I'm not Moving but I am

I migrated to the UK over twenty years ago, to join a man that I had married. It was trouble from the get-go - the trouble from the get-go not his fault nor mine, but that particular trouble of life revealed so many things. Many other troubles surfaced from that initial trouble.

I was a naive young woman at the age of twenty-eight years when I got married. I didn’t understand the politics of marriage, and navigating the big issue in most marriages - in-laws. I came from the bubble of a ‘loving’ home (I have put loving in inverted commas because I wrote more about my growing up in my coming book. Look out for my book in 2026); a loving church (This Present House) and a lovely and small bubble of friendship while also having a good and secure job.

Married, often I put my foot in it (I still do every now and again), plus I spoke the truth at all cost (I’ve got a big mouth for my small self). I had thought everyone was my family and could handle the truth, but soon realised that people preferred deception than truth, and that was one of the things that landed me in subsequent troubles, not the initial one.

In the UK, I learnt real life, even in church - my bubble was broken. I told my brother once that I learnt more Yoruba language in the UK than I ever learned in Nigeria (and that is the truth).

My, now ex-husband separated from me, leaving me to be a lone career when my kids were three years and three months. I had no job and no recourse to public fund. He told me that we needed to leave the apartment, he looked for a room (as lodgers) in a couple’s flat, paid the initial two months' rent, telling me it was a temporary arrangement (he came a couple of times to visit myself and the kids and then the visits dried up). *Thanks be to GOD - shortly before all this happened, I joined a church in our new locality.* When it was time to move to this room, I realised that it was just myself and the kids moving there while he was moved elsewhere, he did not even help us move. It was the Pastor that went many trips with me to move our stuff. How did we manage that with two kids, you will ask?

It was after we had moved that he told me he was not ever going to live with me again and I should look for a job to pay for mine and 'my children's’ rent going forward. With two kids, no job, no source of income and painfully, I, as a Christian, had to push one child in a buggy while carrying the other on my back on the streets of London without a wedding ring on my finger (that pained me most). How will we survive? What would I do with no immediate family in the UK?

I wept a lot, just mourning, sorrowful, crying and then I’ll cry some more and then mourn some more, lost so much weight until one day the LORD led me to Nehemiah 1:4. He told me I had mourned enough and it was time to rise up and begin to pray. So, I began praying; I prayed a lot and prayed a lot more.

Little by little, I began to adapt to the situation as the saying goes, ‘when the going gets tough, the tough gets going.’ The church supported me so much (thank GOD for the church of Jesus Christ), not for months but for years. Life was excruciatingly hard but I kept going. It was a school but I began to learn day by day.

Shortly before all the madness, I had been given a responsibility in church to lead the choir. I had about twelve people to lead and only one of them was married and older than me. Nine of them were teenagers when I started leading them (can you imagine leading teenagers?).

When the LORD told me to stop mourning and start praying, I started praying - not only for my two kids but the other twelve I had just inherited (even the one older than I am). I prayed for these every single day for years.

The more I prayed, the more GOD was working in each life and mine (He was healing me one day at a time). Taking this responsibility, I discovered two things - one, when you are in pain, you need to get up and serve. Serve GOD's purpose, serve people, serve in the Kingdom (the more you serve, the more you heal. The more you sit on your backside and wallow, the worse your situation gets). The other thing I discovered was that the music ministry is more than just having a good voice, carrying the microphone and singing. It was about sacrifice, serving GOD, and living THE life. We loved GOD, were a unit and we carried power. And I dare say, we were the best choir in the world. (It was not about our voices or being known - though we had good voice - it was about the Presence).

Day by day people grew up, went to the university, graduated, got married, moved on, moved up. (I was seeing apparent answers to all my prayer for these ones (all grownup)). I and the kids also moved on but I did not seem to be moving up. See all these people I prayed for moving up but here I am stuck - no going forward nor backwards. For years, I felt stuck. Immigration sorted, got a job but I did not seem to be moving vertically, though a lot of horizontal moves. The kids and I moved accommodation eight times in six years (it was traumatic for me and till today, I hate moving), from one room to another. I prayed, fasted, served, worked hard, did all I knew to do but did not seem to be moving, not even an inch up.

I was tired, it was as though one terrible thing after the other was happening. One day, I was speaking with my prayer partner, lamenting how everybody was moving up, even the man who did me wrong, but I wasn’t. Her response was, ‘... you are moving up but it’s not obvious.’ I cherished those words even though it didn’t seem to be true to me at the time.

About two years on, I began to realise that it was true - I was moving up. I had been moving up every day, all these years but it wasn’t apparent to the human eyes - at least not to mine. I was like a seed planted in the darkness of the soil, incubating and growing up in the soil but I couldn’t see it - I didn’t know it.

The great Husbandman was watching over me, removing the weeds, watering me, nourishing and nurturing me, replanting when I needed to grow but I could not see it until later. He was with me, stuck by me and still does. Oh! I am not fully grown. I am still growing up, starting to produce fruit little by little but still a long way to go.

Every now and again, I feel the husbandman’s shovel pulling me out of the ground of where I’m planted, my secure ground (I am feeling the shovel currently), to plant me somewhere else, bigger and better; and I begin to gasp for breath, uncomfortable, wondering why the disruption, hoping He’d just leave me where I am. But a life that carries His purpose and yielded to Him must trust the hands of the Husbandman, trust His shovel, trust His scissors, trust His knife; so, I trust. In the unknown and the fear, I trust. He never disappointed before; so, I have got to trust. I'm not the Husbandman, He is, I must trust.

Were I as wise as Solomon, one wisdom I'll give - trust Him. It may seem you are in one place; neither going forward nor backward; the pruning being painful, He’s pulling you out of the ground to replant you somewhere else. Just be assured that He’s always replanting in a bigger pot, once you’ve grown to the pot, He will carefully and lovingly pull you out to be replanted in a bigger container; and then when you grow to that, He carefully pulls you out again to replant in a bigger soil.

How very uncomfortable that seems but the end goal is continuous growth - after all, there is no adults of GOD.

You must keep trusting and I must keep trusting as well, even through scary times.