By God’s grace we will all usher in 2012 together!

The first 20 people who leave a comment will receive a card. After I receive your comment, I will send you an email asking for your mailing address.

Thank you!

(Updated to add: Last year I sent 15 cards and that’s what I meant to do again this year but when I posted the entry originally, I indicated 25 cards. To compromise I have changed the number to 20 and at the time of this update, eight people had signed up.)

This month has been so rich with things to be thankful for and there are other things that I’ve probably forgotten to recognize. On the other side, the loss of life always makes me somber and this week I learned of two people passed away: one was one of my grandmother’s closest friends (may she rest in peace) and the other was a leader of one of the political parties in our country. I have to admit I was particularly touched by this latter passing because people who manage to show a brave and optimistic face in the light of their battle with cancer always blow me away. Rest in peace, Jack Layton. He left a letter to Canadians which touched me.

1. Today is my incredible father’s birthday. He has faced many challenges this year so I am thankful that he has made it to another year. Please pray for him, that this new year he’s entering would be one of answered prayers with regard to his employment situation, impeccable health, and freedom from those things that cause him stress. I will always consider it my extreme honour to have been placed by God in this family as my Daddy’s daughter.
2. My mother celebrated her birthday last month. I’ve talked about her before, and asked for prayers for her before because she faces health challenges, but I’m regularly blown away by how she always manages to keep her high energy and optimistic nature. I tear up just thinking about the pain she endures daily without letting on: she’s always thinking about others and how we’d feel knowing she’s in pain, rather than allowing herself to be the one that is cared for. My father was not able to be there for her birthday (I mentioned very briefly in May that a family member moved; it was my dad) but we managed to find a way to make my mom’s birthday special. Her gift from me was a train ticket so she could spend almost two weeks with my dad and they enjoyed that.
3. My mom is healing from the surgery she had on her hand at the end of June. The surface is healing slowly but surely but the inside is taking longer to heal. Some dear friends have suggested physiotherapy so I’ll do my part to explore that option.
4. I bought a car! I have had it in my possession for three days and I love it. It’s my baby right now: I’m trying to keep it from getting dented or scratched. Sometimes I laugh at myself because if I’m acting like this over a car, imagine how crazy I will be over a child of mine? The car should be completely mine in four years (maybe one day I’ll be able to pay cash for a car!) so I will have to be disciplined in my spending moving forward. The whole car purchasing process was emotional for me and I could not have done it without my family’s support. I know a big girl like me should not need to count on anyone else but guess what? I choose to.
5. We (well, my parents) are hosting the family that have graciously allowed us to stay with them when we land in Lagos. The whole family (six people in total) are here for a few days in what I’m calling their “North American tour” and I just know we’re going to have a good time. The husband and wife are so generous with their time and money yet so down to earth. You don’t often meet people with that kind of humility, especially growing up with the blessings they have. They live in a society where showiness and flaunting of riches is en vogue so for them to be so low-key is refreshing.
6. My dear friend Chiddy who has been reading my blogs since 2005 or so (in the days before this blog) has arrived safely in the USA. I’m so thankful that her travels went well, without any mishap.
7. The church I have been attending for the past nine months or so has been such a blessing. I feel challenged whenever I walk out of the doors of the church, after a sermon. The music speaks to my soul; like my mom said you can’t help but reflect on the words you’re singing and often tears will stream down my face while singing certain songs. The sermon yesterday was about how we have a responsibility to share the good news of Jesus with others. I have always shirked my duty in this regard because I’m more afraid of what someone (a non-God-believing friend or colleague) will think of me if I tell them about my beliefs, instead of being focused on what God will think if I don’t use an opportunity presented to me to share with others. I also worry that with my many bad qualities that my life just won’t be enough of an example for them to want to be a believer too…gotta work on that.

   The pastor who preached told us that if we think this belief in God thing is so great, why wouldn’t we want to share it with others? This makes complete sense because if you found out about a place giving a great deal on something, you’d want to let others know right?

   I have to admit I like how Nigerian culture has God wrapped up in it. Even those who are going through the motions and don’t really believe in God have at least had exposure to people who believe in God, which I think makes it easier.

It is bedtime for this thankful and blessed girl.

When I was in Nigeria this past October/November, my uncle K’s wife was very ill. I am sad to share that she passed away last week, and the circumstances related to her illness and passing have been and still are very stressful on my mom’s side of the family (especially my maternal grandmother) and my parents. I am asking for your prayers to be directed toward my uncle who has three young children to raise, and my grandmother who has been physically and emotionally impacted by this, and who has experienced the most difficult two months of her life. May this unfortunate start to 2011 be changed to one of blessing and opportunity to give the glory to God (Amen).

