{UAH} My newly wedded husband gave me HIV

My newly wedded husband gave me HIV

We have several meetings every year and our first meeting for the year 2018 was held in Ibadan, Nigeria where we had several events. One was a breakfast meeting with the Single Ladies fellowship of Maranatha Chapel.

I was told that this single ladies meeting was more for sisters of marriageable age but not engaged or married yet. The meeting was to encourage them not to make the mistake of selling themselves cheap or taking steps they would regret for the rest of their lives.

I read my brief, prayed and meditated on it for a while and the phrase that kept catching my attention was "sisters of marriageable age". The first question that came to mind was; "what was the marriageable age? Who defines it? Tradition, culture, our parents?"

The predicament of a woman named Leah immediately came to mind. Her father forced her into marrying a man who was in love with her younger sister just because according to him… "It is not the tradition here to give the younger [daughter in marriage] before the older (Genesis 29:26 AMP). This resulted in a loveless marriage where her husband had his eyes on another woman the whole time. As a result, Leah spent all her life trying to buy her husband's love with children, but it didn't work (Genesis 29:31-35).

Personally, I had my reasons for getting married when I did. If you've ever heard my story, then you would already know that I had two children outside of wedlock. So, with two children outside of wedlock, I felt; who was going to marry me now? Also, because I saw my very close friend getting married, I too wanted to be married. So, I got married to the first man that came along but the result was emotional and physical abuse, cheating and much more.

The second time around, I was still desperate and as I was now in church, I didn't want to keep fornicating but the result was that he used me for what he wanted from me, cheated on me, got another woman pregnant and left.

So, I thought I had my case studies sorted which I believed were enough to convince these single ladies not to make the mistake of selling themselves cheap or taking steps they would regret for the rest of their lives, however, little did I know that the Lord had another case in mind.

I arrived Nigeria and a couple of days before our meeting, there was this lady that came visiting. I had briefly heard of her story before but I didn't know the full details. However, I was soon about to find out.

"How are you doing?", I asked her but she gave me the usual Christian response; "I'm doing well by the grace of God. I am getting stronger ma".

Well, I'm used to such responses so I didn't stop there. I went on to ask; "but how are you doing emotionally?" That was when she gave a huge sigh and then for hours, she began to share her story which went along the lines of…

"I am over 40 years and the first born in my family. All the others were married except me and the pressure was on for me to get married…"

Immediately she started speaking, I remembered the phrase "sisters of marriageable age" which had caught my attention even before I left London for Nigeria.

This lady felt time wasn't on her side and so became desperate. She was eventually introduced to a widower who already had two children from his previous marriage. Well, so she thought. She eventually found out that he had three children. Why he lied about the number of children he had, I'm not sure but I know she didn't have any children and can only imagine that she was hoping that she would have at least one child with him. However, things didn't turn out as she must have expected.

They both attended separate churches. The lady attended a church where the rule was that before any couple got married, they had to do several tests; the test for HIV being one of them but her fiance kept on coming up with excuses why firstly, he couldn't follow her to visit her home church and secondly, why he couldn't turn up for the HIV tests. It just happened that an emergency work meeting always came up whenever they had a hospital appointment. That should have been a clear sign that something was not right but one of the things I've noticed about us women is that when we get to that stage where we become desperate to get married, we tend to overlook a lot of things.

On her own, she managed to do a test before getting married which showed that she was HIV negative but he didn't get to do one. However, the wedding was still to go ahead though there were moments when she entertained the idea of calling off the engagement. However, it wasn't because he was coming up with excuses not to do the HIV test. There was other signs of control, emotional and verbal abuse which she chose to ignore because of what people would say. According to her, "they would think I'm being picky or selective". After all, you are over forty and here's someone that's willing to marry 'your old, good for nothing self'. Isn't that how we tend to feel when desperation steps in? We fail to listen to that inner voice that screams, "run for your life".

There were also issues with finance. Apart from lying about the house that he lived in before they got married, he made up so many excuses why he couldn't come up with any money for the wedding preparation and this lady not being one to do things last minute, decided that whenever she had money, she would use whatever money she had to buy whatever she could afford for the wedding. This was with the hope that she would make up for it when he eventually gave her some money but the day before the wedding, he came up with an amount that wasn't even enough to buy anything so she had no choice but to run around borrowing money from people just to avoid embarrassment.

So, they eventually got married and let's just say it was hell right from day one. She said she immediately lost so much weight because she was so unhappy. She actually showed me some of her 'before' and 'after' pictures and the difference was so clear. She said she cried day and night because of the constant abuse at home and in public but she couldn't share what she was going through with her siblings. They were all younger than her, had been married before her and didn't have such experiences so she wasn't going to be the first. She would rather suffer in silence. However, that was nothing compared to what she was soon to find out.

