Eve, Esther, and the Proverbs 31 Woman

This thought has been flowing over and over in my mind, as I am writing from my experience as a wife-to-be.  This is not strange for me, as I have always felt the need to chronicle my life journey for reasons unknown to me - perhaps it will mean something to somebody else one day.  Anyway, most of it seems prolific enough for me to write down.  Maybe it will all be a book one day.

I have never reflected more on my womanhood and presence on this planet than this pivotal moment in my life when I am getting ready to combine that Womanhood with Mr.'s Manhood (not talking about sex, so keep up, please).  It's not that I didn't notice the she in me when I was hanging with my girls (whom have all for the most part strangely gone mum or absent on me, with no help or advice).  When we were shopping, buying clothes, getting nails done, talking as women are wont to do, and battling between eating that dessert and eating those veggies, I definitely remembered my gender.  I love being a girl.  Wouldn't trade it.  But I never really THOUGHT about what it means in combination with a man's gender in that messy, miraculous thing called marriage.

There was nothing to ponder...like breathing...  You just are who you are; you just do what you do.

But the closer I get to that day when it's official, with all the prepping and life changes, I realize that there is something deeper God himself wants me to understand about me.  We don't really learn who we are until life demands that we bring our entire selves to the table.  We bring our entire selves forward when we are getting ready to join life to life.

The thoughts I have contemplated and meditated on focus around the three women that most women whom are actively attaining Christianity attribute our role in life or marriage to.  Eve, the first woman God made...Esther, the first Queen God crowned through life circumstances...the Proverbs 31 woman unnamed so we can all fill our names in the blank...all three have messed with my mind over the past nearly 6 months of marital consideration. 

Why are these three all up in my brain, so to speak?  Why do they matter?

The life intended, the mistakes made, the process walked through, and the perfection of being are not to be looked at lightly.  My preparation to love Mr. is not a mere "something to do" in the whole scheme of things.  While I may, as a woman, desire to have the perfection of the woman in Proverbs 31, I sometimes feel like Hadassah becoming Esther with the propensity of Eve to screw things up.  The process forces you to engage every part of the woman, every part of what makes you "not-so-perfect" but loved anyway, honored anyway, needed anyway.

How can all these elements be in effect but a man still sees the deeper purpose (very reminiscient of how our Creator sees us)?  How can grace finds us in that earthbound reality?  That is where I am right now, meditating on that grace.  He does love me, honor me, need me - little old me.  How? 

This pending marriage is crazy, in my head and through my eyesight.  How can someone love you enough to want to be joined to your life everyday?  How can someone want to be with you, when he knows that you can feed him something spiritually, emotionally, relationally, and (God forbid) physically; how can he know that what you feed him can make or break his entire life, that can affect his very purpose on this earth (like Eve).  Everyday, the question is raised to women - what are you feeding your spouse?  What are you feeding your children, your generations?  What are you giving them all that they are eating, internalizing, digesting?  Obviously, I am not talking about food.  God wasn't either when He questioned Eve about the fruit she gave Adam, when He asked her "What have you done?"

How can the man I believe God brought to my life love me when I came from a semi-orphaned existence, not entirely like Esther but uncovered paternally as she was until her cousin came along?  I had a different name, just as she did.  She came from somewhere that was not considered royalty.  She was not necessarily from a royal lineage; in reality, she was from a enslaved culture - bound to a reality she did not choose for herself but was hers  nonetheless.  I am not asking these questions from a place of pity, but from a place that acknowledges that marriage for me is like queenship for Esther - something never witnessed before.  The process to become a queen was a year's worth of hard work internally and externally.  I do not believe that the reason it took so long was based entirely on physical reasons.  Esther had to learn how to walk, to relate, to exist as a queen.  Where she came from had to be eradicated from her everyday though probably was never completely erased from her mind.  Not easy at all.

Finally, how can he (this man that has interrupted everything I ever thought about manhood) see me as this metaphysical manifestation of the woman he trusts his heart with?  Of all the things that stick out to me about the Proverbs 31:10-31 verses, these two hit me the hardest:

¹¹ The heart of her husband trusts in her confidently and relies on and believes in her securely, so that he has no lack of [honest] gain or need of [dishonest] spoil.

¹² She comforts, encourages, and does him only good as long as there is life within her.

Wow.  These are heavy statements to make, especially when there isn't much trust going around nowadays between men and women in marital relationships.  That doesn't mean there aren't any good marriages, so please don't misunderstand me; yet, I doubt anyone can deny the enemy's plan to destroy marriages and families.  But when I look at the truth of these verses, to  me they are more concrete than anything else I have ever seen in describing marriage.  After all, what is the point of a man marrying a woman and not being able to feel this about her, know this about her, testify this about her?

To me, the heart of a man is the most priceless and precious treasure he has.  When Mr. says he trusts me with his life and his heart enough to give them both to me forever, it makes me want to work harder (like that Proverbs 31 woman) to keep those gifts true, to make our home his sanctuary he can come home to when the world outside our door is so ruthless and dangerous to his heart and soul.  It makes me want to work harder at "making [him] feel my love" as Adele sang in her remake of the Bob Dylan classic.  He gives me something unable to replicated by anyone else, and I polish it like the gold of heaven, holding it dear.

These three women are forcing me to make this thing we have to be the best love we each could ever have.  This is no small thing; quite frankly, nothing any of us vow until death to treasure could ever be.  I see that now.