SONGS OF SOLOMON:

3:5 – I charge you daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or by the does of the field, do not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.

So, we were at church, ready to head home but we had to wait for  my sister who just wouldn’t finish up with her meetings (…rolling eyes..) and since she was my driver, I had to dutifully wait. While hanging around, my 5-year-old little girl was having a blast running all over the place. Then this little boy came along and kept tugging at her to play. At first she seemed to prefer to just do her thing but the boy was kinda persistent, pulling her braids, running after her and stuff.

At that moment, I was the proud mom, watching my baby do the diva thing!

But alas, since the boy wouldn’t be shaken off, they both started running all over the place together, crashing into each other, laughing really hard ( over what I simply couldn’t understand *scowling*) and they were actually having fun. At that point, I stopped being the proud mom and the mother hen spirit took over. Okay, this isn’t fun anymore, I don’t care how happy my daughter looks. When I could take it no more, I pulled my girl outside ( as gently as I possibly could, given the circumstances…I’m sure you can understand). As soon as we stepped out, I asked her the first question that popped into my head.

“Don’t you want boys to respect you?” To which she calmly answered “No”

What?! Okay. Calm down. Regroup.

So, I also calmly asked “Do you know the meaning of the word ‘respect’?

She tilted her head to a side and gave me this look that says ‘hmmm, lemme think about that for a second’ when in actual fact she has tuned me out and thinking ice cream. Okay, she doesn’t know the meaning of the word hence her answer. Phew!. I carried her to the ledge and put her on it, all the while thinking furiously, ‘Do I Iet this slide, is this the point where I do the ‘talk’, am I not supposed to wait till she’s at least 10? will it not be too late then, I mean she’s already interacting with boys now! She would love the fun, love the attention and who knows, if the boy stops giving it, what assurances do I have that she won’t go seeking it. I definitely do not want her growing up believing there are no boundaries. And if I don’t teach her now and she becomes accustomed to that way of life, will she listen when she becomes a teenager?Then I remembered that verse that expressly says ‘Do not awaken love’.

Okay then, let’s do part of the ‘talk’. I stood in front of her, made her very comfortable and tried to explain the word respect in terms of boys, why it is important to not be easy and make the boy work for your attention. After all, she just can’t run after any boy who comes along asking to play tag. I am not sure I did a good job of explaining because even though she kept nodding through my ramblings and answered my subsequent questions correctly, she would occasionally  point to a flower and say ‘Mom look, that trunk is bent’ or give me that famous blank stare. Okay, she probably did not get me but I’m sure I planted the seed.

For as many as have been in love before or had sex before, they will all attest to the fact that you never want it to stop. Once one is over, you want to move on to another. That’s when the need for acceptance and the need to be loved becomes more important than life itself. It is easier for adults to handle this, but not teenagers who are basically controlled by hormones and zero common-sense. That’s why that woman in Songs of Solomon begged that love is  not to be awakened or even stirred until love is ready. Cos once love is stirred, there is no going back. I believe these kids should be encouraged to enjoy childhood as much as possible, not rush into the crazy, hormonal years where life is meaningless if that crush doesn’t reciprocate their feelings. A lot of youngsters lose love for their parents, love for education and even love for self in the pursuit of love of the opposite sex. And we can only see the beginning, who knows what the end will be like.

I don’t think kids should be kissed too often by their parents especially on the mouth, I don’t think parents should be too busy to not be attentive to the changes in their kids, I don’t think we should watch these kids set themselves up for emotional disasters and say nothing in the name of ‘we love them too much to be firm’. I don’t think we should trust them too much that we cool it on the guidance. I don’t think kids should be given unmonitored internet access.

Playing hard-to-get is not just for the girl. It’s also for the guy. He gotta get sure if he wants the girl that much. The turn of time has taught us that girls that play it hard are dumb. Yeah maybe. But if this wasn’t the case, yeah maybe there will be more late marriages but maybe there will be less divorces too.

LET WINTER MELT INTO SPRING

And I find myself drifting further away from the super-poetic, romantic, suave Solomon…I tried really hard to stay on track, I really did. But hey, here we go.

I got to reading about the laws concerning vows in the Old Testament. I know we really don’t read much of the Old Testament, after all most of the principles don’t apply anymore in these times. Really, my neighbor has no goat or grain. And we don’t put to death that married chick that was caught going at it with her bobo’s colleague. Right?

So back to the issue of vows. It was plainly stated in the entire chapter that if a woman makes a vow, promise, covenant or whatever and her father hears of it and decides the vow does not make sense, as her dad he has the right to annul it. And it will stay annulled in the sight of God. That’s super cool right?? Now I can make crazy promises that I know I can’t make good and just get my dad to cancel them for me when it’s time to pay up.

Now, isn’t that just bananas!

Okay, the amazing part about this is that when the babe gets married, her husband assumes this authority. If the babe makes a vow to God for example, and her husband hears of it and annuls it, that’s final. Meaning the dude (bless his heart!) gets the sole rights to make decisions of such magnitude on the girl. And the best part….it’s stamped by God Himself! By the way, we are talking about Leviticus 30.

It got me realizing that even though we are in the age where the dude and the babe make equal (or almost equal) financial, mental, social contributions in the home, the truth of the matter is the guy is, at the end of the day, the head…the rockstar…the rule-maker…the game-changer. So when we girls argue with our men, claiming rights and stuff around the home and he is still putting his foot down, maybe we should take a step back and re-assess.

It goes beyond annulling vows and promises. It involves making choices. It’s about taking a job the dude does not agree with, buying a property the guy isn’t ok with, going against his wishes especially when it’s not about him being selfish. I think it is safer to get the dude to agree with us than blatantly going against his will. And I don’t think that should be too hard, queen of his heart tins. It doesn’t make us stupid when we defer to our men, it makes us wise. And the wise woman just doesn’t build her home, she keeps it too.

