She Blackmails Me To Do DNA For My Boy…

Dear Agatha,

I thank God that gave you the wisdom to daily tackle people’s problems.  I pray, the same God is always on hand to tackle your problems too. 

I once wrote to you as a ‘Worried Man’ for advice, and solution to the problem I had then concerning my I6-year son, whose mother initially denied my paternity of the child.

I took all you advised, applied them, and I want to tell you that the child is now in my family though currently staying with my mother to cool the nerves of my dear- wife. I want to say. I am now a happy man.

The new worry is my wife, who insists we do a DNA test for the boy. Despite his uncanny semblance to my mother and me, my wife insists it is not good enough proof that the boy is really mine. 

Agatha, the boy is my replica physically and in mannerism. Can we go for the test just to satisfy her again? Personally I have objection to it because I know without doubt that the boy is mine. I don’t need a DNA test to tell me he is mine.

But my wife is saying if I refuse to accede to her demand she would continue to scandalise the child and I. Though she has not disputed the semblance of the child to my mother and me. It is like blackmailing me to accept her position, something I detest.

Agatha, how reliable is DNA test? I am told that it can be doctored. Is it true? And can I get the result the same day? 

M.

Dear M.

I am glad to know you have reconciled with your son, which is why this demand by your wife has to be handled with the utmost care. If poorly handled, it could ruin whatever chance you have of establishing an enduring relationship with this young man, who though part of you but has lived without your love, support and attention for 16 years. This young man is at a vulnerable age where his emotions, feelings and treatment of him has to be handled with the utmost care in other not to implant greater injury than the one he has had to deal with before now. 

Any suggestion that despite his willingness to accept you into his life as his father, you are still in doubt about his paternity in whatever form, may lead to a chain of reactions including rejecting you as his father. Your responsibility is to protect him from whatever pressures or manipulations from within and outside the family.

Since you harbour no doubt and your family, including your mother all agree that this child is yours, a product of your loins and the first proof of your claim to manhood, why is your wile bend on stirring the hornet’s nest? What does she hope to achieve by her demand? If you don’t have problems accepting the child as yours, why should she?

You as the head of the home has to fashion a way of blending the interests of these two people without offering one as the sacrificial lamb. If she loves you, she should accept this boy as hers and water him with love, because he still feels like a stranger, an outsider in your home. He needs all the love to integrate properly into his new family. 

No matter what she feels, she should rise above selfish feelings and embrace this boy as a member of the family. She stands to harvest from her labour of love later in life.

But if she insists, DNA tests cannot be concluded in a day. Result is not immediate. Ideally, it should be the final proof, but instances have shown that it isn’t especially where there are interests to protect and project. 

Continue to commit your home to God. You need patience and wisdom to navigate this slippery path. 

Good luck.

She Doesn’t Want To See My Face Again…

Dear Agatha,

There is this lady I met several years ago, during our youth service year in Kano. Being from the same place, we gallivanted towards each other and actually became a pair before we left Kano. At the end of our service year, I decided to spend some time with my family in the village while she headed for Lagos. We agreed that I would only spend a week, but due to an accident I had on the way, I ended up staying a whole year. I was unconscious for the first six months. And when I came round, I wasn’t exactly myself.

By the time I was strong enough to get up, a lot has happened. I give God the glory that I was okay physically. I was told only two of us came out of the vehicle alive and that the other person died of the injuries he had during the accident. Till date, my parents celebrate God for letting me live.

Memories of my time with her made me go against the counsel of my parents to stay back with them. They were afraid they might never see me again, but I assured them that the God that preserved my alive is still on His throne.

Back in Lagos, I tried to locate her at the address she had given me. Fortunately my things were recovered at the scene of the accident. Her phone number wasn’t going through, so I decided to surprise her by going to the address she gave me. When I got there, I was told she had left the place for another place. When I requested for the address, her siblings refused to give me. In addition they were very hostile and I wondered why, especially since I was meeting them for the first time.

When I went again to beg for her address, they set their dog against me, making me wonder all over again what I had done to deserve this kind of treatment. I was on the verge of giving up when one of her younger sisters came to me to push piece of paper into my hands with the instruction that I should not tell anybody where I got the address. I got there to discover my girl has had a child. I needed nobody to tell I fathered that child. When she saw me, she ordered me out of her flat, using all sorts of unprintable names to describe me. Nothing I said made sense to her just as her reactions to me didn’t make any sense either. She said I should go back to the lady I got married to in the village. 

Agatha, this is the sixth month I have been begging her. I have done everything to make her and her family members see reasons, but nothing has worked. I don’t know what to do anymore. I love this woman with my whole life, but why is she refusing to listen to me? What did I do to incur her wrath? Please help me to make sense out of all these. 

Godstime.

