I can love him/her better than you

Always remember that everything you are doing to or for your husband/wife or your boyfriend/girlfriend, somebody else can do it and even do it better. Don’t say it’s not possible…it is! 

If you’re giving him/her sex, somebody else can also give them that and even give them better. Maybe your stronghold is food or taking care of the home…but do you think nobody else cooks better than you or can ever manage your home or partner better than you? You think nobody else can spoil your girl/wife better than you’re doing now if they get the chance? 

Everything you do in life, somebody else can do it better than you. The only reason why you are still there and still the only one doing it is simply because that other person has not been given the CHANCE. So, never lose guard and start playing dull moves. Everybody can potentially lose their partner to the next available highest bidder. 

You’re not irreplaceable in even the most loving of all relationships. Just do something very silly, or worse case, just die now and see how soon you’ll be replaced by someone else. It’s natural for voids to be filled, just like in every working environment. 

Like Sam Casey put it: 

“It’s easy to see your position in leadership at the office as becoming more important than your job as the leader of your home. No one is indispensable. Everyone can be replaced on the job. God can raise up another leader to do what you are doing. It’s worth asking your spouse from time to time to make sure you stay on the mark” 

Never stop loving your partner, never stop doing right by them. And never stop evaluating yourself and each other. Start treating them wrong…and you will soon see. You will wonder where that highest bidder taking what belongs to you even sprung up from. Oh boy, they have always been there! They have always been secretly admiring and wishing for what you have. All it had to take was your negligence. 😜

© Mark Gadogbe (McApple), 2017

Marriage & Personal Development Author 

Weddings and the choice of colors or styles

Any time wedding colors and style comes to mind, I can’t help but to be reminded of my wife’s obsession with the color fuchsia the time we were planning our own wedding. In all my life I have never heard of any such color before…not that I am very good at colors anyways. And I remember the troubles the one handling our wedding decorations went through getting that color…and my wife was unyielding in changing her very favorite yet difficult to find fuchsia. On my part I brought a teal blue suit with me from the UK which I just slid in with a bow tie and suit hankie that looked more violet than fuchsia. I ended up giving her the pet name my “Fuchsia Baby” and she on her part calls me her “Teal Blue Baby”. That was one fun part of our wedding colors and style choice. What’s more fun? Try pronouncing “Teal Blue Baby” 10 times without break and see if you will get it right…that became a game we enjoyed up until now.

Everything about a wedding is important. Choosing your wedding colors and style or outfits is one of the first and important decisions would-be couples make. The bride and grooms’ style is one of the defining features that makes their wedding beautiful in its own right. Of course, you will want to be looking at those wedding pictures and how elegant your outfits (suit and gown) and colors played out for many years to come and still want to look trendy.

For almost every wedding, color plays a major role in defining the décor and ultimate tone of the occasion. There is something really beautiful about the way a wedding comes together and a good choice of wedding colors or style makes your wedding stand out. Everybody is impressed by a beautiful wedding décor or color theme. Your wedding color or style may well be one of the most noticeable attractions of your “once in a lifetime” or “most beautiful” day.

When making that decision, it is important that you look at a number of different styles available in order to arrive at the best possible choice that brings out the best in you. I remember how my wife got so “hooked on” other people’s wedding pictures and videos on the internet trying to look out for one thing or the other that best suits her wedding ideas. Just like my wife, if you’re looking for inspiration for your upcoming wedding, I recommend you check out The Black Tux’s suit and tuxedo rentals selection which hosts a lot of amazing styles and color schemes for just the perfect wedding you dream of. Trust me, when it comes to weddings, using the right service and people specialized in the field goes a long way in making you pull off a wedding with no regrets.

At the most basic level, you may want to also choose colors or styles to match the season. There are some colors and styles that best fits the season in which one is getting married. Oh yes, there are summer colors, fall colors, spring colors and autumn colors. Just like in our normal daily life, there are some colors that one shouldn’t wear on a bright sunny day, etc., same way the experts know some colors and styles are best for or bring out the shine in the season in which one marries. Fall is here and I wanted to share with you some of the top trends for the season that I find very lovely, below. Seeing them makes me feel like getting married again.

