While she is waiting to get married

I met my wife Carol for the very first time in my life, when she was twenty-eight, and I married her when she was twenty-nine.

She was full of life. She was full of positive energy, unlike some other girls of her age, who were not yet married.

She was not embarking on three weeks of fasting and prayer or four days of dry fasting in order for her husband to come. Not that she was not praying; but she didn’t panic in prayers.

It’s not as if men were not coming. Being the daughter of the very quiet and honest Bishop Michael Marioghae drew many suitors to her. Some families were interested in getting a wife for their sons from such a home.

For example, one young man who travelled hundreds of kilometres to propose to her told her of his admiration of the pastoral qualities he saw in her father, when he was under his ministration, while he was still a student in one of the universities. Carol had no problem with him liking her father. She was happy with it. But she wanted a man that will marry her because he also loved her. For that reason, she refused his marriage proposal.

Her younger brother married before her, while her elder sister had already given birth to four children.

She was living with her parents at the age of twenty-eight, while working with one of the then four leading banks in Nigeria.

In church, she was the president of the youth fellowship. She was also a Sunday school teacher. She would take public transport to cover the long distance between her bank, her home and the church in order to meet up with the Sunday school’s preparatory class on Saturdays.

She would organise the youths and take them out on picnics. Some of the unmarried ladies of her age in the church felt too embarrassed or proud or both to be dancing in church with younger people. Many of the men didn’t mind. But many of the ladies felt they ought to be in their husbands’ houses and not be dancing with the youths to the altar, when it was their turn to do so during thanksgiving and other church events. Some could not imagine themselves dancing and happy when younger women were cuddling their babies and by the sides of their husbands. Some felt ashamed, but not Carol.

She never had a boyfriend, and it didn’t occur to her because of her deep and genuine relationship with God. She thoroughly enjoyed her years as a single lady.

I met her at 28 enjoying living with her parents and relating with them. I met her at age twenty-eight thoroughly enjoying her work as a banker. I met her at age twenty-eight happy teaching her Sunday school class every Sunday morning before the Sunday service. I met her at age twenty-eight full of joy that she was the president of the youth fellowship of her church. I met her at age twenty-eight thoroughly enjoying her being single. I met her at age twenty-eight being the chief bride’s maid to almost all her friends.

She never complained nor murmured about her being single. She never believed that being single should make a single lady to be singled out for sympathy. Her faith was strong that the kind of man that would give her peace would come. Her faith brought me her way, not her fears.

I am saying being single is not a disease because it is not against nature. It’s a stage of life that one may step out from early or a little late in life. Enjoy it! Love you.