Dear Minister, Before You Get Married, please read this:

When we met, you told me you were a Christian.
Spirit-filled.
God loving.
Word believing.
You would come to me in church unfailingly, every evening when you close from the office to join me in prayer and worship daily at the time

You acted like someone who is willing to marry a pastor and who understands it is a life set apart unto God and God’s people.
Someone who will protect my vision as I protect hers every day. A willing partner, a friend. That was the person I married.

Over the years, I can see you pretended at that time just to get yourself a husband.
Your security lies in the same belief system that I am a pastor, and therefore, I cannot get out of this illusion of a marriage once you were able to trick me into it.
I was naive
I ignored all the warnings, and I fell for it
It was right from the start that I knew I had sold myself into bondage in the name of getting married to you

Who do I see now?
A constant thorn in my flesh. A worry-filled cocktail of woes and misery
A woman who would wake up to watch the news but not to pray.
A woman who has to be prompted and pushed to remember God.
A woman whose drive towards God is borne of the goodness of his hands and not ineffable love.
A woman who would rather run around meeting people for a job for her husband (so that he can stop pastoring and trying to fulfill the call of God upon his life) than ask God what to do and what step to take.

If I stay in church to do my duties, you are always complaining. I cannot minister as a pastor to a woman; you will burn the whole church down with the fiery fire of your jealousy.
I married a wife, and in my very presence, you have transformed yourself into a terror.

All you do is put me in a chokehold due to your fear and obsessive jealousy.
I must submit my phone to be searched every night
I must get a nine-to-five job because “that is more predictable than praying and ministering to strangers whom you are not comfortable with, and I must forget about this calling and ministry nonsense”!

How can I confide in you or treat you as a loving wife? You are opposed to everything I believe in.
If I share what God says with you, as long as it fits into what you want, it is good. Otherwise, you will pretend to listen, then come back in the middle of the night to have one of your common-sense talks.
You will say you are driving me into success, because I lack the drive for success in life
You want to put a Giant blue whale in a sitting room aquarium.

I got more encouragement to go to the office for money’s sake than to go to church. Your gospel is “The ministry is not bringing in money, dump it.”
You even dislike the fact that people call me pastor at work. Whao.

The children were not there when we met. When I told you straight that I would be a pastor. It is all I ever want to be.  ALL. MY CALLING IS MY JOY, THE FARTHER AWAY FROM IT I AM THE FARTHER AWAY FROM JOY I AM, AND THE MORE MISERY I WILL SPREAD AROUND.

I go to my office, put my head down, and collect the salary just for you. My ATM card is with you.
When they pay, I send you a text message, and that is it. I have never asked you what you do with the money because I know I am fulfilling your plan and not the plan of God for my life.

Every day feels like a good day to commit suicide.
I buried my head into it, became good at it, but as soon as I began to find some free time to do the ministry on the side, you protested. Your intention was to choke me with work until my destiny becomes forgotten. I wonder why. You told me you wanted to be a pastor’s wife. You said so many times. Now that you have gotten married to me, all you do is plot how I must never become a pastor.

You push me to look for another job. Or a second job or a side hustle. You said I should go and meet Tyson, Hulk Hogan, RMD, DMX, and beg any of them for employment, or find another job just to keep me from having any spare time for the Lord

Not once did my Christian wife say, How do I support you to fulfil your vision. How do I stand by you as you do that which you were prophesied to do long before you were born? Let’s take it to God in prayer for divine direction.

I thought you respected my mother enough to budge if she intervenes. I was the one who wrote your eternal bible of reference that you refer to as a stinker.

(What did I write in that stinker? I said, “This young man was given to me by God through the word of prophecy, and I made a vow to God that if he would give me a son, the son shall serve him as a priest to His people. This was why I named him Samuel. Please let him fulfil his calling, don’t stand in the way of his destiny”).

I had spoken to you, pleaded with you directly to no avail, so I came up with the idea of writing to you indirectly as my mother. My mum does not have an email address. Just like your mum, she could barely send text messages on the phone. They are of the same generation. It was a tacit cry for help. 100% my language. You have read enough of my works and listened to me enough to know this is true.

