Chapter 29
What Makes
Marriage Successful is
Compatibility
“For every male, God has created a female who is like him”- Yemi Omogboyega
Marriage, as I have said, thrives on compatibility. Compatibility means living together harmoniously but it does not exclude differences. But such differences are always resolved with the couple's common determination to move forward. One partner could be sheep while the other is goat but they are always able to co-exist. From our courtship days, readers could observe that we have been confronted with the issues of religion, clannishness, and educational considerations but because we are compatible, we have been able to surmount them all and live happily.
Let me not be too simplistic. A compatible marriage certainly needs some doses of determination to make it work. Compatibility is not an automatic guarantee of marital success but it is the bedrock of it. This is because only people who can reason together as God Almighty reasoned in the Holy Trinity to create us that will be capable of resolving fundamental and divisive issues amicably. Certainly God and Satan, like light and darkness, cannot co-exist at unity as they are in opposite poles. It then follows that only people of like minds can interact to produce a positive relationship or result. A truly compatible couple, no matter how tempted, cannot seek to harm, talk less of hatching an evil plan against one another as it is characterized in our society where a husband would wantonly kill his wife for ritual purposes or a woman would go to the extent of exposing her nakedness before a native doctor, so-called Pastor or Alhaji, to either make concoctions or secure satanic means to appropriate a man. Compatibility cements relationships naturally.
For every man or woman, God has created a partnering likeness. So, to get the appropriate life-partner, we must seek the face of God to give us the right person for us. They are there and we would find them if we are patient, prayerful and hardworking enough to locate them. That is the antidote to the calamitous marriages that have crashed and will crash in the future in our society or in the world at large.
Compatibility enables the parties in a marriage to see 'eye-to-eye' whenever misunderstandings or differences occur, without hurting one another or derailing their marriages. Ours is a practical example of compatibility.
Chapter 30
How We Manage
Our Children
I have a clear vision of how I want my children to turn out to be in every facet of life. I also believed that for such visions to be fulfilled, I had to start early.
My first vision for them is to know God. With that, I know that they will be easy to manage. For this reason, right in their conception, my wife and I had prayed for them fervently and prophesied to their lives. I had the habit of feeling how they kicked in my wife's womb and, in conjunction with Mary, we spoke the word of God to them as they wallowed therein. I had appreciated how active as foetuses they were although sympathising with my wife who had no choice in the discomfort of bearing them.
As the children were given birth to, we delivered them in faith into the hands of someone who was much stronger and knowledgeable than we were, my late mother, Victoria Tomire. She took care of spiritual values thenceforth. That was when we worshiped with the C.A.C. (Oke Aanu Parish) at Orile Iganmu, Lagos
My mother shepherded them through every programme in the Church while at the home front I demonstrated to them, as a ministration (morning and evening): consistently - right mannerisms, attitudes and prophetic statements to mould their upbringing, even though they didn't understand what I was saying for a long time. By the time they started talking, I sang along with them, mimicking their joyful, though imperfect renditions! And as they began their A,B.C in the Nursery Schools, I introduced God to them in like manner. We all flowed together and early enough!
However, one of them was markedly different, energetic and very restless, and he got my hands full indeed. At his own insistence, he started schooling at the age of one, on the day his elder brother who was two years old, started. We thought it was a joke but he stayed the course with his brother until primary five when they were about to secure an admission into the Secondary School together. Then Apata Memorial School
As the junior grew, his restiveness increased and he disdained to sit down during praise worships. He fiddled with every available electronics equipment in the house, wanting to know what made them function. When he and his elder brother went for the National Common Entrance examination and he urged him to let them pray before writing the exams, he retorted thus “that is how you will be wasting your time praying instead of doing first what you are required to do”. Incidentally, his senior subsequently scored 501 out of 600 in the exam while he scored only 438! Whenever I wanted to review his day's work in the school to guide him, he would say, “Daddy, don't teach me; I know it all”.
He disrespected his elder brother whom he would not accept as his elder. When anything was to be shared, he chose first and the bigger part as well. He overrode his elder brother in all situations and challenged him into a fight every time!
