ONE OF THE THINGS about getting older is that it gives you a better perspective on life.
You can look back at your life and see the mistakes you made, and learn from them.
You can see clearly the wisdom of the advice received and realize that some of those you thought were unnecessarily pressuring you actually had your interest at heart, while many of those who allowed you to get away with foolishness really didn’t care about you.
You get to realize the value of friendship and companionship, and understand the big difference between these and an intimate relationship.
And you get to understand that good looks are really a superficial thing; the real beauty of a person is the goodness they have in them and how they share that with those they love.
I thank God that at 46 I have learnt these lessons well.
I thank the Father every day for educating me about the most valuable things in life, and for allowing me to fully appreciate them at an age where I can still physically enjoy everything wholesome the world has to offer.
I may appear to be a very religious person, but I am not. I don’t go to church every Sunday, for example; neither do I belong to any group that does charitable work or anything so. I am just a very average person who found out for herself what the glory of God can do in a believer’s life when he/she is down and out.
Suffered and survived
That is why I feel my story is important, because I know there are other people like me who went through, or may be going through, rough times, and they need to know that others have suffered in the same way and survived.
The first 43 years of my life consisted of one turbulent episode after another. I was born into a big family and we were very poor. We were so poor that as a girl I lived in a small one-bedroom house, where my mother slept on a single bed while me, my two sisters and brother had to sleep on the floor covered with an old blanket and a sheet. She used to get some help from the Government, but made money by cleaning, cooking, and washing for different people.
We had a pit toilet in which you could see the roaches when you turned up the cover to sit down. We bathed with water from a bucket in an area surrounded by old galvanized sheets.
We had two lights in the house – one in the bedroom and the other in the combined kitchen and shed roof. Those lights were always on together as they were both connected to a wire that was plugged into an extension cord that carried the electricity from our next door neighbour.
The water we used came through a hose from his house too. My mother used to go into his yard and turn on the standpipe in his yard. She would fill up the five white pails we had each night – four were for bathing purposes and the other one for cooking.
The man who gave us the light and water was also our landlord and as mummy was poor, she would “pay him” by doing his washing, cooking, cleaning, and I believe she also had to sleep with him.
I have no proof of that, but I do remember how he refused to give us water and light for two days because they had a noise. I recall this because none of us could go to school.
So my mother went over by him on the second night to talk with him, she said. In the morning we had everything again.
I revealed this because I want you to understand where I came from and why that would have influenced the bad choices I made.
Fast forward to my teenage years when we had moved to my grandmother’s house and mummy had a full-time job as a maid. She used to “get on the nerves” of my sisters and me about doing our school work and having nothing to do with boys. We used to say that she was like a broken record and was just stuck on that.
Pregnant at 17
But she knew what she was talking about. At 17 and fresh out of school I got pregnant. When I told my mother, she beat me so badly that I ran away and went to live by my aunt. After the baby was born I moved in with its father. I stayed with him for 12 years, had one more child and went through horrors with him and other women.
After leaving him I got involved again, this time for six years, and had to run and leave the second boufriend] too because he was also unfaithful. For two years after that I kept to myself and then I met someone who I thought was different and would care about me.
Nearly five years into that relationship I found out he liked a certain man as much as he said he liked me. That turned me off from men completely, and I decided that from then on I was going to be alone. But about six months after I had a Pap smear for the first time, and it turned out that I had cancer.
A nightmare
Man problems are a nightmare, but when you hear you have cancer you would wish to have that nightmare all the time because cancer could mean death, while you could always leave the man.
So there I was, 43 years old with a lifetime of hardships and disappointments – and now cancer of the cervix. All I could think of doing was dying.
With the help of a number of women who visited the ward talking to cancer patients, I took a long, hard look at myself and realized the way I lived my life was not good enough. I promised the Lord that I would live a clean life if he spared me. And he did. They caught the cancer in its early stages so I have made a full recovery as since then I have been checked and rechecked, and I’m still cancer-free.
I want women to realise that God does exist and he can fill your life with happiness in a way no man can. He will never let you down or be unfaithful to you. I would therefore encourage every woman out there to cast their burdens on the Lord.
I have done that and I am happier and more contented with my life than I have ever been.
