Made In A Nursery

According to her mother, she did not come from God. Her mother told her this very early in life because there were many conditions to her survival that she must adhere to if she was to live a long life. Her mother told her that when she could not conceive for the first ten years of marriage, a lady from her church approached her after the church service one Sunday and asked her to come and see her with her mother the following day if she was sincere about becoming a mother.

The service she went for was a special mass organized by her church, especially those of them who belonged to the Legion of Mary at that time.
When she got home, she told her mother about the strange invitation and her mother immediately began to dance. Her mother was an only child, and on several occasions, when the pain of barrenness became almost unbearable due to her husband or mother-in-law's behaviour or verbal exchanges with her, she would run to her mother's house and cry her eyes out, her mother would comfort her and sometimes cry with her but her mother only encouraged her to be fervent in the place of prayer.

She wondered why everything that other ladies found easy to do was so tough for her, it was natural for young ladies to attract the attention of young men all over the world.
Parents would often caution their daughters against premarital sex and the dangers of getting into relationships too soon for fear of ruining their future. In her case, her mother specifically told her not to say no to any guy who came around to make friends with her.
She remembered clearly on several occasions that her mother would lure young men from some of the church groups to the house on Saturday mornings or Sunday evenings for her special biscuit and tea parties.

On such occasions, her mother would tell her to have her bath and dress up in pretty flowery gowns so that he could serve the guests and make friends. She didn't see it as anything of much significance at the time until her mother desperately called her aside one day and asked if any of the young men asked her out or winked at her or even "tapped" her bum bum.

She was fifteen at the time, and the curves were forming but she had never experienced any of the things her mother was talking about.
She remembered that her mother specifically saying to her "Let any of the guys touch you if he wants to and if any of them pulls you towards a room and tries to take off your clothes, please get naked, open your legs wide and let him in".
At the time she thought her mother was trying to ruin her life, they already taught them in the Catholic school she was attending that as young ladies, they must keep themselves pure and unsullied through sexual intercourse.
It was especially stressed that sex was meant for the marriage bed and girls suspected of having sex among them were gossiped about and treated like lepers. She didn't want such a treatment. She wanted to become a lawyer. Sex and men were the last thing she should be thinking of at fifteen, her mother disagreed.

