Now I get it....

No, I have not solved any master problems. I am not expecting to until I am over 40 (Life begins at 40). But I have found a little light regarding all these questions that I have been asking about women. Amazing how much progress one can make asking questions (... maybe the progress is made by listening to the answers...)

One of the last conversations I had with the Benders was about marriage and what it means to be married, and what it is trying to accomplish. They gave me lots of food for thought, and one of them is relevant. Dave said “To be completed in marriage is different than being fulfilled.” I had never separated these in my mind, so I had to think about this. It may sound like a simple little thing we can all agree with, but it is giving the key to marriage being either an image or an idol.

Mr Paul knew what he was saying when he was telling us that it is better to be single. Many of us think he was out of his wits, or maybe he just never felt as much desire to the opposite sex as some of us. I see now this is beside the point. In fact, I wonder if monks and nuns aren't the horniest people because only the love of an infinite God will suffice. Marriage seems to be about God, not about two people making love and starting a family, though these things do take place are good. In fact, life seems to be more and more about God and not about living. (because, if you do the math, God is life.)

But here is the thing that Paul is telling us. Marriage does not fulfil. At best it is a picture, a metaphor, of God. If one is looking for fulfilment, don’t marry. Find God, and as Lewis says, you will need men less and love them more.

And all this time I have been running to guys to try and help me gain some substance to my being. But I am realising what I am looking for no man can actually give me. Why not? Because they are guys. They have no idea what it means to be a woman. They don’t have a clue what the answer to “Who am I?” is. But that is not a bad thing. It is a poor thing that I have been asking the wrong people all this time.

Who do I ask then? If I say “God” then there is a vague feeling of “Oh no. Not that answer again.” Is “Christ” any better? Jesus is a human, but he is a male... Can he actually restore my feminine identity?

Well, as I was trimming the hedge, I figured something. According to Eldridge in Captivating, one of the three things a woman is longs for is beauty. I think they are right, and I am looking into whether all longing is a longing for beauty. I know that David says “One thing I have desired, and that I will seek...” What One thing about God is there to find? His beauty. [bunny trail.]
So if that is one of the things that needs to be restored I think that what Peter was telling us all begins to make more sense rather than provoke offence. That passage about beauty coming from inside. No braids or earrings.. But isn’t outward appearance something, just as creation is something? This is again beside the point. Christ is the source of grace and truth, and maybe that is what makes a person beautiful. If there is any desire to be beautiful there is only one authentic source. Peter is telling us something very important, he is trying to give women an answer to one of our deepest insecurities.

One other thing which seems funny to me. The people who are ready for marriage then are not the two people who feel that they can not live without eachother. Marriage is for the two people who do not feel that pressing need to marry because they have a source of love which fulfils. Their love is not indifferent towards each other, as my mind suspects, but they are the more romantic because they do not have to control the other with image and presumption to use them to fulfil themselves. They have their substance and are therefore free to love the other.

George sums it up very nicely:

“Happy is the rare fate of the true. To wake and come forth and meet in the majesty of the truth, in the image of God, in their very being, in the power of that love which alone is being.”
What’s Mine’s Mine