Back in the late 1980’s, I remember there was a lot of talk about a study that was done on women in military command. The study came to the startling conclusion that female commanders were more likely than their male counterparts to come to the correct conclusions when faced with battlefield decisions. The only problem was that by the time those women made up their mind to put that decision into action, the situation changed making it the wrong decision.
So even though the decisions of male commanders were often less accurate, they were more successful because they were put into action sooner often changing the conditions of the situation forcing the enemy to fight on their terms.That study is something I always remembered as so many of my female friends run into the same situation time and time again, hurting themselves by not following what they knew to be right in the first place.
Second guessing is the number one weakness of most of my female friends. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I have begun to say something after one of them have come to me with a problem and they said “you know I knew that but I didn’t listen to myself.” Or I will say “we just talked about that a month ago when such and such a thing happened. Why in the world would you get yourself into that situation?”
We are all, often, our own worst enemy but it would seem, more so with women. I especially laugh when one of my female friends say “well you knew I was wrong and not acting right, why did you let me do it?” like I have some kind of magic powers to stop them from doing what they have chosen to do. You can only try so much before someone accuses you of attempting to control them so most of the time you just wait for the fallout and pray that they survive it.
I have discovered that it is a unique quality to the heart of a woman to always want to see the best in a situation even if she has to suffer waiting for it to come. That is why a woman can go through labor and have a baby. It isn’t that men can’t handle having a baby. I have seen men handle much more extreme pain than women when pushed to the limit in military exercises.
In fact, if men had to endure labor, the baby would be born in less than 15 minutes. But the truth is that the baby would also likely be dead. It is because of the fact that women emotionalize pain that make her capable of loving a baby so much that she would choose to let labor take its natural course when men would have simply gotten it over with. Over time I learned that there really isn’t a battle OF the sexes but a balance TO the sexes that we all really need to try to understand.
I am reminded of my time as a young married minister over 25 years ago. One Sunday morning my wife at the time, for some reason just started picking at me as I was getting dressed for service. She picked at me until I finally had enough and said “what the hell is wrong with you? You are not making any sense with all this pettiness” and that was all she needed to say I was picking on her by yelling and she was gonna call the Pastor and make me sit down that morning.
Now mind you, she was the one who picked the fight. I was raring up for an argument when the words came out of my mouth “wow, is this what all this is about? You miss me sitting next to you in the pew? Why didn’t you just ask me? Of course I will sit next to you.” Stunned, she broke down crying and apologized. I’m not saying who was right or who was wrong. Only that there is a still small voice that can guide us to read between the lines when we choose to focus on love.
-Neo