For My Wife: Happy Birthday to the Woman Who Taught Me What Peace Looks Like
Today is my wife, Oluwafunmilyo, birthday.
And today, I dedicate my #50PlusDad reflection to her.
Those who have followed me for some time know part of our story.
My wife and I prepared for fifteen years before we had our first child.
I deliberately say prepared.
Those years were not empty.
Something was happening in us.
About ten years into that journey, five years before our son was born, my wife said something I have never forgotten.
She said that when the child eventually came, the child would not be her first testimony.
Her first testimony would be the peace with which she had gone through the years of preparation.
That statement told me something about the woman I married.
She believes.
She holds on to faith.
She knows how to carry peace when circumstances have not yet caught up with expectation.
Anybody can celebrate when the answer has arrived.
Anybody can be a friend when the going is good.
But adversity introduces us to people at another level.
The Book I read says:
“A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.”
— Proverbs 17:17
And again:
“It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting…”
— Ecclesiastes 7:2
Because some things are revealed in difficult seasons that comfortable seasons may never uncover.
Those fifteen years revealed my wife to me.
They revealed resilience.
Commitment.
Faith.
Peace.
Generosity of spirit.
Then our son came.
And watching her mother him, I have often thought:
Preparation did something.
The years were not wasted.
The patience was not wasted.
The prayers were not wasted.
The peace was not wasted.
She did not merely wait to become a mother.
She prepared to become one.
But motherhood is only one expression of who she is.
My wife is an extraordinarily generous soul.
She does not organise her life around accumulation.
The Book says:
“A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.”
— Luke 12:15
That captures something I have consistently seen in her.
She has always put meaning first in the choices she makes about her career.
Not money.
Not pecuniary reward.
Meaning.
She asks what a path means.
What purpose it serves.
Whether it reflects what she believes God would have her do with her life.
For her, richness is not primarily measured by what a career pays.
It is measured by whether she is walking in the will of God concerning her life.
That is her definition of lucrativeness.
To be where she believes God would have her be.
To do what she believes God would have her do.
For her, life is about meaning.
Today, I celebrate my wife.
A mother indeed.
A friend.
A believer.
A generous soul.
My fellow sojourner.
We do life together.
As husband and wife.
As parents.
As fellow labourers in family strengthening, child safeguarding and protection, and value-based parenting.
We have known preparation.
We have known answered prayers.
We have known uncertainty.
We have known joy.
And through it all, I have watched this woman keep showing up.
Faithfully.
Perhaps that is one of the greatest lessons our son will eventually receive from our marriage:
Life is not sustained merely by what happens to us. Much of life is determined by who we become while things are happening to us.
So today, I celebrate not simply the woman our son now calls Mummy.
I celebrate the woman she already was long before he arrived.
The woman who could say, five years before seeing the answer:
My first testimony will be my peace.
Happy birthday, my wife.
Thank you for doing life with me.
And thank you for showing our son what faith, resilience, generosity and peace look like when they become a life.
Happy Birthday, Oluwafunmilayo.
#50PlusDad
