When you see a pastor who displays the love that he or she has for the spouse publicly and the spouse responds in an alluring way, you must not have the feeling that everything is perfect in such home. Every serious couple covers up the challenges at home to present their relationship in the light of the will of God for the home. The truth of the matter is that no pastor ever had a perfect spouse. Consequently, if you notice something in your spouse that you don’t like, you are not alone! Every minister of God, however beautiful their home appears to be, has has learnt to accept the imperfection of the spouse, so as to keep the home.
In the author’s Twelve Laws For A Successful Marriage, the tenth law is the law of imperfection, which states that You must learn to live with the weaknesses or the imperfections of your spouse.
Most homes that are in crises are in such situations because either the husband or wife of such homes have not learnt to live with the imperfections of their spouse. There are several reasons why you must learn to live with such imperfections;
YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
One major reason why you must learn to live with the imperfections of your spouse is that you are not alone. If your closest pastor friend is going to be frank with you, he or she will point out to something he doesn’t like about his spouse. The only reason why you might not have been told is to avoid exposing the spouse. If you now start telling others about the weakness of your spouse, it means you are not really wise!
YOUR SPOUSE MAY BE HELPLESS ABOUT THE IMPERFECTION.
Though your spouse also doesn’t like the weakness in him or her, she may be helpless in controlling it. Imagine realizing on your wedding night that your husband snores. The following day you told him that he should try to sleep sideways so that he would not snore, which he did but soon he unconsciously returned to former position and you start hearing noise as if a locomotive train is moving. In subsequent nights, it was the same story. You must realize that he doesn’t really have control over it. Consequently, you have to find a way of getting used to a snoring husband.
Maybe one of the things you cherish most about a woman is being able to sing, try as you can, your wife doesn’t appear to be able to; or maybe you like your woman to be able to drive expertly but she has phobia for driving. As a pastor too, you might have preferred that your wife be an Intercessor or a teacher, but she turned out not to be able to do any of the above. She may be helpless in those areas that you would have expected her to perform. You may just have to accept her the way she is because she can’t help it.
I have always told pastors that if your wife can neither preach, sing nor intercede but keeps the home front in a way that allows you to do ministry without hindrance, she is a very useful minister’s wife. You may not value such wife until you see another minister’s wife who is highly gifted in ministry but the pride in her is a big hindrance in her husband’s ministry.
YOU HAVE YOUR OWN.
One major reason why we may be harping on the imperfection of our spouse is that we often forget that we also are not perfect. The simple truth is that you are not perfect too. If your spouse too will be honest with you, he or she would have told you what is being managed in you! Maybe you don’t know how to tidy up your room, just like me. I have a very big table in my room which should be large enough for me to work. However, when I take a book from the shelve and use it on the table, I won’t return that book. If it is on the bed that I used it, it would remain there as if returning it to the shelve would not make it available for me again. When I remove a dress, instead of folding it or hanging it, I may leave it on the arm of a chair! A time would now come when the table and the chair would have been so busy that it would not be available for me to use. When everything has become so unorganized, I’ll decide to set a day aside to reorganize the room. It may be when I decide to reorganize that an idea about a book which I am writing would come, I would quickly pick up my iPad again, never to return to reorganize the room. The shocking part of it to my wife and children is that if they decide to organize it for me, it may turn out into another problem because if they remove a piece of paper or book from where I left it, by the time I need it and ask them they would be regretting that they helped me to reorganize because how many documents are they going to account for?
If I am complaining about my wife’s imperfection, it may probably be because I’ve forgotten that I also have my own which makes my room to be as scattered as you can imagine.
YOU CAN’T ENJOY YOUR MARRIAGE IF YOU DON’T ACCEPT IT.
You will just have to accept the imperfection in your spouse because if you don’t, you will definitely not enjoy your marriage. If you marry at the age of thirty, and you live to be ninety before going back to your God, it means that you will live with your spouse for the next sixty years of your life. Imagine that you are living those sixty years always complaining, there is no way you will enjoy fulfillment in that marriage.
THE IMPERFECTION MAY BE DIVINE.
God knows better than us because He knows the end from the beginning. He also knows what is better for our future than the way we know it. Consequently, He may deliberately put something in your spouse that though is not pleasing to you, is the best for your life. A weakness that is irritating you in your spouse might have been put there by God so that your home may be stable in the future. There are ministers wives that God will deliberately deny some grace because of the tendency in them to be ungovernable in the future if God blessed them with such grace. There are other minister’s wives that may not be able to humble themselves if certain gifts are in their lives, so God would prevent them from experiencing it, but unknowingly their husbands would be clamoring for such gifts in their wives.
A NEW SPOUSE WILL COME WILL COME WITH A BRAND NEW SET OF PROBLEMS.
Another reason why you must accept the imperfection of your spouse is that if you divorce because of that weakness, the next person you marry will not have that exact deficiency, but will come with a brand new set of problems. That is why those who have second marriages mostly don’t appear to have the fulfillment that they had expected. Accepting the imperfection of your spouse will consequently save you a lot of frustrations.
CONSTANT COMPLAINTS WILL LEAD TO OTHER PROBLEMS.
If you don’t accept the imperfections of your spouse and keep complaining about it, one of the problems which may crop up is that your spouse may start having the feeling that you don’t really love him or her. When that comes in, there will be various degrees of reactions which may not be beneficial to you and the ministry.
ACCEPTANCE OF THE IMPERFECTION WILL LOSE IT’S POTENCY TO CREATE OTHER PROBLEMS.
It may appear as if it will be difficult to accept your spouse’s imperfection, but the truth is that you can always find a way around it. One day, Pastor E. A. Adeboye was ministering and he said that one of the major issues that he had to contend with after marriage was the issue of time keeping for his wife. According to him, if they are going to be at a program which would start by 10am at Ibadan, if he is telling his wife to hurry up by 8.30am at Redemption Camp, mama would be wondering why he is hurrying her up at 8.30 when the program would be starting at 10am. She would find it difficult to factor in the time that they would spend on the road before getting to Ibadan and the fact that they would still spend some time even after reaching Ibadan to get to the venue.
When he realized that there was no way things would change, he devised means of making her to believe for a program starting at 10am, they would need to arrive there by 8.30 so that at the end of the day, they would be able to arrive by 10am!
Dr. Mike Oluniyi.
