The sexual metaphor of ‘tasting the pudding before you buy it’, is a no-no for Rachel Afolabi and her husband Abimbola Afolabi, who both were guests on the RTC’s FLOW in the Morning Monday show ‘Awakening Possibility’ with Darron Hilaire.
The Nigerian-born doctor couple, who have made the Turks and Caicos Islands their home for years, offering what some have described as yeomen services through medicine, stated that marriage is an important pillar to a sound society, and therefore, should be fought for.
“Marriages work. All these shacking up, living together, tasting the pudding before you even buy it, it doesn’t work,” Mrs. Afolabi asserted. “Do it God’s way. That is the only way that works, and that’s what has worked for us and still working for us until now.”
Her husband, who totally agreed with her, stated that a lot of married couples have abandoned God from their unions, but rather believe in the misconception that the marriage was designed to only meet one party’s needs.
“…And if I don’t get me satisfied then it is not worth fighting for or worth pursuing…but failing to realize that God is the designer and originator of marriage and he designed it for a purpose of changing you to who He wants you to be,” he said, stating that the process is painful.
“And if you are not prepared to go through that, the easiest option is to just walk out, or just don’t fight for it anymore,” he analyzed.
He stated that the ills faced in society come from home training, noting that what the home produces will affect society positively or negatively.
“The key thing is to use God’s manual…that’s the Bible. If you do that, you are not going to go wrong. Now, most of what is in the manual logically doesn’t make sense. But if you step out in faith, it works,” he asserted.
He added: “We have done it over the years, and it has worked. It has worked for the children as well. Nobody is perfect, but if you do that you will get it. The problems in society, it all goes back to the home.
“If the marriages are not healthy, the children are going to have problems. Society is going to have problems. And we need to realize that governments don’t have solutions to issues of society. The only solutions they have is to put more police on the road, get more prison cells built and just deal with it the way government will deal with stuff. It doesn’t work…you can go checkout anywhere in the world. But when you pay attention to families, to make sure that families are wholesome, marriages are healthy, the children are raised well, you can’t go wrong. It is cheaper in the long run.”
Mrs. Afolabi told the show host that people would look at them and believed that they never had problems, but revealed that their union almost ended four years after they were married.
“But what we realized at that point in time is that we took our eyes off God,” Mrs. Afolabi pointed out. “But what we did was to retrace our steps, and we actually went back to the altar at our fifth wedding anniversary to rededicate. It is difficult. Marriage is not easy. These are two different individuals coming with their own agenda, with their own life.”
She added: “The quickest anybody would get married is 18…(and so) for 18 years you are formed, so you are coming into that relationship with your own idea of what it should be. And both of you, for those first four years, are trying to change each other, (with each saying) ‘it should be my way’.
“But you have to compromise, you have to give-up some things. You have to take on some things. Both of you must realize that you are in this for the long run. There is no shortcut.”
Mr. Afolabi strongly suggested that using the Bible as a roadmap will go a long way. He said the Bible would lead one to understand that God’s plan is all about family because it is through the family that a better world can be built.
“And for the young people out there, the family unit is what God has in mind for the world to be what it is. Because if we get it right at that unit, you can take that into the community, into the bigger society, into the world.
“But if we don’t get it right at home, how are we going to get it right? Because that is the foundation. Having the children go where you want them to go, you have to start early…you have to use the same manual, there is no other way,” he said.
Mrs. Afolabi, in the meantime, pointed out that they taught their children from a young age the importance of having God in their lives.
“And as soon as they can read, we are reading the Bible together, doing devotions together, we are going to church together. Some parents wake up in the morning and ask their two- or three-year-old ‘do you want to go to church today?’
“No! we are going to church. As soon as you can, you are joining the ushering team, you are joining the worship team…you are making yourself useful for God,” she insisted.
In the meantime, the couple said they have found the Turks and Caicos Islands people to be among the warmest in the world, noting that they have treated them with nothing but love.
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