From Disappointment to Blessing: What Do You Do When Life Has Handed You Lemon?/ Infertility Stories, Triumph and Breakthrough

By Veronica Chinasa Osunwa

Despite a humble, poor, and downtrodden beginning, author Chinasa Veronica Osunwa shines a ray of hope. In From Disappointment to Blessing, she narrates how her parents fled from war and Osunwa was shuffled through her family like a worn hand-me-down until she returned to her village seven years later, a penniless outcast.

Moving across the world to New Zealand, she suffered compounding blows of job rejections, racial discrimination, and an unfair end to her third year of nursing school. But Osunwa is a survivor and a fighter and never allowed these disappointments to deter her. Instead, the setbacks made her faith stronger, and she shares her challenges and triumphs in this memoir. She encourages others to see disappointment as a blessing in disguise and to never allow yesterdays issues to overshadow tomorrows dreams, destiny, star, and visions.

Osunwa tells how God moved her from victim to victor, tears to cheers, nobody to somebody, from grass to grace, disappointment to appointment, and from failure to MBA holder. Filled with important Christian themes, From Disappointment to Blessing narrates Osunwas story as well as the stories of others to demonstrate how you can overcome obstacles, particularly if you place your faith in God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Dec 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781504308595

Veronica Chinasa Osunwa

Veronica Chinasa Osunwa, is a multi award-winning Christian song writer, whose songs have appeared in Catch a Rising Star Edition of Paramount Song Nashville in USA. She is an inspiring, motivated, positive writer with an infectious smile and holds an MBA. Veronica is the CEO of Good News Music, and currently works for the Disability Service Commission (Department of Communities). Veronica is married to Rev. Samuel Osunwa, and is blessed with both spiritual and biological children.

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Copyright © 2017 Veronica Chinasa Osunwa.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

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ISBN: 978-1-5043-0858-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-0859-5 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 12/21/2017

To my dear Husband,

When we first met, many waters could quench love.

Now many waters cannot quench love.

(Song of Solomon 8:7 King James Version (KJV)

Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.

To me:

To one person you may be a disappointment but to another person you may be a blessing.

And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.

–Romans 8:28

CONTENTS

Foreword

Preface

When Delay Isn’t Denial

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

How Disappointments Come

Common Catalysts for Today’s Disappointments

Beyond Your Control

Detours

Chapter 2

There Is a Time and Season

How Disappointment Relates to Pruning

Training the Young in Faith

Restoring Negligent or Older Believers

Remember Not To Forget

Pitfalls to Avoid

Chapter 3

Bottoms Fall Out

Discreet and Wise

The Annihilation Plot

From Disappointment to Blessing

Chapter 4

When Stuff Happens

Delayed Answer to Prayer

Once Pleasant, Now Bitter

Guilty Pleasures

Turn Around

Chapter 5

Disappointed? Been There

Horatio Spafford

Joyce Meyer

Terry Gobanga

James Robison

Life’s Not Fair

Maya Angelou

Left at the Altar

Health Threatened

Chapter 6

My Story

The Blessings in Disguise

Job Hunting, Nigeria

Stepping into the Nursing Career

Opening Doors to Overseas

Would You Rather Ask?

My Worst Shared Dinner

Another Disappointment from My School

Untold Hardship

God and Disappointment

Jesus and Disappointment

Near Disaster at a Wedding Celebration

Voice of the Lord Mission, Gashua Branch, Breakup

Victory Christian Centre, New Zealand

Other Stories of Devastation Turned Around

House Hunting

Bachelorette Sam Frost

Chibok Schoolgirls Abducted from School

Two Children Kidnapped from School

Young Man Crippled

Blessings in Disguise

Missed Flight

Saved by the advice of God’s Oracle Apostle Professor Johnson Suleman

Set Up by a Prisoner

Sharing this story curled from The National Christian Choir September 26, 2016

Motherless Boy Buried Alive

Living a Limitless Life

Apostle Professor Johnson Suleman

Chapter 7

Everything happens for a reason

Dealing With Disappointment

Turn That Disappointment Into A Blessing

This, Too, Shall Pass

Disappointed? What To Do?

Don’t Lose Hope

Mental Stability

Chapter 8

What do you do when life gives you lemon?

Nelson Mandela

Victor Moses

From Rubbish Heap to Archbishop

Balak hired Balaam to curse Isreal

Nollywood Actor Leo emerges from the disappointment of a terminal stage kidney disease, to blessings

Abraham Lincoln

Oprah Winfrey

Malala Yousafzai

Rev Dr. Uma Ukpai Kidnapped and Forced To Drink Acid.

