Girly Pursuits to Godly Woman Dreams

From the time we were little, babies even, we little black girls in a white male world were groomed to be strong black women and given the baggage that comes along with it: you are black and female, a double minority, so you have to work twice as hard to be considered half as good. But we didn’t want to be considered half as good. We wanted to be just as good, better, than they, white people, who caused our bags to be so heavy. We wanted to chuck the bags, but being a strong black woman required that we carry top-notch degrees, a stellar house, car and job, and lots of money. We sought a man who, too, could live up to these standards, but sometimes the chase was a waste of everybody’s time. One slip from the list and the man no longer had our attention, no matter how invested we were. This is what happens with vain pursuits, when excellence becomes the god we try to appease with temporal things and impressing people who don’t care anything about us anyway.

I got a clue about this after two degrees, a comfortable house, car and job, lots of money and a string of unfulfilled relationships, male carcasses lining my memory. I was filled with death, empty, and the excellence god was not appeased. On bended knee and an eye toward grace I prayed that God would give me exactly what I needed, including a man, since I didn’t know how to pick them anyway. My love for thugs and losing stats for bougie brothers left me leaning into some real worship. My nights left me lonely and some days I wondered what God had in store for me. When I got tired of the tears and feeling inferior to women with men, I welcomed God’s timetable and what He had to offer me. Within a few months of learning peace, God sent me a man of great peace, Flynn Andre Smith.

Flynn was no thug, had no love for bougie pursuits, made decent, but not a whole lot of loot, but I liked him and he liked me. We met doing business but wanted our next encounter to be personal and for more than a decade his love has been very personal. He knows my thoughts; caters to my wants; gives me whatever thoughtful things he wants for me; guides me to receive what I need; lovingly raises our sons to be men; plays and laughs with them and me; and covers me. He is God-fearing, nourishes and cherishes me and I delight in his presence, wait for his entrance, thank God for his existence and today being my husband for 13 years. I am grateful indeed, that God squelched my girly pursuits and gave me Godly woman dreams! Only God can change a love for thugs and bougie brothers to give you the man that you need.

Flynn & our boys at Veggie Tales Live 2010


My One Thousand Gifts List

#171-180
Taking the youngest two to the library
The restored and upgraded Parkman Branch Library
Two nice libraries close to my home
Leftovers
Clean and running water
Snacks for the kids
Joshua and Nate playing outside
Tabitha watching Nate and Justus so I could attend Joshua’s honors program
Joshua receiving two awards for scholarship
Supporting Joshua at his program

Husband Publicity Plan

“My guy’s a keeper and I’m going to do all I can to show him I’m glad he’s mine.” This was the closing line from my blog post “The Loving Husband.” So how do I plan to do all I can to show him I’m glad he’s mine? I’m going to amp up the best of what I do, namely serve him and speak well of him. Check out my post “10 Ways to Nurture Your Husband” that details all these, but in this post I want to elaborate on speak well of him. Continue reading

The Loving Husband

Me & Flynn on our anniversary, 8/8/10

A few years ago I saw a cartoon that showed a husband coming home from work to a house in complete disarray from garbage strewn on the front lawn with kids in the mud in their pajamas to toys, spills, a loud TV, an open refrigerator and a dog missing in the house. He walked past more mess and piles of clothes to find his wife, a stay-at-home mom, lounging in her pajamas reading. He asked her what happened. She replied, “‘You know every day when you come home from work and you ask me what in the world I do all day?’ ‘Yes,’ was his incredulous reply. She answered, ‘Well, today I didn’t do it.’” Her husband immediately knew the importance of what a stay-at-home does all day and what happens when one whose house is orderly doesn’t do her job. Though my house wasn’t this chaotic before I took my blogging break, some of my job didn’t get done and Flynn, my husband, witnessed this and had my back. Continue reading

Day 11: One of Those Days

I kept hearing another tune about her, one that would prompt me to compose a poem but the rhythm was stilted; it just wouldn’t come. There would be ebbs and flows and then I had to let go because the poem about the strong black woman just wouldn’t come. I was examining her history, seeing how she came to be, even be me, but the words wouldn’t come. Maybe they stayed away because they didn’t want to add to my already crowded day. As I kept inviting them in, their refusal helped me to see that my day is what I should share. Yeah, it’s been one of those days. Continue reading

Submission Sucks

Submission: Placing one’s personal mission under the mission of another; to voluntarily give up personal rights for the rights of others; to rank under another, as a soldier ranking under an officer.

Ahhh, the start of a new year. It brings new resolutions and always new challenges to those resolutions. I already find myself renegotiating one of my own goals: to be more gracious to my husband when he messes up so that I am more submissive. My husband doesn’t see this as a needed goal because typically I extend grace and submit. He thinks I do well, and I do most times because my husband is a sweetheart, constantly doting and thinking of and doing what will make my life better. So I’ve considered chucking the gracious goal. If he’s satisfied, then I’m satisfied, I reason. But I remember why I set the goal in the first place: For those times when my husband doesn’t think as fast as I think he should or plan like I think he should and I’m at war with him in my mind. I have to fight hard not to kill him in there, but I injure him many times; in my mind his ego is bruised, his feelings are hurt and he becomes senile: “Who is this woman I married?”

I don’t really want to bruise his ego, hurt his feelings or make him wonder why he married me so I have to take control of my thoughts that come from an impure heart that will eventually reach out to dishonor my husband with words and cause me not submit to his way of processing, his way of coming to a solution. Submission is important for my personal growth, my husband’s well being, our marriage’s health, the stability of the children and the growth of God’s kingdom. The growth of God’s kingdom is the key reason for submission and all the other reasons help to craft the key.

“Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so [let] the wives [be] to their own husbands in everything” (Ephesians 5:22-24).

After giving the wives instructions, the Apostle Paul tells husbands how they are to treat their wives, always comparing the husband to Jesus Christ. And then toward the end of the passage it says, “This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church” (v. 32). So Paul tells us that the great mystery of marriage is that the union is akin to Christ’s relationship to the church. Because I am the church, I am a subject of Christ in the kingdom of God. As a wife, I am a subject of my husband in our home. So in essence, what I speak to my husband, I speak to Christ. How I speak to my husband is how I speak to Christ. What I do to my husband, I do to Christ. What I speak about my husband, I speak about Christ. What I think about my husband, I think about Christ. Oh the tangled web we wives weave when we don’t think of our Savior but only think that submission sucks. We don’t want to submit because we’d rather that our husbands submit to our ideas, submit to our plans, submit to our way of doing and thinking, submit to us. But I propose that we think of submission sucking a different way.

Submission can suck the life out of your flesh yet give breath to your spirit. Submission can suck your toxins from your husband and kiss him with peace and joy. Submission can suck laziness and disobedience from your children and energize them with a desire to work and please. Submission can suck the parasites from the pews and infuse new blood to the church. Yes, submission sucks to get out the bad and to give life the way God intends for life to be.

Copyright 2010 by Rhonda J. Smith