It is also important to some people to choose colors based on their meanings and their personality types – what best represents them as a couple. One of the proven ways to know which color best suits one’s personality type is to take a color palette quiz and I would like to recommend one of such cool online quizzes I came across. Here: https://www.brandfolder.com/blog/quiz-whats-your-color-palette-personality/

Others also consider what mood the colors create. OK, so white I’m told is symbolic of purity, innocence and cleanliness. Yellow generally symbolizes wisdom, happiness and intellectual energy. Orange represents joyfulness, enthusiasm and optimism. Red they say is the color of strength, health, and vitality. Red-orange is symbolic of desire, sexual passion, pleasure, and a thirst for action. Pink also is a great symbol of love and beauty. Purple is the color of royalty and can represent magic, mystery, creativity and strength. Blue is symbolic of youth, spirituality, peace and tranquility. Green is the color of harmony and balance, renewal and peace. Olive green is the traditional color of peace. Gold is a symbol of wealth and also representative of good health.

In fact, the list is endless and so are your choices. But at the end of the day, you can never go wrong when you use the experts. Everybody’s got a dream wedding color or style, right? What’s yours?

 

© Mark Gadogbe (McApple), 2017

Marriage & Personal Development Author

Every woman…

Every woman has a longing. 

An innate desire of usefulness to a man because from man she came

But whether her value will go beyond the bedroom 

Beyond just being a man’s object of sexual gratification 

All depends on how she sees and carries herself 

The value she places on herself and sells out to the man she’s with

Will ultimately decide how her man will see her

Men always know the difference 

They know who makes it only to the bedroom as a “sin partner”

And who makes it to being a wife and a destiny partner

When all you bring to the table is your body and chopping of a man’s money

You’ve already decided where you will end

You hold the power to determine your usefulness.
©Mark Gadogbe (McApple), 2017

Marriage & Personal Development Author 

Marriage: a field of openness and accountability

​A healthy relationship or marriage requires honesty in all things!

In marriage, your partner has every right to have access to your phone; and in fact, investigate whatever they want on it. It’s just not always recommended because of not wanting to encourage or breed unnecessary suspicious behaviours towards each other as couples. But the simple truth is that marriage is a field of openness and truthfulness.

A part of marriage means or involves accountability. If you don’t want to be accountable to your spouse then you don’t need marriage. I don’t see why you would want marriage yet not want to be accountable to your partner. 

The moment you decide to marry, you are saying you want to be responsible and you’re giving your partner exclusive rights to information on every detail of your life. Every action of yours affects your marriage, as such, it is every partner’s duty to keep the other in check. If you don’t want that, then you simply have to remain single because you can’t be married and still have singleness attitudes and mindsets.  

Singles are only accountable onto themselves but once married, you are accountable to each other. The marriage vow enjoins you to. 

Our accountability in marriage is not only in the eyes of God but also to our spouses; as such, you must not resent being checked by your spouse. 

The trademark of a strong Godly marriage is complete openness; a relationship where couples can talk freely about absolutely everything. If you are faithful, there is no reason to want to hide anything. What at all is on your phone that you are hiding from being seen by your spouse?

Some may say one’s partner may see something that may trigger mistrust but the point is, trust never happens in a vacuum. It’s based on actions…always! I can never wake up one day and just start trusting someone. I must see evidences of your actions over a period of time to conclude on trusting you. And who said trust is a one time thing? It never is. It is constantly being assessed and daily renewed. 

If a partner thinks once you marry, trust must just be there automatically, I don’t want to marry such a person. You need to continuously prove to me that I can trust you and I can never do that without genuine openness and accountability for your actions. 

So yes, If I chance on something unpleasant or suspicious on your phone, there is something called explanation, clearing of doubts or putting things in their right context. It’s only people who don’t want to be accountable that don’t like being questioned. And for me, once you don’t want to be accountable and subject yourself to scrutiny, then you are a questionable marriage material. Even Jesus Christ says he will judge us so we must be accountable and if that’s cool with us, then it must be cool that we are accountable to our marriage or partners. 

