Looking back over the past year is one of my favorite traditions. I get to remember the ups and downs, the growth that occurred, and see what themes continually show up. This is the first year that I’ve applied this to my professional life, probably because it’s the first full year I’ve had as a hmmmmmmm you don't need to this sweetie In looking back over the past year, I’ve seen an emphasis on 5 different virtues about marriage.


1. Choosing marriage is choosing to give up control of your life.


I cannot emphasize this virtue any stronger:
Marriage will cost you your life. If you value your own authority, singleness, or ego more than that of others, do not get married. Choosing marriage will require you to give up control of your life.
You will make decisions that will affect at least two people (more later when you have kids), and this is a very difficult change from that of a single life. It might be the best gift ever given to a single person, and it’s the costliest.

In a very real way, marriage is much like salvation. In accepting God’s plan and will for your life, you are setting aside your own to be submissive his his plan. This means that you’re an active participant in his plan, but your life is not about your happiness. Marriage is about giving up of ones life for the sake of the other, which translates to a giving up of control.

“You complete me,” might be one of the most famous lines in the movie Jerry Maguire, and it might be the most misleading. Marriage will offer you the unique and unparalleled opportunity to grow. Marriage will not fill you, rather it will make you more aware of your emptiness and need for God, and only God.
Unfortunately there is no real way that Hollywood /Nollywood can show more than an infatuated love. So we don’t get a real picture as to what mature, longstanding love looks like. Instead we get a glimpse of the joy and warm fuzzy love that we all want to have. There’s nothing wrong with this, but it’s not a lasting version of love.


2. Couples that protect pain from happening are preventing intimacy (connections) from developing.

Its no secret that people don’t like pain. It’s also no secret that being in a close relationship is an inevitable date with pain. The challenge is viewing pain as though it is a gift, not the plague. Pain is not fun, but neither is numbness. I don’t know about you, but when I leave the dentist after getting a shot of Novocain, I cannot wait for it to wear off. The feeling of not controlling half of my face is miserable (not to mention the inability to know when I’m drooling). We were not made to be numb, we were made to feel.


Pain shapes our lives either in our acceptance of it or our refusal to experience it. Creating a space for pain to be a welcomed guest in your marriage will serve you well. This is the task of every marriage: To create and develop a philosophy of dealing with pain. You will raise the next generation of people based on how you and your spouse engage each other in times of pain.


3. Marriage is a muscle: Use it or lose it.


Marriage takes work, and will not naturally grow on it’s own. It takes consistent time and energy much like your muscles. If you were to sit all day every day for a year, you would notice a significant amount of atrophy in your body. Your inability to function after that year of sitting would likely take you a more painful and greater amount of recovery to return to your previous abilities (if ever at all). Once you have lost muscle mass, it is very difficult to get it back.
Your months and years of dating and courtship are very much like a daily trip to the gym. You’re exercising the muscles of the relationship that cause it to grow. When you get married, continue your visits to the gym (literally and metaphorically). Read books together, attend marriage workshops, go on dates, spend intentional time together, take trips. Do all of these things regularly and your marriage will not atrophy.


4. One plus one equals three: Becoming one, requires two.


One of the more nuanced challenges of marriage is to become one together, but remain distinctly individual in the process. It will take both husband and wife bringing 100% each to the marriage to make the relationship work. This is not a 50-50% proposition, it’s a 100-100% arrangement. Only bringing 50% of yourself to the table means you’re not being fully you in the relationship.

When a husband or wife begin to lose their individuality, marriage problems will soon follow. Being an individual is not the same as being single, rather it’s being an individual who maintains their autonomy while being 100% committed to the growth and health of the other person for the sake of the marriage.

This is the goal of marriage, to tend to and care for the spiritual and emotional health in our spouse. We have the best chance of doing this when we are operating out of our fully unique and individual lives.


5. Marriage is Redemptive.


I know no other way to describe marriage more simply than its capacity to enact redemption in life. This comes in unimaginable ways as past wounds, hurts, fears, and resentments are all confronted with the woman of our dreams.
Surrendering ones life to another is hard, yes, but it is also glorious. I believe this is the hope that beckons us to get married in the first place. We might not know this is what we are signing up for, but the spirit in us all moves us towards a need for being saved from ourselves.

Marriage offers us just that: An opportunity to be saved from ourselves.

Hmmm...
For the married and the intending

chai,chai, wey,my Dyt oooooo,nor worry we go talk,get gist for you,am still on and off these day's

Martin0:



chai,chai, wey,my Dyt oooooo,nor worry we go talk,get gist for you,am still on and off these day's

Did he tell I asked of you?
Glad you feel better

Dyt:


Did he tell I asked of you?
Glad you feel better

yes oo, met yesterday I will be fully back again to social life this month,I just dey arrange things oo,including ur side

mehn I am strong now ooo,e nor easy! thanks for the care oo nor worry ar go buy u ice cream

martin's year ends in June and July is the start of a new year this dude though.

Martin0:



yes oo, met yesterday I will be fully back again to social life this month,I just dey arrange things oo,including ur side

mehn I am strong now ooo,e nor easy! thanks for the care oo nor worry ar go buy u ice cream

Clown
You take care

Dyt:

Clown You take care

na u sabi oo
yeah I hail you oo

MISEDUCATIONS:
martin's year ends in June and July is the start of a new year this dude though.

nor let people wey,strong pass u,cut off ur mouth ooo

Martin0:


nor let people wey,strong pass u,cut off ur mouth ooo

how you doing though

MISEDUCATIONS:
how you doing though

mehn,brother I just dey,yakata for bed how ur side na u just dey shine like say tomorrow nor go come again

Martin0:


nor let people wey,strong pass u,cut off ur mouth ooo

How have you been?

khiaa:

How have you been?

cool and you,been a long time oo