Your Reaction Matters

What you say, when you say it, and how you say it, are key elements of communication in marriage. Your communication with your spouse, especially at the point of emotional overload (either anger or joy) needs to be handled with great care. Words have the capacity to build up and at the same time, the capacity destroy. We read in Proverbs 18:21 that “the tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit,” and we also read in Proverbs 16:24 that “pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.”

When your spouse offends you or hurts your feelings, believe me when I say they are well aware of what they are doing or what they have done (at least in most cases). Now, the big issue isn’t what they have done, but how you react to what they have done. Giving it back to them in the full measure of what they did to you is simply justifying the wrong they have done to you. Your wrong reaction has actually right the wrong they did to you, and then the two of you are even. The sad thing is that they will wrong you again and again and then your marriage begins to break down little by little until the center can no longer hold.

But then there is a measure of pleasant word reaction that gives the conscience the power to cleanse the offender. When you react right, you give God room to deal internally with the one who is wrong and then your right reaction produces right action in your spouse with the dealings of God in him or her thereby enjoying a win-win victory by what seems foolish reaction to the world but the wisdom of God put to display.

There is something that happens in my marriage that is so very interesting. My husband is a person who does not like to say sorry to me his wife and to tell you the truth, I really don’t mind. Because rather than say sorry, he buys me a gift instead, or credits my account. That is his own mode of apology and I am enjoying it all the way. Before now I have learned the secret of pleasant words; my husband can be impatient sometimes and harsh sometimes. But on most occasions, I watch myself not to react in the same manner of his harshness and then when he sees that I am not reacting to him in the measure of his actions to me, his conscience takes over. He becomes sorry and sober and just wouldn’t want to openly admit it. Then he goes to get a gift or credit my account, knowing that I will acknowledge what he has done and there the quarrel ends.

It might not be exactly like this for everyone because we also didn’t start so sweet, but with cultivation and growth, it gets sweeter every day and every time. Your marriage is worth every sacrifice that you can give to it, because, the yield is far more than the sacrifice.

Your Marriage Was No Mistake

What is your marriage standing on? What is the bonding glue that is keeping your marriage together in one piece? Is it God, or is it love? It is the common belief that marriage cannot exist without love and to this end, I agree. But what happens when you are married in love and then after some years or many years love fades? Does the marriage fade also?

I have heard so many people say their marriage was a mistake, and they believe and hold on to the fact that nothing else can make that marriage work. Even though I know that people are bound to make mistakes, nobody has journeyed through life more than once and going through a road you’ve never been before you are opened to missing your way and taking a wrong turn or follow a wrong route occasionally. But if that is acceptable in other areas of life, it’s not so with marriage. It's morally unacceptable to change spouse as though you were changing your clothing. Yes, you can change jobs, change career path, change houses, change cars, but you can’t change spouses in like manner.

And so, in making the life partner choice, you need a little more than mere love to hinge your decision on. You need God. Even though you are bound to make mistakes because life is a journey you have never embarked on before now and because everyone’s journey differs and so you can’t rely on another’s life experience, you are prone to mistakes. But God never makes mistakes, in fact, God is a mistake repairer. So, when you give your mistakes to God, He fixes them.

And this is why I am so against divorce (even though I do not judge or condemn those divorced), but when you hand over that mistake marriage of yours to God, He fixes it. He repairs it, and then He brings it back to you. And when He gives it back, it turns out to be the best thing that ever happened to you. We read in Malachi 2:16 and Matthew 19:3-6 about how God feels about divorce. If we then call ourselves children of God and we love God, then isn’t it important to put God’s feeling into consideration as we strive to deal with our mistake marriages?

God is a fixer of mistakes. He alone can fix any mess we make of our journey in life. No matter how messy those mistakes are, God alone can and will fix it if only we let Him. No matter how messy a mistake our marriage is, God alone can fix it and make it beautiful. Even more beautiful than what love alone can do. Are you willing to give your messy marriage to God to fix? Divorce is not the best solution to a messy marriage, God is. I have been there before, so I know.

The Power of Thank You

They say the phrase “thank you” is a magic word. They teach it to our nursery and kindergarten children but for us adults, the phrase “thank you” has totally lost its value. And then it has become none existent in a handful of marriages (being careful not to generalize). In fact, in our relationship with God, it's also just the same. When we don’t get what we want how we want it, appreciating what we have becomes a problem.

