HOW COULD THE MAN I LOVE SO MUCH HURT ME TO THE LAST OF MY BONES?

I sat there waiting she was running late which was so unlike her. A few minutes later my phone rings and yes it was my good old friend Marcela. She told me she needed 10 more minutes then she will join me. Since I had no other appointments, I waited. It didn’t take 10 minutes and she was there! We were all excited to see each other after such a long time. We grew up together in our teens; I remember so well how wonderful we told the stories of how we wanted a Cinderella dress for our wedding. The memories trickled in one by one. Then we fast forward…. And now we are both married to the men we love so much. 

Then she poses and looks right into my eyes, takes a big breath, with tears in her eyes and a smile on her face she asked, “How could the man I love so much hurt me to the last of my bones?” I immediately knew she was in trouble.  I remember thinking in my head only a woman would cry and smile at the same time. Only a woman would cry for what belongs to her, only a woman smiles when she is hurting.

I held her hand and asked if she wanted to talk she slowly nodded her head as she picked her handkerchief from her bag. She then tries to compose her self and said: “No woman in this entire world knows what it takes to love my husband, no woman knows the cost of loving my husband and if they did, they would not be proud to be the other woman in his life. The good memories we had when we first met, the jokes and the walks we always took, the way we went to the park to pray for our lives and that of our children, the promises we gave to each other, the mood swings of carrying the child of the man you truely love, the labor pains of pushing our children reminding yourself you have to make it for your husband’s and your child’s sake, the lonely nights at home when he never came back, never called and if he did was to acusse me of a wrong I did in the past. It hurts and it hurts to the last of my bones” 

At this point, I was trying so hard not to cry because this statement broke my heart. I knew in my heart that marriage is beautiful but how do I tell a woman who is hurting so badly to hold on things will get better? She continued “I want to stay because I love my husband; I want to keep my vows to him, and God hates divorce. I might have done many wrong things but I have never cheated on him.” Still crying, I held her hand and said “Let us pray” and so we prayed in agreement and believed God for His intervention.  I didn’t know where to start from but I picked up a line anyway “How long has this been going on?” She paused for a minute wiped her tears and said “How long this has been going on does not matter what matters the most is that I have chosen to love my husband over and over again and I want you to keep me accountable on this one. I want to love him with no expectations I want to learn to forgive him everyday of my life I want my marriage to be what God wants it to be even though my husband wants out, I will trust in God for a better ending because the end of a matter is better than the beginning.”  She looks at me and smiles again though still crying. I smile back at her and all I could see was the love she had for her husband. She challenged me, even in her distress; she picked out the positive things.

As I sat there, I started to get angry. I remember asking “God where are you in all this?” and a gentle spirit calmed me down I heard this words very clearly and even spoke them aloud to Marcela “Even in your pain I am with you. I am God and that will never change” 

In that moment of anger, I felt God speak to my heart, “Are you really going to be angry yet I have said My grace is sufficient in all things? Where is the grace in that?”

By the time we finished our conversation, my anger had left and I felt appreciative for God’s revelation in me. I knew all things work together for good for those that love the Lord. 

As we’ve interacted with many couples over the past years, there is one missing ingredient that causes a marriage to struggle: grace.

When a marriage is missing grace the entire disposition of the relationship changes.

Little things cause big fights.

Motives are constantly questioned.

Tempers are short and often lost.

Assumptions are always made.

Conclusions are frequently jumped to.

Husbands and wives consistently lead with anger.

The past is always brought up.

The score is always kept.

When grace is missing from a marriage, three words dominate that relationship: You. Owe. Me.

A lack of grace will cause a husband to be furious with his wife for telling him her fears. A lack of grace will cause a wife to notice all that her husband does wrong and not see all he does right.

It is easy to give grace to others and refuse to give it to your spouse. You can’t show grace to someone you are trying to make pay.

If you want to see change and improvement in your marriage, take a few minutes this week to think about how messed up and imperfect you are…and how God loves you anyway. That is grace.

So many couples try to correct their behavior or change their communication patterns, but without grace those changes are temporary and exhausting. Grace is the starting point from which all change is made.

When you connect your heart to the grace of God, it becomes much easier to dispense that grace to the person you love the most.

Today I want to let you know alls well that ends well and all our marriages have and will work in Jesus name. I want you to help us in pray for marriages. Make sure to leave a comment on our blog as we encourage Marcela and many other couples that are struggling in their relationships. Every positive comment counts because you never now if it will save a life. Don’t forget 

MARRIAGE IS BEAUTIFUL AND MINE MUST WORK!