The response was outstanding.
You labelled what I wrote a ‘stinker’ and weaponised it! You declared my mother the enemy of your soul and banned her and all my siblings from coming to visit us.

Our challenge is simple.
You knew I was called to be a pastor, but you want me to become a career person while discarding the notion of fulfilling my calling.
I knew you were a career person, and I wanted you to be a pastor’s wife while growing in your career.
We both wanted to marry and convert.

You win.

I couldn’t build you up spiritually, but you made me a career person.
The fallout of my conversion is this misery and wailing I am experiencing.
Like Jephthah’s daughter, I am mourning the death of my destiny, my future, my hope, my expectations, God’s promises and prophecies upon my life

Either I collect a better salary or not. We have always been like this. I don’t hate you, and you don’t hate me. It is also not a money issue. It is a pile-up of resentment and contempt borne of failed expectations on both sides.

This is why I have started looking for other jobs to add to the one I am doing, even though, as things stand now, I barely sleep due to so much work for so little pay, which you called my training season

Perhaps I could also get a business to do that will afford me time to fulfil my destiny.
Since all you worry about is that I must work because you were not raised to feed a man and his children. I do not ask that you feed me and the children. I ask that you let me do what I know will open the door to the fulfillment of the promises of God for my destiny.

If money is coming in from another source, perhaps you will be a good pastor’s wife too, and I will put money on the table, and we will both then get our heart’s desires.

Your reference to my relationships with your family is noted. I won’t change. I can’t. I have only one path that is set before me. I will not miss my way. Christ is my light.

I know where I was headed right from the day the Lord called me. I don’t want to be in a casket one day and watch you saying, “He had potential, a very intelligent young man of a sound mind, but he never amounted to much’

If I will fail, let me fail doing what I love, be what you promised me from the beginning, not a crying, complaining person who would rather see a half-empty cup than a half-full cup.

A weary heart wears out love.
I am resigned to where you have confined me, Oh Lord, unless you bring me out of here, I am six feet under. Buried under the rubble of religion and human agenda, please deliver me from this snare, Oh Lord.

What shall I do? To whom shall I go? I beggar must take what life gives. It is important to take such on the chin.
God is wise in his ways, he knows I needed humbling, and he knows how best to put me in my place.
I stand humbled.
I know my redeemer lives, even though it may seem he is but a dream or a mirage at the moment, I know he knows my now and my then and my to be.
Though he slay me, I have no other champion.
My living dog is grateful. Tomorrow will surely be better than now.
Please don’t waste your money cooking for me anymore. If I cannot feed you and my children, I can do without eating you into indebtedness.
I will be okay.
I apologise again for my writing to you to express my frustrations, it is ungodly.
I know I must have sown such a seed in the past, and here I am harvesting such a torrid time.

I will not argue with my maker; if he decides the crown he gave me should be replaced with a cap, as long as I get to keep my head, I know his wind of favour will blow again.
All the lies I have told you since before we got married, I don’t deny them. I apologise for all. I can’t even remember many, but I admit my wrong and beg for your forgiveness.

It will not continue like this. The controller of times and seasons is mine; he shall cause my story to end in joy.
Again, I am sorry
Finally, a day is coming, and I see it brightly ahead of me.

The plan of God for my life would have been fully established, my desert would have turned into a well-watered garden
The angel of the Lord leading my path into destiny would have settled me in Rehoboth
All the lies would have become true

The prophecies would have been fulfilled
My empty boasts would have been quickened to living words
The Lord would have caused my tree to bear fruits all over the continents of the world
That time is not so far away, I see it with my two eyes and experience the glare of its glory even as I write this
When that day comes, and it will come very quickly
Where will you be?
You cannot become what you mock and disdain daily
You cannot eat the fruit of a tree that you have cut down and used all its branches as firewood
At the smell of water, I am springing back to life
Where will you be at the time the bridegroom comes like a thief in the night?

PS: I was going through my email messages, and I found this message from a pastor who was going through a terrible time in 2013
I decided to share so that young ministers can read and learn a thing or two
It is a lengthy read, but so is life!
A Pastor cannot marry outside of the will of God if he desires to fulfill destiny.
Please remember this.