The simple truth is that in marriage, both of you need to take joint responsibility for how the marriage is doing. How do you do that when you want to keep some things a no-go area? 

Share your thoughts with us. 

©Mark Gadogbe (McApple), 2017

Marriage & Personal Development Author 

Abuse of the marriage covenant

Here’s a great marriage vow:

“I will be with you, no matter what happens to us and between us.  If you should become blind tomorrow, I will be there.  If you achieve no success and attain no status in our society, I will be there.  When we argue and are angry, as we inevitably will, I will work to bring us together.  When we seem totally at odds and neither of us is having needs fulfilled, I will persist in trying to understand and in trying to restore our relationship.  When our marriage seems utterly sterile and going nowhere at all, I will believe that it can work and I will want it to work and I will do my part to make it work.  And when all is wonderful and we are happy, I will rejoice over our life together, and continue to strive to keep our relationship growing and strong.” ~~ Elizabeth Achtemeier

I don’t know how different it is from the usual “for better for worse, till death do us part” Church vow. But when we say the marriage vow in Church, we are literally saying our spouses are supposed to love us “no matter what” and always find us beautiful or handsome, no questions asked. Of course, that’s the essence of the marriage vow.

But sometimes we take advantage of that binding agreement and just let ourselves go intentionally in so many ways. We go like, oh how great it feels that we’ve just signed a contract that binds the other person to us for their whole life and nothing, except sexual infidelity, can save their skin! Sweet! Now I can relax, for every bad action or inaction of mine as long as it is not infidelity, should technically be coped with, endured and at best forgiven. Per the vow or covenant we’ve just entered into, everything is allowed as long as it does not border on infidelity…Hurray!

I vowed to love you “no matter what” so now you are at liberty to take your looks for granted! You can now just let yourself eat all the junk foods ever made, grow fat and out of shape. Oh, he should just understand that I’m now a mother and childbirth, raising children, taking care of him and all that just makes many a woman get out of shape. She should just understand that the ever-increasing responsibilities, stressful nature of my job, late night eating and all that just makes many a man develop a pot belly. Just understand and accept it as it is…so I wouldn’t have to put in any effort.

The deed is done, you have now taken the “no matter what” vow, so you can now stop giving much attention to your physique and every other thing as you used to and just corner your partner with the “no matter what” attitude whenever he/she raises a concern. Just remind him/her of the “no matter what” vow they took so they can stop whining about things you feel you cannot change. You think that’s a really safe zone? How sweet!

Well, these and many others are the sentiments/frustrations shared by many. Problem is too many people treat marriage as a place of arrival, acceptance and comfort; a kind of destination that they arrive at and then everything else in terms of effort stops. People don’t put as much effort into bettering themselves in marriage like they did in the dating phase. After all, if it’s Christian, it never should be broken on any other grounds, right? And then upon that, if you are a man, you are allowed to force your wife into subjection no matter all the ills you do, right? How sad. That’s how God wants it?

“It is so easy to take a spouse for granted, and to take intimacy for license. We can subconsciously think since we’re married, I don’t have to be careful to be polite. We have to love each other regardless, so I can just speak without thinking about how it is perceived” ~~ Shaunti Feldhahn

Right after marriage, many people begin to take so many things for granted. The problem is not the reality that the “no matter what” covenant marriage puts us in. The problem is to be a Christian yet hide consciously or unconsciously behind that and not put in any effort to better anything. I think that is a way of dishonoring your partner and your marriage and making God look stupid for instituting marriage and giving ground rules. Nothing must be taken for granted in marriage. Marriage (and all that comes with it) should not put an end to personal development. We must not pick up a habit of putting our spouses through the “no matter what” test, especially when it is something we can make the effort to change for the betterment of the union.

