A Relationship? Are You Ready for One?

I woke up today to a discussion on Twitter by one Tera Carissa Hodges (Twitter handle - @teracarissa) on marriage and why marriages today don’t work at all; or why there are less and less marriages happening today… In that discussion, she had wanted to VET 12 single men and 12 single women so that they may not have any catfish “false identity” issues and therefore do matchmaking... That was rather out of place, considering that I was just passing through my tweets before attending church…

After reading through, and while I was dressing up, I had to be pondering about such statements that I list below as responses from various people who responded to her question and/or request;

-          Kenneth Townsend (a guy) said, “Because mature people keep fishing in the WRONG pond. KNOW YOUR WORTH. Know yourself. Know God FIRST!”

-          Ni’sa Coleman (a lady) asked, “What if you have absolutely no one to choose from or the ones to choose from have the mindset of a teenage boy, or are feminine?”

-          Melanie Williams (a lady) said, “Relationships should be based on Biblical principles. HE who finds the wife finds a good thing, but often are looking for a trophy...”

-           Veronica T (a lady) said, “Being the shoulder he cries on, just so he can give his smiles to the next... we can’t be about that life. Men need God to heal...”

-          Donnie Trump (a guy) said, “A pebble and a diamond are equal only to a blind man. Not seeing someone’s worth can cause us to lose that someone...”

-          Jessica Smith (a lady) said, “I am Ruth [of the Bible], just waiting for my Boaz... in due season...”

-          Heart on a Page (a guy) said, “The spirits of Jezebel, Mammon and Beelzebub cause us to focus on money, status and bodies instead of the person’s inner beauty...”

And this went on and on...addressing the underlying issues to the given problem...

The above is what inspired me to write this post even though I had earlier decided that I won’t be posting on this blog “till January smiles at us...”

The reality of failing relationships is too hard for us young people to keep in track with. There is always a possibility all around us of us (or our friends) running through several relationships before any of us gets himself/herself into a stable relationship. Failing relationships or the lack of any has become a way we all pass through before deciding to get married. Relationships have even lost meaning to some young people. The pain, the destruction(s) involved, the reality of losing people you thought were life partners, the shame of not being ‘hooked’ or attached to someone at a given age, the loneliness, the problems that those “ex” bring with them… have made most of us not to even give relationships a try... We fail even before we have tried...

A review of an average person from childhood to teen age, trailing down to adulthood has slots of experiences that make some methods of dealing with relationships quite efficacious – or so we are made to think. Efficacious because we all are known to want ‘to make things work out’. We hate being tagged failures as young people – especially when it comes to relationships, because nothing matters to us young people more than having good ad healthy relationships, ama?

Some young people have ‘gained’ experience in matters of relationships (as they seem to show us), some have blamed God along the way whenever their relationships fail to work out, some still blame others for the failure of a relationship or the lack of one thereof, some think that “they can’t be played anymore” thus the vigor to engage in meaningful relationships fades with time. It is a graph that draws deeper with increase in time.

But again another closer look at relationships that have failed and why they DID fail is a better place to start from when trying to understand the mystery of relationships. You can start with finding out parts of yourself that made (or have made) mistakes in the previous relationship, ask yourself if you have known your strengths and weaknesses, if you have forgiven the wrongs in your previous relationship(s) and so on…Find out if you really need a new relationship or if you need time to heal (with assistance of God and good advice of course) before committing yourself to another relationship. Find out if you have gotten over your past [bad/unhealthy] relationship(s). Then after considering the above factors, you may accept yourself to be ready for a new relationship in the coming year…

Blaming God for a failed relationship is not reason enough, nor is blaming fellow men or the one you broke up with. I don’t always think that getting the ‘right’ person is the problem, but the kind of preparations and readiness a person gets through while aspiring to engage in a relationship.

And for those who are starters, I prefer that you know your priorities for now. Relationships call for quite a lot (which I am going to discuss below) and hunting for a person to get hooked to may not be the best thing for you to do. Hunting means that you are becoming desperate. Desperation means that you are likely to bend the rules along the way in order to get yourself what you think you want. And bending the rules means that you are growing stupid. It may seem cruel on my side to tell you so, but it is the truth.

