RELATIONSHIP 101: DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE?

Warmest greetings to everyone who believes in love and is willing to pay the price to make love work. May love speak for you and yours, and even when the road is rough, may you trust the light of love  to lead the way for you.

Continuing with our talk on relationship 101, it is important that we pay attention to the fact that we are fearfully and wonderfully made...

If God would let us take a small peep into the future, we will be shocked to discover how perfectly the way we are, fits into His plan for our lives. So anytime you try to do something to change the way you are just because you are ashamed of it, you are actually saying that God is not as wise as He says He is. You will always get into trouble when you try to be somebody else, and anyone that tries to duplicate himself/herself (or anyone else for that matter) in you, does not attach value to who/what God has made you.

You have a complex problem when you cannot celebrate yourself; when you feel that everyone is better than you are. Soon, if you do not already, you will hate yourself, and then you will begin to blame God.

Instead of trying to change how God has created us, perhaps we should work and pray to change, by the constant renewal of our minds, certain characters and traits that we have which are unacceptable to God, and are potential destroyers of our relationships. 

Build up yourself to the level where you become trustworthy and reliable, then you will be in yourself a MIRACLE! And believe it or not, a miracle no matter the imperfections it may seem to have, is still a miracle, and there is someone (somewhere) who will love you enough to sincerely thank God for his/her miracle, despite those things you see as flaws.

Anyone that cannot stand the way you are (in terms of your size and looks), neither understands nor appreciates the wisdom of God in your life; and if you continue to hang out with them, they will eventually kill the very essence of God in you.

To be continued...

Blessings and more, to you and yours

SHALOM

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A GIRL AND A WOMAN

Greetings to everyone who believes in love... And everyone who knows that love is worth holding on to. I trust we are all doing well this fine week. Love has a very interesting way of inspiring us to be the very best we can be and I trust that the challenges inherent in our various relationships not withstanding, we are learning that love is a beautiful gift that we must give our best and our all, to nurture and preserve.

I have been receiving a lot of messages from my friends and readers. Some like the one below, are not questions but assertions out of someone's experience. I thought I should share it and perhaps know what you think. At the same time, I think that some of the lines (edited to suit the instant context) could serve as litmus for men to be properly guided, so they understand the implications of the decision they make to be in a relationship with a certain kind of lady (and not run away all of a sudden after a few brushes); and for the ladies to check themselves and know what kind of aura they exude and why they might feel they deserve more than they are getting and yet might never get it. May I add that I am doing a write that provides a balance to this piece in a post titled "The Difference Between Men and Boys"

Girls search for a rich man, Women search for a caring and loving man

Girls envy those who move ahead and hate the players; Women share their knowledge and help others move ahead by not hating the players but teaching the rules to the game
Girls measure a man's worth by the weight of his pocket; Women measure a man's worth by his level of Wisdom and the fear of God and how disciplined he can be towards his finances.
Girls breakup with silly excuses; Women have endurance knowing that everything happens for a reason
Girls think about the present; Women think about future
Girls love to have many guys going after them; Women know the law of demand (Cheap things have high purchasers)
Girls take their relationship affairs outside; Women solve their problem in-house...
Girls demand for money to buy make-Ups; Women demand for money to make plans
Girls get hurt by one man and make all men pay for it; Women know that, that was just ONE man

Girls will read this and get an attitude; WOMEN will read this and pass it (SHARE) on to other grown women

I am still thinking about all the lines, but I must admit that we all have a thing or two to learn out of this.

Blessings and more, to you and yours

SHALOM

RELATIONSHIP 101: WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

Greetings to everyone who believes in the impact that loving and being loved can have on their lives and the lives of the people around them. I trust that you are all doing well, and things are picking up really well for you in 2013. Best wishes to us all.

Relationship 101 is going to take a while longer than I anticipated to finish. To everyone who has sent messages to me on some of the issues already raised, I thank you for trusting me enough to share your issues with me. I was more excited though, about people who had one form of disagreement or the other about what they read; and about the fact that we were able to resolve it and agree that the mere fact that people refer to certain situations as ideal, does not mean that they are unachievable in reality. We are what we think, what we decide, and what we make out of the situations and circumstances that characterize our lives.

