I have heard it over and over that marriage is overrated. I haven't experienced that though, rather I feel there's so much more that the ride can offer, that we aren't even scratching yet. There's a sweetness in marriage that every couple knows it's possible deep inside. It's like you need to scratch that part of your back where your finger can hardly touch but you aren't quite getting it. You know the joy of getting relief from scratching a part of your skin that's hitching and no one can say deriving such satisfaction is overrated.
There's sweetness in marriage be it the sex without guilt, being naked and not being ashamed? Is it the companionship, holding and having? Is it the shoulder to lean on when weary or someone to protect and to care for?
Is it the friendship and the fondness, the likeness that feels good within, both to give and to receive? Is it the hands to hold or the body to cuddle? Is the beautiful thoughts in the mind concerning the other person?
What about the freedom to be all of you before another imperfect person who takes you as you are? What about the forgiveness and the forbearing? What about the childish plays between adults even as grandparents?
The list goes on and on, to how you got that help and comfort from your spouse in time of loss, disappointment, troubles, frustration, depressions and failures without being used against you. To the times you got reassurances and confidence boost of faith and belief from him or her. Even the joy of being there for each other and that mutual sense of being responsible.
These joys, many times, are hardly gotten with such rigid assurance from other people with whom we don't have such depth of commitment but from someone with who we had gone to the extent of marriage.
I'm not speaking of the negative sense of entitlement that places demands on one's spouse. But the joyful thoughts that someone actually would willingly put herself or himself in that position to take all your messes and filth at such a close range with little room for manoeuvring and still be ready to give all the joys without complaining... That's sweetness!
One may ask, 'Are you saying every marriage should be like what you have described here?' Well, yes. Every marriage should be like that and it won't start with your husband or your wife but with you!
You both should first of all have a vision of such a marriage because marriage has that to offer, probably even much more than I have said here. You should, however, know that it won't fall on you like ripe mangoes. It takes commitment from each of you as individuals and from both of you as a tag team.
It takes translating that commitment to practicality through efforts, both joint efforts and personal efforts. It takes work to squeeze out the juice of sweetness from the fruit of marriage.
Samson in the Bible said, 'Out of the strong came forth sweetness and out of the eater came forth food'
Marriage is as a basket full of juicy fruits from where wines should be made to bring sweetness and gladness. Our unions should be winepresses where work is done to bring forth the juice people would drink into with joy.
But as Pastors Femi and Shola Oladipo said in their new book, Connection, not Perfection, many marriages' toolboxes are either empty or scanty. So, they don't have what to work with. I guess some don't even have toolboxes thinking the wedding suits and the dresses aren't work clothes. They had planned to live literally together happily ever after without lifting a finger.
To many of such people, marriage will be overrated because of the misconceptions of how to get the wine out of the fruits. They'll discover that they have had the thoughts of lemonade but had been given lemons and not knowing that the lemonade is in the lemon, they throw the lemon away with the lemonade.
You may need to understand how to squeeze the juice, and it's such that the sweetness keeps getting better as it ages, if you know how to grind and squeeze it out.
The work is in giving the sweetness, without selfishness or a sense of entitlement, to someone with whom you have both made commitments of marital sweetness.
That's why it's good for one to know what the other thinks marriage is before getting into it. Someone to marry isn't someone to serve you and to exploit even if the other person is ready to serve, honor, submit, care and protect you.
Just as you need to know what the other person thinks marriage to be, you too ought also to know what marriage is all about. It isn't a selfish trip, it is a 'we' thing and not a 'me' thing.
If you don't have the capacity for unconditional love, you may not be ready for marriage. If you don't have the willingness to give and to forgive selflessly, then marriage may not be for you except you develop that capacity.
If you don't have the capacity to desire and work for the betterment of another person sometimes at your own expense willingly, without feeling cheated or deprived, you may not be ready for marriage.
But when each of you first, and then after, both of you, get to that point where you are ready to be so to one another then you are ready for that sweetness.
That point where each understands that he or she doesn't have a right over himself or herself but the spouse, where it means that you have cheated and defrauded just for depriving the other person what's yours... That point, the juice will start dripping and dropping and soon it'll become a pool where others can fetch from for their own satisfaction.
Folks, there's sweetness in marriage, don't despise it. You won't find it in living outside marriage trying to dramatise it like in a movie until you give and get that commitment and get down to the winepress and squeeze out the wine...
Would you think about this? Start this weekend. God bless you greatly! Happy weekend.
"The marriage bed must be a place of mutuality—the husband seeking to satisfy his wife, the wife seeking to satisfy her husband. Marriage is not a place to “stand up for your rights.” Marriage is a decision to serve the other, whether in bed or out. -Apostle Paul to the church at Corinth
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