Dear Godstime,

When it is God’s time for her to listen to you, she would have a change of mind and give you the audience you need to properly explain yourself to her. Don’t give up; continue to plead your case. If the situation persists, write her a lengthy letter with pictures, if available, of you while in the hospital. Attach the receipts and name of the hospital you were admitted into.

Understandably she is not too happy with you for abandoning her when she needed you the most. To have abandoned her to face the humiliation of finding out that she is pregnant for a man nobody in her family knows and who is nowhere to be seen, can be very painful and embarrassing for any woman. It makes her appear irresponsible and lacking in moral decency. It is no picnic for a woman who finds herself in such a messy circumstance.

Given what she thinks of you, she may think you are now interested in her because of your baby. She has to be convinced that you still love her for herself and not because she has a child for you.

Her immediate family too has a right to be angry because of the image of an unmarried, pregnant and seemingly abandoned daughter conjures up in the minds of the larger family members. Through her conduct, she portrayed her immediate family as lacking in moral discipline.

Get some of your family members to go with you to see her people. The presence of your people would convey the seriousness you attach to the relationship and her importance in your life. I am sure, by the time they listen to your side of the story and are confronted with the evidence of your travails, they would change whatever opinion they have of you.

Don’t worry, things would eventually work out for the two of you.

Good luck.

Holy Fraud: Born-again Ladies Cajoled Me To Let Her Go…

  Dear Agatha,

I want to commend you for the wonderful job you are doing. I hope you appreciate that you are blessed with a special anointing to help the youths and to heal marriages. Use it wisely and God will never leave you alone. Forget whatever problems you have as a person and give in to His directives. Yours He will solve effortlessly. 

I am a single and young pastor in charge of a church in Lagos. I took over the rein when the former pastor resigned to form his church. Despite being single the mother church felt I had what it takes to pastor the branch.

Six months after coming to the branch, I have discovered that a lot of things are very wrong with women generally, and that they are the reasons some pastors backslide.

Immediately it came to the notice of the church that I was unmarried, both young and old women, married and unmarried flocked my office with one problem or the other. The young ladies would come in very transparent clothes and very short skirts. The older ones would come to introduce their nieces or daughters to me.

I have done everything possible to dissuade them, explaining that I have a girlfriend who is in another branch of the church.

When the pressure became too much for me to handle, I appealed to my girlfriend to cross over to our branch. I thought her presence in the church will stop all the unnecessary attentions and pressures I was getting from the women, but to my disappointments, it has only increased the pressure on me as all the women in the church ganged up against my girlfriend.

Honestly, I didn’t know this at first. When my girlfriend started complaining about the problem she was having with them, I dismissed her, accusing her of being too distant and too snobbish for my congregation.

I really got mad with her when the women started coming with one complaint or the other against her. I got scared when two members of our prayer warriors team came with messages concerning her. They came differently to tell me that she has a familiar spirit and that if I married her she would infect my ministry with bad luck. Since I was already having problems with her, I told her to go.

Agatha, I didn’t pray. Not even when she urged me to pray on the day I told her to go. I was really violent that day. For the first time in my adult life, I brutalised a woman. Till date, I still cannot explain what got into me that day.

It is now four months. God has since exposed all that went wrong. I am too ashamed because despite being a pastor, one who is gifted I didn’t see beyond my nose. I don’t know how to handle the situation at all. And now that I have discovered the truth, I don’t know how to go and face her. Agatha, please publish this letter, beg her for me because she reads and respects you a lot. I want her back in my life.

Wale.

Dear Wale,

Being a pastor does not insure against problems, neither does it guarantee one a happy relationship. You just have to invest more time on prayers, more than members of your congregation to protect yourself and your loved ones from physical and spiritual attacks and manipulations. 

Your callings expose you to more attacks than the ordinary members. It is spiritual. Most times, the unforeseen hands behind the problems brought to you for solutions come to attack you the pastor for daring to free their victims. Working in the vineyard of God especially pasturing His people is not easy. So learn to equip yourself more with prayers and fasting to have a safe landing in your calling. Temptations would always come in your life, so be careful. You need the grace of God to recognise and neutralise them. Go back to God for such grace to withstand and defeat all the problems that have been planted on your road to the top of your calling.

Granted that you should have been more discerning, don’t blame yourself too much. Go to her and beg her for forgiveness. I am sure, she also knows the challenges of contemplating marriage to a pastor. She would be humbled by your humility and open admission of your guilt. Before going to see her, take the journey to God for His help to smoothen things up for you. Don’t worry; God has already taken charge, hence the revelation to you.

I hope your girlfriend is reading this. Please go back to your man. If you refuse, you would have unwittingly destroyed part of his ministry because the God that ordained both of you to be together has a reason. Forget what he did, such incidents at times help to strengthen relationships.

You should also get into the habit of interceding and praying for him. It is part of your duty to him and your future home. Good luck.