If you are undergoing pressure (from family or friends), be frank to tell them that you will get into a relationship when you are READY – and ‘ready’ in this case means a lot more than ‘ready’.

What I call a healthy relationship is that which should help to define you and seek to make you better; but not one which changes you (or seeks to change you) and to make you a weird slave to someone… Remember that true love does not enslave, but sets free…

If you aspire, as one of your many resolutions for the coming year (2013), to get into a healthy and meaningful relationship, look deeper through the following facts which may help you gauge your readiness for a relationship; 

1. Are you really ready for a relationship? Any relationship?Are you spiritually, psychologically, emotionally and socially ready to become part and parcel of another person’s life? If not, stop right there and build yourself up into a person that can be depended upon – one who is reliable when tied to another.
2. Are you mature enough to adequately handle the conflicts and meet the many needs and demands in a relationship? If not, stop right there and grow up. Yeah, grow up my friend.
3. Are you ready to openly communicate both your fears and strengths to another person without giving it too much thought? If not, go and build yourself up in the area of honesty and faithfulness. Relationships are neither for people who play so-called mind games, nor for those who want others to guess everything about everything concerning them…
4. Are you ready to love someone unconditionally and care for another person without showing or living in selfishness? If not, Christ can teach you a better lesson in that. Go to Him and allow Him to show you what selflessness is all about…
5. Are you ready to support and help another person without complaining or being pestered to do so? If not, go out there and learn more on how to please, compliment, help and support your significant other without feeling disgusted about it. You don’t want to suffocate your relationship, do you? Side note: Do these things knowing that you are still not married to the other person, but that you want them to feel secure and appreciated around you…Don’t act as if you guys are married – that boundary is too steep to cross, so don’t cross it!
6. Are you ready to respect and honor someone of the opposite sex without showing arrogance? If not, go to Jesus. He is the best teacher when it comes to lessons concerning humility and honor…
7. What new thing are you going to add to this person’s life that was not there but that is beneficial to them? Are you going to bring in more garbage from your past relationship, or from your mom’s advice log, or your dad’s diary, or from your friends’ ‘to-do-list’? Watch out on what good thing you will bring into your new relationship!
8. Are you ready to encourage someone selflessly and sacrifice to meet someone’s emotional and social needs? If not, go learn, Google, do woreva it may take to know how to sacrifice your time, your prayers, your mind, your words… and give out one or two things (not sex, pliiiiiz!) Side note: I swear that relationships sometimes need the cruelest of sacrifices! You should be ready for them…
9. Have you gotten over your past relationship(s)? Have you healed from them? If not, understand that whoever you are going to meet next will be an altogether different person from the one you were with previously… so tread your steps slowly, wisely…
10. Are you getting into a relati9onship with the right motives? Are you acting out of peer pressure? Or a surge of hormones? Or insecurity? If your motives ain’t right, go rectify yourself first. You don’t want to break someone’s heart and shutter their life, do you?

 

As for me, um chilled out…

Plan well for your coming year…

Bonface Morris.

Of Weddings, Fashion and Christmas Gatherings

Hi guys!
The festive season is here, and with it will come all kinds of fabrications, swaggafications and complications. Save your breathe for another day, because you may or may not like what is going to be happening around you in those paintings of fabrications, swaggafications and complications; but it will happen anyway...  with or without your approval.

As always, we are going to witness the meanest and most weird kind of behaviour amongst the various people(s) we will meet. The main agenda will be about feasts, weddings, travelling and partying; boasting, mimicking, ranting and paranoia; it may end up boring or thrilling you – and for that I don’t really care – all to the sovereignty of intermittent bliss. In sortof short, people will be yelling into your well-bred ears about things you may never want to hear, things that you may end up wishing had been shouted louder before somewhere in January when darkness looms over people’s pockets, or in the depths of February when Valentine is whispering good nothings into lovers’ lame ears... and you may or may not end up being the same person you were in November or in early December... A surge of fluctuating interests is going to be torrential within you, and you may (or may not) pretend to be concerned, but well-the-more you are going to be consumed in its fieriness...  

