Benitho Onyemba

What's interesting about most ideas of love, romance, relationships, and marriage is that if it feels like work or when things feel hard, we assume something's wrong. Are we really in love? Was this a mistake? Did we lose our way? Now of course those can be true and there are times in our marriage where our human flaws or actions hurt the marriage. But even in good seasons, it still takes work. That's not a sign something's wrong, it's a sign something real is happening. Marriage and relationships are like skilled trades. You apply a focused effort over time, and maybe after a few decades you'll be good at something and have something beautiful to show. And man, when I think about marriage that way it gets me excited. In fact I don't even tend to think marriage is as hard as people make it out to be, we usually just say that when our reality crashes against our expectations. Even in times when it feels hard I tend to not think much about the hardness because I think this is what I signed up for. This is expected. This is where we get to the place we want to be. I get to learn, study and understand Naomi. I get to apply a focused attention on her, the kids, learning to be a better husband and father. Sometimes you need to slow down enough to be able to appreciate what's important. You don't stumble into creating something meaningful, not in work, not in marriage. It takes attention, effort, and grace to build something special...