Journey to marriage 2 - How it all started

Inasmuch as I wanted to get married, I had grown complacent over the years. I had become so comfortable in my singleness and the beehive of things I had to deal with kept me constantly occupied that I hardly remembered I was single.

I was terrible at networking and meeting new people. I hardly went out. I worked from home all week, and was in church all weekend. If I was in church with full blooded male adults, it would have been better but I worked with teenagers and they definitely wouldn't marry me.

When I went for performances, I went straight from my house to the stage, and when I was done, I went straight home, not even taking time to network.

The only way African Naturalistas survived networking with other brands was purely because of one person, Berry Dakara. It was a win win for me. She networked, I worked. Everyone was happy.

I was lazy about meeting people. So I remained happily single

Another thing is that I am one of those people who does not see anything wrong in matchmaking. Two reasons: I believe there's no prescribed way of meeting one's spouse. I also believe a matchmade couple already have a primary support system in the person who matchmade them. The only downside to matchmaking is that one or both of the parties might feel pressured to please the one who matchmade them if things are not working out. And that's where maturity comes in.

So if you put these two factors together i.e. I was lazy at meeting people, and I believed in matchmaking, it is not rocket science to know what I did.

I told one or two very close friends who knew my values to hook me up with a serious God-fearing person who wants to settle down. These didn't amount to anything.

So I told Berry, the networking expert to hook me up... again and again

Again and again, Berry turned me down

She asked me to start going out more, networking more, going to the adult church more, and attending my singles fellowship. For everything Berry told me, I had a perfect reply as to why I couldn't do it, so she dismissed me as an unserious person.

As at December 31st, I had an encounter while writing my vision board for 2016. The summary was "Lord, I'm actually ready this time for real. I'm getting married this year."

I knew in my heart then that my single life was over whether I liked it or not. It was like I heard something say move to the next phase. Your time here is up. So I moved but I didn't even have a boyfriend.

So in the step details of my vision board, I wrote that I would start going out to events at least once a month in order to network and meet new people.

Look at my vision board above I prepared on 31st December 2015. I had two of them, one for business, influence, finance, etc, and this one above, for marriage, rhyme and reason, and two other things. The yellow post-it notes on the left have the scriptures attached to the visionary pictures, while the ones at the bottom right have the steps I would take to actualise the vision, based on scriptures. The direct writings on the cardboard were the desires of my heart, such as the kind of friendship I want between my husband and I, the kind of man he will be, statements like "I am getting married this year." "My husband is a visionary, knows where he is going in life, etc."

By the grace of God, almost everything on my vision board for the year has come to pass, even up to the kind of proposal ring I got, and even the inscription on my proposal cake (which were not things I specifically prayed for, but were written on the board). As you can see, the theme for my vision board this year was "A lot can happen in a year." I will talk more about the vision board, the power behind it, and how it helped me later in this marriage series. Though I need to reiterate that my vision board had other things on it, apart from marriage desires.

To be honest, once a month was a very lazy goal, since I perform at events. All I needed to do was to stay back at one of the events, and I'm settled for that month.

In the first week of the year, Berry and I got chatting. She recounted how lazy I am at meeting people and told me about her neighbour who said she was getting married this year but had no boyfriend. I told her it was possible because I was getting married this year (I had started saying it to everyone who came my way with so much conviction). Berry basically laughed at me. I told her about my decision to go out once a month, and asked her to be my first date for the year, so I could tick January as completed.

And next thing she said was, I'm going to introduce you to someone. Let's all go out together, i,e. Berry, cakes, me and this someone.

I was beyond excited. Right there, Berry told cakes. They told this someone, and he agreed.

And that... was how it all started... right from first week in January.

What are your opinions about matchmaking? Is it something you can consider?