What a Blessing to Love Your Spouse!
Dr. Tesfa
G. Gebremedhin
West Virginia University
The most
important thing parents can do for their children is to love them and to show them
practically what it means to love your own spouse. Giving is one of the fundamental
characteristics of true love and the foundation of solid marriage. If you are
always the receiver (not the giver) in your marriage, you are draining the life
and love right out of your relationship and end up creating frustration and
misunderstanding in the family. Consequently, resentment begins to build and
the giving spouse gets disgusted and disappointed. At that point, the
relationship between the two spouses begins to deteriorate and fall apart. Subsequently
it leads to undesirable separation and division of the family. The failure to
walk in love with your spouse is the most common and principal cause of
problems in a marriage. If you want your spouse to sincerely love you, you
first must be actively caring and loving to your partner. The way in which you
love your spouse will directly affect the way your spouse will love you and
will also indirectly affect the love and integrity of the children and others
in the family. To demonstrate true love you need to take practical action that
constantly reveals your love to your spouse and children. The following story
will demonstrate indeed what it means
to love your spouse.
It was in the middle of spring, a busy Monday morning,
approximately 8:30 a.m., when an elderly gentleman in his 80's, arrived in a certain
clinic to have stitches removed from his wounded thumb. He stated to the
attending nurse that he was in a hurry as he had an appointment at 9:00 am. The
nurse took his vital signs and had him take a seat, knowing it would be over an
hour before some attending doctor would be able to see him. She saw him looking
at his watch and the nurse decided, since she was not busy with another
patient, she would evaluate his thumb. When she checked the thumb the wound was
found to be well healed. After she talked to one of the doctors about the wound,
she got the needed supplies to remove his sutures and redress his wound. While
taking care of his wound, the nurse and the gentleman began to engage in casual
conversation. The nurse asked him if he had another medical or other
appointment that morning, as he was in such a hurry to leave. The gentleman
told her that he did not have another appointment; however he needed to go to
the nursing home to eat breakfast with his wife. When she heard him mentioning
the nursing home, the nurse then inquired as to the health of his wife. He told
her that his wife had been in the nursing home for quite a while and that she
was a victim of Alzheimer's disease. As
they talked, the nurse asked him if his wife would be upset if he was a bit
late. He replied that his wife no longer knew who he was, that she had not
recognized him in five years now. The nurse was surprised, and asked him,
"And you still go every morning,
even though she doesn't know who you are?" He smiled as he patted the
nurse’s hand and said, "She doesn't
know me, but I still know who she is and I love her very much" The nurse had to hold back her tears as he left the
premises, she had goose bumps on her arm, and after he left in a hurry to see his
wife, she said in tears to herself, "That
is the kind of love I want in my life." True love is neither physical,
nor romantic. True love is an acceptance of all that is, has been, will be, and
will not be. Love of a spouse should come from deep inside of you and should stay
forever, in health and sickness till death.
It is important to remember that the happiest people
do not necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the best and
most of everything that comes along their way. For some reason or another when
it hurts to look back, and again for some reason or another when you are scared
to look ahead, you can look beside you, your own spouse, who is your true
friend and best sister at the same time, will be there for you at any time and
place to reach for your hand and to touch your heart. It is evident that the
gentleman in the story can tell you that a wonderful spouse is hard to find,
harder to leave, and impossible to forget.
I just had to share this most important message with
you because I love my wife (my best friend) and children and I care very much about
my fellow Eritreans and I want you to have such kind of love for your spouses,
children, and friends. To have good relationship and walk in love with our
spouses and children is what life is all about. We discover our role in life
through our relationship with our loved ones. To say that we are really alive
and have full life and happiness, it is essential that we should be surrounded
by the people who love us and those we love. As indicated above, the most
important gift we, as parents, can give to our children is to be the role
models in loving our spouses and having a wonderful family environment at home
and then hopefully they will emulate such kind of love and family when they
have their own spouses and children.
Obviously, many of our children have been the victims
of our ignorance and arrogance and they are suffering in so many things because
there is very little love in our households, with our friends and in our
communities. It has been observed that parents have no time for their children
and have no time for each other. We have no time to love each other because we
are either avoiding one another or busy judging each other. Love is contagious;
it begins at home between the two spouses and supposedly spreads to the
children and friends in our own communities. When it comes to spouses, love
starts with a smile, grows with a kiss, and ends with a tear. It is essential
that we need to nurture the love to our spouses and children when we have it
because it is the best gift we can have in life and we can not recover it if
once it departs from us. We need to give our loved ones the time that they
deserve. Nothing in life is more important than our spouses, our children, and
our communities. Give time to love, give time to speak, and give time to share
the precious thoughts in your mind. You need to have evening walks and talks
with your partner to express your love, to give warm hugs to your loved ones,
and to say kind words to your friends because that is the only treasure you can
give with your heart and it doesn't cost a penny. Give your spouse and children
the time they deserve, these things cannot always be put off to "some
other time" because you are not going to stick around in this world forever.
Life is too short; it is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by
the moments of love that take our breath away and we need to cherish it.
We, the Eritreans, can develop healthy, robust communities
only if we do what it seems to be the hard work of getting along with each
other and treating each other with love, respect and dignity. As Mother Theresa
indicated, “If we have no peace and
love among ourselves, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each
other”. Each of us is a brother and a sister in our own Eritrean community.
We have to spread love among ourselves everywhere we go; first of all in our
own house let’s give love to our spouses, to our children, to our friends
and members of our communities with kindness in our eyes, kindness in our
hearts, kindness in our faces, and kindness in our smiles. We, as Eritreans,
have the moral obligation to respect our differences, focus on what we have
in common and live together and work together in peace and harmony with love,
cooperation, and trust. God/Allah blesses us all! Thank you.
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