’t get it. I had to try a different tactic.

“Ok, lets try this again. I’m gonna tell you something a very dear friend of mine told me before Aden and I got married, something that would probably have saved me a lot of grief if I’d taken heed of a lot earlier than I did.”

“Ok” she sighed. I could tell she was getting slightly impatient.

“She told me never to tell my  husband I told you so .”

I saw her mouth open as if to say something.

“Babe, let me land first.” I said before she could say anything. “I got married thinking- no, knowing I was smarter than Aden. After all, situations proved I was always right, so I didn’t understand why he’d have an opinion contrary to mine, and I loved to tell him so every opportunity I got. The more I told him I told you so the less he sought my opinion and the more mistakes he made. It got to the point where I patiently waited for him to make the mistakes I knew he would so I could tell him I told you so.”

I could tell my words had started to sink in, so I continued.

“I didn’t trust him to make the right decisions, and he didn’t trust me to support any decisions he made. It was a vicious cycle that threatened to destroy our marriage, because I didn’t trust his ability to make what I presumed to be the right decisions, I wasn’t in support of anything he wanted to do, even if it was right. It was spiraling out of control, it was no longer us against the world, it had become us against each other and I was powerless to stop it.”

“So what did you do?”

Laughing and shaking my head, I continued. “I fasted and prayed. Then fasted some more. I prayed that Aden would quit being soo stubborn and would listen to me. I prayed that he’d realize I was always right and fall in line!”

“Did it work?”

“Nope. Nothing changed, well except maybe my weight, I think I lost about 5kg from all the fasting.”

I could tell she was now slightly confused.

“To cut the long story short, a book by Stormie Omartian called The Power of a Praying Wife, found its way to me. It outlines specific areas women should pray about concerning their husbands. I thought it a little strange that the first set of prayer points were for wives to pray about ourselves. I mean, I wasn’t the problem, but it was a small price to pay to get him to fall in line.”

“Did it work?” she whispered.

“It took a while, but yeah, it did. Though not in the way you think. God convicted me in a major way! I was the one who needed to change. I felt my heart fill with the realization that it wasn’t about me, or what I wanted, but about what was right for us, because i can never want better for my family than God wants for us. The first thing I had to do was stop saying I told you so, the second was to lay down our opinions before God and ask for direction, conviction and humility concerning His will. If I was still convicted about my choice, the right thing to do was pray for Aden, generally that God would make him a man that I could trust to make the right decisions, a man that would hear His voice clearly concerning all things, and specifically that God would convict him concerning the issue at hand, and give him the humility to make the necessary adjustments. If I was wrong, then I had to humble myself and make the necessary adjustments. God showed me that I had elevated the “gift” He had given me for the benefit of Aden and I above Him. I realized that if I felt Aden was going down the wrong path, it was God and not my superiority complex that would get him back on track. In marriage there is no I. What affects one affects both. But what struck me the most was that most times, neither of us was right, there was often a different path God wanted us to go down.”

“Oh my God!”. She sobbed.

Realizing she was crying, I pulled her into a tight hug.

NOOOOO STOP!!! That's Ishmael

“I literally can’t stop thinking about him. He’s unbelievably charming and we have so much in common and to top it off, he is a Spirit filled....”

“Tongue speaking, fire breathing, demon casting, hot stuff”

Laughing, my friend immediately rose to her own defence as I completed her sentence for her.

“I haven’t gone on about him that much. Have I?”

“Err only like a zillion times! Anyway what’s the problem?”

“Haven’t you heard all I’ve been saying?  I can’t stop thinking about him. He’s literally on my mind every single second. It’s driving me crazy!!”

“Hmmmm”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just waiting for you to get to the point”

“Claire, the thing is, said thoughts haven’t exactly been of the pure variety.”

I almost chocked on the homemade Chapman I was sipping on.

“What EXACTLY have you been thinking about?”

“Anyway, it’s nothing overly serious. It’s just that I’m really, really, really, really, really, real...”

“I got that the first hundred thousand conversations we’ve had about him, just get to it madam”

“Sorry. Well it’s just that I’ve been wondering a lot what it’d be like to kiss him. More than wondering actually, fantasising is more like it”

I slowly set the glass down as I contemplated what advice I’d give my friend. She took the lack of an immediate response from me as a cue to continue.