Because of all the violent video games (my brothers are sitting in front of me playing one as I type this) and movies out there, it’s easy to become desensitized to the idea of death until it directly affects you. I am different in that I get emotionally impacted by death, even if I know that the person isn’t dead in real life. The thought of no longer being in this world, especially when one leaves early (by human standards, not God’s), is painful to me. I’m glad that God made me this way, even though it can be emotionally draining at times.

It was not my intention to start the year off with this kind of post but if you can take anything away from this, it’s to be thankful for your life. Even when it seems like it’s all bad, it’s not. As long as there’s life there’s hope and with hope in God you’ll be fine.

I came across a list of about ten resolutions that I had for 2010 and I only managed to accomplish one of the items on the list fully, and it was the one item that I had the least control over. If that isn’t God’s hand in my life, I don’t know what is!

When I looked under the tree, as full of gifts as it was, I was reminded of how blessed we are, not just with a great family but with so many THINGS. The consensus was that the preparation was all too much: too much stress over what to buy for the other family members and too many gifts. In all the rushing around it’s easy to lose sight that Christmas is about reflecting on the reason we celebrate Christmas. Next year we’ll each pick a name of a family member to buy a gift for instead of buying for everyone. A price limit will be decided upon and people can buy smaller gifts or stocking stuffers for the other family members, if desired. We don’t need more things; we need more time together to enjoy each other’s company.

As we get older, I cherish Christmas with my family even more because I know that soon enough (hopefully!) we’ll have in-laws to consider. My friends who are married or dating talk about having to plan when they’ll have Christmas with their biological family and when they’ll see their in-laws over the holidays, and alternating on successive years. It’s hard to imagine that some of us may not be able to make it to my parents’ place for Christmas celebrations in the future due to where we’ll be living or due to other family obligations, but at the same time it’s something to look forward to!

Some of you may know that I enjoy crafting, but in the last year and a half, I haven’t done as much creating and crafting as I would like to do. In order to encourage me to get off my butt, I would like to invite those of you who live in North America or Europe to help me out.

I like to make my own Christmas cards and my goal is to send them out so the recipient receives it before Christmas Day. In order to do that, I will have to mail the Europe-bound cards by November 29, and the North America-bound cards by December 13 (or so my postal service tells me). If I had thought about this earlier, I could have included Nigerian residents in this blog post (but those would have had to be mailed by yesterday, and I have yet to gather all the supplies I need for these cards).

I will send a Christmas card to the first 15 people who leave a comment including the words “Merry Christmas” in it. If you don’t live in North America or Europe and you leave a comment, I’ll have to skip your name (sorry). Once you leave a comment I’ll send you an email asking for your mailing address and the name or nickname you’d like me to put on the card.

So what are you waiting for? Kindly drop your comment below!

I was talking to the bride-to-be last weekend and of course her biggest problem is how large the wedding is getting due to all the uninvited guests that will be attending. If you’re not Nigerian or African, this might seem strange to you because most North Americans I know don’t crash weddings, no matter how popular the movie Wedding Crashers was. As of last weekend, the bride-to-be was expecting 500 people, which is more than she had invited. She sent out invitations and what baffled her most wasn’t that Mr. & Mrs. X included the names of their children on the RSVP card that they were returning (even though in some cases the kids weren’t invited), but the fact that Mr. & Mrs. X included the names of Mr. & Mrs. Y, people that the bride and groom do not know at all! And this happened more than once.

Personally, I don’t understand it. Let’s imagine that Mr. & Mrs. X have visitors staying with them and they feel bad leaving them at home to attend a wedding. First of all, Mr. & Mrs. Y don’t even know the bride and groom, so why would they want to attend the wedding? Why can’t Mr. & Mrs. Y spend a quiet evening at their friends’ home, understanding that due to plans that were determined before their arrival, their hosts won’t be available to entertain them for that evening? I think most houseguests would be understanding about that. But in many cases, RSVP or not, Mr. & Mrs. X will bring their houseguests along, not caring if their guests take the seats meant for someone who actually knows the bride and groom and who received an invitation. It’s aggravating for brides especially. Imagine: you invite 200 people to your wedding and you could have 50 extra people show up – or more! Regardless of whether or not you’re serving buffet style food or by the plate, an extra 50 people makes a difference.

