When Wives Pray

Remember a few years ago when we embarked on The Power of a Praying Wife , well i'd like to invite you to participate in a slightly updated version of the program starting on the First of November titled “When Wives Pray”, where we will embark on a 30day journey in which God will teach us to intercede for our husbands (to be), not as a means of controlling them, but of refreshing and restoring our marriages and laying a solid foundation for those yet to be married, by surrendering all claim to power in and of ourselves, and relying on God’s power to transform us, our husbands (to be), circumstances, and marriage.

Is this for only married women? NO! It’s for everyone who considers herself a wife, especially those who are single. Proverbs 18:22a “He who finds a wife finds a good thing” – you are not a wife when he marries you, you’re a wife when he finds you, you become HIS wife when he marries you. A ring doesn’t make you a wife, your character does.

Is this for only those in troubled marriages? NO! While God “will restore the years the swarming locust has eaten” – Joel 2:25, and resurrect dead places in the marriages of those who embark on this journey, He will also refresh, revitalize and strengthen great marriages while impacting areas of your husband’s life (finances, spiritual walk, health, friends, protection roles as a father, etc..) you would like to see His mighty hand on.

If you would like to join a host of other wives to invite God’s power into your husband’s life and receive free daily prayers via email please sign up "HERE ".

Worrying about your marriage changes nothing, but praying about it can change everything.

P.S please share and tell as many women as possible.

Update : As at 10 Nov 2017, registration for the last challenge of 2017 has closed. The challenge will reopen again in 2018 - date to be confirmed. You can still register, and will be given more information on the start date when it becomes available.

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.

Creamy Banana Bulgur Porridge

They say i have a problem. A bread problem. Some say I’m addicted, but I’d say is more an intense love like for bread. My husband has been trying to get me to google “the dangers of too much bread”, even though I keep telling him that after me, bread is the best thing ever created. K go on, I dare you to dispute that.

At the beginning of the year as we always do I decided to make healthier choices with regards to my diet. In the past and by past I mean up until last week, I’d usually have either bread, cereal, bread, pancakes or bread K  for breakfast, that better not be judgement I hear coming from you! Yes I love like bread. Bite me! Anyhooo I decided to 

The Worse Kind of Betrayal (Part 1) : Regret

 I grasped my chest with my left hand and I tried to steady myself with my right, as the first jolt of pain ripped through me. I silently gasped for air and thought to myself, so this is what it feels like to die, as my knees began to buckle.

“Bidemi! Oh my God! Bidemi!” Bode yelled as he reached out to grab me.

Maybe it was the sound of his voice, or the touch of his hand, but in an instant, new life was breathed into me.

“Don’t you dare touch me” I said as I regained my footing and my eyes started to sting. I rolled them back and took a very deep breath. Don’t do it. Girl don’t do it. My initial reaction was bad

God inhabits the PRAISES of His people

I can remember January 1st 2014. My sister and i had spent the day with our cousin and her family. Now, i what appears to be the blink of an eye, January 1st 2015 is less than a month away. 

I haven't ticked off all the things on my "to be accomplished in 2014" list, but i have soooooooo much to be thankful for- even if it's to thank God for everyday this year that He has blessed me with life.

Life means there is hope. It means i can still accomplish great things - we can still accomplish great things.

So i wanna