Eat the Hay


Hello again wonderful readers and welcome to the second half of the year!!! Its been a really interesting year so far as a lot of intriguing things have taken place.  The World Cup results definitely shocked a lot of people – not so much the winners but how quickly some of the football giants were knocked out.  Let’s not forget the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle.  Honestly folks, anything can happen so still hold on to God.

So, this month is about the shoulda-woulda-couldas of relationships and what we learnt from them.  I did a little reflecting and the story I want to share is one that is very dear to my heart.  I’ve realised that fear is indeed a terrible thing and it can drive people to places they never imagined.  When it comes to relationships, there are all kinds of things that could cause fear and one of them is bad counsel.  An extreme case of bad counsel is seen in the Bible where someone advised his friend and cousin  to rape his step-sister because of a crush.  That move ended the person’s life and ruined things for many others.  The adviser at the time did not plan to get his friend killed, but that was the repercussion of his actions.

I have a friend who is very dear to my heart.  Being her friend means that we understand each other, and I know when to back off and let her do her thing.  Unfortunately, marriage was one of those moments when I had to back off.  I got married a few years before she did and when she told me about her proposal, I was excited for her, but it was also a time to ask deep and serious questions.  She was having a lot of disagreements with her fiancé and alarm bells were going off in my head.  I could hear my mom’s voice in my head saying “…a broken engagement is better than divorce…”, but who dares to be brave enough to call a friend out on such matters?  I actually prayed asking God for wisdom as I spoke to her, but it soon became clear that she would not listen to me.  So, I encouraged her to go for a thorough marriage counselling session, which she agreed to do.

A few weeks later when I inquired how the counselling was going, she said her man was not interested in anyone telling him how to run his marriage, and she seems to agree with him because it’s something they must do together.  This friend of mine had already seen how easily marriages can fail within her own family.  How could they not see the importance of receiving sound counsel?  They couldn’t even agree on which church to receive counsel from as they attended different denominations.  I watched with worry.  I kept trying to both encourage and insist on marriage counselling, but I got to that invisible line which I wasn’t supposed to cross – so I had to stand back and watch.  The couple argued all the way to the altar. A few weeks after their first anniversary they went their separate ways.  It broke my heart the day my friend said, “I wished we had gone for counselling.”  I am not saying that counselling would have solved all their problems.  My experience of marriage counselling was mixed.  I remember coming out of one of the sessions, and my husband to be suddenly changed his mind about a major issue which we had already agreed on, because of what the counsellor had suggested.  That simple suggestion caused me a lot of pain in my first six months of marriage. Yet I still recommend counselling to everyone who feels the call to brave the waters of marriage.

The writer of a book I am currently reading says we should apply wisdom like an old cow, who eats hay that contains some sticks, but is wise enough to spit out the sticks and swallow the necessary hay.  The fear of sticks doesn’t stop the cow from eating the much-needed hay.  We shouldn’t allow the fear of bad counsel make us run away from receiving counsel altogether. I received a lot of counsel before I got married, and I still had shocks once I was married, so imagine not receiving any counsel!  My friend and her husband had very different ideas of what a marriage should be, and these ideas had been birth from the circumstances they grew up around.  They didn’t set out to hurt each other or rule each other, but their ideologies were not in sync.  I strongly believe that counselling would have brought this to light.  They tried counselling when things got bad, but they were both too hurt and angry to receive the truth from anybody – they had had enough.

I remember an incident in my early twenties.  I was chatting to this guy in church and a trusted Aunty believed I had fallen in love.  He happened to like me, but I was genuinely just being nice.  My Aunty’s words were “…you are in love, but you don’t know it.”  I didn’t think that was possible.  I am not in the habit of lying to myself so how would I not know I was crazy about someone?  She encouraged me to go o a date with him.  I did. Nothing happened. In fact, I was angry at both of them.  I couldn’t look her in the eye for some weeks as I kept thinking – I trusted you and you led me astray.  A few more days of thinking reminded me that God didn’t leave me, and I really should have asked his opinion before I jumped head first.  My Aunty was only human after all.  That was when I made a conscious decision to check for sticks within the hay.  Have you met people who tell you they don’t eat fish?  Most of the time, there is a painful experience with fishbone that led to that resolve; Yet fish is one of the most nutritious proteins God gave us.

I have had a few examples of bad counsel in my life, but the good examples far outweigh the bad.  Please don’t be scared to ask for help and counsel when in need.  If you get the chance, learn about things before you need them, so that when the counsel comes, it will agree with what you already have inside you. 
 Eat the hay and spit out the sticks. 

Writing with a purpose,
Keshia

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