One day, we called his bluff and cleared a ring for them to fight, in order to put an end to his constant harassments and restore his brother's birthright! Indeed, his elder brother thrashed him so thoroughy that he actually ran for his dear life! Thereafter, he acquiesced and accepted, as it were, the pecking order of the family. We forced him to recognise that his elder brother was not only entitled to the larger portion of anything they had to share, it was his brother's prerogative to share any such things between them. Finally, as a mark of respect, he was henceforth to call his elder, 'brother', whenever he addressed him but this order he was not prepared to swallow, he seemingly regarded as a bitter pill - no matter the threats we subjected him to. In the end, I resolved that the matter needed a spiritual solution, whereby we made it a recurring prayer-point during the daily family altar.
Nonetheless, he continually kept the entire household on their toes and seemingly perpetually conjured a noisy atmosphere, although no one could pin him down to it as the perpetrator!. But his youthful progress was ceaselessly remarkable.
When he was enrolled in the CAC Nursery School
When eventually they were moved to a more organised Nursery and Primary School, he was expelled within two weeks for being too restless, thereby incorrigibly disturbing the peace of other children!
This development really alarmed us about him and emphasised the magnitude of the challenge we faced. I intensified the practice of committing him to and feeding him with the word of God, as well as cultivating his companionship with me. In the course of this remedy, God apparently came to our aid and He appeared to him in a dream which he himself related to us the next morning thus:
“Daddy I dreamt today. In the dream, I saw an old man who said to me: 'you are a lucky boy. You have very good parents who are very loving and caring.
Make sure you obey them always. Make sure you don't give them troubles because they are very nice people!”
He seemed, not only to have been truly touched by the dream but apparently shared the assertions of the 'old man' he saw in his dream. For a few days, he calmed down and largely behaved to expectations again. He still competed seriously with his elder academically though and still yearned to outscore him always. I loved that spirit of positive competition and so I encouraged him to keep it up.
This was the position until a nephew of mine (with a totally different background from our own setting) joined us. My over-active son in question was in JSS1 then and my nephew in JSS3. My nephew was necessarily different by background. He exhibited elements of stubbornness and lacked the culture of a good reading habit. He preferred playing football to committing to his studies then. These tendencies negatively affected his academic performance in school. At first my nephew and my restless son didn't see eye-to-eye, so they were always quarrelling! One such day, however, my son accidentally swallowed an office pin during a minor scuffle between them. When I remembered the story of an office worker who had accidentally swallowed an office pin he was using as a toothpick and he had died therefrom, I shuddered and I rued the day my nephew came into my household. After trying all possible means to induce him to vomit the office pin, we finally gave him eba to swallow, which he did successfully without complaining of any obstruction or pain. We monitored him till day-break when I took him to the hospital. His stomach was X-rayed, and as the Doctor was examining the film, surprisingly, my son was first to spot the pin in his intestine before the Doctor could do so! Thereafter at home, we pleaded with him to let us always examine his faeces in a bowl or on the ground before washing it into the toilet, to be sure the pin was passed out of his system. He bluntly refused and said he would conduct it himself. So I made him sleep with us to monitor his movements. We searched his toilet unsuccessfully and frustratingly until the fourth day when he was once again pressed to defecate. I then dragged him protesting to the side of the sewage pit to pass his stool. Lo and behold, the pin was found in it! It had become totally blackened and we praised God, because we could breathe easy once again!
But that was not the end of negative influences that threatened our collective fate on the arrival of my nephew in our house. My son's positive competitive attitude soon evaporated and he took after my nephew's unacceptable traits a hundred per cent. He started recording woeful failures in exams at school.
My wife and I as well as his elder brother, Olumide, were seriously disturbed. We prayed, counselled and chastised him but there was no improvement. .
As a last resort, and in a flash of inspiration, I summoned up my son and my nephew one day. Rather than remonstrate straight away, I cursed strongly the spirit that seemed to bind them invicibly together and, in the name of the Lord, decreed instant breakage of whatever their co-operative attitude had wickedly foisted on them to perpetrate their backward mentality. Then I threatned them with police arrest and expulsion from home if they would not reform. While on it, I descended more heavily on my son than my nephew to avoid being accused of discrimination or victimisation. Everyone in the house, except my wife who knew I was putting up an act, was forced to plead with me to rescind my determination. Eventually, I allowed myself to be persuaded against my will!
