WHAT MY FATHER TOLD ME

My dad may have had his many faults but there are areas of His life I will forever be grateful for, and I must have said these many time here. So if you haven’t read or hear this part of me, this article just brought it to you.

Ever before I knew anything about the gospel, I had made up my mind as far back as my primary 4 or 3 or even less that I will never have two wives, whatever the case. Why? Because my father told me so, he told me as small as I was, his voice still resonate in my head, that polygamy is evil, because he has so many wives after the death of his first one. He said the genesis of all his woes was that he ventured into polygamy and that none of his boys will ever go into that error. Before I read the Bible, or heard any preacher on polygamy my father taught me using his own experience.

Today, many men knew where they made mistakes but are too busy or too proud or combinations of both to instruct their children of how the devil had robbed them.

Many women have battled with one strange woman or another all their married lives, they compete for their husband’s attention everyday of their married lives, yet they never find it necessary to talk to their five years old boy, their teenage boys and all their male children one after another the evil of keeping plenty women and what it does to a happy family.

The girls are generally taught how to keep the home but the boys are left to learn from the father’s crude behaviours. So the question is who will train the boys?

I never spent a kobo on a beer, never fell into the vice of alcoholism, even before I got born again, never smoked, not even a stick of cigarette because my father told me it was a reason for concern for my mum at the start of their love lives.

It registered in my small brain then that a good husband must never indulge in alcoholism, must never smoke (that was my interpretation of his message) and that became part of me. Just imagine if he never told me his stories, I would have had enough fightings to make in those area and my wife would have had so many unnecessary prayer points to deal with.

One of my step mom once told me,p sweeping the house, cooking in the kitchen and doing domestic work will never rob a man of his manhood. Today, unless the male in me want to showoff, there is hardly any kitchen or domestic work I cannot get involved in. Sometimes I unconsciously stand at the door of the kitchen when my wife is inside working, preparing the food, it wasn’t that I stand at the kitchen door in a hurry to be served but it is an unconscious part of me. I stood at the kitchen door anytime my step mom was in the kitchen, all the years I was under her because it was her believe that kitchen won’t rob a man of his manhood. I never loved the trainings especially from my step moms but they have helped to shape the man I am today. My wife hardly stay alone in the kitchen while she cooks unless I deliberately decide to stay away.

That was me, many years ago, and it is still me today. No child should be sparred domestic trainings, our children deserve to know our failures and our successes, they need to know our stories, with them they can build the life we want them to live and better still most of us, if not all of us, know the Bible, have a better support Group like 3pG that my father never had, so we have no excuse not to train our children, boys in particular.

I hope this wake someone up to sound Christian parenting.

Olumofin Kehinde Benjamin writes for Praying Parents Prayer Group Christian Ministry (3pG).