The caution is that sometimes it becomes too late to salvage anything and we must not let ourselves get to that point. And I hope it is the Bible that said:

“Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin”
~~ James 4:17

 

© Mark Gadogbe (McApple), 2017

Marriage & Personal Development Author

Image source: www.federalna.ba

Marrying artificial beauties

The story is told of a man who married a very pretty lady only for her to give birth to the ugliest child he has even seen with no semblance to either of them. The man felt the baby might belong to another man and the woman also swore to never being with another man. The man therefore launched an investigation with the aim of seeking a divorce. 
In the end, his investigation proved to which the woman agreed, that she was born looking ugly but whilst growing up, she signed up for a series of plastic surgeries to become the ravishing beauty that she now is. She admitted having kept this a secret. She didn’t think she ever needed to tell him before marrying him and since he also never asked if her beauty is “naturally acquired from birth” or is a product of artificial modifications, why worry? 

But now, genetics doesn’t lie so her true self has resurfaced in her baby. How sweet or how sad! 😂
It’s funny that our dear ladies of today are deceiving themselves with all these artificial beautification, self enhancement and skin bleaching craze…forgetting their real selves will show up in their unborn seeds. 😂 

Bleach all you want…You will get a man to marry your fair skin and transformed face and figure, but the fruit of your womb can never be bleached or transformed inside there. At least not at a cost you can bear at the moment. 😜 
My only fear is that a time is coming when many men will marry disguised beasts. 🙈 

Perhaps there is just so much insecurity growing among our women. We wish women are not insecure about their unique physiques and God-given beauties. Right there…I just saw a quote: 

“If it’s not fixed by the One who made it, it probably won’t work” 

All the best to us as we brace up for the future unknowns. 
©Mark Gadogbe (McApple), 2017

Marriage & Personal Development Author 

Parenting in the age of gender revolution and gender confusion

​”The first and second surgeries to remove [her] testicles and penis were successful. The third surgery to transplant ovaries into her body led to serious complications. And [her] last surgery to transplant a uterus, so that the transgender woman might be able to have children, ultimately killed her”

The trans thing is growing at a fast rate and becoming very unsettling. It’s receiving so much push and publicity at a very discomforting level. Society in the name of Modernity and Human Rights is increasingly being accommodating of things that clearly should be “unacceptable”. We now have a growing number of people identifying as:

• Homosexuals
• Transgender people
• Transracial people
• Transabled people 
• Trans-aged people 
• Trans-species people

What’s the next big thing and where does this end?? 

 
OK, so I watched a movie recently and a guy brought a lady home and midway into the kissing and all, he realized the lady was actually “hard” down there.  You can imagine the shock and emotional trauma on his face. He told his friend who then laughed at him that per the episode described, he’s TECHNICALLY A GAY now 😂😂 

Then recently a guy was being tried in court for stabbing and killing a woman he slept with. Apparently two minutes after the sex, the woman told him she was actually born male. And the guys defense in court? He said he’s sorry but he absolutely lost it! And why wouldn’t he? 😂😂

This things are real? Wow! 

I sometimes think every responsible parent and yet to be parents must begin to shiver at the thought of the kind of society their children are going to be raised in and the overwhelming work of damage control they would need to do to keep their children sane. Imagine your little girl asking you if she can identify as a boy? 

We have a lot of work to do in teaching our children all the good stuff about their sexuality and how they should accept and embrace their God-given sexualities. And the best ways they can work through anything they seem not to like about themselves. 

And we may have to do it way earlier before they stumble on all the garbage out there. The church will not do it for us and when we wait too long, the schools and this technologically advanced age may corrupt them way beyond repair before we even begin thinking of doing damage control. 

A lady friend of ours recently said by age four (4) she will begin to give her kids thorough but well-thought-out sex education because you wait too long and you will be surprised what your kids already know. At first my wife and I laughed at the idea of them being too young but on a second thought, it’s a very cool idea. We just have to make sure all the information churned out are very age-appropriate. And surely, with all that is going on in the world, sex education for kids must surely include gender confusion education. 

