LOVE WINS: A DECADE OF LOVE

It is with great Joy that I finally get to write about something that I care about so much—there is no life in a world where there is no love. This is a very astonishing statement yet proven a thousand times every day of our Lives. In one of the Elizabethan theatre plays I did in my literature class in high school, THE TWELFTH NIGHT, Duke Orsino who had suffered from unrequited love laments: If music be the food of love, play on” , our Love story is that which defines the audacity of Hope when it comes to Love—we live each day with utmost faith that we will row with the current to the finish line when we finally say, I do and live a happily ever-after. There is a song by Taylor Swift, LOVE STORY; it could best explain our love story. I can fetch a few lines that always melt our hearts every time we listen to it:

 

“We were both young when I first saw you.

I close my eyes and the flash back starts:

I’m standing on the balcony in summer air

………………………………………………

Romeo, save me, they’re trying to tell me how to feel

This love is difficult but it’s real.

Don’t be afraid, we’ll make it out of this mess.

It’s a Love story, baby just say, “Yes”

Love is a journey.

About seven years ago, I watched a movie titled LETTERS TO JULIET. It tells a story of two love birds who met fifty years earlier—this was through a letter the man had written to Juliet fifty years ago. I am not a person who just sees fairy tales, movies and books as just that. I angle in to read every tidbit of the story line to the end. My fiancée Jovitah and I met ten years ago as young people—that’s around high school days. We lost contact for six years and each one of us lived a life different from the one that had the ole story of boyfriend and girlfriend—basic equivalent of saying we picked out other people therein. My greatest surprise, as is the case with Real Love, when we met again four years ago—the glowing splint re-ignited, to the present day. I am glad she came the day I asked her out, I am a better man because she did, thanks Love.

Take a Bow, I am a Better Man.

If there is anything that I have learned the last couple of years, it is how to give and receive love. At times you have to take the compromise and wear out to heal the wounds of yesterday or else you forever be wounded—this must be the single-most secret I have discovered in the realm of Love. Some want to fall into a very rosy bed of love where there are no thorns, there is no such a thing as such, Love at times hurts but it is what we need to heal in retrospect. I can say without holding it back, in earnest, we are able to keep going because we have mastered the importance of saying SORRY—it is highly paramount.

Two years ago, just after we had become Parents, a very challenging and yet transformative step in our lives—as is captured in my earlier Piece on Parenthood,we watched a Christian family movie titled FIREPROOF. It is about a couple whose relationship was almost falling to pieces but came back to have life when mutual respect and understanding came back into play. I will talk about this movie very expansively—it has been a point of reference every time I have something to make right with Jo.To begin with, the thing about love:

“When a man is trying to win the heart of a woman, he studies her. He learns her likes, dislikes, habits, and hobbies. But after he wins her heart and marries her, he often stops learning about her. If the amount studied about her before marriage was equal to a high school degree, he should continue to learn about her until he gains a college degree, a master’s degree, and ultimately a doctorate degree. It is a life long journey that draws his heart ever closer to her”

 Like I said earlier in my late father’s eulogy, I didn’t have chance for him to take me through everything about parenthood—though, there is certainly a lot I learned before he passed on though. Now again from the movie FIREPROOF, I learned a thing or two from Caleb’s dad, as he advised him—words that every human soul ought to live by:

“You can't love your wife because you can’t give her what you don’t have. I couldn’t truly love your mother till I understood what love really was. I’ve now made a decision to love your mother whether she deserves it or not. Son, God loves you even though you don’t deserve it.Even you though you have rejected Him, spat in His face…You can only truly love someone (people) by God’s Love”

These are words you will not just meet anywhere yet they are words that everybody needs to know. I said earlier, I share my stories because I have lived under the victimhood of a single story and I am telling these to inspire and encourage someone out there—our story is not just ours, it’s for all my human siblings.

                                       Contentment isn’t a Product of material abundance.

 My late Parents

While it may be true that money is important in Life, the life of love doesn’t depend on how much or how less money one has. As that picture of my late mother and late dad below the heading above shows, it’s always about hard work and togetherness—passion, intimacy and commitment. It is a kill-joy these days with so many fights over the much-little syndrome but certainly it has to be because the players are very myopic and are not paying attention to the big picture—you are in for a relationship, or you are in for ‘business’, the motive matters.

A while ago while I wrote about President Obama’s lasting imprint on my life, I may not have told a story about how the story of their life—to be specific their love life is a very inspirational one. As Michelle Obama delivered her 2012 Democratic National Convention speech, she did make mention of a few things about their very humble beginnings, something that keeps me very awake. I sleep late reading and writing not because I just want to be a president but because I want our son and future children plus their mother, my fiancée Jovitah, to be proud of the man in their Life. What I know for sure, we have come a long way and we are proud of the baby steps we take each day. Jo and I were talking through this as we wrote this story and we only can scream gratitude to the Lord and everyone who has given us unwavering support—there is a lot to be done, we still need you around, actually do not miss our wedding when we call the date.

Greeting the stereotypes with a calm but steady attitude.

I have grown in a society where stereotyping based on single stories is common especially when it comes to Personal character, Love and dating but I have defied the odds—the beauty of it all, that’s who my fiancée is, equally. In 2014, there was really a lot of noise in the background when we decided to father and mother Shane (be parents)—noise about how young (coughs*common, we were all 24) and how unready we were, that made come here and publish the early engagement as a message to the naysayers.

