…Take heed that you leave no area uncovered!
Mrs Ely Smith did not know how far gone her husband was in sexual sin. When she tactfully broached the subject of madam, pointing out how they might not need her anymore; how very soon their little princess would go off to kindergarten and could be left there until evening, her husband flared up.
“Talk for yourself! I still have need of her myself. You can’t make me hot porridge of cereal in the morning because you’re in a hurry to get to the office and you don’t have time to pack me fruits and veggies for snacks. And when I come back in the evening, you’re not there. Besides, I don’t want my daughter to be left in the hands of callous Day Care people.”
Her pastor’s wife told her to calm down when she told her, hysterically. So, they started praying. When she was told to go on a three-day fast: 6-6, Mrs Smith screamed.
“I can’t handle it, I’ll faint. I work long hours and I need food.”
“Then do 6-3,” the pastor’s wife told her.
The first day, Mrs Smith fasted 6-3, but the second day she forgot and took coffee early in the morning, then she remembered but since there was nothing she could do about it she had to eat for the rest of the day. The third day, she fasted until noon and broke accidentally. She cried in prayer.
“Father, if you really want to save my marriage, you’d do it. Jesus has made the sacrifice, I don’t need to make any more sacrifices,” she prayed.
However, at night when she reached for her husband and found him cold and limp, she would cry in her heart promising God that she would fast from the break of dawn.
Then a new day would break, she would rush through the morning, get trapped in the traffic and with her laptop opened on her knees and without thinking she would reach out for a snack and that day would end like the one before it, no prayer, no fasting.
Brother Smith came back from work one day with the news that his office had sent him to Ivory Coast to open a branch. He would live there close to a year. Mrs Smith sighed in relief. God had answered her little prayers; she rejoiced. The move would break the illicit relationship going on under her nose. Husband and wife were in high spirits as they packed and prepared for the relocation of the man. Madam seemed to have no wind of it. Soon, oga left. Two weeks later, madam asked for a three-day leave. “Why?” Mrs Smith wanted to know. Now, she was naturally averse to madam and was asking around for another housekeeper, an older woman.
“One of my sons is ill,” she said. Barely another two weeks she asked for another three days off; her husband had typhoid and needed to be cared for.
All these leaves came at weekends so Auntie was able to manage with the help of a neighbour but she said to madam testily, “I’m deducting the days from your salary-o!”
One day, Mrs Smith was not feeling well so she returned earlier than usual from work. As she sat in the sitting-room, her eyes opened to how well-groomed madam looked and she knew her salary could not keep her that well-groomed – her nails were manicured and painted a la French; her hair braided in one million braids; her toenails peeping out from her expensive-looking sandals were vanished rich scarlet; her eyebrows were plucked and her skin shone with good health.
When she was leaving for the day, she put her slippers in a branded cellophane bag with the words La Femme Boutique. This caught Auntie’s eye and she sent madam upstairs to prepare her guestroom lying that she was expecting some guest. When she went up, Auntie examined the cellophane bag which madam had dropped by the kitchen door. Printed in small letters was the address of La Femme Boutique: 44 rue de Boulevard Abidjan. Auntie’s heart stopped beating for a while then it started pounding – rude joke or ugly coincidence?
The next day, she drove to madam’s house in a dirty suburb of Lagos, instead of to her office. Madam’s two boys were about to leave home for school, their father in a worn-out shirt taking them. Auntie introduced herself and the man greeted and curtsied, clearly overwhelmed by Auntie’s presence.
“Thank God you’re fully okay now! My wife has gone to work; didn’t you see her?” madam’s husband asked.
“Oh, yes, I saw her. She’s in my house now. I came to do something around here and I thought I should come in and see her family and greet you. Your wife has been a tremendous help to us…” Mrs Smith said.
“Thank you, madam! May God Almighty reward you for all your kindnesses, giving her all those things you gave her just because she stayed back to take care of you for a few days. And, God will not allow you to be sick again!” madam’s husband gushed.
Auntie stood, struck dumb for a while. Madam’s husband became confused sensing that something was wrong. He needed to clear the air.
“Yes, the two times she had to spend the weekend in your house because you were ill,” he said looking a bit bewildered.
He sounded as if he needed affirmation but it took Ely Smith a long time to react to his words. A cold rage seized her. Her host saw her face darkened to the point of dripping blood. She looked beyond the man to the sparsely furnished sitting-room, furnished with cane chairs and blue cushions. A 10-inch TV stood on a wooden table and the floor was covered with a thin cheap blue rug. Ely knew that all these efforts were made by madam.
“I was not sick and your wife has never spent a night in my house,” she told the suspicious man. “May be you should ask her where she spent them, in Nigeria or with my husband in Abidjan.”
When Mrs Ely Smith entered her car and her driver started the engine, she heard in her spirit, ‘Arm of the flesh.” She knew what the Holy Spirit meant. At the office, she took three days off. She would shut herself in and seek the face of God and good a thing she did because for those three days, madam did not come to work. In fact, she never came again to work.
Brother Smith called his wife on the fourth day, after her three days fast.
“You stupid woman,” he yelled, “what did you go to do in madam’s house? You can’t take care of your family; you want to destroy another woman’s family also. Foolish woman! Don’t ever expect me back. Do you hear me? Idiot!”
Ely went into shock. She could not gather herself together for hours and when she did, she phoned her office for more days off. Then, she called her pastor’s wife and she called her best friend and her mother and her immediate younger brother who was in Bible school, then her group leader and her neighbour who attended a different living church from hers and she sent sms to all her Christian friends to pray to save her marriage. However, she herself sat perplexed at home. She never trained herself and so was not prepared for the evil day.
“One thing I know,” the pastor’s wife told her, “God is a prayer-answering God. But you must pray yourself; you must be in the battle yourself, you must get up, bath and dress up; go back to work and be strong for this battle. It might be a long battle but I assure you, God will come through for you.”
“Aah, He has to be fast- o! Her husband came to tell me she’s left her matrimonial home for an unknown destination,” Ely cried.
“God will come when He will come,” the pastor’s wife said philosophically. “Your part is to pray, but know it that He’s in control.”
“I’ve prayed, I’ve fasted,” Ely said wearily.
“If you’re really satisfied with your prayer and fasting, then, you must be of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises,” the pastor’s wife told her.
…to continue