If you had to be one, based on your past experiences, your decisions, your heart, which would you be: the crafty harlot or the virtuous wife?
I have been both. I learned early to seduce men, to lure them into whatever pleasures I desired and to feast off their pain. I think nowadays, that female manipulation is one of the first things our girls master. I see 13 year olds who brag about the things they can do to and the things they can get from a man. Their young minds don’t know that craftiness can kill a young boy’s heart.
My mother told me the other day, “you were raised to be a wife, not a wifey.” My mother was never idle. She was busy about the business of her family. She invested in my sister and I and showed us to be demure, to be ladies. This was no formal education, she led my example. She was purposeful and a woman who made my father look like a king. Her consistency and compassion made him a great man, I think. My dad is awesome, don’t get me wrong, but without a woman who had all the virtues of my mother, life would have been totally different for him.
One day, when I was in my early 20s, I grew tired of men who I used and manipulated. I got sick of the game. I got sick of the emotions of casual sex. And I decided to stop being crafty. I know how terribly mean a woman could be because I used to be a terribly mean woman. Now, I was no wanna be basketball wife, but I was emotionally using men…I was treating good ones like trash…and I was letting bad ones stay bad with no rebuke.
I grew up, partially, and started using my “powers” for good. All of us women have them. I started wanting more for the men I loved. I dated less and less. I believed those who dangled marriage in front of my face like a carrot, and gave them all my heart and all my virtues.
One thing I forgot to be is a wife. I forgot there is a formal and spiritual difference between being in love and being joined by God. I forgot that a wife uses her sincerity, her wisdom, her natural assets and her inner self for her husband. Not her boyfriend, or her “soul mate.” She upholds the values of the leader of her household. She makes him appear to be the king he is. Whoever he is, is magnified by her disposition. I forgot that thing I have is more rare than rubies…it aint for everybody. Only the one who wants to be the one.
How much would he, should he, could he have to give up to attain the jewelry of my heart? How much is my incredible discernment worth? What is the price tag for me to bottle up everything I have, and give it all, 100 percent to a man who will become a king once he receives it?
I don’t want to be responsible for the death of any man. I don’t want to kill any man’s heart, kill any man’s pride, contribute to the death of his marriage or his walk with God. I don’t want to distract him from his walk, because we need more men on the path.
I have been both crafty and virtuous. Now that I am single, everyday, I have to make a choice to be one or the other. All of us women do. How much of myself do I hold onto so that I don’t give away all this virtue and end up with nothing? And how do I interact with men now without being crafty?
