Tag: adventure

Overcoming Fear

by The Unconventional Life, posted in Faith, Hope, Inspiration, Marriage, mental health, Relationships, Separation

I became acquainted with fear as a child observing my mother and other family members.  I observed that because they were afraid of doing most anything our family tended to have the same outcomes.  This observation greatly shaped the adult I would become.

I would acquire an extreme fear of committment.  If I could redo about two decades of relationships I would.  Bad choices left layers of pain.  As a youth, I developed the idea that marriage was evil.  I saw nothing good in it.  Marriage created siblings that meant extra responsibilities.  More work for my mother.  Arguments over adult issues and the list goes on and on.  I decided by the time I became a teen that I would never get married.  I would at most have a live in boyfriend with a backup just in case.

I carried all of these fears into my marriage and oh the devastation it caused.  I didn’t even notice what was happening.  I remember one day being in the kitchen and I just began to cry. “God why did you place these three people under my care?  I’m such a failure.  I never wanted a family and you totally rearranged my life!  Look at the mess I’ve created.”  I received the most gentle reply as I walked to the table and opened the bible.  I had never seen the scripture before, but I had to go sit down after reading Psalm 68:6.

My tears of frustration turned into tears of gratitude.  He had connected two of the most lonely people, my husband and myself, across an ocean.  My husband had said prayer for a family far away from Nigeria.  On my end I had a five-year old telling me his house was supposed to have a daddy that lived there with us.  My youngest son is a handful!  My husband found my match.com profile.  I can only laugh at how all of this happened.  You live long enough to be able to recognize divine intervention when it happens because you go around in a daze asking if what occurred really happened the way it did.

As I sat on the couch, I realized that God had blessed me with children and a husband so that I would know what unconditional love felt like and all I did was complain about it.  Months ago in a soaking worship service I had a vision of myself as a child.  I was in a pit in a white dress turning in circles.  I was searching for someone to love me, but no one ever came.  Although I was in this pit, there was the brightest light all around me and the most beautiful lawn.  God whispered to me, “You will never have to search for love like that again.”  Have you ever been totally wrecked with gratitude?  I needed so many kleenex that evening.  It was an epic day for healing a very deep hurt that I had carried for decades.  I hurt my family because I was broken and hurting.  I have sense learned you should enter into marriage a whole person.  My husband and I had no pre-marital counseling, but lots of issues that should have been discussed.

wpid-20140608_090105.jpg

Continue reading “Overcoming Fear” →

It all started when….

by The Unconventional Life, posted in Uncategorized
We did it!
We did it!

It was a few days before Valentine’s Day 2006 and I was on a plane from Richmond, Virginia flying to Lagos Nigeria to get married. My match.com experience had turned into something unexpected. I was marrying a foreigner. A foreigner that was very, did I mention very far away.

I’m the adventurous one in my family. The risk taker. Everyone else, with the exception of my sister, marches to the beat of normalcy. I was the first to try online dating. The decision came when my first grader took the remote from me as I was watching My Wife and Kids and demanded to know why his family did not have a daddy that lived in the house. How do you answer that type of question from an underage midget?! Needless to say I was speechless. I was given my orders to find a “live-in” daddy that evening. I went to bed wondering where on earth I was going to find a date not to mention a husband! There was an implied “mom hurry up with this request” undertone in my son’s voice.

The whole match idea was about as out of the box as I could go. It was literally a part-time job. I browsed profiles daily! I like the fact that America is a melting pot with lots of samples. I kinda knew I’d end up with a foreigner, other cultures just fascinate me.

Godwin literally popped up on my computer screen one day. The irony was I had stumbled across some African dating sites and had been browsing profiles and Godwin had seen my match.com profile. We began chatting for hours every day. Days turned to weeks and then months. I had found the one person on the planet I could share anything with. I could just be me and he was ok with it. This was the most liberating experience I had had in my entire life. I never expected to love him, but I fell hard and fast like a derailed train gaining momentum.

I remember arriving in Nigeria and seeing a sea of black faces. I just stood there with my mouth open looking every direction. What I had done hit me like a ton of bricks. I had flown across an ocean alone, my cell phone no longer worked and I was searching for a black needle in an all black haystack! Panic overtook me and I was just about to lose it when he saw me first and came up to me with a smile. This was really happening! The webcam companion was standing in front of me. My eyes had to adjust to all the blackness around me, but oh was it beautiful. My first words to him were, “Damn babe you sure are crispy, but I’m here now so let’s go.”

I got cold feet the day of the wedding while awaiting our turn at the justice of the peace. I was ready to have a Runaway Bride moment, but Godwin pressed his forehead to mine and I melted into him. We were fingerprinted, given docs and gave the officials something to talk about with that wedding kiss of ours. LOL! We celebrated with cake that had the texture of a brick and didn’t taste much better. We missed our flight back to Lagos and had and eight hour adventure.

It’s been 7 1/2 years filled with hills and valleys. I still find him intriguing. I like waking up with him beside me. I find beauty in the contrast of our skin tones when my limbs cross his. I know he will wash my car every Sunday and fix anything broken in the house. I still want to be his wife and I pray for many more years to come.