I have heard of Nigerian brides and grooms who have managed to pull off small, intimate weddings that don’t include their cousin’s university roommate. I’ve heard of some different tricks that worked:

Sending the invitations on very short notice, hoping that people will be busy on the wedding day
I don’t like this idea because sometimes the people you really want at your wedding may not be able to attend. You could tell the people you really want to attend to “save the date”, but I wonder if word of mouth would cause the information about the wedding to spread to people you don’t want to attend anyway.

Insisting that wedding guests bring their wedding invitation to the venue and not admiting anyone to the wedding who does not have the wedding invitation | By invitation only weddings
This one works, especially if you have a list of all the invitees on a checklist for those who will forget their invitation but who are actually invited. Bouncers at the wedding would also be an important component of this plan. How mortifying would it be to show up for a wedding you were not invited to, and be turned away? Yikes.

Having a destination wedding
This is a good way to keep numbers down: don’t get married where most of your family and friends live. If the destination is one of those one or two week vacation package deals you can guarantee that due to time or money restrictions, you won’t have a full house of guests…unless you give them lots of notice so they can save money (and vacation time) for it.

When my turn comes, I intend to keep things small by Nigerian wedding standards at around 150 people (keep in mind how random this number is since I have no idea if my future husband will have a trillion family members, all of whom are very special and dear to him). If I have my way I will get married in Canada (and do my engagement in Nigeria) so that will automatically keep my wedding numbers low. I would love to do the guestlist/bouncer thing, but that’s a bit much for what I expect to be no more than about 150 people. Instead, I will beg my mom on my knees to please not mention my wedding to anybody except the people she asked me to invite.

Then I’ll pray very very hard the only thing I’ll have to worry about is the length of my very long-winded father’s speech!

1. How have you or friends of yours successfully kept the number of wedding guests down?
2. Do you think keeping numbers down is the biggest wedding-related concern after ‘Where do I find my bride/groom in the first place?’

Right now, my plan is to have the Engagement in Nigeria. This way my extended family will get to meet my groom and they will also get to witness a milestone in my life. Also, it would give us a chance to throw a party that people would hopefully enjoy. The only “problem” with this is I know my non-Nigerian friends would love to see what the Engagement is like, especially when they find out there’s a part of the Yoruba Engagement where the bride is traditionally supposed to kneel in front of her husband to feed him. I won’t deny that as it stands now, I’m thinking of arranging for NEPA taking light during that part of the ceremony so that when the electricity is restored I can say that they all missed me kneeling. Yup, I said it! I understand the tradition with respect to kneeling for elders but a small part of me cringes at this part of the Engagement. I went to a Yoruba/Angolan wedding (groom was from Angola) and when it came time for his bride to kneel to feed him, he actually grabbed her arms and pull her up before she knelt. I want a groom that would do that!

I know, I know, submissive wife…Bible…but I can be submissive without kneeling, can’t I? The other thing I could do is use the “I wasn’t raised in Nigeria so I didn’t know I was supposed to kneel during the Traditional wedding” excuse. I expect the “I wasn’t born in Naija” excuse will get me out of many tight spots in the future! Anyway, the Engagement will be recorded and I can show it to my friends afterwards.

That means the White wedding will be in Canada. This will allow my friends (100% of whom I know will not be able to pack up their families and travel to Nigeria) to see GNG get married. Of course, Nigerian food and attire would be incorporated into this wedding, and I’m quite giddy at the thought of planning it. It’s far more exciting to me to think of planning this than the Engagement, because I don’t think I’ll have any say in the Engagement. I don’t know the traditions and the order the whole thing is supposed to follow; I will just be a puppet that day.

Before I get all excited, I need to find the groom first! With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, I’m tempted to organize another Online Meeting Project! Although I can’t announce that any couples from Round 1 are engaged, I have received positive feedback from people who participated. Some bachelors had sent me their info too late and I told them they would be included in the next round.

I have some of questions:

1. If you aren’t married yet, how are you thinking of organizing your wedding?
2. How many of you married folk felt like you had a lot of say in either the Traditional or White wedding?
3. If you live outside of Nigeria, did you split up your Engagement/White weddings like I’m thinking of doing?

Here’s a link to to the audio: http://goodnaijagirl.com/sounds/birthdaythanks2.mp3

Can you tell I didn’t read the list of commenters beforehand? :)

If you missed the debut of Vera‘s radio show you missed a good thing (but don’t worry; you can hear it here). She was great, the people who called in (hi tobenna!) were fantastic and next time I won’t miss half of the show! I can’t wait until the next show (I’m hoping she’ll change the time though: it’s going to be at 10am my time…I’ll be working!).