Too tall, too short, too dark, too light, too skinny, too fat, too this, too that…

One of the greatest problems relationships have these days hinges on complex. Complex about how we are and how we are not; what we are and what we are not; what we have, and what we have not. We hate people laughing around us because we feel they are laughing at the way we are; we are afraid to mingle or participate in certain kinds of activities, because we are too timid to be ourselves. A lot of us carry this behavior into our relationship(s), such that we are unnecessarily cautious and touchy with people we love:

"He didn’t talk to me like that because of what I did wrong, he just can’t stand my size (or my looks)…everybody hates me. I’m just not good enough…"
If you feel this way, don’t bother about going into a relationship yet. Let us deal with that complex before it destroys both you and any other thing you love, cherish, and encounter.
Most of the times we feel that people treat us the way they do, because of the way we are, or because of the things we are not, so we build a defense for ourselves, which culminates into aggression that most times are misplaced. 

Once the greatest appraisal of yourself is based on people's opinion of you, you will always take the backdoor even when you are not asked to; and even when there is no back door, you will create one, big enough to contain you. Now you want to be someone else, because you feel or believe that it will make you more acceptable to people.

It is not about who people think you are. It is not even about who you think you are. It is about what God has made and what He can make you.

To be continued...

RELATIONSHIP 101: Are You Ready To Be In a Relationship?

Greetings and a very happy new year to everyone who believes in love. 2013 has started very well and will add a lot of value to everyone's life both in lessons and achievements. There will be challenges, a reminder that we live in an imperfect world... But we shall thrive in this imperfect world. Continuing on Relationship 101

 

You must not be in a relationship if you cannot handle it. It is not a trial and error situation. We seem to have found the right phrases to justify our irresponsibility these days: “I will keep trying till I find the right person” And sometimes the cost of this is a lot of earthquakes, floods, hurricane, and explosions generally; or “we just want to try and see if it will work out." And sometimes I wonder why it takes a lot of cheating, and a lot of general mess to find out that YOU ARE IN FACT NOT MADE FOR EACH OTHER

Think about it.

You are not ready for a relationship, merely because you are old enough to be in one.

Age is just a numeric appellation, used to distinguish those who were born in a particular year or period, from those who were not.

So when are you ready for a relationship? Or rather, when are you not ready?

- If you are in a relationship merely because all your friends are, then you are not ready.

- If you are in a relationship because everyone expects you to be in one, then you are not ready.

- If you feel you know it all and you do not need a guide, you are not ready.

- If you are mama’s boy or daddy’s girl, and relationship to you is simply how your family sees it, you are not ready.

- If it all depends on your folks and their choice, you are not ready.

- If you have a lust-problem, and you lack self-control; and you feel there is nothing wrong with it, you are not ready.

- If you do not see the other person as being worth all the trouble and sacrifice, you are not ready.

- If you cannot just stop thinking about yourself only, you are not ready.

- If you have a complex problem, and you think that is the way things should be, you are not ready-“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent”-Booker .T. Washington.

- If you believe that it is safer to lie to your spouse, in order not to lose him/her, you are not ready. “What you compromise to get, you might ultimately loose”.

- If you cannot get over past mistakes and traumas, if you are just looking for a cushion to rest on after a broken heart, you are not ready.

To be continued...

RELATIONSHIP 101: Relationship Is a Responsibility...

Greetings to everyone who believes in love. We are here again at the season when a lot of people take a break from work to be with friends, family and every other person(s) who matter in their lives. I have been desirous of finishing this series that I have tagged "relationship 101 before 2012 runs out. Talking about 2012, I would like to specially thank God for everyone who has stopped by this blog; for every relationship that has been healed or strengthened by the words shared here, and for every life which has been touched by the activities on this blog. 

Your joy has been a great blessing to me... Your simple words of "thank you" have been some of the greatest pillars in this year to me. The fact that you keep coming doesn't just mean to me that I am making sense; it also means that I am not crazy to believe that loving and being loved are not just possible, but are blessings that everyone must experience. 

There is so much to be thankful for as far as 2012 is concerned... And today, I am thankful for every relationship which through this blog has sustained, despite the challenges they have had to encounter. Love is a beautiful thing.

Today, I write to share with you, the fact that we must begin to see our relationships as "a responsibility" and not just something that comes with responsibilities:

We ought to be getting wiser now. Time has passed when one is considered responsible by virtue of how he looks and what he wears or drives. Responsibility is also not synonymous with marriage. It is not a stranger that bumps into you at I do’s doorstep, or a wrapped gift that piles up with the other gifts at your marriage reception. Rather, what has to begin and prepare you for marriage is a training process. 

