*narrows eyes*
*purses lips*
Yes, you.
There is a phenomenon I have observed many times – please forgive me for sharing my experience and my opinion – it is just that. I hope this doesn’t apply to you, and if you find yourself here in these following paragraphs, I hope you feel convicted, and will try to be more biblically supportive to the women in your life.
Whether it’s a new girlfriend, your wife of many years, your daughter or neice – women all need to be able to look up to you for leadership. You have a role of responsbility, and biblically speaking, God holds you responsible (remember the Garden of Eden?).
Yet I have found that some men will very easily and quickly withdraw their covering and their strength when it suits them. They fall back on this male feminism which our culture has taught them. They say things like “You’re a strong independent woman, you don’t need me…”
This is the inference when you don’t have time, when you refuse to commit, when you shirk responsibility, when you don’t feel like it – the last one usually revolves around not wanting to be where you said you’d be when you said you’d be there, or not wanting to do what you said you’d do.
Why, guys?
It’s not good, and I want to tell you why – from first-hand experience. This makes me so sad to share this, but guys you have to know that when you leave the woman to fend on her own, she will. And you will lose some of her respect, even as her independence grows. This is not good!
I have had to go through so much of my life alone. Men refuse to show up, do what they say they will, aren’t as good as their word, shirk responsibility and shrink from the role of headship. It’s possible that some of that is because I have had to be so independent for so long that it’s something they assume that I want to retain (I do not). They are also middle-aged and broken by numerous bad run-ins with women who are happy to crush them, manipulate them and so forth – I do not exhibit these behaviours. The men are broken and the women – me in this case – have no choice but to live independently. This is NOT God’s way.
So, men, I urge you with all that is in me – please do not force your women, daughters, aunts, mothers, to be independent. If they ever discover that they don’t need you, that won’t obviate your culpability in the eyes of God, and it will diminish you in the eyes of those precious women who should both respect you and support your headship.
I’d like your views on this – both men and women.
I will say, for myself, that I am tired of concluding that I am twice the man most of the single men my age are. After a long life of messing things up, I would have thought that after 11 years a believer, one man might have loved me enough to want to have headship and let me finally rest as a wife under his protection. Sadly that is not the case. I’d appreciate your prayers.
All the above is said in love, my dear brothers.
God Bless you
Lis