Abdulfattah Adeyemi – Marriage Refinery

AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the definition of marriage and how it can affect the individual's definition of themselves. They stress the importance of understanding one's definition and how it can affect their life and future. The definition is related to the definition of marriage, which confers on individuals and limits their growth. It is a marriage that confers on individuals and limit their growth, limiting their growth and limiting their growth.
AI: Summary ©
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Marriages do three things to us, and a
person's choice of marriage and what a person
does in that marriage will be determined by
which of these three things lead the person
to the marriage, or which of these three
things actually happens to the person while the
person is in the marriage.
Number one, your marriage may define you.
Define.
Number two, your marriage may confine you.
And number three, your marriage may refine you.
What is define?
Define is to examine or ascertain your character,
to depict who you are, to categorize you,
sometimes to classify you.
That's why you see a woman who wants
to marry to a family of people who
are classy, so that the classiness, let me
put it that way, of that marriage is
going to rub off on her.
And you see a woman who wants to
marry people from rich class, so to speak,
or people from upper class, because she's looking
for definition, she wants to define her life.
Some men also, they look for ladies of
certain cedar in society, because, yes, because that
marriage is to define them.
They are looking for definition of their identity
in that marriage.
Sometimes it is to color you, to identify
you, to indicate who you are or what
you are capable of achieving.
To name you, you see, you adopt the
name of that family.
You say, I'm married to the family of
so-and-so.
Or sometimes to specify you, sometimes to distinguish
you from other women.
Or to individualize you, give you that sense
of uniqueness.
Or to particularize you, to say, I belong
to a particular kind of class of family.
It may be the family of religious people,
family of scholars, family of learned people.
So royal family, yes, you want to be
addressed as her royal highness.
Or you want to be addressed as queen.
Or you want to be addressed as the
husband of the queen.
Some people want to do that.
They say, OK, your wife is a commissioner
for so-and-so.
Or you want to say, yes, yes, my
wife is a deputy governor, something like that.
Some people actually make that plan.
And they go into marriages not to lend
a definition to their life.
Sometimes these definitions are positive.
Sometimes the definitions are not so wholesome.
But bear in mind, sometimes your marriages may
define who you are.
The same thing when it comes to religious
aspects.
Your marriages define your religiosity.
Sometimes it defines whether you follow the sunnah
or not.
And sometimes it defines what exactly you want
to contribute to the society.
This definition, some people never thought it was
so important, or the way they eventually enter
into a marriage.
Some plan for it, they scheme for it,
they look out for it, and they ensure
they get it.
Some allow it to go by accident.
They never cared, they never bothered who they
were marrying or what they were in for.
Or they use certain criteria that are so
ephemeral and that is not definitive of who
they are.
By the time they enter into a relationship,
they see that they even lose the identity
they had and they don't have any new
one.
They become so amorphous.
Their identities are not defined anymore to be
anything or anyone in particular.
This is one of the biggest mistakes some
people make when it comes to marriage.
You go into a marriage that doesn't have
any definition.
A marriage that doesn't have a center point
or a focal point or a crux or
a core.
A marriage that doesn't have any goal, doesn't
have any bearing, doesn't have any direction.
A marriage that doesn't lend any particular definition
to your life that is worth your while.
And some people look at their wives and
define her as mother of my children.
Some women will look at their husband and
define him as, okay, he's the person paying
the school fees.
What extra definition has your marriage lent to
your life?
What extra definition has your marriage made you
to be?
If you want to be amorphous, want to
be formless, want to be goal-less, want
to be empty, you enter into a marriage
that doesn't have any particular way of defining
your life or particularizing your life or challenging
a path for you to grow as an
individual or as somebody that can contribute to
the society.
Your identity may be determined by a marriage
that defines your life.
Sometimes, like I said, this definition may be
opposite to your own identity.
That's where you see marital crisis.
They want you to become who you don't
want to become.
They want to define you in ways that
are not yours.
And if such a marriage is bringing such
definition that you are not familiar with or
that you didn't plan for, that's not your
life, then you see there'll be crisis in
that marriage.
Let me mention the other ones, then we
merge them all together.
You also enter into a marriage and it's
going to confine you.
The first of them, marriage will either define
you or sometimes it will confine you.
This is one of the biggest mistakes of
women.
You enter into a marriage and you are
confined.
What does it mean to be confined?
It means you are limited in your growth.
Sometimes it means you are restricted.
You feel as if you are in a
particular prison.
You feel as if you are trapped.
And you feel like, how did I get
here?
So you are restricted, you are confined in
the way you grow and the way you
think.
You are so confined to the extent that
you get squeezed.
You get cramped and you get meagered.
You get constricted, you get circumscribed and then
you become scanty and sometimes you become fatty.
Sometimes you are straightened and you are so
incapacious.
That means you are not capable of doing
things.
In other words, marriages can confine.
And finally, a marriage can refine you.
How do you get refined by your marriage?
It is like you are purified.
It's like you are clarified.
It's like you become clear, you become cleansed.
You remember when they say you take some
to refinery?
When you take crude oil, you take it
to refinery, you are able to separate the
kerosene from the bitumen, spirits, from the diesel.
You are able to refine, you are able
to refine, including some of those lower petroleum
products.
You are able to refine the petrol and
you get the real pure petrol that can
actually be useful for something.
Crude oil as a whole, you can't use
it because it's going to be mixed up.
Yes, it's too raw, but you have to
bring out what you need from it.
So you will be refined, you become cleansed,
you become sifted, you become filtered.
Sometimes you become rarefied.
That means you become rare, you are not
common anymore.
Sometimes you become distilled.
You remember this one we used to do
in chemistry?
Yes, sometimes we achieve a concentrate of you.
You remove all the shafts, you remove all
the turfs, you remove all the surf, you
remove all the ladders, you remove all the
foams, we get to your concentrate.
Some marriages will actually refine you to the
extent that you become concentrate.
Yes, you achieve at the maximum level.
And then to refine you is to process
you.
You get processed to become a person of
candor.
You become refined and processed to become a
person of honor, a person of purity, a
person of dignity, a person of respect.
You get treated and impurities in you get
burnt off.
Sometimes you get rectified when you are in
a family or a home that is there
to refine you.
If you are not married and you are
going to marry, seek a marriage that will
refine you, that will bring out the best
in you, that will bring out the scholarship
in you if you are scholarly inclined.
That will bring out the business acumen in
you if you are inclined towards business.
That will bring out, yes, the chief executive
in you.
That will bring out the politics in you
if that is your slant.
You got to be observant of the marriages
you go into or observant of what exactly
your marriage is doing to you.
So you got to look towards being refined
in your marriage.
That is where your strength lies.
When you are refined, you become stronger.
You become better.
And you are able to achieve more than
ordinary.
And that's why I say you are going
to become rarified.
And Allah Akbar, purity will not become your
definition.
It's going to become your new normal.
You know, Allah Akbar, this is very essential.
And the same thing with the adepts of
Islam, with the good characters of Islam, supposed
to refine us, make us to become civilized,
make us to become better people, make us
to become better behaved.
The believers of early generations, they understood that
Islam was to refine them.
So they submitted to be refined by Islam.
They submitted themselves to the refinery of Islam.
And that is why in everything they did,
everything was towards East-West.
Everything was perfect.
Now you are beginning to see where the
strength of the ummah lies.
The strength of the ummah lies in what
we make of the families.
Either it defines us, or it confines us,
or it confines us.
As-salamu alaykum wa-rahmatullahi wa-barakatuh.
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