A man in his sixties walked into my shop to buy a lace fabric for his wife. It was his 60^th birthday shortly before then and he got a handful of cash as gifts from well-wishers, and just decided to spoil his wife and appreciate her. And so he wanted to buy her a beautiful piece of clothing. He bought this lovely fabric and took it home. He also bought her a pair of shoes to go with the fabric. He called a day after to say the shoes were not the size of his wife, and so he was going to return it. And so, after two days he brought the shoe back and I asked him if the wife liked the fabric he had bought. The expression on his wife said it all. He was pained in his spirit over the fact that his wife didn’t appreciate the fabric simply because she wanted him to give her the money and let her buy for herself what she wanted.

Interestingly, he told me that if he had given her money, he wouldn’t have given her as much as he had spent buying the fabric for her. Her lack of appreciation spoke volumes to the man, and his ability to extend such a gesture another time. Even if he had to do, he wouldn’t. And if he brings himself to do just as a sense of duty, he wouldn’t do as much, simply because the initial one was not appreciated.

A lot of us wives make this same mistake, and when our husbands shut down on us, we begin to complain. We call them irresponsible and compare them to men who take good care of their wives forgetting that we are the architect of who and what they have become. For the husband who is doing so much for his wife, have you taken time to study what the wife is doing to make the husband continue to pour out himself for her?

I have learned to appreciate all that my husband does for me and our children even though it is his responsibility to do these things. When I thank my husband for paying our children’s school fees, he asks why? And then he comments that he is just doing his responsibility. But I tell him that there are thousands of husbands who are not paying their children’s school fees even though some can afford to and heaven isn’t falling because of them. So, he should allow me to appreciate him that he knows his responsibility and he is doing the responsibility of his own free-will. That alone is a morale booster for a man.

And the same goes for the wife. We as wives go ourselves beyond the limit to keep the home and family together. I know the feeling I get when my husband and I go out and return home very tired and I still have to go straight to the kitchen to make food while others are stretching out their legs and relaxing, and then my husband enters the kitchen to say well done and apologize for putting me through the stress. That alone drives the tiredness away and you find a little strength to just continue.

These are the little spices that make the marriage beautiful. It’s so wrong and in fact dangerous to take your spouse for granted. A little bit of appreciation here and there is just good oil for the shinning of your marriage. It's not all the gift my husband buys for me that I am crazily in love with, but I appreciate them all and wear these gifts as though I have longed for them all my life and sincerely what that does is that it gives him reasons to keep giving. He is also learning to know more of what I like and improving on the gifts. That is the power of “thank you” it makes the giver to never stop giving. 

There is Always a Way Out of the Messy Marriage Other Than What You Think

It’s been a long while and I feel so bad that I have abandoned the writing of the marriage blog for the pursuit of so many other things. It’s been a big distraction trying to combine business with blogging, but today I pray for the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ not to abandon His assignment on my life knowing that meeting my needs are His priority. And without so much story again, I want us to just dive straight back into the marriage discussion.

When I get to talk to wives, I have had to tell them that the way out of a messy marriage situation is quite different from what or how they think it to be. Most wives who have husbands that are not taking up their husbandly responsibilities right, have resorted to prayers and when prayers seem not to be working, they have resolved to either abandoning the marriage and going for a separation or enduring the miserable situation as it is. And shocking but true, some die trying to patch a terrible marriage in the best way they know how.

But one thing I love about God is that when we pray, He tells us what to do about what we have prayed about and when we do it as He has instructed, we see results that we desire. Based on my relationship with God and how He has helped me out of my messy marriage situation without having to get a divorce or a separation, still married to the same husband, is that I learned to not just pray, but also to listen to God for a sense of direction.

Prayer as we should know, is a dialog between the one who is praying and the God he/she is praying to. Prayer should not be a monolog whereby you just talk, and then stand up and go. When you pray, you should expect a response from the One you have prayed to and a response is not just in miraculously seeing a transformation of the situation you have prayed about, but a response in knowing what God (whom you have prayed to) would have you do in order for the situation you have prayed about to change.

The Bible says prayers without deed is dead. And so, with a few wives who have discussed their marriage situations with, I have asked a handful of them what they have done to help the situation their marriage and what most of them have responded with is that they have prayed. And then I ask the question when you prayed, what did God tell you to do? At the point, the response I get is that well I didn’t hear God tell me to do anything.

The truth is that it wasn’t God who didn’t speak of a way of escape, it was us who didn’t listen or are not willing to listen to what God is telling us to do. And in most cases, what we might be hearing in our spirit being might be far from what we expect or desire as a response and so we tell ourselves we can’t go that route. And then we accuse God of not answering our prayers because all we want is to wake up one morning and see a brand-new person in the spouse we are complaining and praying about without any input from us.

