I have never feverishly desired marriage nor have I admired married men
except for when I am lonely and horny or both.
There is however one couple that constantly revives my faith in this
institution and I don’t know why.
For better or worse, no pun intended, I am at that age in my life where
marriage hangs over my head like a nimbus cloud, pregnant and heavy, full with
the promise of good things but also promise of disruption.
The major champions for this endeavor in my life are my uncles and a few
well-meaning friends. I am normally honest with them. Sadly my answers to their
query seem to hide a past hurt or a cynicism that seems misplaced in the heart
of a God fearing youth clinging onto scriptures like Jeremiah 29:11. But that
is far from the case.
A relationship, ‘oba’ love, is a two lane road of emotion and logic. I
seem firmly embedded on the logic side of the lane. You see nothing that has
been promised me from the time I started listening to teachings about marriage
seems limited to marriage. It either seems like a lot of work or just too fairy
tale.
Of course those who are married make it look like they have ascended
through a portal into a realm of good things that only those that have partaken
of it can express or understand. This is well and good, but the other side of
the coin seems true. The world is full of couples, born again I might add, that
seem to be existing in limbo. Like when they were making the jump into that
portal Umeme load-shedded and they ended up in some other twisted ‘horrorverse’.
I feel, rightly or wrongly, that all the ‘marketeers’ need to change
their strategy. I don’t need to be married to have sex and enjoy it. Contrary
to popular belief not all acts of fornication are immediately followed by
catastrophic or cataclysmic planetary collapse and blinding or numbing guilt.
The many Christians having sex can attest to that.
I definitely don’t need to be married to have babies. All the single
mothers and fathers can also attest to that.
I don’t need a wife to wash my clothes; my washing machine is doing just
fine. Yes my house may be covered in a layer of dust most times however when I
do get around to cleaning it is a good job…sort of. I don’t need her to cook, I
have lived on my own since my second year at university, I can manage a proper
sensible meal for over ten people and I am not just talking about one source
and one food.
Companionship, conversation and most other things can be got from
without marriage. So what exactly is the validation for getting married
especially when the statistics say being born again apparently has very little
to do with your divorce quotient, sex is freely offered and pregnancy out of
wedlock is not “that bad” any more, the number of domestically inept bachelors
has gone down considerably and ladies believe that men are ravenous, cheating
canines with the men claiming that women are nine tailed green eyed vixens.
Don’t get me wrong I want to get married, I want to have kids but at the
moment, I see no good reason to.
But, this couple I speak of seems to have landed on the answer. They
have not told me, they have not taught me, they have shown me. When I look at
them, it’s like I have caught a glimpse far beyond the reaches of all the
married people I have observed or talked to, it’s like for a brief moment, a
brief instant I gazed into something more beautiful than the stars and as
endless and mysterious as the galaxies in the heavens.
They may not have been married that long but for now they are my
sextant, my rule, my campus…my north star on this thing called marriage. They
renew my faith in marriage.
