The Choice

My husband shared a meme with me this morning. It was a video of a man standing outside looking at a little garden project. Above it said: “When you realize you’ll have projects forever because of one choice you made.” After a few seconds a woman walks up and stands next to the man. He puts arm around her and words appear above her saying: “The choice.”

We chuckled a little and I said: “So why do you men do it, why do you always make that ‘choice?’” He responded with: “We can’t help it. It’s wired into us.”

I’ve been thinking about that, different attributes and desires that seem to be wired into us, instinctual almost.

We all know the cliches - A man builds(provides) a house and the woman makes it a home. We laugh about how if there is an empty shelf in a house and a man lives alone he will happily leave that shelf empty and use it to put his keys on when he gets home, but if he’s got a woman in his life, she will fill that shelf up. It’s almost like she can’t help it. She will find something pretty to put on it even if it is simply a pretty shell she found at a beach. Or a plant or a rock or a photo or a little decorative object. We all know that the truth is that it will likely be all of those things arranged on the shelf.

A woman complicates a man’s life. And yet men can’t help themselves, they want us and all of our complexity.

This idea of a woman always “wanting more” goes beyond physical things. It permeates everything about her. Indeed, how many men have lamented that “She’s never happy, she always wants more from me!”

The truth is that most women will always want more in a relationship. Most men feel this as pressure or a burden. But the feminine is infinite. She is a creatrix ever yearning for more. Give her a space and she will fill it. And in a relationship there is always a deeper level of connection, more intimacy, union and presence to be had. This is a Godly desire and it does not come from lack, it comes from love.

To a man it usually feels like more work. More tasks, more demands on his time, energy and behavior. So he resists it and unconsciously pulls away from it.

He hears: You are not enough.

What she means is: I want us to go deeper into love.

Her feminine heart is not saying: Do more.

It is longing to dissolve all barriers between you, to enter the fire together and remember the divine within you both.

Indeed, her longing is the divine saying: Awaken to the deepest truth within you, transform yourselves into light and taste the purest love.

This is a beautiful thing.

God said: “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make a helpmeet for him.”

We learned here that the correct meaning of helpmeet is a companion of strength, that has saving power and is equal to the man.

A wife is a mirror. She reflects your leadership. She is your feedback loop. She will show you your blind spots, not to shame you, but shape you.

The feminine and masculine are designed to rise together, not in opposition but in sacred synergy. It is a divine pattern for the masculine to create a space and for the feminine to fill it with life. Creation flows through her and she will always want more. The heights in which you are willing to arise will be filled by her as she rises with you.

There is a lovely passage about Wisdom in Proverbs 8 that describes this with poetic beauty.

“The LORD possessed me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of old.
Ages ago I was set up, at the first,
before the beginning of the earth.
When there were no deaths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I danced,
before he had made the earth with its fields,
or the first of the dust of the world.
When he established the heavens, I was there;
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
when he set a boundary for the sea,
so that the waters might not pass his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was at his side, like a master architect,
and I was his delight day by day,
rejoicing before him always,
rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the children of man.”