Page 15 - Mangwanani Magazine - June2017

L loyd and I met in 2007 at a friend's birthday lunch. I never really gave a second
thought towards him and only wondered who the gentlemen might be. As I sat at this
birthday lunch, it wasn't a priority to introduce myself to everyone around the table
and engage in interesting conversation, I was 15 years old and was terribly shy, and in that
moment I only had one thing on my mind… another guy. This young man had recently
broken my heart and all I could wonder was why me? Why again had the guy I was interested
in found an interest in my best friend? Little did I know that God had already planned my
hopeful future, one that I could be confident in and all I needed to do was trust Him.

If you had to ask Lloyd today what he thought of me the first day I met him, he would say he
watched me from across the lunch table, crying over another guy and wondered what the
heck was wrong with me. How embarrassing! My future husband seeing this! We look back
and both just laugh. It’s rather amazing that God ordered our steps in such a way that when
one relationship ended he allowed an opportunity for another friendship to start.

Now it is important after any painful experience in life to find hope and remember that God
is your strength, but most of all itis so necessary for us to focus on being whole again, to find
your confidence as a person and to make sure you have no baggage moving forward because
this will ultimately affect the person who will come into your life next and this isn't really fair.

I t takes two people believing in each

other, respecting and loving each other.

Our journey was filled with hardship, hurt and pain. Never by intention, rather because we
each had our own desires above the other person and made ourselves the centre of our
world. It wasn't until one day that I was again left broken because he had decided to move on
to someone else. This put me in a position where I had to make a very important decision.
Was I going to take the pain and let it ruin me or was I going to do what I always proclaimed?
That I loved him.

That's when I got the revelation of what love was. It was the hardest thing that I ever had to
do. I knew Lloyd wasn't perfect and maybe the problem was that I thought I was more perfect
than him. How could I be someone that made someone feel that way? It was no wonder he
didn't feel the need to be in my presence.

This is when I got my second revelation about love, we need to treat those in our world not
based on who they are but on who we believe they will become. This was the turning point
in our relationship because as I began to do this so I helped encourage, support, and truly
love him from a distance because we were no longer together and I could only do this as a
friend. For me it was good enough and all I asked for. My mindset changed and rather than
thinking of what I can get out of the relationship and how I could gain, I did everything in my
power to put him first and love him the way I would want to be loved.

When our aim is to purely love another, we find that we start receiving in love what we have
also hoped for. I haven't been married long at all but what I have already learnt is that the wife
can be called the queen in her home by her husband but it is ultimately because she does
everything in her power to serve her family and her family learns from her and begins serving
each other too.

Today it's a great honour I can sit here and say that Lloyd has become the man of my wildest
dreams, our journey was necessary and needed in developing us mentally and spiritually.

My understanding of marriage this far is that in order for it to be successful, it takes two
people believing in each other, respecting and loving each other. It is a relationship of give
and take, wants and needs, hopes and desires and being able to recognise this in each other.
This is our love story which does not end here but we continue to write it each day.

pg 15 www.mangwanani.co.za