Insights

This week I empathized with a woman I've never met, as I see startling similarities despite different choices.

I'm beginning to see it so differently now.

My heart broke for her; I wept for her.  The depth of understanding shook my core, and I prayed for her.  

I could not pray for her husband.

She is blamed for her actions, yet his initial actions and later response over time is far crueler than her indiscretions.  The root cause of so many heartbreaks between a man and wife start with a simple thing:  a man ignoring his wife.

It doesn't matter what she's done; or if he's simply too exhausted and stretched himself.  The truth is he first uncovers her, and it leaves her vulnerable.

Uncovering:  when a wife no longer feels emotionally protected by her husband. The consequences vary, but always it leaves a path of destruction in its wake.

Only the man can rectify it.  Only a husband can bring his bride back under the shelter of his protection.  In the relationship between men and women, there are certain things only one can do:  only a woman can bear children, for example.  In this marital breakdown, caused by the man, only the man can fix it.

If he first stops thinking only of himself.

In the meantime, she is left to repeat mistakes, seeking only the protection he removed.  

The cycle repeats if the man waffles; his lack of decision makes matters worse.  

I'm watching from afar this scene unfold while dealing with my own heart...and I realize there is so much we judge about other women.

When their hearts beat as ours do.  As they fall prey to the insecurities their man exposes them to.  As they make choices that others judge on the surface, refusing to examine the cause.

As I prepare to re-enter the industry I love, my eyes are open for the hurt, the uncovered, the abandoned.  It has always been my desire to help them, but now I feel as if I come from a place of understanding them.

Men, wake up.  You have far more power over us than you know.  Use it wisely; you create more situations that you resent than you'll ever know. Think first of her, regardless of her sins.  Be the man she needed-recognize your own failings towards her.  For truly it is you who guards her gate...and only you who can swing it wide open.