jAIYE’S BLOG
I drape my suit across my shoulder and mutter under my breath,
“I am off”!
To which she replies “Ok”.
I walk towards the front door seething with anger, no breakfast, what’s all this nonsense about. I suppose we are Christians eh! Well, Yes after all, i still got up at 3am to read my bible, prayed for her and the kids as they snored in various positions of slumber, surely it must be impossible to sleep in that position i think as i prayed for my youngest kid adjusting him into a much holier sleeping posture.
I make a mental note to get his throat checked, this guttural sound cannot be coming from this little lad, he must have a mini microphone stuck inside him somewhere.
I’ve been down this road before and i am tired, thinking to myself. And on occasions, I’ve felt varying levels of guilt but this time i feel no guilt whatsoever, haba! She has to understand that it’s okay for me to have friends and for my friends to want to talk to me and to care about me. ‘I don’t have any problems with all of your other friends’ she had said completely forgetting that we had similar conversations about all the other people she was referring to with varying intensity.
“it’s okay for my friends to want to talk to me and to care about me”
’Jaiye draw the line with all these your friends’, my darling wife would yell at me. Is it until they come and push me out of our home? How will they do that? Oh you think everyone is naive like you! Hmm is it until they use diabolical means for you.
ahha Tinu! What sort of rubbish is that? Please explain how that works to me, because i cant figure it out! What do you mean by diabolical means?
“Look Jaiye, I am tired of all this, I am not a fool, there is more to these your conversations” she replied.
‘Are you accusing me of cheating?” I asked.
“No I am not! all I am saying is that you are giving all these people too much attention!! You never call me all day and when I mention it, you say you were busy, yet when I check your phone you chat away your day with them” she said.
“Tinu! Where did you get that from? If you check my phone properly, you’ll see that i don’t start any of those conversations and i keep them brief” I replied.
As my mind replayed the arguments of the day before, i wonder how we got to this point. Several arguments over the years about different friends I have been ‘too’ close to and I am amazed at how we tend to operate the same cycle of argument over and over only with varying names for the friends.
In my sober moments i am truly confused, is it really wrong for me to have friends? Oh and by friends i am referring to female friends and mostly single. Is it absolutely impossible to have a single girl as a friend once you become a married guy? I know all the dangers that are flashed, but honestly have we all become so bad that it is impossible to have a healthy such friendship?
“Yes” my good friend Jide replies me with an almost irritated look.
“Are you that naive?” He continued.
“ Even between Christians?” I replied.
“Please leave Christianity out of this, hormones don’t answer to no one bro, that’s why Paul said to flee every appearance of evil” he concluded.
Is it absolutely impossible to have a single girl as a friend once you become a married guy?
It is almost 1pm and i have barely achieved anything all day, turning this back and forth in my mind, swinging between anger, confusion and conviction. Why does she insist on checking my phones everyday if she truly trusts me, I never have a password she doesn’t know anyway. Maybe it’s time i do. What do i do? I haven’t done anything wrong, have i? My staff chatted me up, and I deleted it because Tinu would freak out if she saw my staff texting me in the morning.
“Are you at home or in the office?”
“Home ” I answered to Kelechi, the young intern on my team who was very chatty and i do admit occasionally flirty, but I had laid down the law in the office, though i saw her as an overzealous young intern wanting to look good in the eyes of the boss, no more than that.
I guess i hadn’t bargained that Kelechi would reply with a string of texts, worrying about my Sisters health which i had mentioned to everyone, two days before.
Tinu picked the phone to make a phone call, saw the text and hit the roof, stopping short of accusing me of cheating. Fire in her eyes like never seen before, swear words dripping from her tongue like crumbling crust from a croissant. I was stunned and vexed. My God loving, tongue talking wife was cursing like a sailor. The Holy Spirit must have been shy for us! Not sure if I bolted in fear or for safety.
We’ve exchanged long emails since that altercation, but we haven’t directly talked about it and neither is budging. I still don’t feel like i did anything, let alone anything wrong. Why should i have to bear the brunt of an over zealous staff? Often times I know that the children of this world are wiser the children of God and so i am careful.
As the clock strikes 6pm, and i turn off my computer, home is the last place i want to be, yet my heart is at home, but i feel palpable fear at the thought of going home, so i made for the cinema to catch a movie, all the time thinking of what to do.
” Fire in her eyes like never seen before, swear words dripping from her tongue like crumbling crust from a croissant “
“Hello! I like your shoes” a young trendy girl beams at me in her geek frames, i smile and walked away thinking to myself, when it rains it pours, really? right now??!! How ironic that I am in the slammer for not being nasty enough with an intern and here i am at the mall being flirted with openly!
What does the bible say about situations like this? For once i wish we had those 613 laws that the children of God had in Deuteronomy, I’m sure something in there would address this matter to clarify it once and for all.
I turned to the Holy Spirit to ask for wisdom and he seemed silent as well.
“How was the movie?” The nice chap asks at the cinema room exit. What movie did I just see? I felt like asking him, but instead I smiled and replied,
‘It was nice’.
I’ll just play it as it goes when i get home
Trembling with fear as i walk into our bedroom, “I’m back”! I say as a matter of fact, watching for her response and without shifting a muscle she says, “Welcome’! oh boy I can’t seem to catch a break. I noticed on my side of the bed a report card for my 11yr old son and his school fees. Summary? His school fees had gone up 60% and his report shows he still struggle with mathematics.
Holy Spirit is still silent on this matter.
As I changed into my PJ and sank into the comfort of my bed, the energy drained out of me. I knew i sorely needed direction from the only wise God, i found myself thinking, “Lord, i am not feeling very Christianly or Holy right now but this would be a really good night for this young man to dream a dream”.
what do i do? Resigned that this battle rages into the next day i wonder if i should just hold my wife and apologize. She doesn’t believe me anymore anyway, so what’s the point, and to make matters worse, this time i don’t even think i should.
Or should I just continue holding my ground!