It’s just like praying about your terrible financial situation and expecting to wake up one morning and meet a million dollar in your account without working for it just because you prayed. I am sure you will agree with me that, that is an impossibility. When I had my own terrible marriage experience, I must confess it was heart-wrenching, and to say that I prayed is to say the list. I went for all manners of deliverance and counseling and still, nothing changed. And then I just resolved to look for the solution to my problems within the pages of the Bible and from therein God began to speak to me. I was so desperate for a solution that I was willing to obey anything He tells me to do. And He told me to do the oddest thing that I could possibly hear God give as instruction back then. He told me to submit to my husband.

At that time, I had considered my husband the devil while I was the saint. But with strength and grace from God, I obeyed, even though it was tough and difficult. With time and help from the Spirit of God obedience became easy and then God began to use my obedience to bring about a glorious change in the life of my husband. And today I am enjoying the time of my life with the man of my life and in the marriage of my life. My marriage is just so sweet and glorious.

I have mentioned my own case repeatedly on my blog articles and I can’t just say it enough. Now, what are you willing to add to your prayers to make your marriage the beauty that you desire it to be? What is that thing that God is telling you to either put in or take away from your life to make your marriage what you so desire it to be? In truth, if you want a change from the status quo, the first thing to do is to look into the mirror and begin the change with who you see as the reflection in the mirror. That change that you so long for in your marriage begins with you. 

The Joint Account Issue

We had our second marriage workshop tagged “Couple’s Clinic” a few days ago and it was fantastic. One of the issues discussed that raised a lot of questions bothers on finances. We tried to look at the most common issues in marriage that bring about disagreements between couples and I am sure you will be surprised if money didn’t feature on that list. And the issue of couples having a joint account came up. In order to have more people benefit from this discussion, I have decided to write a post on it.

There are no clear instructions on this when we search the Bible, but we can apply godly wisdom in dealing with this kind of issue. The first thing that I will advise couples already married and those intending to marry is that whatever you can’t finish or better still whatever you can’t sustain in your marriage it is better you do not start it. And I say this with money as a focus.

There is absolutely nothing wrong in couples having a joint bank account, but when it gives the devil an avenue to attack your marriage then it’s important that you avoid it. Having a joint account or not does not in any way affect the issue of trust in marriage. If as a wife you don’t trust your husband, sharing a joint bank account with him will still not make you trust him. And likewise, for the husband, having a joint bank account will not in any way result in trust in the marriage.

Quite a lot of couples share the same bank accounts and they are good for it and a handful of couples share the same bank account and they feel choked by it. The truth of the matter is that masculine material priority differs totally from a feminine material priority. A wife may want to buy a skirt or a wig, or a hair extension and as far as the husband is concerned those a trash. And in the same vain a husband might want to buy an expensive wrist band and the wife sees it as absorb and a waste. And there the trouble begins. What men need money for are most of the time totally different from what women need money for. But that is not to say that I condemn having a joint bank account, but if it has to be done, then it should be done with a level of wisdom such that it doesn’t give room for any marital crisis in the future.  

It is a nice thing if both couples have separate means of income. If for any reason there is the desire to save between couples, they can decide to have a joint account whereby they both maintain a certain level of contribution periodically for the family. And if both couples are working and doing this, then it’s very okay.

But in a scenario whereby both the wife and husband are working and earning a salary and have decided that they put all of their salaries in one joint bank account, I fear that might be a time bomb waiting to explode. This has absolutely nothing to do with trust but the fact that the wife who might most likely feel choked from this arrangement after a while, will need to always seek her husband’s approval for every spend in her life even though she is working and earning income. And the same goes for the husband. Invariably, one of the parties will start to hold back some of his/her income to meet personal needs and this will, in turn, break down trust and openness in the marriage. 

A typical example of this was shared at the just concluded marriage gist and what I advised such a wife to do is to begin to look for what she can do that will fetch for her a second source of income whereby she get money to do what she wants to do without having to feel choked seeking husband’s approval to meet her needs.

Another possible way was for her to speak with her husband and gently and lovingly explain to her husband that the arrangement is not working well for her and as such she will need to be allowed to retain a fraction of her income in her personal account to cater for her personal needs.

Not having a joint bank account does not in any way reduce or improve the level of trust and openness in marriage. I don’t share the same bank account with my husband, but if I need to save money such that I won’t have any reason to touch it, I give it to my husband for safe keeping and he returns my money to me when I demand it. But not that I condemn the act of couples having a joint bank account in any way. I will say this to couples, never rush into any decision making out of momentary emotion that you feel, it is important that you consider the long-term effect of your decisions. Any decision or agreement that has the potential of dividing you or causing disaffection between you two in the long-run, then it’s important you don’t enter into such agreement.

