When I met Bob, he couldn’t look at me in the face. His name is Robert but I call him Bob. Bob is the short form of Robbert. How Bob became the short form of Robert but not Bobrisky still remains a surprise. Sometimes I think of it and I’m like, “It should have been ‘Rob’ but rob also means something different. Something riskier than Bobrisky. No wonder they settled for Bob as the short of Robert.” 

All night Bob couldn’t look at my face. He would look at the light on the table for several minutes and then look on the floor. He would look at me for a microsecond and then go back to looking at the light on the table. I said in my head, “Gentleman, you brought me here. I wore this beautiful dress for you. I should be the most beautiful thing in your night and not that miserable light on the table. Look at me. For Christ’s sake, maintain your gaze at me.” 

It didn’t work out. So the next time we went out on a date, I made sure we chose a table that does not have a light sitting on it. I can’t stand to lose to a light twice in a roll. I needed a place I could be the center of his attraction. We sat where there was no light but he managed to get something else to focus his gaze on. I said, “Bob, look at me. Are you a shy person or it’s because we are new to each other?” He smiled. “I’m not a shy person. Have I been acting shy? You think so? No, I’m not.” I said, “Then look at me when you talk. We are here for each other. I want to know the truth in what you say so show me your eyes when you speak.” 

He tried. He couldn’t sustain his gaze but it was better than before. Such outings continued for over three months. He would take me out and not say anything. Our chats during the day suggested he liked me. The way he checked up on me every day and showed concern told a story of a guy in love with me but each time he saw my face, he chose to look at something else but me. One night I asked him, “Bob, do you like me? You like me as a girlfriend and you can’t say it? You’re scared of me saying no to you? C’mon…be a man and say what is on your mind. I don’t bite and I can’t get you arrested for saying what’s on your mind. Be straightforward with me.” 

That night he didn’t propose. It took him one more month to gather the courage to say what was on his mind. “I’ve loved you from day one. It’s fear that’s holding me back. It’s not the kind of fear you spoke about the other time. A special form of fear. Fear of losing you too but I’ve prayed over this. I hope it turns out well.”

“Fear of losing you too…” 

That was what caught my attention apart from the sober way with which he said what he said. I asked him, “Who have you lost? What’s the story of the loss that you think would happen to us too? Of course, I’m different but I would like to know what happen to you so I stay clear off that path.” He didn’t say anything that made sense. He was like, “Someday we would talk about it. Not now.” I asked him, “So is that a proposal?” He answered, “I don’t know. Let’s pray and see what happens.”

We first met in church. He was a new member of the church and he introduced himself as such. After church, I went to him and took his details so we could check up on him and make him part of the flock. It was through the checking up on him that brought us together. He was prayerful and I liked that about him. He was always in front of the church. I loved that too. He came to church early and stayed back to help put the church premises in order. I liked that too about him because I’m also a church girl. I thought I’d found my match. I thought I’d found someone who understands the need to surrender all you have to God’s work. It was the reason we became good friends. 

He acted like a man who was scared to fall in love with me. Today he would act sure but tomorrow he would act so distant as if he didn’t know me. It got me worried. Anytime I confronted him about it, he said, “We have to be patient. There’s more to it than the eyes can see.” One day, I told him, “It’s better you tell me now or never. Are we in a relationship or not? Your answer today will determine whether or not we’ll keep this thing going.” That was the day he told me his story. When the story ended, I couldn’t say a word for several minutes. What I was saying in my head was, “Wow, if what he’s saying is true, then I’m going to die too. No, I’m too young to die. I would rather run away than dying because of love.” He asked me, “You see why I’m running away? This life is not straightforward like that. I’m not saying it is what it is but this can’t be a coincidence.” I answered, “Let’s talk to the pastor about this. He needs to know so he can help us in prayers.”

The following day, I held his hand and dragged him to the presence of our pastor. I said, “Now tell him what you told me. Everything.”

Bob had a girlfriend when he completed the university. They dated for a year before Bob had a job. According to Bob, the girl always said that Bob was going to be a great person and it was the reason she got stuck with him right from the beginning. “I’ve had girlfriends before her but the kind of love that girl showed me isn’t something I’d experienced in anyone. When I had nothing, she was my everything and the source of my physical provision. She was working before I got a job so she had money to give me,” he said. 

After two years of dating, they planned to get married. A week before the knocking rite, the girl died. “I spoke to her in the morning and she was fine. I spoke to her in the afternoon and she said she was experiencing severe pains in the abdomen. In the evening, she was dead.” 