Parents have a lot of work to do in shaping their kids’ minds before they get polluted by all that is out. 

I envisage the parenting battle is going to be harder than before in this new age of sexual revolution. And I believe would-be couples and parents must not close their eyes on starting discussions along these lines. 

Like I always say, it’s better to know what your partner thinks about something (a habit, a societal ill, etc.) before you marry them than to wait until marriage to discover. For instance, you don’t assume your partner wants kids and would want to raise them a certain way only to marry and realize he/she does not even want them in the first place or would want to raise them that way.  

And I hope by telling my children some day that I want them to be everything or whatever they want to become in life, they do not assume the impression or freedom to want to become anything trans. If they try I will very sternly tell them to look inside their pants and tell me what they see. 😂😂

But seriously, God forbid it! But I hope He also grants us wisdom in dealing with any such eventualities should they occur, because the world as we see it now, we must be prepared and keep an open mind for just anything. 
God help us all! 😂 

©Mark Gadogbe (McApple), 2017

Marriage & Personal Development Author 

(PS: Share your thoughts and parenting goals with us) 

Being in a place of hope: my testimony

​Past times tell of how far we’ve come…whenever discouraged, we look back. 

Yesterday I was very troubled in mind, body, soul and spirit. I was because for sometime now I’ve not been too enthused about my life because I feel one aspect of my life isn’t working well the way I want it to. I am a very organized person, constantly making plans for my life, and putting things in order because I hate being in a situation where I’m caught off guard and have to just cling on hope. I want to always have a grip on my life and I feel I work so hard on myself to keep things that way.

 

But for some months now, life has kept me clinging on hope and I do hate it so much. I hate to be in a place where I can’t figure things out, have solutions to things and just have to hope it works out, hope I sail through, hope I survive. I hate to HOPE! I want to KNOW! 
I don’t like to hope I get to a certain destination in life, I want to know based on my plans for the journey, that I will surely get there. I always want to know and plan how my next one year will be like, how the house will run the next one year, how much should be put into savings or investments, etc. You know, that kind of thing.

But lately God has been scattering all my plans, or so it felt. And He allows certain situations to keep triggering that feeling of helplessness that makes you cling on hope.
Yes, so yesterday I couldn’t sleep. And I didn’t know what to do as I left the bedroom to just be in the hall all by myself at around midnight. Then after sitting for a while, something (I guess God) made me take my laptop, go grab my external drive and just go through the photo database I’ve created on it. Maybe that was just my way of passing the time, but then, God started whispering to me in my mind as I watched many pictures from as far back as I could to the present, that OUR PAST TIMES TELL OF HOW FAR WE’VE COME. 
I saw so many past blessings including the fact that I could afford my own flight ticket and we could afford my wife’s flight tickets every year all through her masters degree on a bursary that did not cover cost of flights. We could afford a descent accommodation and in fact, change accommodation 3 times in 2 years without exhausting all the rent period in the previous two and not even getting refunded. We’ve sacrificed to help many in times of their needs, amongst many other blessings. 

And the rhema God finally left me as I went back to bed around 3:30am, prayed till 4am, and then got up around 5:30am for work was that, WHENEVER I’M DISCOURAGED, I SHOULD LOOK BACK ON MY PAST. He categorically said I SHOULD NEVER FORGET MY PAST; I SHOULD NEVER FORGET WHERE MY BLESSINGS COME FROM. 
He said Son, don’t worry, I trained you that way to always be sure of what’s coming, but even when it looks like all you have is hope, I’VE GOT IT ALL UNDER CONTROL. 

With that assurance, I don’t know if my problem is solved, whether I won’t worry again the next time things are not moving on well according to my plans, but I learned it’s OK to be in A PLACE OF HOPE. 

©Mark Gadogbe (McApple), 2017

Unmarried sex and pregnancy

Just “misguidedly” get pregnant without being married and you will know whether the church that claims it loves you or everybody (sinners included) really do. If they don’t call you names, shame you, roll eyes at you like angels…come back and tell me. The church has a history and statistics in that area.

