Labour in Love
Happy Labour Day! 🌟
As I scroll through my phone, I’m greeted by messages acknowledging the new month and Labour Day. Funny thing is, where I’m holidaying, today is also a public holiday — but where I live, we celebrate it on the first Monday of May. Although these different countries all acknowledge the importance of labour as well as appreciate workers, they do it differently .
As I reflected on this,It struck me: how relationships are kinda like that too.The same core principles will either keep or mar them but how they play out? Totally unique.
Take marriage ( between a man and a woman as the author intended) relationship, there are core principles needed to make it work but each relationship is its own beautiful mess. And added to this complexity is the fact that males and females are different and being wired differently can either pose as a challenge or an advantage. While one wife shows respect by kneeling to greet her husband; another shows it by calling him by a nickname only she uses. One husband locks up the house nightly; another emptens the trash. The crucial thing is we do not compare our relationship with others blindly or insist on what happens in ours as the yardstick.
Growing up in church, I’ve seen ministers use their marriage dynamics as the standard instead of teaching applicable principles. Also, some marriage counsellors present their “now” relationship dynamics forgetting to share the early days of struggling, adjusting and the compromise it took in the earlier years to make their marriages work. Sometimes it is not length of the marriage but the maturity levels of the individuals involved that impacts the way the relationship thrives .
And in this era of Social media where most relationships appear “perfect” and could easily create an illusion that leads to despair, we need to be wary. I still remember someone’s Facebook post declaring an undying love between her and her spouse in a prose that could elicit envy as well as admiration from most readers but interestingly ,that post was made just after her spouse had beaten her in church the day before!
The truth is that for a relationship to work, it takes work which must be intentional and continuous. Being pronounced “one” doesn’t make two people one instantly. Like the saying goes, “Marriage is the only institution where you get the certificate before you start.” I am encouraged by my best friend who says ,” the learning in the school of marriage never ends” .
So, as we rest and appreciate our work, let us all remember that relationships take hard work but the payoff is sweet. Rather than following the path of least resistance, we must be ready to courageously do the rewarding hard work.
Sometimes we must have those honest but difficult conversations and sometimes, it requires silence for the moment no matter how much we are screaming on the inside because the timing is not right. Sometimes this hard work may be reflecting and facing our own insecurities and admitting that we rather than our spouse is the individual who needs to change .
Finally on this Labour Day, let me encourage us all to commit to doing the work. It is not enough to attend several relationship seminars, read books or Instagram posts without putting our hands to doing the work .
For the single person wanting to get into a relationship, are you doing the work of searching or positioning yourself to being found?Are you being friendly and approachable or does a potential suitor need to fast and pray before receiving a reply to just “hello” sent to your DM three weeks ago?
And for those in a marriage relationship, remember it is a covenant and not a contract. Maybe the work a spouse reading this post must do now is to forgive while for another, it is to come off the malice horse and render an apology .
Each of us must work and we at Dishusbandmata are promising also to do the hard work of being vulnerable as well sharing with you all regularly from now with the intentionality of us all having better relationships.
To all our readers, Happy Labour Day! Let’s labour in love, intentionally. 💕
ps-you can share below some of the labour of love in your relationship and if this post has helped ypu , please feel free to share