Responsibility is not just being able to take care of the needs of your spouse and children, it is the maturity to know when to do what you ought to do and how to do them; the maturity to know that you should not disregard, disrespect, take for granted, cheat, molest, or abuse your spouse (or your children) in any way-thinkable or unthinkable.

One thing that is a constant so far is that a relationship (no matter at what level or bus stop) is in itself a responsibility, not just something that comes with responsibilities. You have to be prepared for it, or else you will wreck a lot of lives, and ultimately your own.

To be continued...

Blessings and more.

SHALOM

Sour Grapes...

Greetings to everyone who believes in love, and expects to find or be found by love. It has been a very interesting season in my neck of the woods... I stay in Ghana, and I have had quite a lot of issues going on in my head. I didn't have the inspiration to put those thoughts together on paper, so I waited. Finally, this morning it hit me, so I am breaking my silence on the issue of the "accident of birth" and the price people pay sometimes for being born to a certain family belonging to a certain ethnic group, nationality,  faith or political ideology.

This morning, a young man called me and informed of his decision to divorce his wife because they belonged to different political parties... By the way, in Ghana, you have two leading political parties, namely; the NDC (National Democratic Convention, which is the present ruling party and the party which was declared as winner of the 2012 presidential elections by the Ghana Electoral Commission); and the NPP (New Patriotic Party, which for now is not satisfied with the declaration of the EC, believing that there were irregularities in some quarters and is desirous of going to court to context the declaration of the NDC as winner).

So this young man from the NDC calls me to say that the misunderstanding he had with his wife who is of the NPP has reached a point where their relationship as far as he is concerned has broken down irretrievably, and he desires to move on with his life, without her... Without her? Is it worth it? Is throwing love away out of loyalty to an ideology worth it?

Much worse, is when people quarrel, tear themselves apart and ultimately make decisions which will have generational consequences, because they disagreed over an opinion or an ideology.

People have been denied the opportunity to love and be together forever, because their parents or relations had issues way back before they were born. Why should anyone make someone else suffer for issues he/she didn't have to play a role in.

Hatred and bitterness expressed through stereotypes become the new theories we propound, just in order to impose our interest and hardheadedness on innocent young people whose heart have bonded together in love. They suffer for a sin they didn't commit, and carry a burden they didn't create, all because they were born in a certain home, to a certain couple who had certain viewpoints about life and living...

I ask again, is it worth it? The thing we destroy in order to have our way especially in the lives of other people, who we claim that we love... Is it worth it? Why should the teeth of the children be set on edge, when it wasn't they that ate the sour grapes?

Tell a friend to tell a friend, that living for love and in love, is a better way of living...

Blessings and more

SHALOM

RELATIONSHIP 101: A Relationship Is a Covenant...

Greetings to all who believe in love; blessings and much more to all those who are in love; courage and best wishes to all those waiting to find love or for love to find them; and to all those wondering whether or not love works, I say warmest greetings to you, and I trust that love will encounter you in a very special way.

Continuing with my thoughts on relationship 101, I would like to say that we must learn to look at our Marriages and relationships as covenants and not as contracts.

Usually, a contract is what it is because among other things, people in it are expected to specifically perform the responsibilities they have agreed upon to perform (which are in themselves the basis of the contract and the benefits they hope to derive from it). Where these responsibilities are not performed, the defaulting party is held to be in breach of the contract. At this point the party who has suffered this breach (in law called the injured party) is free to terminate the relationship and just walk away.

A covenant on the other hand, and as we see in the works of God, is between two people as well, but the focus is hardly on whether or not the parties are doing to or for each other, what they have promised to do, but on the fact that one is doing what he is supposed to do in the covenant, irrespective of whether or not the other party is honouring his part or responsibility in the agreement. 

The basis of what we do in marriage or in our relationships, is not about the fact that the other party is doing what you expect him/her to do, but about what you are expected to do and whether or not you are willing to do it, in fair and/or harsh weathers. A bad spouse might necessarily give rise to the other's disloyalty to the relationship, but this is not God’s standard.

This maturity cannot be compromised. Get it, imbibe it; 'cause it is only then that you can make the appropriate measure of sacrifice(s) necessary to sustain your relationship. It also helps you to have realistic expectations and prepare yourself to manage the offenses which will come up in your relationship (and they will surely come) wisely. Think about it.

Blessings and more

SHALOM