Last week, I wrote about how the day I paid bride price of my wife turned to be a day of joy and frustration for me.
It did not end there. I paid Carol’s bride price in August, while the wedding took place in December the same year. The four months between the payment of the bride price and the wedding was not very pleasant to me.
Before I proposed to Carol, I had fasted and prayed almost like never before whether God was in it or not. I, therefore, knew that God was hundred percent in support of my marring Carol. But my parents thought otherwise. They did not see anything at all bad in her and her family, but they felt that I should be more financially buoyant before going into marriage.
They did not show any interest neither did they ask me any question about my preparations for the wedding and for married life. A family member had warned me that the possession of a male organ by a man is not a qualification to get married.
I was alone on my marital journey. I was alone. It could have been very frustrating but I refused to be frustrated.
I did not show my frustrations to them because I felt they were logically right in their reasoning, while I felt that I was walking on the path of spiritual truth.
At a stage, Carol and her mother kept asking me why my parents were not showing interest. I think, I told them that they are not used to weddings and that this is their first modern day wedding experience since they had their own wedding in 1954.
It took nearly two years of my warming up to them and of their observing me and my wife that they became fully convinced that I made the right choice. In fact, one day, my mother walked up to my wife and said: “Iyawo (meaning wife), I did not want my son to marry you before o. But I have now found out that it is only the colour of your skin that is black. You are Oyinbo inside.” She said, this in our language.
Can you imagine the level of frustration faced by Jonathan in 1Samuel 20:25-34, when his father, King Saul threw his spear at him in order to kill him because of his friendship with David. He narrowly escaped death and he fled from that dinner table that evening.
At David’s funeral in 2 Samuel 1, King Saul said of them “and in their death, they were not divided.” We can see that Jonathan did not allow the frustration from his father to destroy or to bring about a distance in the relationship between him and his father. I do not know how they made up after that night’s frustrating moment. But the point I want to make in this write up is that, has your father or mother or both got you frustrated? Or you thought they got you frustrated or stirred up the feeling of frustration in you? Never mind, go and make up with them. Love you!
