I Bi Dem: Woman, Wife, Mother

I have had many opportunities to listen to many great academic and spiritual personalities. You can’t remain the same once you have listened to some messages or lectures. While it is not likely that you will remember everything you have heard, you often cannot forget a sentence, a phrase, an illustration or a joke. Those stay with you forever. One of such moments for me was a sermon preached by late Professor Emeritus, Adeoye Adeniyi, who was the Vice Chancellor of University of Ilorin a few decades ago. He was also a deacon in Emmanuel Baptist Church Ilorin. I can’t remember the title of the sermon but I believe that he spoke about students’ unrest in higher institutions and the family.   What has stayed with me for almost thirty years is his plea to parents to ensure that their children know they are welcomed at home no matter the mistakes they have made in the schools. I wonder if this advice is a worthwhile one; if parents know what this means and how it can be achieved. I

I can’t remember the number of times I have had to stand before a closed store with a ‘closed for stock-taking’ sign. The sign is very annoying especially when I urgently need the item in question. Sometimes I wonder why they have to do the stock-taking during the business hours when they could be making money. Over time I have come to accept and even understand how important it is, as much as it disrupts my shopping plan. I realise that they need to update records; know what has been sold, what is left, what products need to be bought to restock the store and of course the profit or loss made. Without proper stock-taking, a store will have no idea how it is faring and may soon have to close down. The same principle of stock-taking should apply in our lives as well. There is a need to take stock of how we are faring in different areas of our lives. We need to take time to look at our lives dispassionately and ask some pertinent questions. Personal stock-taking, like that of the sto