Don’t worry chicas, my next point of call is to look into the power we girls have on the men in our lives. We gotta have something too, no?

SMILE- OVERRATED?

  

I never get tired of saying this and no matter how many times I hear it, it still never falls under the category of cliché.

Never pass up an opportunity to put a smile on a face. No matter how beautiful the face is, there is always room for that smile effect. And the best part it, the smile goes beyond the face, it radiates to the heart where it gets rooted and blossoms. The world has changed the smile of so many faces, a lot of innocents seem to have on this up-side-down plastic smile. We gotta fight back.

This is hoping some random individual puts a smile on my face today and this is hoping I am blessed with the opportunity to make a stranger a happier person today.

WHEN THE HUNTER BECOMES THE HUNTED (PART 2)

I believe we have all heard the phrase ‘beauty for ashes’ or at the least, we have all heard the various Cinderella stories told from generation to generation. In the last post, we talked about the affair of David with Bathsheba and her ending up being the king’s wife. Her life was sorta similar to the lives of a lot of single moms these days. Yea, she ended up being the king’s wife, moved into the palace, had another baby and all. But she was just one wife among numerous. I doubt she had the attention of the dude much less his heart and his affections.

So what happened to Bathsheba after all said and done? Her son became the successor. A number of scenarios could have played out…she could have been put in a house outside of the palace and forgotten, she might have been unable to have another baby even if she was in the palace, her son had no business being crowned king after all, there are older sons by mothers of royal birth, her son might have been killed before he had his chance…but the scenario that played out was the one where the king crowned her son his successor before he died. She got to be the Queen mother! She had political power by virtue of her position and if she had wanted, she could have ruled the kingdom through her son! That babe was supposed to be just another one-night-stand…She got her Cinderella story…iGiggle

Few years back, I was in a relationship where I got a lot of verbal and emotional abuse (like he was the only guy on earth, right?). Getting that for a couple of months took its toll on my psyche, then imagine taking that for over two years. And I didn’t tell anyone because ‘it didn’t reflect well on me’ (one of the most common excuses of victims of abuse). I had such low self-esteem and really poor opinion of myself such that if I had cash, I would not spend it on myself because I didn’t think I was worth it. It got that bad. The dude eventually broke up with me (of course I couldn’t do the breaking up) and thanks to the amazing support system I had in  family ( Oh yea, they found out…yikes!), I started on my path to recovery. Getting to know God made the process faster and so much easier. What I went through sucked yea, but it did make me a tougher person, made me a fighter.

Even though I don’t have my Cinderella story yet, when I look back at all the things I’ve been able to achieve in the last couple of years, the ladies I have helped get through similar experiences and the number of people who look to me, I actually get proud of me, Lol! No matter how crazy stuff might get, the Most High is still in the business of giving beauty for ashes. The story of Bathsheba makes me sure that the start of a story is not the determining factor of its end.

Hang in there folks, great times are ahead, you will get your Queen Mother status. Or King Father!

RE:

NOTE TO SELF: I’m not done until there’s no breath left in me. No matter what, keep pushing for the gold to the very end.

It’s absolutely worth it!

…when the hunter becomes the hunted (Part 1)

So, I decided to take a break from the romantic, poetic, super-wise King Solomon to take a brief look at the life of his ma and pa. When I read the chapter where these two people met, I realized that the whole affair lasted just one verse (2 Sam 11:4). King sent for her, she came, he slept with and sent her back to her husband’s house. Shikenah! I found myself chuckling, pumping my fists and saying ‘Bad guy!’ I mean, he was the king right, he could indulge in any idle fantasy, move on to other conquests and not have to deal with the repercussions. It was supposed to end there. Simples. Little did he know that there is a Badder Guy who sees all, knows all and defends the helpless against the powerful.
I would give a million bucks to see the look Dave had on his face when, couple of months later, he got the message saying,
‘Yo boss-man, I’m preggers’.
I imagine he must have stuttered and asked,
‘Wh-who is Bathsheba again?’
All sort of thoughts must have been raced through his head ‘This can’t be good…she’s a married woman…Her husband is a faithful soldier out at war for me…Her grandfather is Ahithophel, my adviser…She’s freaking carrying my child!…Ok, calm down hot-stuff, you are after all the king. Solutions! Get the husband to come home and do his thingie with her. Back-up plan…kill him’
His clean-up was neat, no? And it went according to plan until The Most High stepped in to show him that even though he’s king, he doesn’t have the rights to treat people so callously. And boy, did he pay! He paid dearly and he kept paying for almost one year.
I got to thinking about all the people that have trampled on my emotions, my dreams, my efforts. They had the power to do it, they were in the position to do it. I know without a doubt, they must have had a second to decide to not go that route but might have shrugged it off, thinking I’ve got nothing to lose by doing this, so why not. And I wonder, is this what God has in store for them? *shivers*
That time you decide to let that dude spend his entire savings taking you on a boat cruise to woo you, even though you know you don’t care a bit about him and he is spending it all for nothing, I daresay, the badder guy will treat that unkindness Himself. That time you decide to sleep with that girl who has had a crush on you for forever, think twice about it. For you, it’s just sex, for her it is the beginning of a happy relationship. When she finds out otherwise, her heartbreak will not go unnoticed by the badder guy.
And for every lady that has ever been cheated by a guy who took advantage of her emotions and feelings for him or her position, chin up Sweetie, our Daddy has your back and He will make sure no one dare hurt you without suffering the consequences.