Here’s to you, ladies, with deep and proper respect
It took a few minutes for the ludicrous nature of the entire exchange to truly sink in. The chips and salsa had been devastated, the plates of fajitas and other Mexican dishes left in shambles. All that was left was to pay our bill and waddle to the truck, full and happy.
“Let me have your money in case I need it,” my dear bride said matter-of-factly. And, without so much as batting an eye or questioning the demand, I found myself opening my wallet and handing my cash to a lady that has a debit card, two credit cards and cash of her own.
If anyone, absolutely anyone else on Earth, had uttered that dictate, I would have instinctively said no. But a human being that I outweigh substantially and can out-bench-press by roughly 270 pounds walked away with my money.
And kept my change. When God decided to create a lovely creature with XX chromosomes, I rather suspect that he did not tell Adam quite what he was in for. Simply put, there is nothing on Earth quite like a woman in more ways than you can possibly imagine. And from the very beginning, God made it clear that the differences were actually built in and part of his master plan. In Genesis 2:23, Adam observed that she was “taken out” of man, meaning that he now no longer had what she was within him, and she never had what he still was without her. In Genesis 3:16, God said that it would be the woman who brought forth children. And it was; Genesis 3:20 says that Eve was the mother of all living.
Many years later, Peter noted the simple scientific fact that women were the weaker vessel. For a bit of numerical validation of that truth, the world-record raw bench press is 782 pounds for a man and 457 pounds for a woman, the world record for raw squats is 1,080 pounds for a man and 615 pounds for a woman, and the world record for deadlift is 1,104.5 pounds for a man and 636 pounds for a woman. And yet, when men are subjected to period-pain simulators, viral videos show many of them writhing in pain, crying and screaming.
Globally, the average height of men is 5-foot-9, and the average height of women is 5-foot-4. The tallest man in recent history was 8-foot-11, and for a woman, the record is 7-foot-7. And yet, the person that forever strikes the most fear in all human males is generally a tiny creature called “mom,” of which mine stands at 4-foot, 9 inches tall, weighs about 85 pounds and terrifies me to this day. Dads can snap their fingers all day long, and the world goes on as normal. But, I kid you not, I watched my wife snap her fingers at our three kids in church one day, and about a dozen kids nearby immediately sat up straight with frightened looks on their faces. I then watched as the mothers of those kids burst into laughter at what had just happened.
Mom snap has very real power and should always be used judiciously.
Women have the preternatural ability to be calm at times that men are panicking. In Judges 13, having seen an angel, Manoah said something akin to “AGGGHHH! We’re gonna die!” To which his wife calmly responded something along the lines of, “Dude, you are embarrassing me. If God wanted us dead, we would already be dead.” Mind you, though, they will likely then cry after the fright is over when the men are just then laughing and saying, “Well, that was wild!”
Warning of the danger of the immoral woman, Solomon, in Proverbs 6:25, told his son, “Neither let her take thee with her eyelids.” In other words, “she will bat her eyes at you in such a way as to turn you into a drooling idiot, boy.” There is no similar warning in Scripture for the girls; any guy trying the eye-batting routine would end up with someone asking him if he was having some type of seizure and needed medical attention.
Ladies, I know you may be a bit discouraged of late to find that some believe that all it takes to be a woman is simply to say so. The bearded logger with the giant Adam’s apple and the deep bass voice? All he need do is change his name from Bubba to Barbara and don an illfitting dress to be allowed to fight you or race you or waltz into your changing room. But please rest assured that, from the very cellular level, you are one of the most unique things God ever did, and you are utterly irreplaceable. You have a specially designed reproductive system radically different from that of a man. You can grow a new human being inside of you. You can nurse that child from your breast.
You think differently. You react differently. You have a sixth sense about people that men just do not seem to have. You are normally what takes the hard edge off of life; a “man world” would be cold and hard and have much less beauty and joy and creativity.
So, do not let current trends discourage you. Biologically, anatomically, chromosomally, reproductively, mentally and emotionally, you are an irreplaceable wonder.
Right down to the fact that you can both earn your own money and then somehow also turn your husband into an ATM at will.