Isokene (STOP MY WIFE FROM SMILING) - Season 1 - Episode 5

Episode 4 years ago

Isokene (STOP MY WIFE FROM SMILING) - Season 1 - Episode 5

“ISOKENE”

“ I said, I don’t want you smiling when we go out! “ Ibidolo was barking at Isoken. Isoken told me they had just returned from a wonderful Day out. Isoken said she had tried keeping a straight face through out the event, She only smiled at Ibidolo, Which was unlike her. Her normal self would have had her smile plastered on her face smiling at everyone including the security, cleaners, sales attendants but all these she tried to avoid, but she had an exception…She couldn’t help but smile at him…..Who was him?
“ Ibidolo, I smiled at a beggar, a beggar,an old beggar on the street, that smile was to give him hope,I couldn’t give him money, but I could give him a smile “
“ Isokene, I would have preferred you gave him money, I wouldn’t care if you gave him my entire money ,but not your smile…” he said very frustrated

“ This is not going to work, I am getting out of this thing we are calling a marriage….I am done”


“ You said what?”…. Ibidolo asked Isoken

************
Isoken was at my place narrating what Happened at her place earlier that day.
Although the day before was the day she narrated the whole story about the pastor who had match made her with Ibidolo. After narrating her “ HOW WE MET TALE”, I had passionately told her the foundation of her marriage was wrong and based on falsehood. Out of insane passion and irritation for her husband called Ibidolo who was against his wife smiling, I had told her if she wanted out of the marriage,God was not going to be angry with her. Here she was less than 24 hours telling me about her outing with her husband…. Seriously I was mad and the marriage counselor in me went on vacation, but the woman in me and feminist Spirit I never knew existed in me shouted….
“ This marriage was never God’s idea and I have a feeling the perfect will of God for you in marriage is still out there, You are below 30 for Christ sake,” I said with passion but you would not believe that Isoken literally shut me up by making excuses for her husband…
“Aunty, You know what? … His countenance changed when I told him I wanted out of the marriage, I was afraid he was going to hit me, I started moving backwards but what he did next is still baffling me Aunty and that’s why I came to see you, he started talking like a baby, with tears flowing from his eyes, He moved so close to me like he wanted to swallow me up. He said…”
“ Isokene, You can’t leave me, You are the first real thing I have had to myself, and I never want to lose you to anyone, You are my first real possession”
“ Possession?…I am not a piece of asset…I am a human being that has a life of her own…”
“ No no…. Isokene baby, I don’t mean it that way…What I mean is you know, I never had anyone growing up, I am not a beast asking you to stop smiling for no good reason , the thing is I don’t want to lose you to someone else.. You know I told you that I was raised in an orphanage from birth, I never knew my mother or father, I was picked from the street in an abandoned vehicle….”


“ I know that and I have promised you I will be your family” Isoken said
“ Isokene please just hear me out….I never had anything that was mine, I always had to share things with my orphanage brothers and sisters, all the clothes I ever wore was either passed on to me or brought by well wishers… I never had anything I could tag mine….I grew up using what others had used, Used school bags, borrowed text books, even till I got into tertiary institution…, Everything I ever used was borrowed , I lived off my friends, I slept on the floor of my friend’s room, all the textbooks I used were always borrowed…. Aside from my house and car, You are the first thing I can call MINE or better still …First possession I have…I am sorry I am using the word possession, but that’s how I feel…Isokene please…What I am asking from you is little….You know you asked me to stop getting drunk after marriage, and because of you, I stopped….Tell me something else you want from me and I promise to give you ….Please just keep your smile for me, just me alone….
“ Trust me, Trust that I will never leave you” Isoken said
“ I trust you so much, but I don’t trust other people with you, they may take you from me”

*************

“ Aunty, Ibidolo hugged me like a baby that didn’t want to loose his precious possession and at that moment , I was touched, I saw a boy who has never had anyone and now he has one special to his heart he was not ready to lose… Aunty, What do you suggest I do?…

Please if you are the marriage Counsellor and you are in my shoes,What would be your best advice to Isoken, LIKE SERIOUSLY????

☆☆☆

“Isoken, are you mad or something is wrong with your senses?”
Speechless, agitated, mad, going bunkers, terribly infuriated are some of the words to describe what I felt when I saw Isoken after 2 weeks of complete silence and disappearance. I had tried her number several times, but her line was unavailable, and neither did she call for two weeks.