So in that concern, I will only play around with the fun in a few of those so-called weddings, ‘fashion shows’, shadows of fun and Christmas gatherings... zingine utajijazia...

To begin with, let me tell you something about my take on weddings because as a refresher to my trifling dislike for them, I attended one last Saturday. Yes, I attended a wedding.

Side note: I don’t dislike weddings as in ‘dislike’, but I just get bored that I should attend them or be involved in them... Weddings are good... they are of God...what is of God is GOOD...
Weddings may bore me (Wololo! Um just a man, sawa?) but weddings are most interesting. Weddings have things only shared with funerals – crowds, pomp and over-extended emotions. From weddings you are likely to gather up things you may never gather in funerals though; like over-fetched and almost hysterical happiness.
Weddings have always made me promise myself that I will wed one day. I choose to promise myself like that because I have no liking for gatherings where people meet to look and gaze at two people they've been seeing for a long, long time all along as if they had just dropped as a perfect bundle from heaven - and all in the name if celebration!
But I honor weddings. They are an epitome of the rapture. They have their origin in God. That makes them cool: because they are inspired by God.
Ok. Maybe weddings are done differently where you come from, but they can be quite disgusting to the fashionista or the pious ‘style’ fanatic who may accidentally stumble upon one from this side of the earth. So, if you are fashion sensitive and have a liking for order and civilization, I beg you, yes, I beg you not to attend my wedding or any wedding from these sides of the world.
But to solve that, lemme show you on how to do this wedding thing my ‘civilized’ way.

Here's my take:

About gifts, you may just send me the gift you had for me via my innovative channel, where I will only accept cash [solid cheddar] rather than those funny and rugged maua gifts people waste good money on. I’ll be introducing M-WEDDING: a great way to send gifts (especially money) to a wedding couple... haha. This service will not be in collabo with any network but just a simple way to get your precious money (which will then become my precious gift from you) into my ever-receiving pockets... Also don’t bring me plates, cups and so on... I’ll already be having enough... hehe but please, I beg you, ask either for my bank account number or my M-PESA number direct from me for easier and less hustling transactions, sawa? Please don't attend the wedding with those funny gifts, I beg you... Amen? Please say "Amen!" Thank you.
About fashion, allow me to do my thing. If you ever will be attending, please allow me to make my so-called steam of youngsters to wear the fashion of my liking: no funny ties, no weird colors, no oversized coats or dresses, not mismatched clothing, no oversize shoes, no rugged fabrics (as if we all may be going out to slaughter hens after the wedding). Allow my wedding to be cute and swaggarific, I beg you, sawa?

About food, bear with me that we won’t be cooking all that funny food you are used to in weddings... hehe... Why should we cook you such food anyway, huh? If you aspire to eat such food, come with your own packed lunch or go buy yourself lunch...!! *Hiding*... But there will be lots of cakes, sawa? Cakes and conscious food. This is because a wedding is a celebration, and celebrations need ‘conscious’ food, not blubbery...

