WE CAN MAKE THIS WORK!

On my way out with some of my friends, we heard some women having a conversation and one of them said “if my husband does…I will just divorce him”. This struck a conversation between us and we expressed our shock as to how nowadays people are not willing to tolerate even the littlest mistake in marriage. In the words of one of my friends, “people treat marriage like relationships”. Although relationships are not just to be broken anyhow (hence the need to be extremely careful before getting into one), a relationship can be broken. A relationship is way different from a marriage because you have not yet said “I do” to the person you are with.

Marriage is way different and it is sadly gradually becoming really trivialized. He comes back late from work and you go “I cannot deal with this” or maybe she forgets to cook for you and you go “I am tired of this woman”.  No one is trying to say that coming back late from work is good or bad but then, you cannot at the slightest mistake/error/mishap say that you want to divorce a man or a woman. The truth is that the other woman that you think will cook that food when you divorce this one or the other man you think would come back early from work when you divorce him, might do that but then they would also have areas that you are not comfortable with. So are you going to keep divorcing and remarrying? Think about this!

The problem we have nowadays is that because this divorce thing has become very common, many people (especially youths) now go into marriage with the idea that “if he/she misbehaves, I will divorce him/her”. This is a very wrong mentality and we need to be careful about this. It is wrong and highly unadviceable for you to ever go into a marriage with the idea behind your heart that once your partner does something wrong, you will just get a divorce. I remember a Pastor once said “My wife and I made up our minds when we got married that divorce is not an option” and this got me thinking. We can learn from this: DIVORCE SHOULD NOT BE AN OPTION and should not be the first thing we think about when something in our marriage goes wrong.

Sadly but truly, people are no longer willing to tolerate even the littlest thing and this is really bad. There are extreme cases, I agree that might warrant you making that decision and I would not go into that today. But my focus is on the fact that we need to start renewing our minds about this divorce thing. We need to start working on being patient and tolerant people and not giving up at the slightest opportunity or mistake.

If you are already married, please try not to think of divorce at the slightest opportunity. Please try to be willing to make things work no matter what it may cost you. Your marriage is not a football ground where players can just be changed anyhow. Marriage is deeper than this and so we need to be extremely careful. Please be patient! I am not in your shoes and I might not know how difficult it is for you at the moment but you can think deeply about it. Your marriage is workable! Maybe just a little patience, a little understanding will help. If you are going through this, I really pray God helps you with this and gives you wisdom.

For those of us that are not yet married, we need to consciously get this mentality out of our heads! Please do not get married to anybody with the thoughts that “if he or she makes a mistake, you will just get a divorce”. This is wrong. We have to build ourselves to the level that we become very tolerant and patient people. Marriage is the coming together of two different people from different backgrounds and sometimes with different characters. What this implies is that there would be a clash but then how you handle the clash or differences is what matters.

God’s standard has not changed and this is different from belonging to the old school or new school. God says that “He hates divorce” and so that is His standard so why do we think that being a 21^st century Christian or person changes this standard? No! It does not in anyway.

I really pray for each and every one of us (myself inclusive) that God will help us to understand the real essence of marriage so that we do not take it for granted. I pray that we exhibit the fruits of the Spirit so that our marriages will be better for it. I pray for a high level of tolerance and understanding in Jesus name (Amen!)

OneLove,

SomzyBrown