So This Is Love

‘Get up.’ I opened my eyes to see her staring at me with a loathsome look of disgust and impatience. I shut my eyes tight and let out a yawn that I for a moment hoped would rid me of the anger that was quickly rising in my chest. ‘What time is it?’ I asked calmly, trying to hide my frustration behind a demeanor of tranquility and composure. I had had a long night. For the past three weeks I had been sleeping on the sofa, and it had not been a great experience so far. I had wanted to book a hotel room every night while I drove home from work but I never got myself around to do so. I would find myself at home however much I hated it, and I still wanted to see her. ‘I don’t know.’ she answered curtly with a smirk on her lips. ‘I want to clean up the room, you can find somewhere else to prolong your nap.’ She added after a minute of ominous silence during which I had sat up, put my hands on my thighs and planted my face to the ground, weeping silently that I was in this hole of torture. In response I lifted my face to hers. Our eyes met and I saw that glow that had won me over years ago while we were still in Medical School. Those were the same eyes that had driven me mad with infatuation. When I first met Alshie, I never thought that I would come to love and adore her as I did.

I used to see her in Medical School Christian Union, and I would quickly say hi to her like I always did with other ladies, careful not to prolong a conversation into anything awkward and unseemly. She had about her a venerable air of composure that revealed an unmistakable and solid sense of direction in life. She was not outspoken but seemed to have a close friend who was her exact opposite. I never thought much of Alshie until we found ourselves serving in the Hospitality ministry together. And then bit by bit we got to know each other, and soon realized how similar we actually were. We loved the same things, we hated the same things. We went on to confess how we were both introverts. We also were first-borns. She was a writer as she was a reader, so was I. I had asked about her favorite read, and she had said she loved John Bunyan’s A Pilgrims Progress more than anything else; so did I. After she sent me the link to her blog, I stayed awake the whole night revelling in every single word of beautifully curated articles that it was impossible not to love. She was an inspiration. When we shared about how we got born again and how our journeys in salvation had been, I saw in Alshie a partner. I knew it in that instant that I was speaking to my wife. It had been said that for a Christian, there was no better place to find a wife that in Christian Union, and that it was particularly important to get a woman who loved the Lord. Here we could begin a relationship that would be guided by principle, and we would have so many people to guide us. Alshie had to be the one; she was decent, few of words, and she had a beautiful smile. I had told my then roommate Njoroge Maina, that I desire nothing less in a lady, and cared less about anything more.

I just didn’t know how I would get past my fear and confess my feelings. And such a disposition of restrain was inspired more by the fear that my feelings would be unrequited than it was because of priggishness. I had had crushes for a million ladies, but I had never dared to ask them out or tell anyone about how I felt. In the end I was glad that I never did, because such feelings soon revealed themselves to be useless and distracting infatuations. Even so, I knew that to win this fair lady, I couldn’t afford to be faint at heart. I would soon need to tell my feelings if I would ever get Alshie to be with me. Every time I looked into the beautiful blue glint in her eyes, I wondered if she felt the same way for me.

It is difficult to hide the flame of a candle with bundles of dry straw, for it soon dawned on me that my boys had sniffed me out, when one of my forebears stood me up after service one Sunday and questioned me on what my intentions with Alshie were. I immediately realized that my ways had been found out. When a man is in love, sooner or later the world will know, however much he hides it. ‘This cannot be a mistake Daniel,’ he had said, ‘if you are not sure that you love her, please don’t get it any further.’ I had stayed silent, looked down to the ground, my heart still racing hard as I had not expected the confrontation. ‘I am sure I love her,’ I had said with a kind of solemn and certain conviction that surprised me as much as it did Michael whose face softened and lit up into an encouraging smile of someone who seemed to have been moved by what had to be a genuine confession. ‘Well…’ he had remarked and gone on to share insights from his own experience when it came to the murky waters of romance.