In addition to these boring weddings, there are also these so-called ‘family get-togethers’ where you meet flabby people of different cultural likings pretending to like each other's company, meeting somewhere in a remote place in the name of family - ultimate shadows of ‘like’ and ‘love’. This is what you may witness when you will travel upcountry like myself;
Most of the time after travelling upcountry, town-bred tomboys with hawky eyes will move around subduing the whole village into swaggarific stupors. The locals will always hate them and spread unruly gossip about them... And after evening creeps in, an analysis of eating behaviour, sleeping style and clothing [read fashion], fluency of language and lack of electricity will emerge... always done in whispers lest the walls announce the deadness of such moments...
Then you will bury your face in pretence when you hear such things like;
While using town-bragga, a town-bred lass will go something like this: "Kwani hawa wasee wanaishi aje kwenda bathroom in the open?" Then the ka-relative of hers sitting quite close will go like, "Tutakaa huku mpaka lini? [and while smirking] Sijui mom alifikiria nini kutuleta huku...!!" “Umeona vile wanakaa kama pumpkins kwa hizo nguo zao?”, she will rant... and the other will look boringly at her and not say a word...
Yet still, on a table next to them will be an elderly lad and a younger one conversing: "Dude, ati tuna-share kikombe! Hawa watu walizaliwa wapi?" And the other holding a smartphone with a dying battery will go like, "Nimeenda hiki ki-tao/centre chao na hata charger ya phone yangu hawana! Kisha ati wanataka ku-charge my phone [also smirking] [my phone!] na car battery...!!" hehe...
Before them, in that dimly lit room, will pass one of their so-called relatives in funny shorts, and they will look at him with owl-like eyes, Googling the whole of his stature with their eyes, and in the end feeling "Yaaaaaaak!"
Their "village comrades" also out of swaggaphobia will be hiding under a shack somewhere whimpering and whispering terribly hot gossip... [While speaking vernacular]
"Wanadhani wanaown hapa kwetu? Eish! Wakwende huko!"
"Wanadhani tutawaabudu? Eish! Wakwende huko!"
Another one will go like, "Nitawamwagia maji kwa bed. Nitawashow sisi ndo wenye hii place!"
Yet another one will go like, "Na kile kingine [referring to one of the innumerable tomboys] kinaonyesha nani tumbo? [Because she will be wearing more spaghetti tops and bare-backs]. Tumbo imejaa minyoo utadhania kina mimba! Kesho morning nitajifanya ni accident nitakapokimwagia maji kwa nywele...!"
And the ranting will go on and on for 7 good days... you can only imagine how those so-called get-togethers are a relief to many after ending...
Imagine I've not talked about the different cuisine and "maendeleo-ya-hapa-na-pale" talk amongst the elderly in those get-togethers; and the way "things should be done" code appearing and re-appearing here and there whenever the shaggs people will be correcting the town-bred ones . Oooops! It really gets hefty. Quite hefty my friend.
In short, I beg you, yes, I beg you, not to attend those gatherings. They will spare you a lot of stress, pride or low self-esteem... hehe...

Have a grateful festive season people... and go enjoy yourself somewhere...!!

Morris.

Facing the Impossible World of a Forceful God

“Face the facts!” Is what I always tell whosoever tries to real himself/herself against the obvious: that God is not like a man – He ALWAYS has been, and will be seeing things around man in differed arbitrations; and that God’s so-called philosophy-of-man is neither magic-like nor a plain-hound science class with taints of law here and there. God has been, is, will come to be, and will forever be… It doesn’t matter how much we may or may not like the taste of that to our minds and hearts…

One art mankind has protected with might and unto feverish perfection is the unchallenged ability to wrestle against truth. Offer him one truth and be sure to see it face the gristly chance of being multidimensional, multipurpose, multicultural, multi-controversial… just folded into manifold complexity…he seems to be happy and overly enthusiastic with the intertwining in such ability.

And as discovery-pon-discovery comes to the open world he lives in, he wee-fully coughs it out wherever he goes. It makes him feel rather fat. It makes him bellow and beam with queer deportment. It makes mankind style up his common pride with confusing colored realisms… only to want to clutch at the darkest ends of his erroneous arguments…

To many, God should be taken to a rehabilitation centre – because to them, He is such a merciless tyrant. To them, He is such a creepy Master with zealous antics and a fanatic inclination towards barbarism…This is how they always are found ranting:

“How dare He want us all to do what He thinks is right?” they ask.

“How dare He question our misdeeds while in His most perfect sense of senses He has known our damned and most agonizing weaknesses and how they endlessly overpower our ability to become like Him?”  “How dare He think that we can be, in any way imagined possible, like Him?”

