It is so good to have you in my corner, dear reader. This week I am sharing with you excerpts from my recent memoir. This memoir highlights significant moments of my growth with the Lord. I take you through my journey of hearing God’s voice clearly, the very moment I heard His voice for the first time. I mean what is a walk with your companion when you cannot identify his/or voice? There is no intimacy there!
I share this memoir with you with the hopes that it blesses you and encourages you to seek the Lord for yourself in Jesus’ name. Amen.
It is available on Amazon and Okadabooks.
Through HIS WORD
Part 1
True to Your word, You let me catch my breath and send me in the right direction – Psalm 23:3
His eyes were not exactly the most beautiful I have beheld but they had me awestruck and tongue-tied. He walked up to me on a Sunday afternoon right after Sunday service. He had his eyes bored into mine like he wanted to see the core of my soul. I also had mine glued to his, my eyes were not the only things glued down but my lips and tongue were as well.
I do not remember the exact words he said but his question bordered around my attendance at a prayer meeting. And for some weird reasons, I found my tongue giving him monotone responses although my body wanted to explain more. I was not attending this meeting if I remember correctly, so my body wanted to explain to him the rationale behind my absence. But my tongue stopped at that single response. He wanted to hear more from me, so he asked a second question. And yet again to my disappointment and perhaps his too, my tongue failed me. I gave him a simple tense as a response.
So our meeting ended up being a short-lived one. But that interaction never left me, it stayed on my mind for the rest of the day and even spilled into the next couple of days. That night, when the thought of the possibility that he could be married surfaced in my mind, I pushed it out of my mind and tried to get some sleep. My curiosity was piqued and this spurred me to do some research about him online. I found impressive things about him but could not tell if he was married or not, therefore I had to catch myself crushing or fantasizing about another woman’s husband. The next day came with its fair play of replay in my mind; I just could not get over his stare on that Sunday afternoon in my yellow and purple African print. I fantasized a little bit about our wedding day and ended the day yet again with the possibility that he could be married.
On the third day, I received a direct message on Twitter now X —. “Hiya! “How does one become a praise bag?” I smiled hard because my bio to date says I am God’s praise bag. “This guy has some game”, I thought to myself. So I clicked on his profile to see who he was. I liked his profile a lot, and he seemed like the kind of person I’d enjoy speaking with. So I responded to his message saying, “erm….by staying in God’s presence.” About 10 minutes into the chat, it hit me, “this is Mr. Starer” from Sunday! Omg!” And that marked the beginning of our long conversations. I could not contain the joy. We texted a lot that day and then transitioned to instant messages on WhatsApp. We talked all day through late that evening. That began my journey into la la land. Without a doubt, I liked this human being and I knew he liked me too. Apparently, he had noticed me from way back in August but only observed me from afar and asked around about me till he finally spoke to me in November. I thought that was extremely cute and the fact that he was quite older but still able to relate to my silly jokes—we had amazing conversations— made it beautiful. This continued till about December when I broke the news to him about my plans to go abroad for graduate school.. At this point, it felt like I had come to a crossroads and needed to choose, either to stay back in Nigeria or go for my education and have him wait for me. These decisions were dependent on what my Father in heaven says and so I began the journey to seek. At this point, my clear judgment was somewhat clouded with all of the emotions that I had for him and this somewhat translated into my seeking process. This particular process of seeking God’s face and voice concerning this choice was excruciatingly painful. This man was perfect; I saw no defect in him. Although my parents already told me what God was saying, I didn’t want to take their word for it. I wanted to hear God for myself. I began to ask God daily with the hope that He would give me a clear response. With each passing day, it felt like He wasn’t saying anything and this frustrated me a lot. My mood swayed from left to right heavy with the thoughts of what could be or could not be. Until one afternoon on the toilet seat at work, I was exasperated from thinking and the sadness that came with being in the dark. I began to cry on that toilet seat when the Holy Spirit whispered to me, “True to My word, you will catch My breath and I will send you in the right direction”. This whisper came with a fresh breath of air, a freshness of hope and strength. I remember vividly clearly how excited I became on that toilet seat. I switched from sad to joy quite fast at the whisper of God’s word. That whisper made my day and gave me the courage to keep at my chase after God.
The whole memoir is available on Amazon and Okadabooks. 🙂