As Grace and I celebrate 22 years of marriage this Saturday, we are thankful to God for those years. As I always say, for me being married to one woman (I come from a polygamous home) and the same woman for all these years is a miracle. I wish I could have said that it has been easy and enjoyable all through. But to be honest it hasn’t been all that easy. But through all the hard work not to mention the hard talk we have been able to resolve our issues and enter into a deeper level of intimacy with each other.

Grace and I love the movie “Not easily Broken” and we recently watched it for the umpteenth time. From this movie we want to share with you in the coming days some of the lessons we have gleaned from this movie that we can say has been the reason for our success thus far. One of the things that comes out clearly from this movie is how our past affects our present relationship. David in the movie is dealing with some past issues. He wanted to become a professional basketball player but his career was cut short by an injury. He now wants to relive his life in the children he is coaching. He has a skeleton in his cupboard in the form of Darius, one of the boys he is coaching, whose Father knows a little a bit David’s past. He finally confronts himself in the contest he has a one on one basketball contest with Darius’ father. Both men finally get to deal with their shadows.

On the other hand David’s mother-in-law also has a skeleton from her past to deal with. Because of her broken marriage she resents men and poisons her daughter’s mind with the same. As a result they gang up with her daughter Clarice and eventually throw out David from the house.  She too has to confront her past when her daughter Clarice confronts her with this issue but is unwilling to let go.

We all have skeletons in our cupboards which if not dealt with will always come to haunt our present and future lives. 

What we experience in this Nation every election period is a result of some of these past issues that prop us against each other. Most of the things we deal with in marriage are as a result of some of these past issues. Pain from our past, rejection suffered because of our parents’ divorce, sexual abuse by a relative when we were young, mistrust that developed in you when your first boyfriend damped you, unresolved conflict with your spouse, have a way of infecting and affecting our marriages. The sooner we become aware of this and deal with it the better we can be at resolving our conflicts and living together as husband and wife.