“FUNERAL” BEFORE MARRIAGE

Just some three weeks or so into courtship, our planned meeting for a study was not going well. Every question I asked Irewamiri was met with a one-word answer.

After all attempts failed, I decided that we change location- we drove to a quiet location and I began to probe again.

Well! I did not know when the tears began to roll off my cheeks- all my attempt was hitting a brick wall. She joined me in crying and then told me, “I feel I can not know the things you know. You know so much. Can I ever measure up?”

That day our courtship changed gears and moved into a new level of understanding.

It takes a broken man to lead a broken woman. Marriage is actually two funerals and one wedding. The man and the woman must die to self and all its manifestation if the joining will be smooth.

Layers of ego will be peeled. Layers of pride must be pulled away. It takes two living sacrifices to make a loving marriage. It takes sacrifices to cause a marriage to live- it must be two on an altar. Only then can the sweet fragrance be released.

If you keep thinking about “my thing” rather than our “our thing”, the sharp unbroken edges will scratch and injure each other so bad that before one wound heals, another one is inflicted.

You will wound one another with words and actions yet you will be unrepentant about it. Why? Self is not dead. You will take turns at taking offences and it will build a wall in your home. The bed will be full of sighs. Warmth will fade. Heat will reign. Verbal cudgels will replace cuddles.

If you bypass the altar where self is sacrificed and you take a walk to the altar where the two are declared one, then the marriage itself is sacrificed and the home will miss the sweet-smelling fragrance of love and joy!

It takes brokenness to know your spouse. If you stop when you hit a wall and turn back when it is not working, you miss out on an opportunity to get into deeper things in marriage. Handle conflicts in humility and love. That is how broken people do it.

Depths come in strategic layers- you must keep digging till you hit the fountain locked up beneath.

Your marriage can stop being a mountain in your heart. It can become a fountain that refreshes you and all around you.

May it be so!