Sunday, March 23, 2008 Luab: Be true to one another By Evelyn R. Luab light sunday
WHEN I was much younger, I thought it was only women who suffered a lot.
I heard of battered women, of physical abuse, of drunk and philandering husbands. I even heard of lazy husbands.
My grandmother would snort this way: “Kanang tawhana, way silbi! Pastilang tapulana. Ang iyang asawa nagtrabaho. Siya matulog tibuok adlaw; mobangon lang aron mokaon. Liwat gyod sa amahan. Sugarol, unya pildero pa gyod!” (That man is worthless! He is so lazy. His wife works while he sleeps the whole day. He only wakes up to eat! He takes after his father! What a gambler he is! To top it all, he is always a loser!) After being exposed to that tirade, I grew up thinking that women had all the bad luck.
Today, however, I am much older and wiser. I now see that men, too, have their hurts and pains. The difference in both sexes lies in the fact that men don’t show their grief. They rarely share their aches with others, not even to their relatives. Somehow, the strong men guard their privacy and face their problems. The men of character grieve for a time, but they solve the problem and then move on.
In this present age of permissiveness where even married people are prey to cupid’s naughty arrow, I wonder at how times have changed. Women have become more liberated (too mild a term) and much to their detriment, they only realize the value of their men when they are lost forever.
Married women have no business going with “gangs” (sorry, I do call them gangs) when all they do is go to bars, smoke cigarettes, drink and indulge in hollow laughter while their husbands are working and their children are left with their yayas!
Christ forgave the adulterous woman. But He was Christ. Husbands are mortals who generally do not have the heart of Christ. (There are exceptions, of course.) But most of them will cut and cut clean. So where does that leave the adulterous woman?
The Lenten season was an occasion for us to rise from the ashes and dust of our sinfulness. All of us have, in one way or another, failed our families. We have been lax in disciplining our children because we have been tired from work. To keep peace we just let it pass, which we should have corrected. We may have been niggardly in our time spent with our families. Social life, golf, mahjong, etc. may have kept us away.
What a tragedy it will be to find one day that our partner is gone and the children have all grown up and left us. What could be more painful would be the tragedy of having a drug addict or a juvenile delinquent in the family.
Actually, marital problems can be prevented. Only mature individuals who can open their eyes to the realities of married life should enter the sacred sacrament of matrimony. Marriage has to be nurtured and appreciated. The man or woman we marry is the one we love.
If only we can keep that love burning by the virtues of understanding, patience, and an all out giving of self to our loved one, then the other half cannot help but appreciate the goodness, the loyalty, the sacrifice of an all-loving partner.
Oh, dear women! The rewards of fidelity are life-long. I ache when I hear of men or women hurting because of the infidelity of a marriage partner. To think that fleeting moments of stolen pleasure often bring disastrous results.
Today is time for us to remember that God is a God of life. He rose again. He wishes us to be happy. What greater happiness is there for us than to enjoy the blessed company of our families? We are made for life! Let us treasure and appreciate our partners. They gave us the honor of choosing us.