Love you all! Brenda

WHEN A GOOD MARRIAGE ISNT GOOD ENOUGH

What do you do when you have gotten into marriage and it's not what you expected? Do you turn back and go? Do you stay and hope things will be better? At this point most people will want to do what would suite them best. Does this ring a bell in your mind? "You are the change you want to see." This is a quote we probably all know too well but very few of us would practice it in our marriages.If you want to see change in your spouse it has to start with you.We have gotten into marriage hoping that we will change our partners to be another us.I mean, why would two same people marry each other? it would be a boring world if that happened to all of us! At least for me it would be like the end of the world. I don't think i would stand a husband who is talkative because am one talkative lady we would be competing on who says the most like our daughter Janelle and I. We are always competing to talk. I just love my quiet nice husband who listens to all my stories even when they do not make sense. :) Most of the time in marriage we often see the negative things and what our partners are not other than what they are. Learn to count your blessings perhaps you would start by thanking God for a partner even if they are not what you expected.Some people are praying and fasting to get a partner and they are still on the waiting list.It reminds me of the 80/20 rule. How many people leave the 80 and run for the 20 only to discover that: "You don't know what you've got until its gone." I want us to do a simple exercise. Take a blank paper on one side of the paper write positive and on the other side of the paper write negative the start listing all the positive and the negative things about your spouse and in most if not all the time, you will find that the positive out weighs the negative.  There is never a perfect person neither is there a percent marriage and trust me if your partner changes to what you want them to become your marriage will fail i would rather they become what God wants them to become.

My husband is a perfectionist am not and sometimes i feel so bad about not being perfect and i try to be perfect but it will only take two days before i get tired of being soooo perfect besides, i think i scare him every time i try to be perfect.Your spouse should love you for who you are and complement you. I hate ironing like HATE ironing i do it because i have to do it but if i had a choice i would just not simply do it but on the contrary, my husband loves ironing and you might think his clothes are new from the shop! Sometimes am like how does he do that? I always tell him he has magic hands he touches your clothes they get life. (Sometimes i tell him God knows i don't like ironing and gave me a husband who loves ironing)After a long time of arguing on ironing, my husband chose to understand me and take it up as an act of love. If my husband irons my clothes then i feel so much loved and i really do appreciate it from the bottom of my heart.Sometime when people tell me am smart 50% of that credit goes to my husband because he has tireless never got tired of doing what i don't like as an act of love. To all of us lets lower down our bench marks on our spouses and love them for who they are lets not be their mothers or their fathers lets just simply be their spouses because marriage is beautiful and mine must work!

By Brenda Ochieng

INTEGRITY

I repeatedly tell myself that my marriage either works or it works! No one can make it work better other than God himself, my husband and I. I must say this and I stand to be corrected if I am wrong there is nothing at all in this world that can match the beauty of marriage. Marriage is very beautiful in fact, its fanatamaglorious!! This is a word I have borrowed from my husband which simply means fantastic, marvelous and glorious. That’s why I will urge all of us to put effort in our marriages so that each one of us is able to enjoy every bit of it as God intended for us. 

Getting married to Kevin is the best thing that ever happened to me. I appreciate every bit of my marriage season and I pray to God as we draw closer to Him he shall help us be better for each other. At this point some of you are wondering if I have lost my mind or something. Actually I am totally sane right now just for the records. Does it mean that Kevin and I don’t have differences and we do not fight at all? No it only means that most of the time we do fight but even though we fight, we have made a choice to work on our marriage day by day until we are better for each other. We are just 2 normal human begins who have decided to draw nearer to God so that He can make us beautiful for each other. I am more of an extrovert who is talkative, always all over and a happy go lucky kind a lady and my husband is an introvert a quiet and very very organized gentle man and when I say organized I mean every little bit of it. As far as the north is from the south, so is our character and our behavior. We are almost like day and night. This can paint a picture of how much different we are and how a typical fight between the two of us would look like. It has not been easy like it may sound in my story, neither are we perfect but we are learning to aim at God to make us better partners for each other and that’s why we have no choice but to work on ourselves and our marriage until it is as beautiful as Christ Jesus would want it to be. 

