Why Walk the Tightrope?

Relationship Friday: Why Walk the Tightrope?

One of the greatest awe inspiring entertainments are those performed by stuntmen and women who walk on tight ropes, some with bars to hold for balance and others without. Some perform in circuses and more daring ones do it between skyscrapers. We applaud those who made it and reward them lavishly with their acts recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records. Those who fall and die hardly make it beyond the evening News. The world doesn't celebrate failure.

Now, that tells us how dangerous walking on tight ropes can be, and why only a daring few ever gets to perform it at the highest level. And even the best of these stuntmen don't live on those tight ropes, no matter how much they make per performance. They step down afterwards to enjoy their pays in normal lives.

This morning, I'm inspired to tell you, married and about to marry folks, why you shouldn't transform your marriage into a tight rope you walk on daily.

God's plan is that our homes will be resting nests for every member of the house. A place to remember when away and be hopeful of returning to. A place where after being battered and beaten at the market place and offices, we can return to for entertainment and comfort. A place where we can find solace for all the troubles of labor and of men. If that's not what you want in marriage, don't bother to go in there. It must be a place we prepare for ourselves and for our partners so to be.

It shouldn't be a place where we are always struggling to maintain a balance so as not to fall off and get injured or even die.

Why do we find ourselves in such situations? The sense of having just a thin line to tow or to toe is a sign of limited space for manoeuvre. It's a kind of bondage and binding to a narrow route of which stepping out of such a line would cause a big problem.

It is that sense of having to compulsorily do things in certain way so as not to offend or cause disruptions in the home. It is that sense of superlative carefulness that steal peace of mind. It is a kind of cold war, a maintenance of a kind of peace that don't offer freedom. Real peace comes with freedom!

The home however is a place of freedom. A place where you are free to be naked and not be ashamed. It is a place where you should be yourself and create room for others to be themselves too. A place where others are free to boldly without animosity correct our errors and mistakes and where we too can correct other people's mistakes without the fear of them taking things personal.

We aren't perfect people. We get into relationships with other imperfect people. We need not be there demanding perfection that we ourselves can't give. Marriage isn't flying a plane. It isn't managing the atom bomb button where being careful all the time is the job. Where safety and security won't give room, not even a foot space, for play.

It is a place where we share our foolishness expecting that the other person will bear us gladly. It shouldn't be a place of criticism and cynicism at every little mistake. Not a place where you are always looking over your shoulders to see if you have not offended the other person. It isn't a place where you take offence even when there's none.

I wish we can grasp the fact that in marriage submitting and obedience to each other is purely for love. They aren't things enforced. When it gets to their being enforced, know that something is wrong already and steps must be retraced. When my wife scolds me, it isn't like she would scold our seven year old daughter... It's play, fun and love...and when I correct her, it isn't that I'm lording it over her, it's all loving in such a way that even if the correction isn't taken, it's still OK, we would always come back to joke about it. It has nothing to do with our egos, egos don't play any positive part in a loving marriage.

Men sometimes want to talk about their wives respect for them as a right and it's laughable sometimes, how some are so overtaken with that. In a relationship where you are expected to see each other's nakedness and display your emotions and base vulnerability in the desire and in the act of sex, someone who has seen you at that point over and over should be one to be so free with. We shouldn't be so overtaken with laws and rules that we make the home a prison or a military training grounds even if you live in the barracks.

Create that ambience of freedom in your home, be ready to enjoy your lives together. Create room for freedom and pleasure between yourselves. Nobody lives on a tight rope without getting tired to either come down or fall off. It's not a display we put up in the home neither what we should subject our spouses to. Be free and don't be afraid of the freedom of the other person. That's the kind of peace that is self sustaining. Wise people understand such kind of peace and not one created by a balance of power and by being so careful not to offend one another.

Let's work on it. Thanks for reading. Extra thanks for sharing!

Have a lovely weekend of peace and joy in the nest!

Good Morning!