ONCE YOU MESS UP, THAT'S IT!

Some years ago, I went out with some of my friends and we heard some women having a conversation where 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 very 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 divorce 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. I agree that there are extreme cases 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.

To be continued...

OneLove,

SomzyBrown

WE TOOK SO MANY THINGS FOR GRANTED.

Olumide and Shola decided that they were going to get married after being in a relationship for six (6) years. Too long right? Well, this is a topic for another day. Thankfully their parents were in support of their marriage and there was no issue at all. They were both from wealthy families and so funds for the wedding was not an issue. They got married and their wedding was the talk of town. However, in a recent discussion with Olumide, he mentioned that they were so concerned with the wedding going well that they did not prepare well for the marriage life itself. 

According to Olumide, "this is a mistake that many people make these days. They take the preparation for marriage for granted and focus majorly on the wedding, failing to recognize that the wedding is for just one (1) day while marriage takes a long time and infact is for a life time."

Going into more details, Olumide said "We got into marriage and the first few months were like hell." "I mean I wasn't expecting it to be all rosy but I wished I had senior friends or mentors or people who could have told me what to expect in marriage. I was at the verge of calling it quit when I realised that all we needed to do was understand each other. Don't even ask me about our spiritual life. It was nothing to write home about and this is another thing that we took for granted. We both felt we had walked with God so well and we failed to involve Him in our marriage." He continued. 

"We eventually had to attend a counselling session if we wanted the marriage to work and that was when we realised that it was the little things that threatened the success of our marriage. We realised how we were so engrossed in wedding preparation that zero attention was given to marriage preparation. The fact that we had put God on the side because we felt it was our thing and we could handle it ourselves was also another thing that we had taken for granted." He said regrettably.

"Our marriage is a lot better now and there is a lot more connection and understanding between Shola and I. We are not there yet but we are a work in progress and we have indeed made significant progress in our lives and marriage."

I'm sharing this to encourage people in the process of getting married or planning to get married someday. It's okay to have a fantastic wedding but don't do this at the expense or detriment of your marriage. Delegate as much as you can when it comes to wedding preparation but marriage preparation requires a lot and requires you and your partner putting in the work. Do your research well; have mentors that you both can talk to; involve God; be tolerant and understanding etc.

I hope you have learnt a thing or two today. Thank you so much for stopping by. God bless you. Have a blessed week.

OneLove,

SomzyBrown.

WHEN 'MAN-NING' UP DOESN'T CUT IT! 2

Sometimes in a bid to ‘Man Up’ and go through challenges alone without seeking help and speaking up when we feel overwhelmed, we slip into God’s role and lose sight of God and His place in our lives. When we believe we can do all things with our own might, we want to fix it all by ourselves. We allow the pressure of life and societal norms or ‘ab-norms’ weigh us down, sometimes we feel if we cast all our cares upon Him, it makes us feel weak or powerless and men are not supposed to be weak right? WRONG! 

God's strength is made perfect in our weakness; I mean, If we could do life on our own and were that powerful then we wouldn’t need a savior. “Jesus answered them, “Do you finally believe? In fact, you’re about to make a run for it—saving your own skins and abandoning me. But I’m not abandoned. The Father is with me... In this godless world, you will continue to experience difficulties. But take heart, I’ve conquered the world ” (John‬ ‭16:31-33‬ ‭MSG)‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

“Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go...But don’t, dear friend, resent God’s discipline; don’t sulk under his loving correction. It’s the child he loves that God corrects; a father’s delight is behind all this.” (Proverbs‬ ‭3:5-12‬ ‭MSG‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬)

So my fellow men! 'Don’t tight the world to your chest' (permit my Swahili). Societal norms were created by imperfect people like us and most of these rules are not right. I mean we live in a society where good is the new bad, orange is the new black and many twisted truths just to suit perverted narratives. We cannot afford to have this same society guide how we interact with life so the first thing we need to do is turn to the one who created life itself - God and accept you are not in control, give your life to the One who subdues our fears because honestly, that’s all that really is.

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life... I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” (Matthew‬ ‭11:28-30‬ ‭MSG‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬)

Secondly, prayerfully choose your friends (those who genuinely love you, want the best for you and you can confess your faults to without fear of ridicule) and lastly join a Christlike community to build you up.