 

The same people that will treat you in church like dirt when your sins or “shortcomings” come to the open, are the same people who indulge in secret sins…some more grave than yours. It’s simple…the church’s attitude screams “do it but don’t get caught”; hide it as much as you can, otherwise you are in for trouble.

 

That is why the ones who get pregnant and immediately marry as “damage control” are more “accepted” by the church than the ones who unfortunately don’t. Trust me, when a church leader gets somebody pregnant, you can bet that the church will encourage and support him to immediately marry her. In that situation, the Church is OK with applying the Exodus 22:16 scripture to support the action [Read old post on that scripture here: Fornication…]. They will do everything possible to clean the mess of a church leader from getting into the public domain. We’ve seen, heard, and read of it countless times. But let the tables turn and a mere church member get tangled in same situation. You will see a different scripture and modus operandi being applied or enforced. Let a church elder or Pastor’s child get in the same mess as a mere member and just watch how both situations will be handled. The church cares more about protecting the image of its leaders and their household than the image of its members.

 

 

When we say there is no fairness or equality in the church and can never be, people say we are just “fault finders”. Well, whatever it is, some of us choose to live with the simple principle that when you raise your expectations of church, just like anything else, you risk getting hurt. So, just do Christ; don’t do Church.

 

The church as a human setting is full of judgmental people. Period! If you don’t want to be judged and discriminated against, don’t go to church; otherwise, keep an open eye and open mind and expect the worse to sometimes happen. It’s simple…the church preaches forgiveness and repentance but judges and shames “saved” people who fall back into certain sins! Just accept it because it’s the truth everywhere. Some sins are pardonable, others are not…and by now you should know where the sin of unmarried pregnancy falls. The church treats it as an abomination, a detestable thing that is deserving of hate…and not love. If you can deal with it, stay. If you can’t, leave and find solace where your soul will get the peace it needs. Your destiny is not tied to a church, it’s tied to Christ.

 

But truth for me is, no child should be treated as an abomination whether conceived in wedlock or out of wedlock. Sadly, the church will rather be happier you secretly kill or abort a child and come back to the front roll next Sunday and shout “glory hallelujah” as if nothing happened. But a church that makes you see a “child from a forgivable act” as an abomination should not be a good environment for you and your child. You may not like it but whether you do or not, nobody goes to or stays at a place where they are disliked. Well, I wouldn’t.

 

Nobody says churches should encourage promiscuity, sin or wrongdoing. Whether they think shaming people deters others from same acts; or accepting, loving and supporting them encourages others into same acts…whichever way they look at it, the ultimate should be doing what Jesus would have done. No good parent teaches or encourages his/her children to be promiscuous, but when they go wayward (because one can never rule out that possibility, even God or Jesus wouldn’t), what do good parents do?

 

Nonetheless, whatever the failings of the church, may God grant grace that we flee fornication so we would not have to deal with all the negatives of unmarried pregnancies.

 

 

© Mark Gadogbe (McApple)

Marriage & Personal Development Author

Wives carry and transmit favour

There is a lot of God’s favour on a woman’s life that rubs on and doubles a man’s favour when married to her. It’s a kind of favour that elevates; that makes a man rise; that pushes him to the apex!

 

The saying “behind every successful man is a woman” is just another way of putting the “he who finds a wife finds favour from the Lord…” biblical promise.

Every time I look back on how far we’ve come…I confidently say to myself “I have the best wife ever”. I truly am blessed with her.

 

And surely the blessing is not because of WHAT (material things) I have in my life but WHO I have. Her personality is astonishing! And her beauty? Breathtaking!

 

…And we really have come a long way on the road less travelled by many for fear of many unknowns. The “unknowns” have daily been with us, but we’ve learned to conquer many; riding at the back of the One who holds it all together so beautifully.

 

So today, halfway through another anniversary, we say…cheers to many more unknowns to conquer!

Nothing can stop us…We “all the way up”!  🙂

 

© Mark Gadogbe (McApple), 2017

Marriage & Personal Development Author