Marriage Isn’t An Assignment!

By Dr jarlat Uche opara

Very beautiful an experience for those who are called to it. An experience that is laced with the good, the bad and the ugly, a fine mixture, if blended with love, patience and forbearance gives one a sweet smoothie for a relish.

No marriage works with a single condiment of love. Love isn’t a enough condiment to make a marriage cuisine that would stand the test of time. Yes , marriage isn’t an assignment to be discharged, rather a vocation to be pursued and lives through, yielding to God.

It is not an assignment to be carried out dutifully with mechanical precision expecting reward, rather a vocation to be fanned into flame with love, patience, forgiveness , endurance etc. It is not an assignment to be carried out with compulsion, strict rules to achieve but lacking in deep sense of self giving, total yielding and selfless disposition, not for trophies, not for crowns but for the sake of fulfilling vocation.

Marriage isn’t for love alone. It is beyond feeling. Marriage for love fades too soon and the crash and fall too deadly to be remedied most times.

Love is to marriage what painting is to a house. It gives it the aesthetics, the fine ambience, the gucci and cool outlook but not the stronghold, not the firmness, not the ruggedness. It can be renewed. It can be repainted, but it keeps fading and waning too. Build your marriage on it alone, the waves, the tsunami and the storm of life would make it so unbearable.

Marriage isn’t an assignment. See it through such lenses, you stand on a cliff, on a precepies, falling and crashing become a deed waiting for time.

Marriage is a vocation, wrapped around with love, patience, passion, commitment, forgiveness, forbearance, self- giving etc these are strands and layers that form a formidable army, that would fight abusiveness, infidelity, hatred, indifference etc when they come, surely they would.

Don’t marry out of love it vacilitates. Don’t marry out of beauty, it fades. Don’t marry out of pressure when push comes to shove, the heat, only you would bear. Don’t marry because of fame and wealth , these two are mere straws in the waves of life. Marry because your mind is Christ wired to accommodate, bear and endure with the love of God the good, the bad and the ugly that would find a home in the bag of your marriage.

Each marriage is unique. Each marriage comes with an empty bag, what it is filled with becomes the choices you make both in the long and short terms.

Your spouse isn’t a Saint,not an Angel in human form. They are work in progress, a piece of wood in the hand of the sculptor, carving off the excess to form the real them. A process that is continuous, by day it gets better but won’t get to the point of best , needing no carving again. Your spouse isn’t flawless, they are not made of gold and diamond, out of dust with dirts they were formed.

Understand this with commitment, love, patience, forgiveness etc and your marriage becomes nothing but a sweet Irish cocktail, not too sweet to cause diabetes, not too bland to cause vomit, not too bitter that it won’t be swallowed, but well blended, with a balanced taste, for healthiness.

Marriage!! A vocation not an assignment with time line.

Jarlathuche@gmail.com