Growing in a Middle Eastern culture I was often compared with other men based on height (and I am relatively short), looks (and I am an average looking Middle Eastern man), education (and I was a general labourer/forklift driver for 4 years), wealth (and I come from a middle class family and I earned minimum wages). Because of this throughout all my life I have always wanted my wife to love me for who I am: my God-given personality and talents, my continuously conforming character to being Christ-like, faith and relationship with the Lord, and my love and commitment to her.
This desire to find a woman who loves me for who I am scared me from getting education early in my life (that is, right after graduating from high school) because I was always told, “Fadi, get a good education so when you want to get married the woman will agree to marry you!†So in my mind I equated good education with getting stuck in a loveless marriage to a woman who only married me because of how much money I make. And I did not want a woman to marry me because of how much money I make—I wanted my marriage to be based on a godly and committed covenant and not be a financial conditional contract. And so it took me few years until I could discern the Lord’s will for my career and realize I will obey Him because He has given certain talents and not because I will impress and attract a woman.
Education & Marriage by Fadi
This topic is about education and marriage and to make my point, I will start with this personal story:
Years ago I had a best friend, a Middle Eastern girl, and her and I were best friends for few years. At the time she was majoring in biology at university because she wanted to be a doctor, and I was working full-time as a forklift operator and general labourer for minimum wages. She was confident and I was very insecure, she was outgoing and I was very shy, she had many friends and I had none, and she had dreams and plans and I had none (except to know God’s will for my life).
One day she called me on the phone, (I think I had known her for about 3 years by then), and she sounded very sad and she told me, “My friend [an Iraqi girl at university with her] is so lucky because she is marrying a relative of hers from Iraq and he is a doctor. I wish I can be as lucky as her and find a man like that.†Of course those words hurt me deeply because I just felt like I was a no body because I had no higher education, and as if I was not there and my feelings simply did not matter. But I had made a commitment early when I became her friend that I would always treat her as Christ treated me, and Christ always treats me better than I deserve and He loves me unconditionally. (The reason I made that decision is that I had no experience talking or dealing with girls, so I didn’t know how to treat her. Being a Christian I decided the Bible’s principles of loving others, respecting them, encouraging them, comforting them, healing them emotionally, and building them up are going to be my guide.) So I comforted her, encouraged her, and told her that she will find the right man in the right time, and I prayed for her.
(If you are wondering why her words hurt me, consider this analogy. Suppose that you were born crippled and all your life desired to be in a loving marriage, but all your life as you grew up you only heard how desirable “healthy†men are. And you had a best friend–whom you cared about a lot and loved her unconditionally and sacrificially–one day called you saying, “My friend is so lucky because she is getting married to a healthy man who is not crippled.†How would you feel? That is exactly how I felt.)
Anyway, her friend married the doctor and he came to Canada. One day, about six months later, my friend called me thanking me for being her good friend! And I was very surprised by her sudden appreciation of me, and she continued saying, “Thank you for always loving me, never comparing me to anyone else, never putting me down, always comforting me and encouraging me, and making me feel like I am the most precious and important person in the world!†I knew something had happened because I had always tried to be a good friend to her, so I wondered why she was appreciating me now. So after few more minutes of talking she said, “My friend and her husband [the doctor] are getting divorced. I saw him today at university and so I talked to him. When I asked him why they are getting divorced he said, ‘I married her thinking she is ok looking and maybe we will be happy together. But when I came to Canada and saw all the beautiful girls here I thought to myself: I don’t want to spend my life married to this monkey [his wife]!’†She continued saying, “I was shocked when I realized there is a man who actually calls his wife a monkey because he thinks she is ugly!†Of course, I was shocked also because I spent years praying to God to bless me by giving me a godly wife, and so I could not fathom someone saying such a thing about the woman he is supposed to love as Christ loved the church!