Most of the times a lot of marriages break because of integrity. Most people tend to hide a lot of secrets behind their make-up, their wealth, job, careers, cars, cloths etc. Is it right that there should be secrets between two married partners? If you think yes then that beats the fact that love does not keep a record of wrong. Don’t you think so?  Many times a lot of people are struggling with secrets in their marriages and these secrets keep eating and eating them up to the point it breaks their marriage. We should all understand that speaking truthfully and honestly to our spouses will not only help us build our bond with each other but above all it will glorify God. We should learn to say it as it is and be remorseful enough to accept our wrongs, ask God and our partners to forgive us and not defend and find excuses for why we did what we did. Remember that one sin always leads to another and before you know it one finds him/her self too deep into sin hence having too many secrets that will eventually end up breaking your marriage. Let’s learn to open up to each other and be willing to be accommodating enough to forgive and pray for each other so that we can be people of integrity. 

Integrity is not what you appear to be when all eyes are on you, it’s who you are when no one is looking. It’s a level of morality below which you never fall, no matter what’s happening around you. It is high standards of honesty, truthfulness, decency and honor that is never breached. It’s doing for your spouse what you would want them to do for you. A spouse of integrity says something and means it. They don’t play verbal games so you never really know where they stand. They know to let their “Yes” be “Yes” and their “No” be “No” for whatever is more than this is from the evil one. Matt 5:37. They will not play both sides of the fence to please everyone Their Goal is to please God and do what is right. A spouse of integrity will keep their word even if it costs them something to do so. When placed in a possibly compromising situation, they will continue to stand strong in what they believe in. above all we should all be a spouse of truth, one can depend on our solid honesty. You have to be the spouse that stands firm and says my marriage either works or it works!

By Brenda Ochieng

CHOOSING OUR BATTLES

Dear Friends,

Is it worth fighting over? I ask myself this every day. We all know that a couple that has no fights does not exist. While this statement is true, I want to say that we should learn to choose our battles. We cannot just fight over anything and everything as it has become the behavior of some of us. Marriage is great when two people enter into it with a mutual commitment to keep it strong no matter what. Most of the time a couple will have preconceived ideas about who the other is and how married life is supposed to be, and then reality checks in and that’s when their kingdom can become divided. A couple needs to ask God to do whatever it takes to keep their marriage intact, even if it means striking one of you with lightening when you think about giving it all up! Marriage takes work it’s always not easy and sometimes we have to learn the hard way. Sometimes differences have become so huge that you probably thinking how you are supposed to show love to somebody over and over and over again who constantly continues to hurt and reject you. Well, you should never at any one point stop loving your spouse because God is love. You can’t truly love your spouse until you truly understand what love is. 

1^st Corinthians 13: 4-8 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

This is the kind of Love that God wants us to share with our spouses. If you are not married, don’t get married for the wrong reasons and if you are married, don’t get divorced for the wrong reasons. Don’t just be concerned about your rights and your needs; don’t be selfish because if you are, one ends up ruining their spouse’s lives. God made marriage to be for a lifetime we can’t just get in and out of it like we feel like. We have to keep our vows to our spouses. We have to beg God to help us be the husband/wife He wants us to be. Most of the time I have heard people say they will follow their heart. This is very wrong and I will tell you why we should never at any one point follow our hearts. The bible says the heart of a man is deceitful above all things and if we choose to follow our hearts we can be deceived but we have to lead our hearts to be more like Jesus Christ so that we are able to love our spouses with the love that God wants us to love them with *UNCONDITIONAL LOVE*

My life in marriage has been a class to learn every day. Coming from a broken home made me become very emotional and defensive. I saw my parents fight and I was so scared of marriage. I always told my husband that any time he would show me signs of being like my dad I will walk out of our marriage. I was always alert to defend and strike at any point I sensed that my husband was going to confront me with something he thought we should talk about. Instead of asking God to help me know when to talk and when to keep quiet, I picked up fights even when I should not have and we were always in a bad mood. We could not talk about anything important without getting into a fight. This would hurt my husband so much and at some point I think he was so frustrated on what to do he only could not tell me. Whenever my husband tried to tell me how he felt about something, I would get so emotional and the conversation would stop. It got to the point we would rather avoid any conversation about us and talk about anything else. We feared conflict and began to sweep things under the carpet. This was not healthy for us and whenever we fought, it was a really bad fight. At one point I remember we argued about finances while in public transport to the point my husband threw his wedding ring out of his window. We are still not perfect but we are seeking perfection from God. We want a Godly marriage and we will hold on to God until he teaches us how to be better partners for each other. Sweeping things under the carpet is not healthy for any couple because the day either one explodes then the fight will not be a good fight. We all ought to discuss things as they are when they are still fresh in a very Godly manner. The bible tells us we should not let the sun go down when we are still angry. 

