Men & Women.

I feel like it's all too easy to idealize or demonize a person from the opposite sex. Much of the time I have found myself having false expectations of what a relationship with a woman would look like, viewing it as the goal, the end, the finish line.

But it isn't. I'm finding that dating, being engaged to, or marrying someone is a very real undertaking. It isn't perfection, it isn't fantasy, it isn't a way for us to get all of our needs met. It's something that causes us to die to ourselves on a daily basis, to show true, sacrificial love to the other person.

Men and women both have very real purposes and unique things they bring to the table. For example men are most actualized when creating and initiating something. It's who we are, we thrive on doing and giving life to something. Women are uniquely created with a profound ability to be and to relate. They were made with a high level of emotional skills and the capacity to be responsive.

Out of our brokenness we will often find ourselves getting these roles mixed up, and it can become hard for a healthy male/female relationship to take place. Our wounds may also cause us to avoid male /female relationships altogether.

God himself possesses both of these masculine and feminine qualities as shown in his ability to initiate truth and action in our lives as well as provide a place of comfort and rest.

The point is that we were created to be in right relationship with God and members of the opposite sex.

Rather than idealize or demonize male/female relationships, we should earnestly seek wholeness in Christ and in our unique gender roles as masculine & feminine.

You hear guys say to each other all the time as advice for getting a woman to like them; "Just have confidence bro." That "confidence" can serve as a mask for the fear and insecurities within. Jesus doesn't want us to cover over or avoid our brokenness, rather he wants us to be fully confident in him and who he has made us to be.

As men we should treasure the heart of women and fully accept in grace and love their humanity.

I'm done placing unrealistic ideas on women and expecting them to be the ones who fully heal the broken places in my heart and who affirm my masculinity.

I want to become a whole person in Christ so that on the day I am blessed with a companion, I can begin the journey of caring for the real human heart that has been entrusted to me.