“How dare he?” they ask…

That is the fright. That is the madness man always has against God. That is the dismay and pain mankind faces when trying to deal and debate against a God they can’t see, yet who seems to control every little thing they do. It forces man to ask questions. He asks questions. He makes noise. He refuses to understand God... That is how so many of us feel while facing our own created impossibilities in the name of justifying our negative shoves against “what God has created and done…”

“I don’t like how He treats us – how He treats mankind…”, we say.

Some say He (God) claims to be having control over all the heavens and the earth. Some believe it. Some think God is not even present – that he is nonexistent. Some abhor him and His “impossible world…” All these sum up into a series of strangles against what that same God teaches us and wants us to understand as an infallible truth: that He exists from the ends to the ends of time…

In such times of doubt and loudly pronounced harangues, man has therefore two options to lean on:

1) to pretend that he knows not what God is all about and dispense all his soul and might into understanding Him…or 2) to fight against him… And as always, he chooses one…

God sojourns all around us, maybe with us knowing a little of him or without us knowing at all; but He does anyway. God walks around us. What mankind is tempted to do (and what he claims is the ultimate do-or-do) all the time God moves around is to equivocally strive to - and with suspended surety – believe in a God ‘he has no choice’ but to believe in. Such a God, as he may want to define Him, places the greatest and toughest of laws between this man’s obedience and the thereafter reward(s). And that He (God) comes out to be such a merciless judge (I don’t know where men find that one from) who is offensive to man - at most all the time…

Those are lame products from minds describing a God I have never met and don’t think will ever meet…A God that has no description of love as part of Him… that to me, is their own God. Not mine…My God is different. My God doesn’t force Himself into people’s lives or will… My God doesn’t suppress mankind with intolerable laws…My God is different… My God is different…My God allows me to do what I please – whether pleasant or not, it is always my choice as Christian…It is always my choice to do what He says or not… Even if He knows my beginning to my end, He neither forces Himself into my world nor forces me into His. I allow Him to come in, and I can as well march out; with all the freedom I’ve got...

We fall in the danger of becoming a secular humanists or existentialists when we support the norm that God occasionally uses force to justify His means thus making Him more of a Machiavellian operating under that ancient tagline: the ends justify the means... The end result is magnifying God in a rather opposite direction – shows Him as one such supernatural creature who doesn’t care so much about how He reaches at making a person (or people) better (according to what He describes to be better), so long as He can make him (or them) bow lowest and in such ways that may be most unpleasant to his (or their) weak flesh…

Take for instance, the atheist arguing about nonexistence and God. I always wonder how a nonexistent factor (that is God to an atheist) can be the central flux in a major philosophy for decades. It translates either to lunacy or lack of considering the laws of logic. I think it is common sense that no-one argues with or about nothing… How can non-existence (or in the case of an atheist, a non-existent God) lay itself across the spasms of humanity and demand loyalty? And force subjectivity? Man cannot obey nothing, right? I think so. I think that there is no such thing as subjectivity unto an empty entity…

The debate therefore is, if that God, Jehovah, is forceful, then He should also be cruel; because force also gathers unto itself cruelty. He should then be covering up for His misdeeds in the name of wanting to make people better. And if so, He should then be like some other god I hear about (but would rather not mention) – such a god who has never cared for the fate of his followers as long as they obey him in every way…

And with such heightened claims against the God of Christianity, and His so-called impossible world of force-for-My-gain, we meet also Theodicy: an aspect of arguing out why and how a good, loving and merciful God allows bad things to happen to good people… [This is a topic for another day…]

Whenever we see God as forceful, even in the realms of Christianity, we are falling for the philosophy of the secular humanist or the naturalist who believes that God is oppressive to mankind and is not entirely pleased with the well being of mankind as a whole (read, globally).

To me, that is not true.

If God is forceful at all, his followers (we Christians) will come out to be forceful too and thus may become opponent to the moral values which are equally important to all.

None of us is spared the doubt that God may be forceful to some extend. None of us has escaped the snare of thinking that God has always had the freedom to force men into doing as He pleases… And as much as I may want to make a defense against it, this debate really never ends…

What do you think?

Morris.