We always have a joke in our house that those days we would not resolve conflict, one used to get in the house and before you do anything you check around and under the seats, beds etc just in case the other partner planted a bomb for you to explode! As much as so many people would not want to come out and share their stories, this is very true in most marriages and I would just urge us to learn to choose our battles. If it’s not worth fighting over then let’s not fight because some of this conflicts cost us so much. Our spouses get hurt because sometimes we say things we do not mean to say and we cannot get our words back. When we respond with anger, then we do not only hurt our spouses but we hurt God too. So many unhealthy relationships exist and so many people are chocked in such relationships. They are busy trying to see how they can fix their partners than how they can ask God to fix them to be better partners. For those who are busy trying to fix their spouses, I have news for you stop fixing what is not broken the person who needs fixing is you! We all probably don’t know how to be better spouses to our partners but if we ask God, then He will teach us on how to be one lovely spouse to our partners because marriage is beautiful  and mine must work!

 By Brenda Ochieng

IF YOU CANT BEAT THEM JOIN THEM

Dear Friends,

Is this statement true? Do I really want to join him? Heddwyn and Lydia Williams one of our mentor couples during our premarital session is one lovely couple that has been married for such a long time. Once Lydia told me “Brenda, if you can’t beat them join them”  and I was like “No you just did not tell me that! i really don't want to join him” I felt so sorry for myself. It felt like i was just coming from home under the control of my parents to being under the control of my husband. Is this true that submitting is being controlled?  Absolutely not our spouses are not controllers they are our lovers and we ought to treat them with love. There was no way this was going to happen. My husband is a football fanatic or so to say soccer fanatic for the sake of my brothers and sisters abroad and he would do anything to make sure he watches any game his favorite team Arsenal would play. Hehehehe! I know I have caught the eyes of most men with my previous sentence. It felt like he gave football priority over me and I started fighting it. Every time he told me he is going to watch football we would have a fight I even went to the extent of telling him to make football his wife. I knew the bible told us that we should do everything with moderation and I just didn’t understand how my husband loved football so much that he would put on hold everything else until the game is over. After some time I thought to myself that my tantrums have not worked and so I shared my story with Lydia Williams who was not only our mentor couple but also happened to be my husband’s boss then. My husband even watched football with Heddwyn Williams who was also his boss they would even bet which team would win that's how much the 2 of them loved football.

I remember when I told her this story, I had balancing tears in my eyes I wanted to cry so loudly but held it in to save myself from shame. She put her hand over my shoulder and told me her story. She used to be in the same situation in her marriage but she thought she would die trying to make her husband stop loving football. So she decided that “if she can’t beat him join him” and she begun to accompany her husband to the matches every time he went for one.  Guess what? It worked perfectly well for her! She started having sports conversations with her husband that played part in improving their marriage. At that point, her husband felt that her wife was very loving to come to a football match with him. Before Heddwyn knew it, he had begun slowing down on the matches since he also wanted to join Lydia on some of the things she liked doing. I decided to take her advice and guess what? It worked for me too! I don’t go for all his games but it helped me learn to let him to do what he liked doing as long as it does not draw him away from God. I guess that answers my question on top of the page it doesn’t matter how much you don’t enjoy something positive your spouse does if it’s going to improve your marriage it’s worth the sacrifice. You might be asking how football would improve any marriage. The answer is it creates a good atmosphere for you and your spouse to share a conversation he likes even if you don’t like it yourself with time you will find that you don’t mind doing it for the person you love. My confession is that today as I write this I feel nothing even if my husband watches 5 games in a raw I out grew my jealousy and I came to know that his love for me is much greater than his love for football it can never replace me and that’s just the truth. 

Men can do anything to watch a game they love would you also take the same example and even be better husbands and do anything for that woman you love. You never stop supporting a team despite how many times they have lost. Your wife should never cease to be your favorite despite how many times she has failed you and the reverse is true.  I mean my husband is still an Arsenal fun to date and you dare not say anything negative on the team because you will not like that conversation. Why would it be so easy to write off your marriage yet it means so much than a football team? Why is it so easy to write off the most important things in Life? I pray to God that this shall not be our portion in Jesus name! The bible says that a man shall leave his father and mother and become one with the wife why then would we let our better halves go? This are questions we should always ask ourselves and strive to do the right things even when we don’t feel like because Marriage is beautiful and mine must work!

By Brenda Ochieng