For us as Christians, we have a sure foundation we can rely on to get help and we have the light to illuminate our darkness when we are overwhelmed. What are we doing with the light we have? We are not light to shine among light, we are to shine in darkness so let’s go out into the world and shine. Through the help of the HolySpirit, we can be the help to that man or woman around you or be the messenger of hope……BE THE MESSAGE! Speak up about your truth (God being our truth and how he helps us overcome challenges), speak up to the right community when you’re down, speak to the people around you who need hope. Be the message in your own niche and let’s change the narrative.

If you are in a position where a man confides in you about a challenge, don’t blame him or call him weak or tell others of his situation; encourage him in the Lord and let the HolySpirit guide you to be the light in his darkness. We all need each other and we all need God so Man Up! when you need to, Speak Up! when you need to but above all God Up! ALWAYS!!! even when it seems you don’t need to.

Samuel Idiake

Thank you so much for stopping by. God bless you and see you soon.

OneLove,

SomzyBrown.

WHEN 'MAN-NING UP' DOESN'T CUT IT!

 

Man up! Man up! Until there’s a Man down!. How many men have to go down before we start speaking up and stop ‘Man-ning’ up?

So many men like myself have heard the phrase ‘Man Up'! like a million times from childhood, or other phrases like ‘Be a man’, ‘Na Man you be’, ‘Chest the pain like a man’, ‘Men don’t cry’ etc. but men do cry or sometimes want to cry but we bottle up our emotions for fear of being called ‘weak’.

Growing up, my father was my childhood hero and best friend; living through childhood with him, my 3 sisters and my mum was a lot of fun before my younger brother joined the fun when I was 11. However, that fun was cut short when I was 16 - my dad died and everything changed. I remember when we heard the news, my sisters were wailing, my mum was all over the place, my brother was just 4 but seeing my mum’s state also started crying but everyone around was telling me to ‘Man Up’, ‘You are now the man of the house’, ‘You have to be strong for your mum and siblings’, ‘Don’t cry, na man you be’ but I was hurting, hurting really bad, I had just lost my best friend few days to my graduation from secondary school, we had great plans together but now he’s gone and I’m not allowed to cry because I’m a man. I mean, who in the life of Papa Ajasco wrote that rule.

The first and probably the last time I really cried about my dad’s death was two weeks after his burial. I caught myself alone in the house and I cried like a baby. I cried because I had been in a lot of pain, ‘sifia pains’  but masking it all along and the burden was becoming too heavy to carry so I cried uncontrollably. I cried like my life depended on it cos it probably did; but after that I wiped my tears, washed my face and ‘became a man’ again cos I was now the ‘Man of the house’. I have to be strong for my mum and siblings, never to be caught crying or weak (sigh!). It’s been over a decade since his death and I do not think I have completely healed from that hurt and pain bottled up within me (heavy-sigh!)

The truth is that men are not immune to pain but we live in a society that makes speaking up about our pain look like weakness when it is in fact a strength. I believe the whole culture of absorbing issues and not talking about it as men, has done more harm than good and this needs to be changed. Many men are hurt and have never spoken about their hurt to get help, healing or closure because they have been told to 'man up'. Instead they go about hurting people cos ‘hurt people’ hurt other people. Society expects men to bottle up their pain/feelings and then in the same breath complain of African men being unromantic.

My dear, we were trained to be emotionless and it affected how we love too; if you overly express love, they’ll call you a woman, if you make yourself completely vulnerable to your spouse, they’ll say you have been brainwashed, you’re under a spell etc. What then does it mean to be in love if you can’t be vulnerable to your spouse but that’s a topic for another day. It’s almost like the only emotion we are allowed to express is anger, strength and any other emotion that doesn’t make you look vulnerable or weak and this is extremely sad.

I totally believe in being responsible, accepting responsibility for your actions and the consequences of your actions, facing your challenges head on and never backing down, always striving to be the best, making the best of whatever situation you find yourself and always being optimistic but the reality is that MEN ARE NOT SUPERHUMANS! 

To be continued...

Samuel Idiake