After a few months of getting married, she noticed she had some irritation in her private part and when she brought her husband's attention to it, he advised that she should go and check it out in the hospital which she did. Actually, he was the one that took her to the hospital and to her amazement, the same man that always complained that he had no money to give her even for feeding, brought out the money she needed for the test and then left her there to go about his own business. He didn't even call to check on her.

At the hospital, she was asked to do several tests which later revealed that she was HIV positive. To say she was confused was an understatement. Actually, she couldn't believe it at first. "There has got to be a mistake somewhere". They referred her to another hospital to do some more tests but she was hoping that the results would prove that the first hospital had made a mistake.

She broke the news to her husband who unfortunately didn't really show much concern. All he did was tell her to go for the second appointment which involved a bit of money but he didn't give her the money for the second test.

Anyway, off she went for this potentially life-changing appointment and after some more tests and what seemed like hours, the devastating news was confirmed. She was HIV positive. She couldn't believe what was unfolding before her eyes. Before she knew it, she was on the floor screaming; "my life is over. I got married late. I have no children and look at what life has dealt me with".

I sat there listening to her. Again, the brief I was given for my meeting coming up in a couple of days came flashing through my mind. Like I said earlier, the meeting was to encourage single sisters of marriageable age not to make the mistake of selling themselves cheap or taking steps they would regret for the rest of their lives but this was more than selling herself cheap. She had taken a step with grievous consequences. All of a sudden, my own experience was trivial compared to hers. Yes, I had made some mistakes in life but this? Where does one start from?

Unfortunately, her husband showed no remorse whatsoever and things actually went from bad to worse to the point that she had to move out of her matrimonial home. However, one day when she came back to collect some of her things, to her surprise, she found another lady on her matrimonial bed. Can you imagine the audacity of this man? So, what's his mission? What is he up to?

I spent quite a few hours listening to this lady go on and on about the things that occurred in the marriage which only lasted for less than two years but to be honest, I had heard enough. She was a victim of circumstance. She felt she had passed the so-called marriageable age so she was desperate but now, she's paying a costly price.

She said she married late so I wanted to know more about her past. I asked about her previous relationships and she admitted that they all followed the same pattern. She was always meeting guys that lied to her. As a result, she was forced to break up with them because lying was one thing she could not stand. However, she had no idea that this man she eventually settled for was the chief of them all. He actually lied that he was a pastor.

By the time I met her. She had faced the worse. Her family and friends had even abandoned her to her fate. They thought it was only a matter of time before she passed away but thank God that she's still alive today and better than she was a few months ago when she could hardly even talk or had any memory of what was going on around her. She now lives on her own and though she's often very weak from the medication she takes, she's had to struggle to work because she has to feed herself, pay her bills and pay for her very expensive drugs.

She has very strong faith that the Lord would turn her situation around this year and her story can be used as a testimony of how the Lord can turn her mess into a message and my declaration to her was, "let it be to her according to her word".

We ended up praying for her and are still praying for her for a miracle to take place but I have a few questions to ask;

What killed her husband's first wife? This was a question that she only started asking herself after it was revealed that she was HIV positive. However, it was not just his first wife that had died, she also found out that he had another girlfriend who had also died?

Why has this man not been stopped? She said she found another woman in his bed. Does she have a responsibility to let this other woman know that she is risking her life being with him? This is no longer a case of "my husband is cheating on me" but that he is taking advantage of innocent victims and intentionally spreading the sickness that he has. That's how it looks like to me.

Why did her church consent to the marriage when he didn't meet the criteria imposed by the church; where was his HIV certificate to show his current status? Why did they even attend the wedding? Shouldn't it have raised eyebrows?

What is his church doing about it now that they know the situation at hand? Before she found out she was HIV positive, she said she discovered that he was secretly taking some medication which she brought to the attention of her pastors but nothing serious was done about getting to the bottom of what kind of drugs he was taking or why he was secretly taking drugs in the first place. She also informed her pastors of the other woman she found in his bed. What are they doing to stop him in his tracks?

And finally, I asked this lady whether it was okay to share her experience during the breakfast meeting we had which she attended and she agreed because like she rightly said, it could help somebody else from making the same mistake. She actually wants me to continue to help her share her experience believing that it would help someone from making the same mistake she made. So, to all my single ladies that are of the so-called marriageable age, what lessons can you learn from this true life story?

I want to plead with everyone reading this post to please join in our prayers for this lady. Also, if you feel the need to help in practical ways, please get in touch with me by sending an email to info@meetingbythewell.org with "My husband gave me HIV" in the Subject line.

Thank you for reading! Your comments are highly appreciated!

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