EVE : Hebrew word meaning Life
EVE : The day before a big event
EVE : An abbreviation for evening
Have you ever wondered why that first woman was called EVE? I’ll tell you. She moulds with her womb, she nurtures with her hands, and she loves with all her heart. She is the mother of all living because she is the very essence of life just by being. She is the expectation of goodwill, the harbinger of success, indeed she ushers in the celebration. And when the day is done? She is the gentle evening breeze that brings peace and serenades a restful sleep…..EVE.
Dear Eve, do you know your value? Do you know the God-given purpose for which you were created? You are the neck that steadies the authority, the feet that hold the upright, the spine that supports the entire system, a queen indeed. Your worth cannot be measured; neither can your mantle be quantified.
This EVE is of a new dawn, a new beginning. It is time for you to truly understand why you are……….
Yesterday, YOU made a decision to spend the rest of your life with him, hence the reason why every wedding invitation card reads ‘Eve weds Groom’. It was your agreement that made the event occur at all, your mandate that is being executed during the life span of the marriage and therefore your determination and endeavour that makes it succeed. I have often heard that marriage is a partnership where both parties have to make sacrifices and ‘bend over backwards’ to please each other…. but look at it from this angle, if two people are literally moving in opposite directions (and without looking too, I must say), how exactly will that yield the desired result? Every partnership human or mechanical, has a pivot – the driver who holds the aces no matter how subtle. The pulley turns the belt, the horse draws the cart, the hinges swing the door, the skates pull out the drawer, the switch turns on the light, and YOU complete him.
You may notice that the pivot in most cases is the smaller object, yet it is the stronger one. Your position in the home appears to be the lesser one, but it is the most important. You are actually operating from a position of power where every decision you make has an impact. Are you aware that when you abuse that privilege, that is the very definition of non-physical violence? For instance, the way you address him when the chips are down is a potential deal breaker or maker. These chips could be a trying period, a troubled past haunting you, or indeed a truly terrible man. Words are the foundation of the earth and therefore the backdrop of every action. The key is the tone (pun intended) of your voice which you should train – much like rehearsing for a duet. That way, you can hear the background instrumentals (Grace), hear another voice for guidance (Patience), harmonise your own voice with these (Humility) and invariably create a symphony of sounds (Peace) which is the beautiful music of marriage.
I know an Eve called Maiye. She and Femi got married in 2005, though I am not sure they ‘fell’ in love the conventional way (I always hated that phrase ‘fall in love’…. sounds like one literally slipped and fell!!!). It was more of a mutual decision to partner and move to the next level in life together. She is a lawyer with a reputable Nigerian law firm, while he is an architect who runs his own small architectural firm. At the time they got married, he was doing relatively okay, getting contracts here and there and generally able to pay most bills while Maiye supported only a little bit. Over the years, they had three children, two girls and a boy and naturally the bills mounted. It just so happened that Femi’s business began to dwindle and the jobs became quite few and far between. And when they did come? They’d be terribly time-consuming without a commensurate monetary compensation. Maiye’s career in the law firm was not particularly growing either, only getting promoted twice from entry level to the third level in the thirteen years she had worked there. However, she was doing much better than Femi and therefore had to shoulder most of the responsibilities in the home. In order to compensate for his financial shortcomings and also to use his less active periods productively, Femi took up a lot of domestic duties (school run, hospital run, nanny supervision, etc), which suited Maiye very well as we all know how hectic the legal profession can be with the sometimes-crazy long hours.
Femi attempted several times to get a nine-to-five job so as to earn a more stable and sizeable income, but this did not work out as Maiye subtly frustrated the moves. She was enjoying the fact that he was always there to literally carry the children and monitor the nanny with only few periods when he was working on some project or the other. She did not show appreciation though. She began to exhibit what I like to call ‘coded disrespect’ to Femi – speaking to him rudely both when they were alone or with company, cooking only when she felt like, snubbing his family and friends such that no one could visit their home and pointing out at every opportunity that she was paying the bills. They quarrelled sometimes, (though not as frequently as you might think) but mostly all was relatively calm because Femi did not have a leg to stand on, being the defunct breadwinner.
Now, I call it ‘coded disrespect’ because the people who are currently window -shopping in the soap opera of their marriage are marvelling at how supportive and wonderful Maiye is. She is taking up so much financial responsibility with little or no complaints and still meeting her obligations as mother and wife, while Femi is the couch-potato lazily playing house-husband. Wrong! Maiye is simply fulfilling her life’s purpose to be a helper (remember you can only help someone you are stronger than) and a woman of virtue BUT she is abusing Femi in the process. Her total disrespect of him as a man and as her husband, no matter how ‘coded’, amounts to non-physical violence to him. She is silently killing his creative nous and breaking his spirit. Shall I tell you how the matter will end if she does not repent? He will eventually get his big break and land a huge contract, make a lot of money and then begin to maltreat her. Then the window-shoppers will say “what an ingrate!! After she supported him all those years, look how he is repaying her”. It all goes downhill from there, trust me.
My dear Eve, what are you saying to him?
Bookie