One day she decided to school her mother, who was non-literate, believing that her mother was too dumb to see that life is not all about boyfriends and relationships.
She woke her mother up early in the morning and began to talk about her future and all the schools she still has to attend before she could think of settling down.
Her mother said "Open your ears, you are not like other children. You came with instructions when I could not have children and I desperately went to meet a spiritualist for help.
The spiritualist took me to a fruit tree nursery.
In the fruit tree nursery, I saw many trees with nursery bags around their roots. I grew up in the village and my father was a farmer, so I knew trees.
I saw mangoes, oranges, bananas, guava and even yam stalks.
The man explained to me the advantages and disadvantages of each.
He said any plant I choose will be taken home and cared for by me for twenty-one days, on the twenty-first day I would bring the plant back to him and he would perform a ritual for me to bind the plant to me.
He said I would then take it home and plant it in my husband's house.
He said I must make love to my husband that same night and after the lovemaking, I must water the plant immediately.
He said I would become pregnant but depending on the plant I chose, there would be further instructions as to how to raise the child.
A child raised from yam seedlings must grow up not eating yam if she wants to become a mother in life.
A child raised from a banana plant must taste plantain as soon as he or she is born.A child from a mango plant must get pregnant or married before she clocks 21 if she ever hopes to become a mother.
I saw all these things and went home to think about it.
The next morning, I returned and picked a mango tree plant in the nursery, it was the only one that didn't have issues with longevity.
I chose the mango tree because I was told the child would grow into adulthood without any issue but the child must get pregnant early if he or she must be a parent in life.
You cannot listen to those teachers who assume all the students in your school are to be taught the same things.
You are all different and as such you cannot all follow the same path in life".
Her mother's words were a shock to her,
she knew her mother was telling the truth.
She had always been warned never to eat mangoes and whenever she fell ill, her mother always made special concoctions out of the mango leaf for her to drink and have her bath.
She always slept after that and woke up healthy,
it all made sense to her.
She went to her room to think about her life and the choices before her.
She decided she would allow anyone who wanted to sleep with her to do so, but while waiting for that to happen, she would pursue her education.
No man tried to befriend or sleep with her!
She graduated from the School of Journalism at the age of 22, got a job as a secretary while studying as a trainee bank clerk.
She got a banking job at the age of 25 and began to build her career.
When she was thirty-two, her mother told her a man and his family had come to ask for her hand in marriage.
She knew her mother had done some underhand deals to make that happen.
She had tried all by herself to flirt, to court, to talk to, to whatever.
She had gone to Friday night jams, clubs, parties, weddings, parks and other places where other girls picked up boyfriends for fun, she was never seen by any man. She had decided she must have come from a male mango plant because the men were not attracted to her at all.
When her mother revealed the identity of the man, he was someone she knew very well from their church.
A man whose greatest achievement in life was to be born in Lagos, he was a lady's man.
One of those guys who took pride in changing or rotating girlfriends every two or three weeks.
He was ten years older than her, had never held down a job for more than a year, still lived with his mother and was vain to the bone.
She told her mother she did not want to marry such a man, her mother told her she would never marry if she does not marry him.
She married him, he moved into her flat and began to drive her car.
A few weeks later, another lady went to his family's house to announce that she was pregnant for him. His mother came to their flat to break the news to the two of them.
She knew he would have left her for the other lady without a second thought.
He loved the other lady, she could hear it in the tone of his voice.
He didn't leave because he had nowhere to go but his mother's house and poverty.
He stayed with her because she elevated him to a certain status and his vanity would not allow him to settle for less than that, that was why he had stayed with her for that long.
She funded his lifestyle and they both looked good together, she knew it was not love
she also knew the other lady delivered the baby and the baby was a girl.
She told him she would leave him if another woman came to announce pregnancy while they were married.
She felt he could leave her with dignity and make his own money if he wanted to cheat to the point of having children outside of the marriage.
She couldn't help him cheating, she knew it was in his nature but she drew the line at using her money to fend for another woman and child outside of their union.
He got the message but she struggled to have children, his mother would taunt her and so would he whenever they got into a row.
She could only trust in God as she approached her fortieth birthday that somehow her womb would be opened.
She had done IVF six times without any positive result, she considered surrogacy but she knew her husband would rather impregnate another woman than spend a fortune on bringing a baby into the world through a stranger.
Her mother told her that the spiritualist who helped her to conceive had died and the lady she met after church was his daughter.
When she got to the lady's house that evening, the lady told her that she noticed a mango tree with three ripe fruits during the late harmattan, long after Christmas. This indicated that there was room for late bloomers like her to become mothers.
Each of the fruits had been plucked and prepared but she could only have one. The two others will be given to two other ladies like her, who missed their blooming windows and had been waiting to become mothers.
She was given the mango fruit and encouraged to eat it and also eat the seed. She did and a month later she was confirmed pregnant, she delivered a daughter. They gave her the same instructions as her mother was given regarding how to raise the child. She was determined to do better than her mother. Her daughter grew quickly but something happened that she did not envisage or bargain for. Her daughter was born again at the age of twelve, as soon as her daughter started speaking in tongues, everything changed. She stopped falling sick periodically and rebelled against the use of mango leaves concoction and other things that they had been using for her welfare. They fought until she gave up.
Her daughter was strong-willed and unrelenting.
When her daughter was fifteen, she called her and gave her the same talk she got from her own mother. Her daughter listened and laughed it off.
She said, "I am in Christ, I am a new creature, I determine the course of my own life. I didn't come from any mango, I came from above and he that is from above is above all". Her daughter was not one to listen or obey.
"She has been taken over by a strong Spirit and she is riding upon a strong headwind". This was what she was told when she ran to the spiritualist lady who helped her conceive. Her daughter studied petroleum engineering at the University of Ibadan. She graduated at the age of 25 with a first-class, she proceeded to Scotland to study for her PhD on scholarship. She got a job with an oil company in Germany, the week she resumed at her office in Rue du Port she met her husband, a music minister and teacher of the gospel. She got married at the age of 30. The following year she delivered a baby boy. Two years later she had a set of twin girls. She flew her mother to France in 2023 to help her tend to the children while she attended a conference in Germany.
When she returned home, her mother asked her how she did it.
How come everything about you is different,
how come you can live abroad, be married and have children when I was told I cannot live too far from the tree my mother planted and I must bathe from its leaves at least once every year.
She told her mother what it means to become born again, she said she met a brother in Jeans and a T-shirt a few years ago and told him her story.
She said the brother told her to check Romans 11 and read it out loud to him.
She said she found a verse that fitted right into her story and it changed her life and her understanding of the Gospel forever.

Romans 11: 24 After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their olive tree!

She was the product of the wild tree but she had been cut off and grafted into Jesus, the cultivated tree and therefore she has taken on the features, nutrients, fruits and seed of the cultivated tree.
Her mother read it several times and wept!
She said she had never seen the passage in the Bible before, she asked how she could also become born again.
She was led to Christ and filled with the Holy Spirit.

PS: We all didn't come from the same source from the beginning.
There was a season when darkness covered the earth and gross darkness the people.
The devil and his dark powers came up with spiritual gene editing and manipulations.
The world is full of all sorts of spirits.
Those of us who came into Christ were cut out of whatever background or past we had in the world.
We were grafted into Christ and we bear the fruits of this truth daily.
I was told to write this testimony in full by the Holy Spirit at 6 AM this morning.
It was a lot of work but I know he is interested in ministering to someone.
Someone in need of deliverance from a certain kind of foundation and background.
Please do not hesitate to send me a DM on X, a message on 08072744871 WhatsApp, or via text or email at gbengasamuelwemimo@gmail.com
Your season of joy is here by the power of the Holy Spirit.