Student told by teacher he would not make it

What do you do when life hands you the disappointment of infertility?

Born Without a Womb and Ovaries, this Woman Beats the Odds and Gives Birth to Twins

After 46 Years of Marriage

Pastor’s Wife delivers a miracle baby after eight long years.

From 33 years of Infertility… to Triplets

From Four Miscarriages… to Mother

True life story: Woman without a Womb Gave Birth to Three Children

World Fell Apart

Finally

What others are saying about disappointment

Endnotes

FOREWORD

1

T his is my brief story. I had dreamt of being a solicitor and was stopped by a mere 120 naira, the equivalent of a dollar. As one of the five pupils from the former Nkwere/Isu LGA, Imo State, Nigeria, who were successful in the National Common Entrance Examination, I gained admission into the Federal Government College–Okigwe, Imo State. This college guarantees direct entry into any Federal university of your choice. My father could not afford to pay my entrance tuition fee of N120, and neither could my uncle Boniface Okorom (who had sponsored me through secondary school). All my efforts to raise the amount from a few prominent Obeazi people and maternal people failed; hence, I could not take up the opportunity that could have led me to study law.

To assist my uncle through my secondary school days, I did menial jobs like pushing trucks and wheelbarrows. I also used to trek more than two kilometres to fetch and sell water. Hunting for snails, digging toilets (pit latrines), and loading and offloading yams from lorries and trailers were among my jobs.

Upon graduating from secondary school with excellent results that included credits in English and mathematics, the future of furthering my education became bleak because of a lack of sponsorship. Frustrated, I joined Mr Charles Okpara as an apprentice and servant for the next nine years before being settled. To say the least, I understand what disappointment is.

The author, Mrs Veronica C. Osunwa, nee Okorom, is my elder sister; therefore, I am in a great position to know her evolving circumstances.

Veronica has written incredible, honest truths about the secrets of her growing up, struggles and failures she faced, and the divine successes in this book, From Disappointment to Blessing.

This is a brilliant, stunningly conceived book of a life filled with pain and joy, a sense of humour and bitterness, and a character who lives, breathes, and illuminates the world of African-cum-Nigerian women.

This is a must-read book for all. Enjoy and learn from it!

–Cosmas Okorom

2

In life you won’t accomplish everything you set out to do. I’m sorry to say that. Really, I am, but it’s the truth. At some point, something will go wrong and you’ll be faced with some tough options that’ll result in you sticking or twisting.

I suppose that in a bittersweet way, that’s the point. Life goes on even after the loss of a loved one, the failure to land a new role, or a loss by your favourite sports team at the final hurdle.

Life. Goes. On.

Staying still and stagnating isn’t really an option, and in an ideal world, we would love to have every single plan, scheme, or football match end in triumph.

But there is a saying: Something-laid plans something mice, something awry, which essentially sums up that in certain situations, despite having the best intentions, things will fall apart and you will need to move on or do something about it.

I was eight years old and attending Wesley Primary School in Mt Albert, New Zealand. The school did nothing about bullying, but it was still a school, and kids, being kids, would tease me for being black. (In full disclosure, it wasn’t simply because I was black; it was because I wasn’t East-or-West-Coast African American–rapper black, but more East African, forty-hour-famine black).

It reached a breaking point one day when I decided to fight back at lunchtime. I got my butt whupped then, and again after school. This happened for the entire week, to the point where the following Monday after lunchtime, I, eight years old and five foot nothing, walked a kilometre and a half to a rival school and demanded to be enrolled there.

Outwardly disappointed at the situation but secretly proud of me for doing something, Mum came to the new school and enrolled me, because eight-year-old kids can’t enrol themselves into a school for some strange reason.

The story resonates with me not simply because it was Mum that was there but also because of my audacity to believe I deserved better, to feel that my personal progress would suffocate where I was, and to lay out and execute a plan before demanding that the middle-aged assistant principal of the school call my mother to get out of work and enrol me, because I wouldn’t be leaving. The story resonates with me because it is essentially the story of Veronica Chinasa Osunwa and how she did the opposite.

Born in the villages of Igbo land, Nigeria, Veronica survived the Biafran War, though some of her family did not. She managed to start anew, finishing her high school education, and her reward was to marry into the impoverished house of a minister. Veronica was told she would not be able to have children, yet she had to put her nursing degree on hold for the birth of one