The cause of death was illegal abortion. She was pregnant but decided to deal with it in her own way. It went bad and she lost her life because of that one bad decision. I asked Bob, “She told you about the pregnancy?” He answered, “If she did, we would have had the baby. The baby wasn’t mine. That was why she decided to handle it the way she did. She could have even given it to me and I wouldn’t know it but she chose the road less traveled and she paid the price with her life.” I asked him, “So how did you know the pregnancy wasn’t yours?” He answered, “Even her mother knew it wasn’t mine. She was dating another man—a married man. I think that man was there before I went into the picture. Her plan was to leave the man once we were married.”

That is just a quarter of the story. Bob said he started having weird dreams about his dead girlfriend. Some nights, she would appear with anger and some night, she would sit next to him and say nothing. Some night, she would call him her husband. In some dreams, they were happy living together.

He took it as just a dream so a year later, he got himself a new girlfriend. They dated for a year. The day they made their final plans to get married, the lady had an epileptic attack the following day and died. “No, she wasn’t epileptic. She was twenty-seven years old and had never had an attack until that day. I started connecting the dots to my dreams. The dreams about my first ex. Those lonely nights she appeared in my dreams calling me her husband started making sense to me.” The first person he spoke to was his father. He didn’t believe it had connections. He spoke to his mother too and she brushed it off as a mere coincidence. He wasn’t in any church by then so he couldn’t talk to any man of God about it.

He said one day he proposed to a girl and the girl told him right in the face, “If they sent you to me, please tell them you didn’t see me. You want me to be your next target? No way.” He proposed to two other girls and they both brought out his past girlfriends who died. “It’s a small town. Everyone knows everyone and news reached everyone before it finally dies..” He decided to leave town and start afresh from somewhere else. The dream kept coming even when he had left the town. He decided to give his life to Christ and pray the dream away. He came to church and met me. The reason he was holding on to his love for me was because of the dreams of his ex-girlfriend. 

Any woman would get scared no matter how spiritually inclined you are in God. I was scared too. What the ladies told him kept ringing a bell in my ears, “You want me to be your next target?” The dream hadn’t stopped after three good years since that girl died. After sharing the story in front of our pastor, the pastor said, “The day you gave your life to Christ was the day you got liberated. What you keep seeing comes from your mind and the fact that you’ve accepted the consequences as true. Christ is bigger. If you believe in him then you’re free. Go ahead and fall in love but don’t stop praying. Don’t stop looking up to the cross. You’ll be fine.”

When we left the presence of the pastor Bob said, “So he didn’t give any spiritual directions? How would I know I’m free when I keep seeing the same dream every night?” “I answered, “We’ll pray about it until you don’t see it anymore.”

Every Friday and Saturday was for fasting. At the night, we’ll meet in the park and pray for hours before we break our fast. On Sundays when we went to church, we gave special offerings asking God to take all our burdens away. We did that for six months and at some point, he stopped dreaming of the ghost. We didn’t stop. He’ll call me at dawn and we’ll pray. We would call the pastor and ask him to pray with us too. The dream stopped coming. He proposed again and I said yes. A day before he comes home to do the knocking, I had a dream. I was fighting with a girl. She was stronger. I was overpowered. I was on the floor and she was about to step on my head. I screamed, “Jesus!” and woke up from the dream. That scream came out live and it was so loud my next-door neighbor heard it. 

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I called him right away. I narrated the dream and described who I saw. The one I fought was tall. His ex was short. The one I fought was fair but his ex was dark. “So who is this one too?” I asked. I told our pastor and he answered, “The one you saw was the creation of your own fears. You still think about his ex that’s why it’s manifesting in your life. Stop the fear. Have you forgotten the one who lives in you? You make God so small when you continue enlarging the territories of your fear.” 

That last line stuck with me until we got married five years ago. My dream was the last dream we had about his ex. He hadn’t had the dream again and I haven’t had that fear again. We have two kids now. A boy and a girl. The boy is four and the girl is going to two years. Each night before they go to bed, my husband would recite a Bible quotation to them and ask them to say it after him; “Proverbs 18:10, The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous runneth into it and is safe…” You should see my four-year-old boy struggling to mention “Righteous…” 

Each night, they recite that quotation before they go to bed. We pray over them and pray over our lives. We sleep and sleep like babies. When we dream, we dream of beautiful things. When we don’t dream, we fill our nights with beautiful snores. We wake up with love in our hearts—love for God and love for each other because “There’s no fear in love but perfect love casts out fear.” All our fears are gone. What remains is love for each other and fear for the almighty God.

–Bobwaa

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