There have been times in my life when I, shamefully, have voiced a negative and disrespectful attitude toward men, generally out of some painful experience with one man or another in particular. In the last couple of years, the Lord has really called me out on that "pain deflection" and taught me to take my pain to Him rather than seeking to mend my wounds by casting blame elsewhere. I'm thankful for that and have seen amazing restoration in my life and relationships as a result.
Pain and hurt are realities every woman needs to learn to take to the Lord. However, I also realize that sometimes it's not necessarily a painful conflict or relationship that leads women to feel that men are "out to lunch" and "just don't get it". It's simply this- Men are different than women. And WE don't get THEM.
I strongly believe that the differences between men and women are a part of God's expression of His own nature. I believe that He created the uniqueness in the sexes to complement each other in marriage, family, the Church and all areas of life. Consequently, my desire has been to understand men better- for the sake of many relationships in my life, to be able to serve others and above all, for the glory of God. I want to learn to respect the men in my life for who God has made them and not for what I (fueled by Jane Austen and the like) expect them to be.
Now, to be completely honest, I know the tendency that we women have when trying to understand men. We want to ask a close friend who will give us an honest opinion. That leads us to- our girlfriends. While we hopefully have wonderful godly female mentors who can give us sage wisdom on the men in our lives, my personal experience with this is that we are often pooling ignorance, patting each other on the back and sadly, echoing the lie of our culture- "Well, honey, men don't really know what they are doing anyway! Better to look out for yourself!"
So, reaching out to my girlfriends for insight is probably not going to be very effective and may even be harmful. I need to hear about how men process and what's important to them from MEN. While my own brothers have given me some insight (for which I am very grateful), men aren't generally as inclined to analyze and discuss said differences for hours over coffee and scones giving us great insight into these differences. And I have discovered that they often don't express their thoughts and desires because they know that we are fragile and it might hurt us.
That brings me to my book recommendation. I just read For Women Only:What You Need to Know About the Inner Lives of Men by Shaunti Feldhahn. I confess, the title kept me away from the book for a while. Anything that sounds like it's going to reveal "secrets about men" sounds a little too Cosmopolitan magazine to me. Not to mention, the numerous follow up books and devotionals which can feel "pop psychology" to me. Nevertheless, the recommendations from friends and trusted author reviews finally got me to pick up the book. In fact, I got the audio-version and in the 4 hours it took me to prep my house for company, was able to listen to the whole thing read by the author in a very heartfelt and winning way.
Shaunti Feldhahn testifies that she found herself in a similar situation to the one I described above. She started to see that women were just not understanding the fundamental differences between them and their men and were consequently making judgments and reading into things entirely wrongly. (Sound familiar to any gals out there?)
Through conversations with her husband and other men, Shaunti started to realize that men view a handful of things very differently than women- namely love and respect, "being visual", sex, romance, the drive to perform and burden to provide. She, like many of us ladies, knew that there were differences, but hadn't realized just how great those differences were.
Shaunti started to informally interview people and looked for professional survey work done on these areas and discovered there really wasn't any. Consequently, she had a couple of professional surveys done polling men in general and then particularly, men who were regular "church-goers".
The result of her work was a book that I found incredibly helpful, worth-while and surprisingly, encouraging. Shaunti Feldhahn uses her survey research to reflect on Biblical principles and point out some insight into men's "inner lives". This insight isn't necessarily ground-breaking and "secrets revealed". It's more the kind of information that caused me to slap my forehead and think, "I knew this, I just didn't understand it very well." The book gave me areas to think about, brought up attitudes to repent of, showed me how to pray for "my men" better, and gave me hope that the gender gap isn't impossible to bridge. It just takes a lot of humility, patience borne of love and faith -in God and His work in the men in our lives.
I wanted to pass this book recommendation on. And the other thoughts just kind of rolled out in the process. :) I hope that my lady friends who read this will be encouraged to understand, pray for and respect the men that God has put in your life. And I hope any men who stumble on my little post will be encouraged to know that many of us women want to understand, better respect you and pray for you diligently.
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