Dear Agatha,
I need urgent help. Five years ago, I met my husband. Right from the first day, I knew he was the right man for me. Although a lot of people kicked against our relationship on the premise I was too innocent for his wild ways, I was determined to go ahead with the relationship.
It wasn’t long for me to know he was a chronic womaniser not because he kept dating them but as a result of the number of hostile females I had to contend with. Our first year together was tough as many of his ex-girlfriends fought tooth and nail to get him back.
One of them was particularly hostile. She employed all sorts of tricks to ensure we went our different ways. But we were able to defend our love as well as protect it from all the different challenges we were encountering.
We got married two years after we met. I got pregnant almost immediately but I lost the child at birth. The same thing happened with our second and third children. I always lose them during labour.
When it happened the second time, I decided to try another doctor. The same thing happened. None of the doctors can say categorically why I kept losing my babies at birth.
My husband was always supportive assuring me that the child meant to be ours would stay but I noticed my in-laws, precisely my mother-in-law was getting impatient. When I lost my third baby she stopped short of calling me a witch. She told my husband that I was responsible for the deaths of my children because of a covenant I sealed with my spirit husband.
Initially, my husband protected my innocence but he must have yielded to his mother because I noticed tremendous negative changes in his behaviour. He became violent and took to beating me whenever I questioned the change in him. It got to a point he stopped coming home for a whole week. He also stopped giving me housekeeping money. It was his young brother staying with us that took to giving me money as well as encouraging me to stay on. When my brothers came to take me away from his house after a particularly violent attack, it was his brother who intervened on his behalf. My brothers listened to him because of the role he played during the attack. But for him, my husband would have killed me. He fought his brother on my behalf, a situation, which led to his brother and mother accusing him and I of having a relationship.
My husband insisted his brother left his house but my father in-law whose property it was insisted his younger son stayed. He also went to beg my family to ignore my husband and his mother.
According to my father-in-law, the source of my problem would soon be revealed. My people had no choice but to allow me stay on.
My fourth pregnancy was really a miracle. It happened on one of those rare moments my husband came home and practically forced me to make love with him. I didn’t want to because I was still very sore but I had no choice that night.
I didn’t even know I was pregnant until three months after. When I told him, he asked of what use is the pregnancy since I would again eat up the baby in the labour room.
I was very upset but I ignored him and instead concentrated on the prayers given me by my new pastor, a close friend of my brother-in-law. My husband wasn’t around most of the time so didn’t know when I went into labour.
He also didn’t know all the prayer warriors were with me at the hospital from the minute I went into labour. This time I didn’t have a stillbirth. The baby and I had to fast for the first 12 hours after birth. Fortunately, the medical doctor too was very religious and was around to ensure compliance.
Two hours before our 12 hours fast was to expire, I went into a sort of trance. I saw the lady who gave me the most fight of all my husband’s ex-girlfriends, come into the ward with a knife with which she intended stabbing my baby but she ran away when she saw a massive angel with a golden sword in his hands who warned her to stay away if she didn’t want her child to die.
I woke up from the trance and relayed it to my brother-in-law and the pastor who were with me in the ward. They too had seen similar visions.
The next two hours were spent praying.
I was discharged the following day and since there was no way of contacting my husband, he didn’t get to know until a day to the child’s naming ceremony when he returned purportedly from Ghana.
On the day of the ceremony, his ex-girlfriend came with a two-year-old daughter and right in the presence of everyone, she announced my husband as the father after which she became mad.
My father-in-law insisted on the ceremony and celebration going ahead.
It was after the whole ceremony; I got to know that my mother-in-law was behind the re-union of this woman and my husband after she threatened to expose my mother-in-law’s involvement with their occult world.
This lady killed my babies at birth.
But my problem now is, looking after their love child and forgiving my mother-in-law and my husband. My husband is begging forgiveness. How can I forgive him; forget how he almost killed me or how much he made me suffer for something I know nothing of? How can I look after this child without remembering all I went through in the hands of her mother? What if the spirit of her mother enters into her and she tries to harm my baby?
I am all so confused. Please help me.
Adebimpe.
Dear Adebimpe,
Haven’t you learnt anything from this whole experience? When God fights, His victory is total. You are today a mother through His grace and mercy. A lot of women in your shoes are still under the heavy yoke of the devil because they are yet to get the type of mercy God granted you.
If God is so merciful to free you from the bondage you were placed in by the combination of your mother-in-law and this other woman, why are you fearful of anybody being capable of hurting you again?
The only thing that would prevent you from savouring this victory as well as stop this advantage you have over your enemies is not to forgive your enemies. One of the best weapons in life is to learn the art of unconditional forgiveness. Irrespective of what anybody does; the harm as well as the pains they bring into one’s life, the law of God is a simple one; forgive. It doesn’t cost a penny but gives one an enormous strength to do the incredible and be right with God.
You got this far, not because you are without sins but because God did the unusual with you; forgave you all your past sins as well as faults. Think, haven’t you done two or three things you are not proud off in the past, something you are too ashamed of, you don’t want anyone to ever get to know about?
Your mother-in-law and your husband’s ex may have caused you incredible pains, denied you of holding and nursing your three children; but think, did they really make these children die? If you know God the way you should, you will know that nobody has the powers to take life. It happens only if God allows it for a reason; yes they may have desired to hurt you in the only way they know how but only God in His unquestionable wisdom made it happen.
He did it to exalt His name in your life. Your new baby, the support of your father and brother-in-laws as well as what happened to the his ex are all patterned to give you strength as well as edge over your enemies. You didn’t do this on your own. You did through the support and glory of God.
What you owe Him is to give your support for His glory to continue to manifest in your life.
Allow the girl a place in your heart and home. She needs you now that she has lost her mother and stability. Remember she is an innocent party in all of these. She didn’t ask to be born; she didn’t ask her mother or grandmother to do what they both did; for that matter she didn’t have a say in who became her mother or not.
So why punish her for something she or you can never change?
We can only change a present and future we know but not a past we have little or no control over. Many of us would have chosen different parents or relations had we the powers or say in the matter.
However, you can help give her a positive future if you invest love into her. It is the only way your fears concerning her would not materialise. She doesn’t have to have a wicked mother to harm your child if you insist on being wicked to her or treat her like house-help in her father’s house.
She would grow to become your child if you get it right from the beginning by giving her a large space in your heart to grow up, make mistakes as well as love you. I know sometimes it can be difficult to let go of some painful memories but you just must do that because it is the only option you have.
It is also the least you can do for the support and encouragement of your father and brother-in-laws. They had a choice of not supporting you but did. Though you also have the choice of being hostile and rejecting this child but do it for the sake of God whom you daily pray to.
Good luck.
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