Beloved daughters of Zion, let it be known to you that your spouse can never be exactly like you, neither can you be exactly like him in your behavior. The sooner we get this right, the better for us. So many sisters are faced with this challenge of I believe he should be as intelligent, brave, vigilant, humble, accommodating, tolerating etc. as I am because I received him from the Lord. You forgot that both of you were not born, fed, nurtured by the same parents; neither were you instructed in school by the same teacher.
The Lord who has given that brother or man to you has a way of making things work out for you if both of you let Him have His way. When I married my sweetheart, I expected him to be like me in some areas where we didn’t have similar views. I reasoned that since he is the will of God for my life that having similar views on all issues should be a normal phenomenon in our marriage. But I was wrong and soon learned that life and marriage, in particular, don’t work that way. One of the things I struggled with, which has the potential of bringing strife within a family, is the different upbringing about turning off the light to sleep at night.
According to my husband, he went to the boarding school, and every time they have their light out to sleep at night, he usually has terrifying dreams that keep him awake and frighten him all through the night. This affected his academic performance in high school because he often slept in class while lectures were going on due to a lack of sleep at night. He had little choice since lights out was part of the boarding school ethos. However, whenever he goes home on vacation, he has the liberty to turn on the light in his room without anyone questioning the decision. With the light on, he doesn’t have bad dreams and sleeps very soundly.
So when we got married, l wanted the lights off. In contrast, my husband wanted the light on even though he has overcome these terrifying dreams since ss1 but couldn’t still do without turning the light on because of his childhood experience with bad dreams occasioned by darkness in the room. Initially, this wasn’t convenient because I don’t get good sleep when the light is on. We talked about it and decided to find common ground. My choice was to sleep early, so l turned off the light while my husband, who sleeps late, works in his study room. When he comes into the room, he turns on the light. When I wake up and see the light on, I turn it off again to get a few more hours of sound sleep. We reached this compromise until it no longer became an issue in our family because we both realized these individual differences.
Occasionally my husband still puts on the light when I am asleep, but most of the time, he also turns off the light when he’s done using it. Does that mean that l have changed him, or he has changed me? No! But we found a way to work around it. To finally put the matter to rest, when we relocated to the US, where you pay heavily for the light you consume. I didn’t need to persuade him anymore about turning off the light. I didn’t have to worry if the light would be turned off at night or not as we both see reasons why the light has to be turned off at night but not just at night alone but even during the day. This is one significant way God can resolve issues for His children when He discovers that they have put their total trust in Him. Not every issue must end with a quarrel or keeping malice with one’s man. As virtuous women, we should first think of how we can best provide a solution from our side before expecting the man to turn out to be like us suddenly. May grace allow us to handle the individual differences in our homes with the wisdom of God resting upon us all in Jesus’ name. Amen.
