The Lucid Mirror

This woman came crying for help, she said her husband of ten years suddenly came home one day and said he would like them to consider separation or co-parenting as the marriage was no longer working for him; she said he claimed the marriage was seriously endangering his mental health.

She took the matter to their church pastor and the elders; those ones are not strangers to their marital issues. They formed a committee and addressed the issues. The husband claimed he could no longer bear her insecurity as a wife and as a person.

He said it was amusing while they were dating that If he was on the phone with anybody, he had to put the call on speaker phone otherwise she would believe he was hiding something from her; but it got worse after the wedding.

She found a way to ensure his parents and relatives didn't come to visit their home at all because "in-laws are judgmental”.  He caught her checking his phone messages and writing down strange phone numbers in the middle of the night (to verify who the person truly is and to ensure that they were not sending coded messages). She would call and embarrass his contacts in a bid to be sure he was not cheating.

She had accused him of giving her an STD even after the doctors in the hospital had confirmed she didn't have an STD.

Due to the counsel he received from the church on how to deal with her insecurity issue, he began to close from the office early so that he was to be home by 6pm every day and he never went anywhere on the weekend without taking her and their two children, yet the accusations didn't stop.

He said she had accused him of sleeping with at least 20 people and would often go into bouts of moodiness and lamentations about the woe she was facing in the marriage. He said the last straw was her habit of telling the children things about him that were not true or stylishly asking the children to spy on him whenever he went out with them alone. He said he had begged and appealed and come to the conclusion that his wife had a mental challenge which needed to be addressed.

For the safety of the children's mental health, he elected to part ways with her so that the children wouldn't see the way she was behaving as the norm. I called the wife and she told her version of the story.

She said, "I am fighting for my marriage, everything he said I did is true but they are my way of checking him so that he does not stray. I don’t want to be complacent. I don’t want to tell the story of ‘while men slept, the enemy came to plant chaff in his garden’.  I am watching and I am

Praying, what is bad in that? I love my husband and I don't want to lose him.”

Has he ever cheated on you? She said, "No, but I am sure he will if he has the opportunity. I don't want to give him one."

I said, "He said you accused him of sleeping with the house maids, is this true?"

she said, "I only did that to consciously keep him on his toes, so that he wouldn't be tempted to do so."

The husband had a lot of evidence- email exchanges, WhatsApp messages, text messages, recorded calls; he said there was no way he could keep his sanity if he stayed with her.

All these while, we were not having the meeting together, I'd meet with her and then I had met with him. We agreed that the sister needed some counselling to help her deal with jealousy and insecurity. We agreed that the brother also needed some counselling to deal with the trauma of being false accused and treated unfairly in the marriage for the last ten years. They both needed to heal.

Aunty chose to speak with a senior pastor's wife who is also a marriage counsellor, Uncle spoke with the husband of the same woman. I kept in touch with them and they began to show some level of improvement; the husband was no longer resentful and the wife toned down her negativity.

Three months went by quickly I asked to see the two of them last weekend. The husband arrived first with the children and a new house maid. He said the previous one left a few days earlier.  The wife arrived, saw the new housemaid and fell apart immediately. She didn't say much. She was just glaring at the young lady and giving her the evil eye.

I noticed her body language and called her aside I said, "What is the problem?" She said "I join a prayer meeting every morning and this morning they talked about agents of the devil planted in homes to scatter marriages. That girl is an agent of Satan. I said, "Let's find out." We went back to the meeting; I asked the house girl if I could pray with her and she said yes.

We joined hands and prayed in the name of Jesus for a few minutes: (Normally, of the lady was possessed or anything like that she would be manifesting within a few seconds, but she didn’t).

We finished praying, the House help and the children went to the reception and I began to talk to the couple on reconciliation.

The husband said, "I came prepared to accept her back and move forward but with the display she did this morning, I believe I am better off alone."

Wife: What display? I had a dream overnight that when we came for this meeting you rejected reconciliation and my dreams always come to pass. This is the work of the enemy. Last week, during the layer meeting, there was a word of knowledge about a woman whose husband had been turned against her so that he misunderstood her words and actions I knew that Word was for me and it is proving to be true now. There is a strange woman manipulating you against me; I have prayed and prayed about it but now I am tired of praying.   I knew this meeting will not amount to anything; I almost didn't come."

Wow! After her outburst, we all kept quiet. She sat with arms folded across her chest panting like a warrior. The husband was smiling, the knowing smile of, "Brother Gbenga, didn't I tell you she can never change?"

I realised something at that moment. I had heard it in a sermon before but it suddenly got seriously impressed upon my heart and I said, "Can you call your father? Is he available?"

The wife picked up her phone and called her father. I spoke with him and we agreed to meet during the week. They left.

When I met with her and her father yesterday, I asked her daddy to explain to her what it means to be a wife. Her father is a pastor and he has years of experience dealing with knotted issues.

He spoke to her about her fears and told her she could not control her husband by laying land mines and proxy schemes. They talked for hours.

When they were done, I noticed a remarkable change in this lady. It was spiritual and psychological. She was calm and relaxed.

She said, "Brother Gbenga, I am learning a lot. I promise to make amends. I have made a lot of mistakes and I trust that the Holy Spirit will teach me to make amends."

Wow! Her father broke through that lucid mirror of reality that had controlled her mindset for years. He really did.

Early this morning the husband called me that she came to the house to see him and the children. He said she was a new person, a changed woman.  He said she acknowledged the things she had done wrong and apologised for them.

He was quite enthusiastic about the future.

I am too.

 -GSW-