“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering” (Rom 12:1; TM)

This week my husband and I celebrate 46 years of marriage. This is my simple advice for the younger wives: be grateful to God for the gift of marriage! Many wives confuse spirituality with practicality. They feel that taking care of the home is not very spiritual. They feel used and misused. They develop inferiority complexes. They think that preaching in the pulpit or singing solo in the worship team are the only signs proving that they are women of God. That is not true! The Bible teaches us that there is a practical side to being spiritual and a spiritual side of being practical. For example, as a wife, I pray for my husband and our children. This is clearly a spiritual work. But cooking good meals for my husband is also a spiritual work, highly rewarded by God! When I fry the tomatoes and pepper for the Nigerian stew (as you know, it takes a long time, you need to be patient so it will not get burnt…) I play worship music on my radio and I pray. Cooking in the presence of the Holy Spirit makes me happy and the stew will be tasty. I never feel that my work in the kitchen is a low class type of ministry. Cooking tasty food for my husband is a practical expression of my spirituality and a demonstration of God’s grace to him, thru my kitchen ministry! Like pepper and salt, prayer and cooking they go together! What God had joined together, please do not separate! (You can smile now!) Glory to God!

(I wrote this letter in March 2020. My husband, Pastor Richmond Sisan Leigh, is now in heaven. I do not need to cook for him anymore. He now worships Jesus, His Savior and His Lord, forever! But the wisdom of how to be a woman of God is still with me on earth. Dear daughters, I pray that you learn from it. To God be all the glory!)