Addictions

Everybody is addicted to something, said a wise man.

If you don’t know your addiction or haven’t yet discovered it, you might think you’re the best of human beings, perhaps a super being, and just go about castigating everybody else.

Look deep within, you will find your addiction, no matter how subtle. You will find that which you can’t do without. You will find that which has a constant pull on you. You will find that one thing you like so much although it does affect you negatively too. You will find that one thing you are struggling to do away with. 😊

Perhaps you are addicted to being perfect? 🤪

On a more serious note, bad addictions need to be worked on, especially when you acknowledge it puts your life in danger. Take the needed baby steps and before long, you will be walking, trotting and running your way out of that bad addiction.

I don’t know what your addiction is, but I bet you have one. 😊

Happy New Year! Be the best version of yourself this new year!

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©Mark Gadogbe, 2022

Featured Image Source: Instagram | @hajia4reall

Marriage killers

​”We put everything ahead of marriage and then wonder why it fails”

Whatever comes between you and your marriage is a marriage killer…be it positives like the Church, the kids, friends, family, and job; or negatives like addictions, bad habits, adultery, negative mentalities, etc. 

Whatever does not edify your marriage…watch it. Whoever is always willing to bring a charge against your marriage because he/she finds nothing good in your marriage should not be kept as company. Bad company corrupts good habits. 

In the course of a marriage, there is a lot of time to develop and to become divine lovers. That is where your marriage must get to. 

Work at it, pruning off all the negatives one step at a time. It’s possible to become divine lovers! We have the Grace; all we need to do is to put in the works. 

©Mark Gadogbe (McApple), 2017 

MY WIFE, MY INSPIRATION

My wife said something yesterday:

“Your willingness to learn and unlearn things helps your marriage to work. The learning is easy; the hard work is in unlearning a habit or an attitude that you have grown up with”.

I said in my mind, wow how beautiful! You can’t surely coexist with someone by forcing on them your way of life, your upbringing. 

(PS: Still learning from my wife in marriage. She’s a storehouse of wisdom but she never talks on the “open market” 😜. If you want to know what she knows, you will always have to put her on the spot. Otherwise, you wait until I bring it to you. I’m the one that blogs the stuff and spreads it on social media. So I’m the one that gets called funny little annoying names too. But nothing spoil because sometimes I take the glory 😂🙈)

…not always the right thing

Sometimes what is comfortable and natural is not always the right thing. Many of us are immersed in unhealthy patterns in all kinds of areas of our lives. We spend too much time on the internet. We yell too much at our kids. We get up too late and are always in a hurry. We have no organization in our lives and always feel a little discombobulated. We’re doing what comes naturally and feels comfortable, but it’s actually hurting us. And we can be like that in our marriages, too. We stop talking about matters of the heart and only talk logistics: who is going to the grocery store, who is going to help mom this weekend. We criticize when we should keep our mouth shut; we retreat to our own hobbies instead of spending time together.

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The Marriage Race

Growing up, I learned very early that many times we fail at a task because we do not prepare well enough. Hard work pays and it’s as simple as that!

I also observed early in life that many times, most marriages fail because we do not prepare well enough, we do not work hard enough, we do not put in as much effort there as we do our careers, we seek too many comforts that we bail too easy and early enough when the comforts we seek do not arrive too soon. Marriage is no rocket science but it’s still hard work all the way through. Yet, with all the hard works too, it still will not work well if we don’t build it on a solid foundation of Christ and a great deal of “marital knowledge”.

Good knowledge will always be a vital tool in every endeavour; without it every venture perishes (Ref: Hosea 4:6). It is in light of that and my resolve to see my marriage last till the end that I recently made it a life goal to not let a day pass without reading something (even if it’s a sentence) on marriage. Aside books, I subscribe often to different daily marriage devotionals and I’m really learning a lot. Mark Twain said “the man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read” and I find that to be true. Similarly, I believe a man who makes the effort to acquire more marital knowledge (and applies it) will have a better marriage than the man who doesn’t and just goes through the motions.

I think what I learned today from the recent marriage devotional plan I subscribed to (a plan adapted from Dr. Kim Kimberling’s new book “7 Secrets to an Awesome Marriage”) was interesting:

“Let’s compare marriage to a long distance race. The truth is that most of us did not prepare well for the race. We just jumped in and someone said go and we went. We did not train. We did not change our habits or behaviors. We just ran. So it is not surprising that not too far into the race some of us were ready to bail out. Others seemed to be hanging in, but they were really struggling. It comes down to this.

Everyone in the race needs hope. Hope that they can make it the distance. Hope that there are a whole lot of water stations along the route that refresh and energize them. Hope that their spouse is running side by side with them. Hope that their spouse is in it with them to the end. Hope in the truth that they are not running the race alone – God runs with them.”

How to make marriage successful is never learned in a school syllabus in our formative lives and if we do not make any effort in our adult life to seek that knowledge then I wonder on what foundation of knowledge our marriages will be built on and how well/far we will run the race. Maybe attaining the “marriageable age” naturally confers on us all the marital knowledge we need to achieve success, huh? Or, maybe growing up and observing our own parents’ marriage is all the knowledge we need, huh?

Well, whatever it is, why not start a daily marriage reading challenge and see if it is worth it?

 

 

 

 

 

Mark Gadogbe (McApple)