God is Like my Mother – Oluwasewa Kayode
I know they say God is a Father, but to me, God is a lot like my mother. My mother, who gave up on me. The last time we argued about the length of my skirt, she said, “Rosemary, Rosemary, Rosemaryyyy!!! Okay, I have warned you enough. I leave you to the mercy of God.” Then she hissed – an elongated sound that felt like the jingling of bells in the ears of a malaria patient – and left the room.
What my mother did not know was that I was not acting out of my volition. She did not understand that every night, all I want to do is lie in bed, light a scented candle, and read a book. But when my body begins to itch, when I begin to feel like I will not sleep well if I don’t feel a man’s thing between my legs, then I will enter my tight jeans skirt, rub perfume oil between my thighs, snatch my braids into a ponytail and slip on a crop top without a bra so that my standing nipples can be traced with the eyes.
Sometimes, I overheard my mother’s petitions to God about me. It made me worry for her; she was thinking a lot. It’s much ado over nothing because I will never change. Not that I don’t want to, but I just don’t have the power to.
It’s like a force -this repulsive side of me, this habit that has warranted my uncle parading me at several deliverance services – and I have stopped trying to say no to it.
Today, my mother is staring at me as I put on a blue see-through dress. Gideon has promised to give me “the greatest pleasure in bed tonight.” I am almost smiling as I remember his statement, but my mother’s presence broods over those thoughts. She is seated on the mattress which serves a dual purpose in our one-room flat; to sit during the day and to sleep at night. Her eyes speak of disapproval, but a look of concern and protection overshadows it. She looks different. Her face shines more. She carries the demeanour of a woman who had just given birth; as though she wants to lock me in her arms so that I won’t go anywhere, not even to the nurses who helped birth me.
“Nne, stay with me,” she says.
I cannot look her in the face. I turn away and rub my perfume oil, then quietly exit the house. Between the mosquitoes buzzing around my ears and the noise of Oshodi bus conductors even at this late hour, I think of how God is like my mother. But He is that version of my mother who pampered me long ago before she got tired of me. Back then, whenever I was leaving the house, she would follow me to the junction. “At least tell me where you’re going” She would say on our way.
“It does not matter, Mama. Go back inside. Sleep.”
“Nne, I cannot sleep until you are back. Doesn’t that bother you?”
I would usually not answer those types of questions, because it did bother me. But what my mother did not know was that I have, like Apostle Paul in the Bible, begged God repeatedly, to take this curse away from me. But maybe God does not answer these kinds of prayers. My mother did not know that I feel like a zombie, that I cannot fight back. I do not have it in me. I have tried fighting back with the word; I have tried fighting back by confession. I have tried fighting back by enrolling in a rehabilitation class for sex addicts; I have tried fighting back through fasting and prayers. But maybe I don’t have it in me to win this war. So, I no longer fight; I submit to the urge. And what my mother does not know is that some nights when she is asleep, I will light a candle, sit on the kitchen floor and beg God to take my life. Because maybe if I am dead, I will be clean.
God is like my mother. Those times before she gave up on me, she would text me every five minutes when I was out of the house.
Hope you are okay, Rosemary?
Take the tarred road o, don’t go through that bush tonight, it’s too late, Nne.
She would be angry with me in those moments, but even in her state of anger, she did not fail to show her motherly love and care. Her major concern was my safety; her anger and frustration were secondary. That is the way God is. I don’t know if God is angry with me, but if He is, He does not show it. Rather, He, like my mother, communicates with me every time.
“Don’t sleep with Joseph; he has Gonorrhea.”
“Go home now; there will be an accident here soon and you will become a victim if you don’t leave now.”
“Don’t meet Gideon at Eko Hotels today…or any other day.”
“Stay with me at home, I will give you peace.”
Sometimes I wonder why He still talks to me. Isn’t He tired of me? Isn’t He tired of correcting me? Is He not tired of my ingenuine repentance? I have prayed Psalms 51 so many times that even I have stopped believing my prayers. There is a voice in my head that tells me to stop shedding crocodile tears of repentance because after my prayer for mercy, I will still sin again. So, I have gone stiff. Sometimes, I don’t bother asking God for forgiveness. But even in those moments, He will still nudge me to pray. Come to me.
God is like my mother when she would lie by my side after I get back, rub my skin with a hot towel, and ask me to wash my private parts before I sleep so that I won’t smell. She was angry, but even in her anger, she sang a hymn until I fell asleep. I don’t know if God is angry, but despite me disappointing Him, He still sings me promises through the Bible, through sermons, through His ministers.
I will make you my wife forever.
God is like my mother before she gave up on me. His voice comes as her voice and because of that, I don’t miss her as much as I thought I would. It is God by my side, in the form of my mother, watching me as I dress up every night, calling me to stay at home with Him instead. It is God by my side, telling me which way to go even when I disobey Him by stepping out against His nudging.
And it is God at my door tonight, like every other night, waiting to welcome me home despite my sins. It is God by my side, singing me a lullaby of promises as I maneuver between the loneliness and the darkness in the apartment. I think of my own inner darkness. I think of how I committed my life to Christ in December 2015, and how my addiction began 3 months after and has continued for two years now. I push away the thoughts and struggle to sleep so I can forget how I have become a slave to my flesh.
By 4:18am, I finally find peace in the form of sleep. I dream of a different life where my mother was proud of me before she died. I wake up hoping I will make God proud before Him, too, leaves me.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.