Later, during the family altar, the spirit of God directed me to remind my son of the content of his earlier dream of the “Old Man' who had urged him to be obedient to his parents and avoid causing trouble. I urged him to realize that a child destined for greatness must pass through troubles of the type he was experiencing.
I reminded him that God was working with him in a dream like the Biblical Joseph. I told him that what was happening to him was Satan's design to make him offend God and revolt against his loving parents so that he could be cursed. Therefore, he needed to resist the devil at all costs. As I spoke, I saw his countenance suddenly begin to change! Then we prayed and I laid my hand upon him, and emptied my heartful desires upon him by prophesying that his disturbed state would surely end and that he would be his normal good self again; that like Joseph, he would become great; God would continue to direct the affairs of his life; he would bring blessing to his family and not shame; he would prosper and, most importantly, that he would become a Minister of God such as a Pastor, apart from whatever career he might choose for himself. (I also prayed likewise for my nephew)
Again, God took control. My son became contemplative and the spirit of the Lord took hold of him. He was opening up to me once more and we prayed together often. Although he remained friendly with my nephew, he shed the bad habits he had learned from him. There soon was a dramatic improvement in his academic performance. He began to score credits rather than passes. That was the position when he wrote his JSS.3 examinations, whereas his elder brother had made distinctions in virtually all his papers at that level.
However, by the time he was promoted to SS1, he had fully regained lost ground. Whenever I dropped him and others at school in the morning he would go straight to a particular quiet classroom to read his books. When the school authorities themselves observed this constant resort, they most often left him out of the morning assembly so as not to disrupt his studies. When he subsequently wrote his first term exam, he took first position which he maintained until he passed out of SS3!. Like his elder brother at the SS2 class, he passed the GCE papers with flying colours! When he wrote his SSCE/NECO exams, they were walkovers! Not only that he came home with the best student's prizes in four core science subjects like Maths, Physics, and two others, he also obtained the Neatest Boy's prize in that academic year. His elder brother had obtained 5 of such prizes in the core -science subjects and topped it with the prize for the best overall student! I was glad to fly down from Abuja
“…thank you for waiting for me. I am
going to enter the University at the same
time with you and will graduate even before you”!
Spiritually, he voluntarily attends Church programmes without any urging. My son today not only reads the Bible himself but volunteers to participate in Bible quizzes in my church, often winning good prizes! (The same thing goes for his elder brother who, observedly, is spiritually more developed, even than the rest of us in the nuclear family!)
Thank God he is like Joseph and not Jacob; so, I see his competitive nature as a positive one rather than the outsmarting type. (And I have personally taught him to appreciate his elder brother as the pace-setter in his life and I am happy he deeply appreciate that golden contribution by him to his life's progresses).
As I write, both he and his elder brother are in different Universities, but because his degree course is a year shorter than his brother's, he would predictably graduate earlier than his elder brother! We are happy parents today.
The competition between them is healthily on-going; so it is amongst the other children that God has blessed us with (including those who are not our biological children but living with us).
If only for the transformation of this boy, I thank God for my decision not to put my children in the hostel early in their lives. Whatever they missed by not being in the hostel cannot be compared to the balanced education (spiritual, academic and home training) they have been able to receive from us as their parents.
Again, by the kind of environment God has granted us the grace to create in our house for children, any child who steps into our house, stands automatically transformed academically, morally and socially, because he or she becomes inured to hardwork, godliness and sound moral grounding!
No doubt they become children of God as well as assets, not only to themselves, their families, their employers in the future but to this Nigeria and, of course, the world at large. Spiritually, nothing stops them from becoming top-class Ministers of God, in addition to their secular callings. This is because we have been consistent in their mentoring and upbringing, from which they would not depart. Indeed, the impact of our process of godly character-moulding will manifest in subsequent pages.
People who don't read books tend to find life boring, dull and their lives are static. So cultivate a reading habit! Yemi Omogboyega
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