Letter from the Other Woman I

Dear Chrysta,

You do not know me but I know you very well. For whilst he cannot talk to you about me because you do not know I exist, I know you do and so he does.

I know when you have a bad day and when you get a promotion or raise. I even know when your PMS causes you to snap at him and throw him out of the house.

No, he does not come to stay with me. He calls but I turn him away. Nature has played this cruel joke on us where our cycles are perfectly synchronized. God has a sense of humor and the joke’s on us (him).

Oh, where did my manners go? There they are! I guess I should introduce myself. In case you haven’t already guessed, I am the other woman in Paul’s life. Or am I one of them? You never know these days.

I am not your average ‘other woman’. I am not trying to steal your husband nor get back at my father. I am neither a sex fiend nor exceptionally good in bed. He says you’re much better.

In fact, many a time, he comes to me complaining how you tired him out in bed, his half-hearted complaints belied by the fact that he is usually grinning like a Cheshire cat. You’re doing it right there.

My name is Gifty and like the name suggests, I am both gifted and a gift. Lead soprano singer in the choir, Sunday school teacher, CFA, and ladies wing vice-president are a few of the titles I can claim.

Over the weekend, I volunteer at a school for special needs children. They love me. Everybody does, including your husband but we will come to that.

If you are shaking your head whilst going through my profile and asking incredulously “…and other woman?” you are right. It does not fit in the picture.

But like I found out from my childhood obsession with picture puzzles lasting well into my teens, sometimes, not every piece fits... (To be continued)

Breaking Her Own Heart

Tears stuck behind her eyelids, Anna blinks, trying to get rid of the foreign material in her eyes. Foreign because tears that wouldn't fall aren't tears; God knows what they were. She lifts her head high and shakes her head, sniffing back more 'tears'.

She refused to cry, for there was no one but herself to blame for the pain. How would she explain her tears? "I took a knife, stuck it in my own chest and twisted it like a screwdriver?" For that was the naked truth.

She had broken her heart all by herself. Her head and heart had both said no and yet she had gone ahead and fallen anyway, fallen upon the sharp knife which now wrenched her gut, called it love when it was pure, unadulterated lust.

But through it all, she smiled. For she had broken a heart she thought she no longer had. And the excrutiating pain at least meant it was still there. Its magnitude showed the insurmountable joy she could one day feel

And so she smiled through the 'tears' that  would not fall. They'd fall when joy arrived. They'd fall as tears of joy. (Or so she hoped prayed)

Traditions...

We all have them. We like some, and are not particularly fond of others. We had some thrust upon us with centuries, decades or years of history behind them; and we create others. And there are certain traditions we never notice becoming traditions until circumstance or forgetfulness hinders us from doing them and we go through the rest of the day feeling like something is missing.

One such 'tradition' for me is getting a caramel frappachino from Starbucks every time I’m at an airport. I never noticed this sneaking up on me because I was formerly of the rigid stance that I would never succumb to the Starbucks craze. In all honesty, I am of the genre of coffee drinkers who will never notice if you gave them the finest of brews today and switched it tomorrow. Unless it has an unusual smell or is too acidic for my poor stomach, it is coffee like all the others.

I had to be coerced and have my drink paid for to try my first caramel frap. And yet, today, I find myself going great lengths to a find Starbucks every time I’m in an airport. I rationalize the calories away with the insignificant number of times I travel per annum. And there’s no way to describe how the first sip feels, nor the warmth I feel enjoying my frappachino (although I usually get it cold).

It’s become my very own tradition. Wherever I find myself, it’s a little piece of familiarity that I can count on. It’s like that familiar face in the midst of a strange crowd. No matter how big, busy, or labyrinthic an airport is, in my cup of caramel frappachino, I find the comfort of familiarity. And it makes me feel at home.

Do you have any such tradition? I’d like to hear about it.

"Guard your heart above all else, for out of it flows the issues of life"

How many times have I heard this verse (Proverbs 4:23) and rolled my eyes? I've heard it so many times that I complete the sentence when it's started and we all know that means I'm not listening or taking that in, I'm just acknowledging it's there.

Today, that verse took on a whole new meaning for me. A friend recounted a story that left a bitter taste in my mouth; her neighbor was murdered by her husband when she asked for a separation after years of abuse.

The man insisted on dropping her off at her mother's because she was going with his children and he wanted to make sure they were safe. He stopped in the middle of nowhere and said the car had a problem and that he needed her help changing something in the back. It was a two hour drive to her mother's place and the children had fallen asleep in the back. When she got out, he knocked her unconscious, tied her up, and placed her on a pile of corn stalks that had been gathered in preparation to be burnt. He then set fire to the pile and left her for dead.

After that, he dropped the children off about a block from his wife's mother's place knowing that the nosiness of village neighbours would ensure they got to their grandma's. The children were still asleep (they were three and five years old).

Long story short, the woman was found when the smoke from the fire alerted neighbours. The corn stalks were not completely dry and so smoked a lot. She died after a week at the hospital. She told her story before dying.

Her children made it to their grandma's and the old lady's search for her daughter led to her finding out about the fire.

The man went to his family and told them he came home from work to find out the woman had run away with the children and that the woman had threatened suicide several times so he was worried and wanted them(his mum and sisters) to go check with his in-laws if his wife had come home.

The police followed his mom and sisters back and arrested him. Sadly, nothing they do to him will bring her back.

Some people make wrong choices about whom to entrust their hearts to and suffer heartache, etc. Some pay with their lives and/or souls.

Whom you decide to love and/or marry is not about who makes your friends the most envious of your good fortune or who can make your toes curl in bed. It's also a choice of how good the rest of your life will be, and sometimes as we've seen, how long that rest of your life will be.

As the New Living Translation puts it, "Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life".

Risky Business (A Mother's Pain)

 Everyone’s heard about the pain of motherhood, but the tales from the delivery room don’t begin to cover it. As I held my daughter who was trying with herculean effort to contain her racking sobs, I understood more than ever the utter pain and despair of a mother who would give anything to take her child’s pain away and yet couldn't.

I think back to a happier day, the day my husband, by custom, slaughtered a fattened ram to celebrate the birth of our tenth born. I remember the smiles of my own mother, and the pride I felt at having nine children dressed in white, seated at my feet with the tenth in my arms, contentedly suckling at my breast, validating my womanhood.

Today, I had buried six out of the ten, and my husband had taken the lead into the afterworld. And as I sat in the sterile room consoling my daughter as my grand-daughter fought what was by all indication, a losing battle against cancer, I knew the exact measure of that pain.

My daughter was an insurance expert; risk management was right up there in her alley. And yet when it came to the greatest risk of all, she was just as unprotected as the rest of the world. I remember when her husband was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan days after her daughter was diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma. My broken daughter looked up to me in despair and asked. “Why is there no insurance against such pain when you can insure your fingernails if you so desired?”

I’d had no answer for her then. And I didn't have any for myself now. I too had been dealt no better cards in the gamble that is motherhood. I always believed the greatest gamble we took with our hearts was falling in love. Now I realize that while it’s true, it’s not the love that drives us to the altar, but the love that wells up when we’re handed that new-born baby that was the costliest chip.