Patience

Patience: It may be a virtue, but it certainly isn't feeling like one of my strengths lately.

He was supposed to come visit the weekend of May 8th, but due to a business emergency he had to make a trip out of town. The trip was postponed to the following weekend, but the business crisis continued and kept him away. Same story the following weekend. I kept hoping that his birthday weekend, Memorial weekend, would finally be the weekend he would be able to visit. But no, still no visit.

Lord, I'm trying to be patient, but this is really hard. When will we finally be together again?

I'm still waiting. The hardest part of this is that the work situation has also kept him working long days and weekends, so we hardly talk. The few messages I have assure me of his love and that he misses me.

At first I was in despair (see previous post: Stormy Week). Then I started to find hope as I fixed my eyes on Christ and serving, supporting, and loving him through this. I found strength in talking to girlfriends who helped distract me from my situation and godly women advising me, and even a few visits with my pastor (see previous posts: Peace and Fear Not!).

Still, doubt slips in on occasion. The world has a different view of relationship and love. To the world love is a feeling, so if the feelings aren't strong then there must not be love and it's time to move on. But God tells me that love is more than that. Love is patient (1 Corinthians 13:4)

Fear tells me to let go of him, he's not communicating much. It says "he loves you, but does he really mean it if he's too busy to let you know he's ok or he misses you"?

Patience says to trust that God has a plan and that God is working in this situation to bring me closer to Him. Patience says that God is using this to strengthen me and change me.

Patience.... is tough. But I'd rather be a fool for holding on even if it turns out that it's over than be a fool for letting go and missing out on something great, because you never know, I might be surprised. It might just turn out that patience brings me my heart's desire. So I'm going to keep hoping, no trusting, that when he says he loves me he absolutely means it. And I'm going to keep hoping that he's so deep into his work waffle, that what he  needs most is space and support, and when he comes out of his work waffle he'll be ready to re-engage with me (see "Men are Like Waffles, Women are Like Spaghetti"). And, I'm going to keep blogging to help me process, because that's was spaghetti women do- we connect with others!

Promises

I was scrolling through Facebook the other day and stumbled across an article shared by HuffPost Good News. I stumbled in because the headline caught my eye: "I'll be 36 by the time this gets published, and I'm still not married." It was very relatable to me. As I continued to read the article "24 Promises Every Man Should Make to His Future Wife", things went downhill right away. I was expecting loving sentiments of support, fidelity, and strength to be promised. Boy was I wrong. Right off the bat things went awry. 

Promise #1: I will try to solve your problems instead of just listening and saying "that sucks."

To the author, I say no wonder you are still single! Women don't want a man to solve their problems. We want a man to listen. Sometimes you will just have to say "that sucks" but other times you can offer support through helping us brainstorm solutions to our problem. By trying to solve our problems for us you are saying that we are not smart enough or powerful enough to solve our problems on our own. You take away our power and our control of our lives. No woman wants to be rescued (ok, maybe we DO on occasion, but not really), we want a man to support us, be by our side, cheering us on as we take on the world and solve our own problems.

Promise #10: I will not share my passwords with you, nor will I ask for yours.

This just screams wrong to me. Passwords should be shared between spouses as a sign of honesty and trust... ok, and in the back of my mind there's a little voice saying what about emergencies? You shouldn't have to ask, they should be willingly given as a sign of trust.

Ok.... so the promises aren't all this horrible, some are ok, but most are kind of lame. Regardless, there are a lot better promises that a man could make to his future wife. It's a nice idea in theory, but try again, man, try again.