“I’ve also been having this unsettling feeling I can’t quite put my finger on”

Bolatito had not so recently come out of a long term relationship that we all thought was the real deal. At the risk of sounding chauvinistic even to my own gender, she took the breakup like a man. But as time went on and she rejected suitor after suitor I began to fear that the break up might have affected her more than we’d all thought. Though to be honest none of the guys that approached her were anything to write home about. A union with any of them would have bagged her a masters degree in unequal yoking. I guess I just wanted her to ‘feel’ something for someone again, that way I’d know her heart was still beating.

So you can only imagine how over the moon I was when she told me about Mr Spirit filled, tongue speaking, fire breathing, demon casting hot stuff. He seemed to think she was the best thing since sliced bread and for the first time in a long time, my friend actually liked someone. But her last statement bothered me.

“What do you mean by unsettling?”

“It’s hard to explain”

Source: Pinterest

“Is it about him or the relationship? Come on babe, you have to give me more to go on here”

“You know what? I think I’m just being silly. This is all happening so fast .I think I’m just a bit scared”

That was 2 weeks ago. Today, I sit here listening to my friend tell me what she just found out about Mr Spirit filled, tongue speaking, fire breathing, demon casting, hot stuff and why a relationship with him would be a one way ticket to disaster .

 ***************

I started the New Year on a high, believing that a lot of things had or at least were falling into place for me. They all seemed so in line with what I believed God has for me this year. There was one opportunity in particular that had me almost as excited as Bolatito was about her new Beau, and like her there was an unsettling feeling I couldn’t shake. I hadn’t prayed about the opportunity as I kept telling myself that it wasn’t yet time to take that step because I was still waiting for things to develop further. However, I was already getting comfortable with the prospects that the opportunity would bring when the Holy Spirit convicted me that I was playing with fire. I’d let things spiral out of control for too long, things may not have gotten to the level that I think they should have for me to pray about the situation, but they had long gone past the level God required. All this was impressed on my heart as I drifted off to sleep last week Wednesday. I didn’t even say what most would call a ‘proper’ prayer, but I committed everything into God’s hands as I drifted off to sleep and you wouldn’t believe how He opened everything up the very next day. I was amazed how something that seemed so right when I woke up on Thursday morning became the complete opposite by the time I went to bed that same night.

 We all know the story of Ishmael, how he was a product of impatience and the desire to ‘assist’ God. Looking back over the events of the past few weeks, I don’t believe I was impatient and if at all anything , I took steps to ensure I do not do anything that can be perceived as helping God. Yet Ishmael came knocking. This has led me to conclude that Ishmael may not always be the product of impatience or helping God, like in the case of Sarah, but may also be a distraction technique used by the enemy, designed to keep you occupied so that when Isaac shows up, you will be so caught up with Ishmael you won’t even notice. You might have waited for as long as you have and even be willing to wait a bit longer when Ishmael shows up looking all like what God promised you.

One thing to bear in mind is that when the Ishmaels’ start appearing, your breakthrough is probably close enough for you to literally touch it. The enemy is only trying to distract you from it. So hold on just a little while longer, pray a little bit more, praise a little bit more.

Even though I used a male/ female relationship to illustrate my point, this Isaac/ Ishmael dilemma applies to all areas of life as I’ve learnt from my own personal experiences.

 I believe that this year God is going to fulfil so many promises it’ll make our heads spin. But as is characteristic to him, the enemy is going to try his best to make sure this doesn’t happen by presenting people with counterfeits. Be watchful. Be vigilant. Be Spirit led in all your decisions. Remember the perfect time to pray is NOW, and not when all the eggs seemed to have lined up.

Happy New Year

Spirit breakout: where there is no vision, the people perish

“Is this it? Is this the best it can ever be? Boye you just have to change the way you.......”

I saw the flash of hurt in his eyes, but I was too frustrated to stop. We’d been dating for over a year and I’d found a greater part of that time less than fulfilling. When the fights started, we joked that we went through the honeymoon phase before the relationship officially started, but now it was no longer funny. You see we’d had feelings for each other long before the relationship officially started. Back then it was electric. My best friend often teased me about how she could feel the chemistry between Boye and I when she was in the room with us.

He cut me off mid sentence.

“Ruth let me ask you a question”

I restrained myself from speaking as I watched him gather his thoughts.

“When exactly did things change? How did this relationship you claimed gave you so much fulfilment only a few months ago become so unfulfilling?”