Love and trust in marriage are not subject to a joint bank account.   

What Do You Do With the Flower of Love?

I was listening to a song titled “No Pain No Gain” by Betty Wright, you know those R&B/Songs of the 1980s. And in that song, Betty Wright defined love in a way that I really love to relate with. In the song, she said love was like a beautiful flower, but that flowers need water and sun to grow. And that has struck a nerve in my thought, we lay so much emphasis on love in marriage that we forget that without the proper enabling environment love withers and dies. And we have so many dead marriages who have anchored their existence on love without wanting to make the sacrifices that give love the room to grow and blossom.

I will never stop preaching the fact that marriage is an investment, and what you put in it determines what you get from it. I dare to say that there is no such thing as bad marriage when a couple without any force, choose to marry each other. If you were not forced to marry your spouse and then the marriage goes bad, it's not because the marriage in itself is bad, its because you and your spouse mismanaged the marriage.

If you have a business venture and you mismanage it, it will collapse with time and the same goes for marriage. It is a fact that if you run a business with emotions and not being alert and wise to the needs of the business, it might not survive. In the same way, if you handle your marriage solely on emotions and not with wisdom, then the chances of survival are very slim.

What we now understand love to be, is that emotion that gives and just keeps giving. But we forget that if the source of this emotion is not replenished, it runs out after some time. And so, the love that we should now run with is such that we give into it and then take from it. So, in order to always have a constant supply of love we need to care for its source. The love that sustains is the one that gives and takes.

A lot of married couples have defined love in marriage as a 50-50 thing. So, it is expected that the husband gives 50% and the wife gives 50%. Two things are wrong with this love methodology. The first is when you give 50% of your love and commitment into your marriage that means you are giving just half of yourself into that marriage. If you are just giving half of your love and commitment into your marriage, then you should not expect your spouse to give more than just half of himself or herself into the marriage or else you will be cheating him or her and asking for too much. Remember the level of your investment determines the level of yield you will get from it.

And then what are you going to be doing with the remaining 50% of your love and commitment? If you are not investing it in the marriage, then you are not being loyal to your marriage. If the marriage goes down, you will be the architect of that.

And then secondly, let’s do a little arithmetic, if you give 50% of you into your marriage and your spouse gives 50% of himself or herself into a marriage, you will both arrive at a 100% which is good, but far from being good enough. If you invest all of your emotions and commitment into your marriage, that means you are giving your 100%. If on the other hand, your spouse is giving his/her 100% love and commitment, what you will arrive at is 200%. That is twice what you will have if you were just giving half of yourself into your marriage, so why settle for less?

Love is good and beautiful and highly needed in the survival of any marriage, but that love needs to be kept alive or else it will be totally worthless. For love to thrive, it needs all that sacrificial watering and sunning you can give to it. Without your sacrificial watering and painful sunning, it will die fast. Make it a point of responsibility to water and sun your love in marriage to keep it alive and beautiful. You know what to do, so kill that which prevents you from enjoying your marriage and groom the beautiful flower of love that adds color to your marriage. 

Dealing With a Temperamental Husband

First, I want to wish us a prosperous month of March. I pray we will enjoy the full measure of God in our lives this month in Jesus name.

Yesterday I was chatting with a friend in a troubled marriage, she had gotten divorced from her husband on the grounds that he was abusive. In the course of our chat, I mentioned to her that most men who behave badly in marriage do so due to peer influence. Men discuss issues with their friends a lot and quietly implement that which they learn from those friends. But she debunked my claim concerning her own situation and told me categorically that her husband’s parents were like that in their marriage. Her husband’s father used to beat his mother, and even though he (her husband) had vowed never to go that route in his marriage, he finds out that he can’t control his temper and gets to beat his wife even though he never wants to do so.

To the glory of God, she told me that after reading one of my blog write-ups in the past, she realized that getting a divorce wouldn’t solve the problem and so they reunited, but still live apart, but that they are building a house together and once done, they will be moving back in together.

With her permission, I am sharing her story so that a lot of women can learn from it. Looking at an issue like this, there are many things to note, first is that the abusing husband is by himself not abusive at heart. He finds himself doing the exact opposite of what he wants to do. He wants to love his wife but does the exact opposite, probably because growing up he has seen so much of abuse in the marriage of his parents that it seems to be the norm to him. So as far as he knows, the only way to make his wife do his bidding is to beat sense into her. And this might be the same issue with quite a handful of abuse in marriages.

