MEN

You devilish brute

I cannot understand you

Sometimes you seem a complete alien to me

like a creature from another planet

gruff and grating in the voice but with a softness around the eyes and a loud and often foul mouth that betrays your strong exterior and makes you susceptible to your ever-brooding sinful nature. You cave to that nature more than most women...or maybe you are less capable of hiding it than we are.   Lies have never suited men as well as they do women, but that doesn't keep them from foolishly trying over and over again.  You've lost my trust and for very, very good reason. You can't even tell when you lie anymore. You don't even notice.

an exterior that seems almost animal-like...with the rough beard that can wound a woman's delicate skin if she gets close enough to try to see and feel who you really are, as if for protection from a beast, or a prodding heart, or an empathetic tenderness, lest your eyes betray your weakness once she is close enough to see, if she is looking. She can see if she wants to, but you don't want her to.

Darkness akin to fur covers your body as if you needed protection from the harsher elements of nature when it is I, woman, who actually has a far more delicate constitution.  It is I who need the covering but I find you oblivious to my need. 

And you were created to rule, to protect and command...to hold authority and power but your ego blinds you to reason and understanding so often. You will not do what you were made for and even when you try, you give up so very, very easily.  I cannot understand it.  I cannot understand you.

You seem so lost, so often and so anxious for a woman to define you.  I hear your words come from so many  sharpened jaws and weakened tongues....a man who cannot speak reason and says to me: "How would I ever find my place with you? What is there for me to do?" As if, my sole purpose in creation was to define a man's identity...show him who he is?? Give him something to do??You do not listen. You do not understand and you cannot seem to speak.  I'm left befuddled. What is it you want? If I knew then I'd give it, find a way to attain it for you...but I cannot understand how I am to define a man, reflect him without denying who I am, the woman I was made to be. That seems to be what he asks for over and over again with his own simple words and the underlying weakness that gleams in his eyes.  

I am to be who he wants.  I am to forget who I am. His purpose is to become mine and I am too old and too clear-headed to oblige. There would be eternity to pay.  The consequences of learning this are pain enough for me here in this life.  I am a defined woman with a definite purpose and as such perhaps I can mold to no man. Perhaps my purpose is best accomplished alone.

Is it true?? Is my purpose here to make a place for you? Am I wrong? Should I not be accomplishing this purpose that I perceive was set out for me? To in fact define and outline a higher power than any man has ever held? To draw others to an ultimate authority? Is that why I must be alone? Is it because men that were made for women are in fact here to be defined by them? Is it possible they do not know their place until a woman creates one for them? The dichotomy of a man molding a woman to his liking and a woman defining him?  Is it not an oxymoron? Is it perhaps not a definition that God ever set in place at all? Or is it? 

Or have I only met the wrong kind of man? I've met so many.

And as I write this, I can see the offense burn in so many of their eyes...that sensitivity...it is all the more "alien" to me.   You have stronger arms and a broader back.  Your height and your weight supersedes mine and I have had to learn to accomplish many tasks in a more difficult way than you would ever have to conquer them simply because of your build, while I am alone and cannot change mine.  You can lay down your pride.  You will not, not for me. 

 I weep in darkness for my weakness but you survive by denying your own, by gleaning offense where it was never intended and by holding it to you like a covering that is way too small for a "body" as large as yours. 

You were created to rule, to have authority and power.  The Model you are to follow took on the form of a bondservant.  He had NO woman to define him...no place to call home and no brute acts of strength to make him "feel" like a man. He knew that manhood was found in humility, in example, and in the laying down of His life.  He rules the Universe. It worked for Him and it still works for anyone who will dare take it on.  Have I ever seen a man like that? Have I ever known a man who even wanted, hoped, tried to be like that? Have I?

I am NOT a man.  I find the need as years go by to somehow supplement the void that is left in this home without one and I look for ways to meet the need and I remember HIS example and I don't think most men do and I don't think most men care as they should that eternity is at stake.  I remind myself that most women don't either.  That is why marriage fails and it is why mine failed and it is why I fail with men over and over.  We are not here for us, gentlemen.  Your purpose is not to find out who YOU are and my purpose is not to tell you who YOU are. Your purpose is to reflect who HE is.  That is all.

Maybe I've grown bitter..perhaps cynical.  There are many blogs on this page to define the wonderful qualities of being a man. I have raised three boys alone  for over 8 years now and as I watch manhood overtake them I am awed because, unlike females, they indeed seem to turn into "aliens" of a sort. I cannot recognize their voices and they tower over me and their physique changes as dramatically as their ideals and I am in awe.  A man told me once that I had no idea what a real man is.  It was his way of excusing my inability to trust him. It is not true. I know what a man is. I refuse to accept less.  I was too smart to accept his argument and he was too proud to accept mine. 

The image of God is to be the image of man (check the Bible) and the image of God is fading on this earth as He promised it would impending his return.  

There is too much to do.  Don't let your pride contradict or push down these words.  You need to listen.  We all do. Yes...men aren't what they used to be, there are only a few real ones left. He promised it would be so.  Satan hates the image of God and he has been trying since Adam to destroy it.  He will not succeed.  There are a few real men who won't let him.  The rest are too weak.

We are here to find out who HE is.  Eternity is the "vacation"...this is the "work".  He will define us when we lay down our lives and stop worrying about how we can define each other.  I'm done.  I'm on a journey and unless I run across someone on this path who follows the same purpose, longing for humility, desperately seeking out HIS identity and needing no defining from me? A man with reason? Who can think for himself and not need my constant reassurance that he is who God says he is? A man who sees more to life than the "day to day" and the building of his own empire?  Maybe then.....but that man has already lived or he is not alone.  I have purpose. He has defined it.  He has set the example.  I will follow because it matters...not just in the scope of time...in the scope of eternity. I deny my loneliness, my ache, my pain.   Gentlemen!  I have one heck of an identity and not a single one of you will ever change my purpose or my aim.  I wish you would all see that the same should be true of you.  He is my definition and despite my failures He always will be. 

JM2017

He was oppressed and treated harshly,
    yet he never said a word.
He was led like a lamb to the slaughter.
    And as a sheep is silent before the shearers,
    he did not open his mouth.
8 Unjustly condemned,
    he was led away.[b]- Isaiah 53

 Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls.30 For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”  Matthew 11:28-30