I didn’t ask Alshie out until a year later when I was completely sure of my feelings, or at least when I thought I was. ‘I’ll give you my response on Friday, after the service.’ That was the response she gave me and the only words she spoke after I seemed to be done with my prolonged speech about eternal devotion and fidelity. This was on Monday, and I immediately knew it would be torture for me. Never has five days been an eternity. I did not sleep a wink, neither did I properly study. Everyday my love for Alshie seemed to be multiplied by a factor of 1000. I loved her more with the passage of every second, and adored her the more with the dawn of each day. I soon knew that as long as she walked the earth, I would never be happy with anyone else. That Friday I arrived a little late for the service as I first needed to finish up a report on a Medical Camp we had had a week ago. I got in when the worship team was singing Yahweh Yahweh by Nathaniel Bassey. I surreptitiously swept my eyes across the room. She was not there. I kept looking during the praise session, through the teaching session. I couldn’t bear to face the reality that she had not come for service until the Chairperson had given the benediction, until we had shared words of the Grace and we were dispersing for tea. I was cooked. Not coming for service meant one thing, she didn’t want to have to face me and give me the bad news, at least not so soon. I was broken, and did my best to avoid the chatty parties that would notice the streak of sadness in me that evening. While I was scrolling through Uber looking to see if I could get an affordable solo ride home, the message came up: ‘Hi Henry, I had to rush home this evening. Everything is alright. Let’s please talk on Sunday.’ I smiled, and read it all over again. I now strangely knew what her answer would be.

When we got married, we truly loved and enjoyed each other’s company. Everyday was bright and exhilarating. We couldn’t get the fill of each others love. We kissed, we embraced, we caressed; we did everything imaginable that a happily wedded couple would do. Alshie was the evidence of the one thing I ever did right in my life. It was a win. ‘The greatest mistake a man can make in his life, is marring the wrong woman,’ I had heard it said and repeated a thousand times. I was proud at what I accomplished. I had bagged the price, what more could a man want in his life?

As days went by, so did the happiness slowly fade with it. Everything was perfect until it was not. Slowly but surely we soon realize that we never liked each others company as much. We had drunk to our fill from the pitcher of love until it was empty. Suddenly we did not love one another anymore. Everything soon became mechanic and artificial until it was impossible to put up with the facade anymore. I would look into her eyes, and I could see coldness where I had seen a fiery passion. She was not beautiful anymore, she just looked like any regular lady I would meet in the streets. I hated the shape of her nostrils and how tiny her ears were. There was no longer any joy in going back home. Her presence was suffocating, she gave out an air of death. As each day passed, it became clear that even though I had never hated her, I had never loved her either. She soon, with a chilling air of insouciance, confessed that letting me into her life was surrendering to a chimera and a whim she now regretted every second of her life. We had thought we were soulmates when we never were; we had only forced ourselves to believe it, and reality had soon intruded. Alshie was a great lady, but she was never supposed to be my wife. It might have turned out much better if we had stayed friends. Everything might have been fine if nothing ever turned romantic.

‘The Papers?’she asked. A tear fell from my eye. I had still not mustered the courage to sign the divorce papers. Maybe I still believed things would take a different course for the best, but would they? Divorce? Who would have thought that I would be caught up in a divorce? ‘I am yet to sign them.’ I said and rising up. ‘So this is love,’ I stuttered silently as I made my way up the matted staircase to take a shower.

Why You May Never Find Love

Heartbreak, according to Brianna Wiest, is when somebody fails to fit into the specific notion we created of them. Suddenly, we are heartbroken because we expected that someone would behave in a certain way, and they did not. As long as we allow our expectations of fulfillment to lie with a fellow human being, we set up ourselves for heartbreak. Making us happy is not the reason people exist. These people have their own goals and lives to live, and it is a little unfair to try to force someone to be somebody else. Fulfillment, especially in the area of romance, does not work they way we think it does, and want it to. Fulfillment comes by being able to be responsible for something, in this case, the well-being of someone. Unconditional love on our part is therefore our ability to love someone unconditionally, even if they don’t love us unconditionally. That is not something many people are willing to do, and it could explain why love has eluded many of us, including myself. When we only love someone because of what they can do for us, what about the days when they will be unable to do these things. Take beauty of instance, nothing will remain of that shapely body in a few years. So when her face is wrinkled, and most of her teeth have fallen out, will you still love her? Love goes beyond a woman’s face or body. It’s a good thing to love a pretty woman, but that’s not all there is to love.