In as much as I don’t want to make a case for abuse in marriage or excuse it in any way or tolerate it in any form, it’s important that we look at this problem from another dimension. In a case where a husband grew up in a dysfunctional home with very wrong values inherited from his parents, it will help to understand that the husband is as much a victim of the problem as much as the wife. He does what he hates to do because that is what he has seen his parents do, and now he needs to learn new values of life for an effective and happy marriage. He needs to be taught that in order to make his wife do his bidding, he can always love her into it.

I have always shared in my blog articles that emotions alone are not strong enough to sustain a marriage. Wisdom and in fact divine wisdom is the important ingredient to make marriage a success. If as a wife you are married to a husband with character flaws and deficiency, condemning such a man or running away from such a man does not get the problem solved and does not make you an exceptional wife that is the pride of a man. But helping your husband become better than how you met him singles you out as a hero. If in your lifetime, your husband is the only person you have helped become a better person as your contribution to the service of God and humanity, you have done fantastically well. If no one recognizes you for your labor, heaven does and will reward you bountifully and your husband will be grateful that he met you in his lifetime. You will become to him a high priced, valued and cherished tool in his life.

Dealing with a man who has grown up with very wrong moral values requires wisdom, patience and the ability to absorb shock. All these are made available from the throne of God through prayers and the will to be obedient to God. When you have a temperamental husband, the last thing you should be doing is to provoke him to anger. You cannot correct your husband like you would your child whether he is temperamental or not. The man is the head of the wife and not otherwise. If you know there is anything that can possibly upset him then it is just simple wisdom that you avoid those things. You speak to your husband more with your attitude than with your words. You should deal with your own character as a wife such that what he sees in you will create an impression in him that brings about the changes you desire in him far more than the words you say to him. Our action speaks volumes and far more than we know, our husbands read and study our actions. We need to deliberately possess character values that make our husbands sit down and have a rethink about their own lives.

When the Lord began to train me on submission, initially it was tough, but little did I know that it was that submission that will change my husband and make him a better person that he is today. I have so mastered submission that its beginning to yield huge positive results for me. Even when I know that the instructions my husband is giving aren’t going to get the job done or get us the result we want, rather than do things the way I feel is right, I follow my husband’s route. It might sound foolish, but it has saved me a lot of headaches and heartaches in my marriage. If eventually we are unable to arrive at the desired result and he complains, I will point it to him gently that I did it just the way he wanted it done, so if there is an error then it is not my fault but his. It is only then will I point to him that, well, there is another way we can do it to get a better result because I know that at that moment he is ready to listen to me. But never will I force my opinion on him, and I have made that very clear to him. After several mistakes and instances like that, we now dialog more than him issuing instructions.   

Many mistakes like this have helped my marriage a great deal. In what felt like foolishness, I have been able to make a great impact in the life of my husband. He is also learning to be patient with me and listen to me more. We agree on the approach and then execute. He is limiting his “I gave you an instruction” approach and adopting the “let’s discuss” approach.

But I can’t remove God from my achievements in marriage. All the success I have recorded as a wife to a temperamental husband was because I prayed, and God answered. He led me through it, and I obeyed Him (God) foolishly. I didn’t try to rationalize God or try to understand His dealings, just that as I sense Him leading, I followed. Many people tell me I am enjoying God’s grace in abundance and I can’t deny that in my life. But that much grace as it is available for me is also available for all. God’s grace is like a flowing river that never runs dry. When you go to the river to fetch water, the container you go with determines the quantity of water you will take from the river, if you go with a 35cl glass cup, the water you can take will only be what that 35cl glass cup can carry. And if you go with a 1000ltr water tank, you get the quantity of water that your tank can carry. So, when you go to God for grace, your container determines the quantity of grace that you can carry from God. If you go to God with a small container, you get small grace and if you go with a large container, you get large grace. It’s all about you.

Before you condemn your husband as a never do well, are you willing to be the change agent in his life? Are you available to God to use to correct all the foundational problems that he has grown up with despite the fact that he hurts you so bad? Interestingly, he is as much a victim of his problems as you are. Fighting him will only amount to him fighting two enemies (you and his problems). But understanding his situation and helping him fight his demons will mean you two joining forces to fight a common enemy. You can be sure that with God on your side the victory is sure. I am happy now and I know you too will be happy if you fight the real enemy of your joy and happiness. That real enemy is not your husband. He does not possess flesh and blood.