“God please, good news today, it has been such a horrible month already”

Ife muttered under her breath removing her apron and hanging it on the edge of the back door to go open the front door for her husband who had just returned from a meeting that had the power to change their lives.

Ife didn’t want him under any pressure, so she simply leaned in for a kiss as she did everyday when he got home and reached for his laptop bag, trying to hide her desperation to hear the outcome of the meeting.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got it”, Kunle said as he felt her hand on the strap of the bag, walking past her and avoiding her questioning eyes.

Ife turned around and walked back to the kitchen to get his food served before he changed and returned to the table for dinner as he did every day.

She served and waited at the table for twenty minutes before she decided to enter the room to check Kunle who would usually rush out for dinner after a long day at work.

She was not ready for the sight she met when she walked in. The blanket over his head with his clothes and laptop bag thrown all around the room.

“K are you okay? I have served your fo..”

“I’m not hungry Ife, thank you” Kunle replies before she can finish her statement.

Ife now taking a deep breath, walks to his side of the bed and kneels down to be face to face with her husband, except for the blanket that is still over his face.

“K, how did the meeting go?”, Ife asks gently while attempting to remove the cover from his face.

“Ife, I am not hungry, please just leave me”, Kunle replies almost immediately, turning the other way of the bed to avoid meeting her eyes and pulling the cover again over his face.

“K, if you did not get the promotion, we can talk about it and not make an issue of it, what happened at the meeting, please tell me?”

Silence.

Ife drags herself out of the room back to the dining table to clear the plates and as she picks the tray and heads into the kitchen, she bangs her elbow against the door, drops the tray abruptly on the floor and grips the elbow she’s just hit on the door.

She holds her elbow for a few minutes, attempting to look down at where it had been hit and in doing that, realises what had clouded her vision. It was water from her eyes.

Realising there was no open wound to the area hit, she bends without thinking, attempting to pack the broken plates and slices her hand on one of the glass pieces. She winces, stands up and jumps over the glass pieces to go wash the blood that now dropped quicker than her tear drops and placed her hand under the running water.

Talking under her breath again as she did only thirty-five minutes ago when she went to welcome her husband, “God, but you know K is due for this promotion by all metrics, you know he has done the work and you know how much we need this extra income, I’m tired of being strong.”

“I will make everything beautiful in its time Ife, trust me”

“Lord please just comfort K, I won’t stop praying but help K not to withdraw and become cold”.

“I have it under control”, she finally hears in her heart before she picks a shadow through her peripheral vision and looks to the door to see K standing there looking down at the shattered dishes on the floor, made even more messy by the food it held.

“What happened here?”

“Don’t worry, I will clear it up” Ife says rushing to where he stood.

As she bends to carry on picking the glass pieces, Kunle reaches for her shoulders and pulls her his way, as if to get her to leave the elephant in the room and attend to another matter, he takes her to the dining table and sits beside her with his hands covering hers in her lap.

“I am sorry for how I reacted when I got home, I was just agitated, not at you, but at the system. I got the job”

Ife opens her eyes wide while shouting “what?”

“Yes Ife, I got it, but I rejected it”

 “Wait first, I’ll tell you why” he says as he feels Ife getting tensed,

“They wanted me to take the job with conditions that would leave me renouncing our godly values and embezzling people’s money, I asked them why and they explained that it is what is required for the next phase I want to step into. I asked for some time to think about it and I imagined coming home to tell you this and I knew already what your response and reaction will be, so I turned it down and walked away”

Silence

“K, lets just pray please”, Ife finally says,

“Lord, I do not fully understand it, I will not pretend like I do, but if K will turn down the offer so that we can be in your will, I will stand by Him because I know It is what you want. We do not know where to go from here, but we trust you. If for your namesake, we have to cut off this job, we will, and we’ll trust you to bring a better one. Thank you for the husband that is K. We are comforted in you, in Jesus name”

“Amen” they both say in unison.

Finally catching her husband’s gaze, she whispers “All will be well I guess”.

K pulls her in for a hug as he starts to nibble at her neck, she whispers in his ears “there are glass pieces everywhere on our floor, let’s get it cleaned first”.