I took a deep breath and attempted to respond, but my mind drew a blank, so he continued.

“It breaks my heart to see you so unhappy. Whatever I do these days either irritates or annoys you. Gone are the days when I could do no wrong, now it seems I can do no right! You hardly smile at me anymore I see the way you light up around your friends, and I think if only I can be better, if only I can do better then maybe, just maybe.....”

He ran his left hand over his head- something he did when he was frustrated.

“Ruth, I know you don’t love me anymore.”

He was right, I didn’t love him anymore.

“Right now, everything I do feels like pouring water into a bottomless pit. I’m tired of the double standards and constantly being made to feel like a disappointment. How is it ok for you to ask me to change things about myself and when I suggest clothes I think would suit you, you suggest I go get a Barbie and stop trying to dress you up.”

I could sense him trying to control his emotions. He looked me straight in the eyes and asked me something that shook me to the core.

“How and when did I suddenly stop being good enough?”

His face twisted in pain as he continued

“It’s funny; the love I have for you is in no way related to how you have treated me the last few months. If it was I would probably have killed you by now. I spend my time focusing on what I like about you, trying to stoke the fire in my heart. While you’ve spent that time concentrated on all the stuff about me you dislike.”

 “So you know what? I’ve decided to make a change that will definitely give you less to be sad, angry, irritated and disappointed about. I can’t bear how unhappy your constantly being disappointed with me and my efforts has made you.”

Right then, he handed me his half of the “Forever Friends” key holder I’d given him.

“It’s obvious I’m not the boyfriend you want, so how about I change my status from boyfriend to just friend.”

By this time my head was spinning. Did my boyfriend just break up with me?

The Moral?

My day job is far from my dream job. It involves more out of office trips than I’d like, and this depressed me a lot between the end of last year and most of early this year. Every time I thought about how different it was from my dream job and went over all the things I hated about it, the more angry, unfulfilled and depressed I became. I just couldn’t see past the (exaggerated in my mind) frequent out of office trips, for me the only option was to find another job - even if it wasn’t my dream job, something with less out of office trips.

The bible says, where there is no vision the people perish. I’ve since come to understand that vision here means the capacity to see beyond any given situation/ limitation. When you cannot see beyond an obstacle, you have no way of overcoming that obstacle. The reality of life is that we become what we focus on. In the story, we see that before Ruth and Boye officially started dating, they both focused on the good qualities about each other indirectly stoking the fire of love they had in their hearts for each other- something Boye continued to do even after they officially started dating. Ruth however, was more focused on Boye’s negative traits, the more she focused on them the less fulfilled she felt in the relationship and the less love she felt for Boye.

Now nobody is perfect, and no one should settle for what they absolutely cannot stand. However, a question we should ask ourselves in situations like this is, if nothing has changed- if the person, situation, limitation hasn’t gotten worse, why have our feelings gotten worse? Most times we realise it’s our perception that has changed, so even when we find ourselves in a different situation we still encounter the challenges of the previous situation because we are still the same.

In my case I spent so much time concentrating on the negative aspects of my job, I ignored the positive, like the fact that while working here, I met someone who is now one of my best- it’s a huge blessing having to work with a good friend, so when I focus on him and what a blessing he’s been to me, my feelings change and I’m glad to be at work.

The devil is indeed the father of lies and wants us to feel like the situation will never change, like it will never get better. He wants to keep us focused on his lies and breed toxic emotions in our hearts. But God says our focus should be on Him and what He says about our situation. God wants us to develop a capacity for vision, and develop the ability to see beyond the negative. He wants us to realise that often times we are the ones that need to be changed and not our situation.

An extract from a Joyce Meyer Devotional

From strength to strength

Psalm 84:5-7 “Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) is the man whose strength is in You, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. Passing through the Valley of Weeping (Baca), they make it a place of springs; the early rain also fills [the pools] with blessings. They go from strength to strength [increasing in victorious power]; each of them appears before God in Zion.”

I have discovered that when I am unhappy, I am tempted to start blaming my unhappiness on some circumstance or person in my life who is not giving me what I feel I need. Satan wants us to think that nothing will ever change, that things will only get worse. He wants us to inventory every disappointing that that has ever happened in our lives and think about how mistreated we have been. We can either be angry or we can look at God to meet our need.

Prayer

Lord, I draw my strength from You today. Help me to keep my eyes on You and see the difficult places turned into pools of blessings. Amen