Had an experience as a teenager that I will never forget in my life. My personal plan for my life was to marry early. And when I came across a girl during the last year of my secondary school, I made up my mind to grow with her and marry her in the nearest future. The relationship was not sexual at all. The love was so much that I would begin to lose weight whenever I did not see her. I could hardly eat. 

There was a day something happened and I thought that she was dead. I was preparing my mind to kill myself, when news came that she was very much alive. The instance I mentioned above was the only time in my life that the thought of suicide ever crossed my mind. I give thanks to God that I did not kill myself because of love that was blind. For the sake of those who may wonder how a secondary school boy will think of marriage, I started secondary school at age 14. I was about getting out of my teenage years in my final year in secondary school. I was, therefore, neither 15 nor 16 years old as the case is now. To cut a long story short, I wrote the West African School Certificate Exam (WASCE) and it turned out to be a fiasco. Who else did I need to comfort me than the girl I was blindly in love with? So, she was the first person I broke the news to. But instead of comforting me, she sacked me. She sacked me. She sacked me with immediate effect and ‘automatic alacrity.’ I went back to my parents’ house. I put on Jimmy Cliff’s music titled,

“That’s the way life goes.’ I put on another one titled, ‘Not now, no baby not now.’ I was almost sinking into depression until I asked myself, ‘What is wrong with you?’ Why will you harm yourself and your life over a person that does not love you?’ It was then I decided to pick up the broken pieces of my life. I rewrote WASCE and came out with one of the best results in the school. From there, I went for my Higher School Certificate (HSC) and finally, my university education.

I did not blame the girl for sacking me. We were of about the same age and I think she did not want to marry somebody who could not pass an ordinary WASCE. One or two of my readers out there would also not have wanted their daughter to marry somebody who cannot cross the school certificate hurdle. But, I made up my mind never to fall blindly in love again. It was much later I began to see that I, Charles, was blind and that love is not blind. When I looked back, I saw that the signals that I was making a fool of myself were all there, but I was too foolish and blind to see the signs.

In Judges 16:4, it is written “and it came to pass afterwards that he (Samson) loved a woman…” In Judges 14:1-20, Samson had earlier fallen blindly in love with a girl. He kept ignoring all the signals, including attempts on his life because he was blindly in love. Nowhere in the Bible is “Love is blind” used to define love. “God is love” and His love for you is not blind. I pray that anytime any member of your family is blinded by love, and begins to do stupid things, God will send someone to rescue him or her, so that he or she will not become permanently physically blind and harmed like Samson. Love you!