 

In 2012, I watched a Christian movie, TO SAVE A LIFE and the TV Series, THE SECRET LIFE OF AN AMERICAN TEENAGER. When my fiancée became pregnant—other than our ingrained discipline in the realm of saving an unborn baby (the present-day Prince Shane), they shaped the course, especially with the very many hurdles that awaited us. I could always go and get TO SAVE A LIFE on my player every time I felt so lowly and I would just forward to listen particularly to these words:

“Life is a journey; not so much to a destination but transformation. God made us to live as a community to laugh and cry; to hurt and celebrate with each other no matter what we are going through. And transformation is tough—we don’t always end up where we think we will, we have to remember that even when we struggle to believe in Him, He always believes in Us—the beauty of the journey is that, the God of the universe sometimes allows us to play a part in changing lives, isn’t that true?”

Yes, the odds have been great but there has never been an experience so rewarding like the ever-after. Recently, while I was watching the TV series, ROSEWOOD season one (starring MORRIS CHESTNUT) I couldn’t stop laughing: somewhere in episode 2

,  Rosy’s mother after a round-about rumor of news that the son could have fathered a kid with one of his exes in the day tells him: “son, we have kids because we are going to die”. Certainly, if I died today, there is someone after me.For that I am thankful—reason we named him SHANE ABAHO Jr (Hebrew meaning for; favor from God)

Dare to Love and you will enjoy the fruits of Love.

Quite often people get mingled into how little they have of the love left in them but—there is always so much in us, it’s just about opening our hearts to love that we shall realize how rich we are in Love. After Jo and I had watched fireproof, I went ahead and downloaded the masterpiece for the forty-day challenge, THE LOVE DARE.I must say that this masterpiece is one of the greatest things I have read—that I read each day, because I want to be the best husband she found.

As a teenager, I loved reading about love. I always loved writing love poems for my girls(Ha:Ha)—one day, I came across the triangular theory of love, I gave it time, I really did: to this day, I still go back and reference, as above, I want to be best at loving my lady.

Recently we watched WARROOM, the Christian movie; I must say that this one of those movies every married couple and everyone who intends to marry must watch. There are like a million lessons to learn especially when it comes to resisting the devil: Every war needs a strategy.

Yes, every war needs a strategy as CLARA says at the start of the movie: “There always seems to be something to fight for. But one thing has remained true of every war; behind the field of battle, someone has developed a strategy. I find myself amazed that of the many battles we engage in today—be it money, control or matters of the heart, very few know to fight the right way or understand who we are really fighting. To win every battle, you have got to have the right strategy and resources, because victories don’t come by accident”. Every word of this statement is profoundly true. As I have often said,

time flies when you find love, have kids, it seems like it has been a day and an eternity all at once. Love is what stays in the midst of all that can go wrong. No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place. Love is not blind; it only enables us to see things others do not see

It is not a secret that you have to learn to be more tolerant the day you fall in love—even the most compatible people on earth have differences, compatibility is about parties involved learning to live with the whole package, the good and the bad side.

As they wedded, so shall we.

We held our first wedding meeting some months ago. Certainly we would like to go and say the vows—I DO. There is nothing we can’t wait to do like that but for some reason(s), we have to postpone. The biggest one is that we would like our cute Prince, Shane to be the overall witness, as a peg boy—that automatically makes us have to hang in till he can pull some dancing strokes on D-Day.

Life is full of all kinds of pitfalls and negatives and things that can get us down .Just remember that no matter what, light doesn’t come from light. Light comes from darkness. And the darkest part of our night, is just before the dawns. For everybody reading this story, this is the bare truth about love:

“love isn’t perfect.it isn’t a fairy tale or a storybook and it doesn’t always come easy. Love is overcoming obstacles, facing challenges, fighting to be together, holding on and never letting go.it is a short word, easy to spell, difficult to define and impossible to live without. Love is work, but most of all is realizing that every hour, every minute, and every second of it was worth it because you did it together”.

As a first year student (2011), I watched the Christian movie UNCONDITIONAL. And the conclusive remarks for our decade of love will be picked from the last minutes of that movie—they have had lasting imprint on my life. To begin with, the words of MICHAEL EALY as Joe Bradford to Samantha Bradford in a letter:

“Find your stride, Sam; share your stories, they matter. Live, breathe and find a way to believe again”

—if you are reading this story, there is no other explanation. And then Samantha Crawford in a confession had this to say:

“Joe helped me find something that I had lost along the way, something I had once believed in so strongly—that the storms of life are bound to come, but that maybe even in those storms, in the loneliest times of all, you’re never alone. Love is the most powerful thing on earth. I’ve seen what it can do, and it can do amazing things. Sometimes I imagine a world where everyone knows a love that’s unconditional and what a beautiful world it is.I think Billy was right, that there truly is enough love to go around. All you’ve to do is share it”

As I have often said, there is always that one reason that makes you hang there in when you feel you are at the very edge of letting go. Before you give up on love, ask yourself one question: “Have I loved enough?”. Because, every time you let go, you hit the road of the search of the next most gorgeous woman or handsome man who may never be good enough  for you, as was your previous one—that’s not a good place to be. A few months ago, I made a discovery—it’s awesome.