Love usually asks so much of us than we are ever ready or willing to give. What happened with all your other crushes? Why did you suddenly lose interest in all those boys you thought you loved? It’s hard to say, right? So what makes you think that you won’t lose interest in your current crush as well? The advice being advanced in the world, is that whenever we think we like someone, we should tell them. I don’t think that is ever the right thing to do. You like her, so what! You want her to be your girlfriend? Why? He is the right man for you? How did you know? Does your mentor agree?

Commitment is the reality of love that we are never willing to accept. Love is only beautiful when those in love are willing to commit to one another, and mostly commitment is independent of the other person. When we are truly in love, we don’t commit to someone because they have committed to us. Every successful love story or relationship has been so because of commitment. Love is a trade-off we are making; we are essentially saying that we are willing to focus on someone else for the season they are in in our lives. Most of us think that it will be beautiful for that person to focus on us as well. What if they won’t?

The Bible says that those who regard the wind will not sow. Love is a risk we take gladly. Aware that in the end, we risk being hurt, but choose to love anyway. If we truly love someone, we take that risk, because we know that it’s in loving them that our lives will make sense, not in them loving us.

A New Attitude Towards Pain and Suffering

There's something quite sublime about pain and suffering. It is only pain that can allow us see certain things. Suffering and deprivation, occasionally serve as instruments that awaken us to the reality and existence of certain things and certain people in our lives, who otherwise we would never think of. How suffering is good in this regard, we can only appreciate when it's past, in retrospect, for no sane man could ever be glad that he is suffering; yet the wisest are glad they suffered. According to Virginia Woolf in her essay "On Being Ill" she explains that the sick man can finally think about the sky, He never would have had had he always known wholesome health all his life.

We cannot always be happy. Happiness would not be happiness if there was no sadness. If there was no other emotion in the world that men would be disposed to but happiness, happiness would lose its meaning. Happiness is what it is because sadness is what it is. For happiness to be what it ought to be, sadness is indispensable. We need the sadness in order that we may understand why happiness is such a blessing. When people always get us, when we always want what we have, when success comes easily to anybody who wishes it, what would it mean? It would be intolerable.

Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable- Virginia Woolf

It is clear then why A. W. Tozer would say: if we never come down from the mount of blessings we may easily come to trust in our own delights rather than in the unshakable character of God; it is necessary therefore that our watchful Heavenly Father withdraw His inward comforts from us sometimes, to teach us that Christ alone is the rock upon which we must repose our everlasting trust.

When we do not fail occasionally, we may forget what it actually means to do well. Even if in part, could this be a probable explanation as to why some people would go to the lengths of actively creating trouble for themselves, and inflicting pain on themselves. Could it be because life isn't life without it's messiness? Certainly, it is the struggles, the striving, the sighs and the pains that give life its meaning.

We need the heartbreaks, so that when we are finally loved, we can truly know what it means to be loved with such fervent passion, with no qualms or conditions. It warms our hearts to know everyone loves us, when everyone praises us, but then we find ourselves asking the question, "what does my life mean?" Just like Jephthah in Judges 11 many people have become great because they were rejected. Denied any inheritance and rejected by his brothers for being the son of a harlot, Jephthah went on to become a great army commander. He still, probably, would have had become so great a man had they embraced him as a brother from the beginning, but that would have been quite unlikely. Rejection, pain, disappointments, betrayals, these things not only come to crush us, but to prove us.

Privation, inconvenience, and ill-health should open our eyes to see the Lord, to see all that he has made available, all that that in good health looks mundane and dispensable. We need the rejection, the lady we think to be a queen needs to turn down our proposal, so that we could at least come down from our high pedestal and reconcile our state with the general plight of humanity. A lady may need to be broken so that she may stop thinking of herself an angel. We need the pain, we need the suffering, so that we can at least learn our lessons. Let us not run from the wilderness, let us not shun away the night, it has its lessons to teach, and we do well to learn.