Before we begin this post, I’ll like to wish my beautiful Ewurabena a Happy Birthday. May God continue to honour and provide for you. I love you dearly. Awww 🙈 🙈 🙈 🙈 So sweet!!! 🙈 🙈 🙈 🙈 Both Ewurabena and I will be writing in this section. So, Ewurabena’s contributions will be written in Italics and mine will be in blue, to make following easier for everyone.
Previously on Faith|Hope|Love, we shared how we met and became friends…Now, we’ll share with you the Part 1 of how we started dating.
It’s a messy story after the beautiful friendship but it taught us the value of times and seasons. A lot of times, when you get excited about something, you begin to overthink it and overreact – if it hasn’t happened to you, it happened to us on several occasions. So, Alan had just been painfully dumped just before we met at Ashesi, and he was looking for a fresh start, with no drama and hurt-free. That’s the opposite of what he found. At the same time, I was all over the place, being an extra version of myself, and honestly, doing a very good job at it – LOL.
From our first year saga I learnt how to control my emotions and not allow them to lead the decisions I make. Here’s what happened; still reeling from a broken heart, I caused a broken heart when I was convinced that I was in love although I wasn’t. You can call it exuberance, selfish choices or foolish moves – but it ended up being a muddle of emotional unintelligence and scars. I ended up in another funny situation when the dust had barely settled. I started getting emotionally attached to Ewurabena (Again, very wrong timing). What put a hold on my initial affection for Ewurabena was a “prophetic word” I accepted from a stranger without asking God if the word was from Him. So after the “prophetic word”, Alan walked away from me. And I was like:
I think at that time, what he needed to do, was to sort out his issues, but I didn’t see it that way. To me, I was left high and dry, and felt very abandoned – I felt like I was a stranger to him, and that made me go through a short period of… depression? I was just very sad, got into (in hindsight) a rebound relationship with a friend, friend-zoned and ultimately hurt him.
It all happened very fast, and was an unnecessarily long and emotionally draining year. Probably not just for us, but also for those who were around us; our close circle of friends and family. Yes, I really regret a lot of those decisions and I wish I had not made them. If I could go back and amend things, I probably would not have gone through that. Its rather unfortunate. One of the most outstanding things I learnt after that period was the need to be patient and value God’s timing. Alan and I nearly missed out on our season. If we had started working on a relationship when we started getting emotionally attached to each other, we would have broken up before long.
In that period of “being strangers” God did some serious work on us individually and prepared us for our journey. Then, all I could see was the pain and I held a lot of anger against God, blaming Him for what was going on. Looking back now, the time Alan and I spent away from each other was necessary. Ideally, immediately after any relationship, the best option is to heal from any scars, detach yourself emotionally from that person and tear down all bonds or ties of the relationship before you take the next step in your life. With this, you’ll save yourself a lot of drama, hurt or heartbreaks.
This experience caused so much growth in our individual relationships with God. Three things worthy of note for your meditation is:
We realized the need to listen to ONLY His word, not what seems to be His word, not what sounds just like His word, and not what we would like to be His word: The “prophetic word” that Alan accepted was without a personal conviction. He assumed the word was true because, it seemed to be from God. We must be weary of what we accept as being “of God” and “from God”, especially as we have an inner witness (the Holy Spirit).
God’s time cannot be rushed, but you may just delay it: At the time where I had desired for our relationship, we weren’t ready for it. We were awakening love a year earlier than it should’ve been awakened, and what we went through was a divine act of correction, keeping us from taking our destinies into our hands.
As a child of God, even when you take a detour on your journey, know that God is working it out for your good.
This third point is a preamble for the Part 2 of how we started dating. 🤗We’ve talked too much already, so you’ll have to wait for the next post to find out more. Till then, know this:
“…But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.”
1 Corinthians 13:13 MSG