I remember being led home by two gentlemen; one on my left and the other behind me. I could hear voices but didn’t know where the voices were coming from. They could come from my own head or from the people around me. One said, “It’s a curse. His family wants to destroy him.” Another voice said, “It’s not any curse. He’s the one destroying his own life.” Another voice said, “In all these, what’s his wife doing? It could even be the wife who’s destroying her husband.” They took me home. My wife came from the inside and saw me in the midst of those men. She said, “Today too? James, what are you doing to yourself? What has come over you?”

She held my hand and thanked those men. When they left, her mom came out of the door. Immediately she saw me she said something like, “Send him to his family before he dies this way. You can’t continue living with a man who can’t take charge of his own life. Leave him for his family and concentrate on the kid.” That wasn’t the first time her mother was saying that. She had said it even when I was sober. Anytime there was trouble and I was at fault, my wife’s mom advised her to leave me. 

That day was my lowest. I was drinking but I didn’t drink to the extent of not knowing my way home. That day I did. I would have ended up in the gutters if it weren’t for those guys who sent me home. My life was already in the gutters. If I fell in, the cycle would have been completed; both body and life in the gutters.

My wife took me in, I took my bath and she gave me food to eat. She left me to sleep. I woke up at dawn and saw her praying. Maybe, it was the loudness of her prayer that woke me up. I could hear everything she was praying about but I didn’t have the strength to join her. I was lying in bed pretending to be asleep while my wife prayed against the evil spirits and demons fighting against me. I couldn’t hold it. I started crying. I was reminiscing on where I’d been in life and how it all changed; how it all fell in the gutters. 

I got married when I was twenty-nine years old. My wife was twenty-six and had just completed her national service. I was working with a multinational company and had made a lot of money for myself. I met my wife in January and married her in November. She was so good I didn’t want to waste time. I thought I knew her so well. There was nothing to know again so I married her and we started our married life together. A year later she got pregnant. She was five months pregnant when I lost my job. 

A guy under my supervision squandered huge sums of money. I should have known but I was too busy working on other aspects of my role that I didn’t realize someone was stealing. When the alarm blew and the guy was arrested, I was laid off for not doing my job well. 

It was a huge blow to me and my pregnant wife. I couldn’t eat for days. I couldn’t sleep for months. My wife would be sleeping and I would be guarding over her, asking questions and wondering how the future would be like for us and the unborn child. Some nights I will cry. It wasn’t easy. I was scared. When my wife delivered and I couldn’t do so much to help, I started feeling the shame of being helpless. She had a job and she was OK doing what she had to do but I felt I’d let the family down. To cover up my shame, I started drinking. My wife’s mother came to live with us for a while and went back. But when my wife was about to resume work, my wife’s mother came back to live with us so she could take care of the child. 

I couldn’t face her. The fact that I was home while my wife worked to take care of us made me feel so small and ashamed. I will go out to look for a job and I will come home drunk. My wife was worried. She assured me every day that she would be there for us until I get something to do. I’m not the man who stays idle for my woman to take care of me so it was hard for me to take. The presence of her mom also didn’t help matters. It looked like her mom was watching me naked while her daughter took care of us. I didn’t feel like a man or the head of anything. I felt like a failure. 

One day I got a job interview. I was closer to getting the job until they learned what happened at my previous job. I thought the truth will make them see me in a good light but they decided I was a risk they couldn’t take. So they called to tell me, “Sorry, we had to consider someone else…” It was the closest I had come to being employed in two years. I was broken. I cried on my way home one day. I didn’t go home straight, I passed by the bar and took a shot to cover up the shame I was feeling. It was right at that point people started advising my wife to leave me. They said I was cursed. They said I wouldn’t come back to life again. My mother-in-law also said the same thing.

My wife got me an interview with the help of a friend. The interview was a mere formality. I was going to be given the job. The salary was poor and the work was way below my qualification but my wife said, “It’s better than nothing and it will keep you busy until you get something better to do.” I went to the interview a little bit intoxicated. I lost the job and I was back to square one. My wife’s mother said, “This is not ordinary. There’s a hand in it. We have to seek help from a great man of God. My parents agreed and we started moving from the feet of one man of God to another. We prayed, and we fasted. Three years without a job definitely had to be the work of the devil. 

Prayers and fasting didn’t help it. I still went around drinking anyway. Even when we were fasting, I will go out there and steal a shot. It was the only thing that kept me sane and stable. 

So that evening when I got so drunk and was brought home, my in-law was convinced the devil had won so he advised her daughter to leave me. But that dawn she prayed and said, “He’s all I have, God. I don’t want to give up on him but if he continues going the way he’s going, my resolve would break down and I might go against you. This is the time we need your presence in our lives.”

I lay down crying but woke up with a renewed strength to change my life before I lose everything including my life and family. The first person I spoke to was a friend who was once a colleague at my former place of work, Ericus. Ericus had left the company and established his own company. It was something new he was doing. When he saw me he was shocked. He screamed, “What happened to you? Were you sick?” I told him everything, my journey through the wilderness and my new desire to stay afloat. I said, “I know what you’re doing is new but I want you to employ me. You know me and know what I can do. I will put everything I have into this and help you out.” 

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He was quiet for a while. He said, “You know it’s a new thing I’m doing. I can’t afford you at this moment. Maybe someday but not now.” I said, “Let me work with you. I don’t care how much you’ll pay me. I need a distraction and this will go a long way to keep me in balance.” When he was still adamant about my demands, my wife called him and pleaded with him to take me on; “It’s not about the money now. He’s rusty. Help him come back to life.” He reluctantly agreed and we started working together. 

It was a slow process back to life but I gave it my all and as time went on, he trusted me enough to leave so much under my care. We’ve been doing it for the past three years and today, the company is experiencing consistent growth and it’s in a position to employ more hands. I’m not just an ordinary worker there but a co-owner of the company. It’s been a roller coaster but when time got hard, we stayed true to each other and true to the course of the business. 

This is not a story of how we built a company but the story of how a woman picked me up from the gutters back to life again. We have two kids currently and life is good. It can be better. That’s the aim.

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My wife looks so small but the kind of heart she has is so big to contain anything this marriage has thrown at her. I’m a better person because of her. When her mother told her to leave me, she was right. Any mother who has her daughter’s interest at heart would have said the same thing. I was in a very bad place that if I had a choice, I would have left me for someone different. It’s the reason I don’t hate my in-law. She has her role to play in lifting me up and I’m grateful but I’m most grateful for the woman who saw it all and still had faith in me. She’s the reason I believe a good woman is the best thing that can happen to a man in his lifetime. 

—James

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