When my mother died in the early 90s at the age of 60, I did not know that the effect will be so much on my father who was then 68 years old. While we were preparing for my mother’s burial, my father entered my mother’s room, called her name and left very sad.
It was that day I knew that my father loved my mother so much. Like I have had cause to tell people, I never saw them hug each other any day not to talk of kissing each other. I never heard my father openly say words of love to my mother any day. He was a kind man who worked so hard to provide feeding money for my mother and the whole family, but there was something missing — the ability to express love to his wife. It is under this traditional marriage atmosphere that I grew up.
For those who might have read Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” or watched it as a stage play or movie, the main character of the book by name Okonkwo was so traditionally buried in the Igbo culture of his home town Umuofia, to the extent that he was not ready to accept any other new way to love and live with a changing society.
Some people have been heard to say, “I am a typical Yoruba man. I’m not an English man.” Some say: “I am a typical Igbo man. You don’t expect me to be holding the hands of my wife and walking along the street hand-in-hand. I provide for her and that is enough.”
Having grown in a traditional marriage and family life, I know that it is possible for a product of a traditional family to decide to show love in words and actions to his or her spouse. Many men and women like me who grew up in traditional family settings like mine made deliberate decisions to make life sweeter for our spouses than the way our parents made life sweet for themselves and their spouses.
It is possible to uproot yourself from different backgrounds that you know will not make life pleasurable for your spouse, children and other loved ones. We all say that we worship God, but the Bible says: “God is love” (1 John 4:8). And you can see from the Bible that Jesus kept expressing His love in words and in actions. The way God wants us to love our spouses and our children cannot, therefore, be hidden under any culture, family background or traditional beliefs. It is the kind of love that is selfless and flows out in spite of culture.
So, if you feel you love your spouse, your children or those around you and you hardly show it, you have to examine the type of love that you have. God will love it if you can deliberately decide to show love to your spouse and family whether you feel like it or not. Once you decide and start practicing it, you will perfect it. Love you!
