This experience that a lady shared with me is laden with lessons.
She said, “We lived on the same estate in the city. We often ran into ourselves at the salon and on realising that we are from the same state, our friendship blossomed.
“She lived with her uncle and his family and had just completed the one-year mandatory National Youth Service Corps. I on the other hand combined my studies and business ventures that afforded me quite a comfortable life.
“About a year into our friendship, the uncle she lived with was re-assigned to another state and she would have to seek another accommodation. She didn’t ask to move in with me but I knew her challenges. And was hoping she would never ask me.
“I hated sharing my space. In fact, my mind got busy turning up one fault of hers and magnifying the other on a daily basis. Anyway, the next time I saw her, she visited with another lady in the estate. She called her Becky.
“Becky is not her fellow Igbo but that’s the person that gave her a roof over her head. In fact, Becky is from the North although a Christian. The interesting thing is that she had known me longer than she knew Becky. And I lived alone but Becky shared accommodation with her sister.
“The following year, I lost my own accommodation. There was a court injunction on the property and everyone was served a notice to quit. Finding a suitable accommodation took some time. So, a friend asked me to put up with her for a while although, hers was a sublet in a huge flat owned by an older lady.
“A few days later, my friend began to act uncomfortably. I asked what the matter was and she told me that the other lady said she didn’t want me in their space. She had been hiding it from me all along and trying to buy time for me to find my own place but on that day, the lady insisted I either move out or she would abandon the flat for her.
“That’s how I found myself in one of the remotest parts of the city, putting up with a cousin and his wife. I was there for some weeks and those days were most challenging to my emotions.
“Navigating the traffic from that “far place” to any part of the city and back was hell. My experience in the hands of my cousin’s extremely petty wife and her sisters was another part of that “hell” experience, one that still gives me goose pimples.
“Eventually, God showed me mercy with a comfortable accommodation but I didn’t walk away from the whole experience without the lessons.”
From Oby
Somehow, in some way, life will most likely give us a taste of our own medicine.
Part of your daily ritual before you lay your head to sleep should be asking yourself this simple question “did I handle anyone exactly how I would love to be treated, if the tables ever turn? If there is more YES each time you ask this question of yourself, your heart knows God in truth.
Don’t ever justify your reasons for turning down someone in need of your help. When someone is down, the justified thing to do is to help them up. Remember that it is not every goodness that others have shown you that you merited.
If they are in NEED and you can do something about it, know that life placed them at your mercy for a reason.
In your darkest moments, it is not always whom you have known the longest, who you share affiliations with, that will come for you with a light in their hand. It is who has the heart to do it, that will do so.
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