The call came and I received it with my usual excitement each time the person called. His request was, however, strange. It was a plea for his wife to visit me in Lagos so that I would counsel her on how to marry him. I smelt a rat! I told him that I do not counsel a spouse without the partner when there is a misunderstanding and that my house was available for the two of them, any time and at any day.
It is always difficult for a spouse to practise at home what is taught during a marriage seminar if the partner did not attend. This explains why I like to talk to a couple first before discussing with each of them. It affords each spouse the opportunity of opening on sensitive issues concerning their relationship. Where a spouse fears that the partner may react negatively later for the disclosure, wisdom guides me in making the presentation. After discussing with each of them, I will bring them together for us to deal with the grey areas. Apologies and clarity on certain issues may follow. We pray and then bury the issues in God’s sea of forgetfulness, which is underneath the cross of Calvary.
In the telephone issue I mentioned above, Uncle refused to be drawn to line. It was not that he was avoiding the air ticket to Lagos. His rationalisation was that it was his wife, the devil, who needed counselling, while he, the saint, did not need it. ‘She is very stubborn and that was why I slapped her,’ he told me casually. ‘You slapped your wife? How can a Christian husband slap his wife?’ I asked him cheerlessly. ‘If you are in my church,’ I followed up, ‘you will be placed on discipline. How dare you slap God’s daughter?’
‘Why should a Christian husband slap his wife?’ I continue to ask myself. Does he ever imagine how the Lord Jesus feels when His daughter is slapped? Will the prayer of such a man be answered? Has he forgotten how he and his spouse, perhaps, sat in the same lecture hall during their university days and in some cases, while Aunty was making good ‘A’s, he was collecting only ‘C’s? And yet, she accepted him in marriage! ‘Why should a man slap his wife?’
The father-in-law knows that he is a lion and his daughter a lioness, and yet, he gave her to him in marriage, believing that he would love her. Slapping her is certainly not that, but the opposite. Has he forgotten his wife’s brothers, who may be as strong as he is, if not stronger? When Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, was defiled by Shechem, the son of Hamor, her brothers reacted. They killed Hamor and Shechem. They also ‘spoilt the city’. Whatever spirit that makes a man to slap his wife can also make her brothers to revenge beyond measure.
‘Why should a Christian husband slap his wife?’ Well, rascality is not the exclusive prerogative of men. Some wives also beat their husbands silly. In 2011, one of my friends visited me. We were in my bedroom discussing when another man visited. Many people were visiting me because I was recuperating from eye surgeries. In the living room, I met rather a strange face, though he said that we had met several times in the past. We were there for a long time when the friend I left in the bedroom joined us. He felt that the man should have left for me to have sufficient time to rest. Feeling that he had no plan to leave, he asked him when he would be leaving. The man’s response was only by smiling.
My friend then left. The man was still with me for long hours talking, longer than you could imagine, without showing any sign of leaving. It was at last that he drew the curtain and showed me the picture that prompted his visit. It had nothing to do with my surgeries. It was all about himself, and you may not blame him. The heat in his home was beyond what he, though a pharmacist could bear. He came to take cover because his wife, an Amazon, was beating him!
Landlords have no legal right to stop their tenants from exercising their physical gifts. They expect them, however, to go to the sports stadium, which is designated for testing prowess. Boxing, wrestling, athletics, soccer, weightlifting, are a few of the areas such competitions are rife. It is what a spouse does there and not at home that testifies about the physical abilities. The beauty of going for contests at the stadium is the possibility of winning prizes. It is only the devil that awards his own prizes when spouses slug it out at home. Ndigbo say it all, that, ‘Ogbu nwanyi a bugh ike’ – Beating a woman does not mean that the man is strong.
‘Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it’ – Prov. 22:6. Beating a spouse is one of the ways a child is trained. Most of the men who beat their spouses learnt it from their parents. If couples are aware of this, there will be no provocation from a spouse that will attract beating by the partner. Does God beat us for offending Him? The tolerant God, described by the Bible as ‘slow to anger’, is the One Who gives us mercy all the time. We, His children, should not be deficient in this area.
For further comment, Please contact: Osondu Anyalechi: 0909 041 9057; [email protected]