My security man had told me I had a strange visitor and he wanted me to see her first before he could allow her come in. Matthew, our security man was a very security conscious person, he was so security conscious that at times when my husband and I were driving in, he will checked if we were bringing in strangers and if we had strangers, he would ask the strangers to get down to be checked and screened.
Although, I found it strange, my husband was fine with it.

Therefore, for Matthew to have tagged this person a strange visitor, must definitely be wrong.

When I got out of the house, I saw a lady figure dressed in a beautiful pink gown, but what was strange about her was that she had a black and grey covering like the Muslim purdah on her head that covered everywhere;the only thing visible was her eyes…. The eyes look familiar…
“Good afternoon ma, please can I help you?” I asked moving close in caution.

The lady in question burst into outrageous laughter and unveiled herself to be Isoken. I literally wet my pants….

******
“Isoken, what so you mean you are doing this to keep your marriage, this is wrong? And besides are you denying your Christian faith to become a Muslim by dressing like one of them to keep your marriage…. This is wrong. I mean dressing like a Muslim when you’re not one, assuming Ibidolo is a Muslim it would have been understandable….” I said.

“Aunty Betty, I know wrong can not give birth to right, but I am trying to be the right person in my marriage, two wrongs can never make a right. Now I realize Ibidolo is selfish, uncompromising, and not a Christian I thought he was, but do you expect me Ma to also do what is wrong by running out of the marriage, No! I am going to be right and Right gives birth to right…. And may I add, my dressing this way has nothing to do with my religion, I don’t think there is anywhere in the Bible where you are told you can’t dress this way, It is a choice I have made. Let’s think about this, what if had a massive scar on my face and I decided to do this, would you have frowned at it?” Isoken said with all seriousness. It was obvious wherever sheshe must have gone for those two weeks had done a lot of mindset restructuring….
“I guess this is Ibidolo idea?” Asking just for confirmation sake…
“No… 100 percent me, Ibidolo qyet to see me, he went on a work trip to set up a studio in Abakaliki… Aunty I had two weeks of reflection to myself and this is what I came up with… Self-denial that give birth to love.
I was speechlessly speechless but I asked a simple question after a long break
“So you are ready to sacrifice your smile for your marriage”

“Love is sacrifice. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son… Aunty , God let go of his only Son to gain the whole world…. Aunty I have a plan”

“Isoken what plan? your smile is message to people, your smile heals a lot of people” I said as I could wrap my head around what was happening.

“I don’t want to heal a lot of people, I want to heal my husband. Of what value is my ministry of smile to the world, if my smile doesn’t win my husband. For instance Aunty take a look at you and your husband, you know it will be a great failure if after repairing other people’s marriage with your powerful marriage ministry and we suddenly your marriage failed. Of what value was your message?” She said.

At that point, Isoken had hit me on a sore spot… My husband and I were having it rough in our marriage, we were not fighting in the sense of physical abuse or emotional, we were just drawn apart. We had not had intercourse for 9 months and none of us bothered… And yet I go around preaching about how compulsory it was to have intercourse in marriage…. The truth is I hardly have time for it myself because of how busy I had been, jumping from one state to the other preaching to women on them keeping their homes at all cost, but was I keeping my home…???
“And beside Aunty, who says am sacrificing my smile behind this veil, I smile a lot without people seeing….. Aunty let me use my smile alone for my husband to pull him out of the valley of the feeling of being unloved, abandoned and not cherished. Aunty, Noah saved his family, even though he couldn’t save the world… I will keep my smile for my husband alone if that will help me secure a good place in his heart, which will further help me to achieve what I want to achieve with him”
“So you mean you are planning to wear this veil all your life to make your husband happy”
“Yes if I have to, but I assure you, something good is coming out of this” Isoken said as she smiled under the veil, but how did I know she smiled? Since she was wearing the tick veil. I saw it in her eyes, her eyes were shining, the eyes don’t lie, I saw the joy in her eyes even though I couldn’t see her mouth…

As a marriage counselor of over 15 years, I had never seen a wife her marriage as more important than her purpose even though it was built on a wrong foundation but Isoken did, because she realized something I didn’t realize on time that was tearing my own marriage apart….

What was that? Find out in the next part, because seriously speaking, Was this step by Isoken a wise one? Letme hear your opinion