Copied. Shared by Chima Ejimofor on facebook 02/24/21
Eleven years later..
It's eleven years later without Mum. For some people it may seem like a long time. For me, it is not. I remember her like yesterday.
Her warmth. Her smile. Her courage. Particularly her courage..
Many do not know how strong Mum was. She was very strong! A real soldier. For herself. For her husband. For her family. For her work. For her God.
Remembering Momsie!
To God be the glory
This Christmas day, as I remember Aunty Annie, and celebrate the birth of the Saviour whom she knew loved her and gave His life for her, that Saviour who today continues to extend the invitation to eternal life to whosoever will come, it is the words of this song that come to my mind:
To God be the glory, great things He has done;
So loved He the world that He gave us His Son,
Who yielded His life an atonement for sin,
And opened the life gate that all may go in.
Refrain
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord,
Let the earth hear His voice!
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord,
Let the people rejoice!
O come to the Father, through Jesus the Son,
And give Him the glory, great things He has done.
O perfect redemption, the purchase of blood,
To every believer the promise of God;
The vilest offender who truly believes,
That moment from Jesus a pardon receives.
Refrain
Today is a call to worship the King of kings and Lord of lords. A day for whosoever will to come and know Jesus Christ for even the vilest offender receives total forgiveness in Christ. Today is a day to know the Prince of Peace and experience abundant life and peace despite the circumstances.
HERE AND THERE: Remembrances by Amma Ogan
A peaceful oasis and a calm full stop to an unassuming street in a quiet corner of Lagos - that was my feeling on returning to Nigeria after an absence of 15 years to visit Auntie Annie and Uncle Osoka. This was an uncle and aunt who had always been a refuge, comfort stop, welcome point and second home on every journey we made as a family to or from or within the city where I grew up as a child. Even on those rushed Saturday exeats from boarding school, their home was a pit stop we had to make. And indeed throughout our lives our families ran parallel, a signal of the enduring bond that linked our parents.
Uncle Osoka and Aunty Annie were there when we first moved to Lagos in the beginning of the 60s; there too in the dark uncertain days of the first coup and counter coup when Oriaku was Baby Nnenna and parents gathered in their Surelere home to confer about the uncertain future.
Through the rushed exodus eastward to a situation where nothing could be predicted beyond the certainty of war, our families shared a refuge in Crowther Street, Umuahia and two sisters, my mother and Auntie Annie were pregnant and Ugonma and Erinma, two ‘win- the- war- babies’ were born.
The stumbling course of the Biafran war took us to Item and when that fell the frontline divided us. Our family escaped just in time ending up as internal refugees in Nkwerre, but Auntie Annie, Uncle Osoka and family remained behind the lines.
Until the day when Uncle Osoka turned up at the house of our friends, the Nwogu’s who had given us shelter, because that was the way it was in those days.
He was thin and exhausted and drawn. He had taken a dangerous journey through the bush travelling at night, hiding in the day with members of BOFF, the Biafran Organisation of Freedom Fighters.
I had never met anyone so brave.
I remember the day sitting, watching him as he talked with my mother, drinking in the fact that this was not a ghost but really Uncle Osoka and he had done this heroic thing, and more, was determined to return to the fear and terror of living behind the enemy lines. He was not going to leave his family alone.
If the test of a man is how he conducts himself in times of great difficulty, Uncle Osoka is up there with the best.
He combined this strong confident manliness with a deep emotional warmth. When he hugged you his grip was sure and heartfelt. Whatever was his to do he did, and left nothing unfinished.
Returning after 15 years to meet him in his later days, what I found was a depth of peace and calm I had not expected, but that is simply as it should have been.
His death last year, following that of his wife by little over 12 months, brought on remembrances of a life well lived and one that carries the legacy of the greatest love story of a generation in our family.
I recall my mother telling me how her younger sister had stood her ground despite threats and physical punishment and quietly insisted to my grandfather that she would marry the man of her choice. Let me add that my mother waited till I was an adult before she breathed a word of it. Duty was a virtue expected of every daughter and I was stirred by this story of self conviction, especially coming from my mother who was relating the story with what I sensed was a quiet pride. I was also struck by the contrast between the two sisters.
My mother was the first child in a polygamous family of 21 children. My paternal grandfather was one of the leading citizens in the community and my maternal father also had a substantial reputation for achievement in similar fields. He insisted on training his first child to the best of his ability despite her gender and I remember both grandparents urging me to see my mother as an example of what a perfect daughter should be.
Once she started working as a nurse my mother set down to financing her sister’s education. Auntie Annie became a teacher of maths and physical education serving her longest stint in a dedicated career at Methodist Girls School Yaba.
In his mischievous moments of which there were plenty my father would often wryly remark that my mother was such an obedient daughter that if her parents had told her not to marry him she would have complied. That comment of course carried the added barb of ‘see what a lucky thing it was for her that they did not!’
It is wonderful is it not, the versatility of the fabric life weaves from the threads of experience and how in every family there is enough for each member to cut a piece and wrap themselves in.
The God of all comfort
We thank the Lord Jesus Christ who comforts us and tells us not to let our hearts be troubled, and reassures us that He has gone before us to prepare a place for all those who are in Him. We thank Him for Auntie Annie who died in Christ and although for now, she is absent in the body, we are certain that she is present with the Lord. We thank Him because although we sorrow at this present time, we are filled with hope knowing that she is safe and secure in Christ and will yet rise again in a glorified body that is free from pain, free from sorrow.
We thank the Lord because she knew Him and is in him who is the only Way, the Truth and the Life and without whom none can see the Father. We thank the Lord because Jesus Christ was visible through her and we can say with the certainty of the Word of God that for Auntie Annie to live is Christ and to die is gain.
So to Ugonma, Agu, Ike, Chima, Oriaku, Uncle Osoka and Uncle Egesi , we know that the Lord who is your eternal consolation, will comfort you, strengthen you and establish you in His will and fill you with the abundant life and eternal hope that is in Him and Him alone, and that through your own lives, Christ will be made known to those with whom you come in contact.
And to any who is yet to know the Lord, He extends an invitation, and says to all who are weary, to all who are burdened, to all who are heavy laden, He says come and receive rest. Come and know the peace of God even in the midst of the deepest tribulation, come and receive strength in the midst of weakness, come and receive joy in the midst of intense pain, come and live in the One who has already overcome, in the one whose plans for you are always for good and never for evil, in the one who causes even the tribulations of life to work for His glory and for your good. Come and know eternal salvation which is found only in Christ, not because of your good works, though they be many, but simply because you have trusted in the One who has paid in full, to the eternal satisfaction of God, the penalty for every sin.
TRIBUTE TO MOMMY from Charles
TRIBUTE TO MOMMY