By Lechi Eke
Love crept in on Jide stealthily, when he was not thinking of it. It kind of disorganized him. If it were a human being, he would have walked up to him in his usual bold manner and told him straight to his face that, that was a sneaky thing to do. But alas, it wasn't a human being. It was a …. feeling? An emotion? A force? A paralyzing, disorganizing, breath-taking, head-turning, heart-thudding insomnia-causing, mind-monopolizing and what-else-have-you sort of thing. Jesus Christ!

All that his Pastor diligently taught him and other singles, about how to go about it …… you pray about it, giving God the qualities you want in a partner and God bringing her to you, then, you go to your pastor first and, all that stuff and all that stuff, came tumbling down. What he felt or rather, what hit him, could not be handled in a rational, emotionless, sensible manner. He was madly in love, swept off his feet. The feeling was hyper-tensive, threatening nerval paralysis. It was a full occupation to sit down, all day, all night, thinking about her!

Jide was in love. Her name was Ifeoma. He got that from his fact-finding mission. He also got that the name meant “a good thing”. Ifeoma was a cuddly Igbo girl he could hold in his arms forever. He needed eternity to get to know her, to satiate the hunger in his heart. Those that made honeymoon had an idea of his need, Jide mused. God also knew how he felt. Jide had never been a carnal Christian. If anything, he was a brother on the serious side of the divide of quality Christians. Problem was, how do you go about it? What do you do when you want to marry someone? What do you say on your first encounter? How do you get the person to stop and chat with you? The church is a rowdy place. How do you get an uninterrupted attention of the object of your love or madness?