In the Mean Time

Public Disclaimer: Since I, Crystal, am a woman and author of this blog i am therefore qualified and justified to write anything that is, in my opinion, my opinion. I have the stated the following in order to incite riots, challenge the status quo and just be plain counter culture. I hope you enjoy my tangents as much as i enjoyed going on them. :)

What to do in the mean time. I have had several conversations, as of late, about the mean time and what i should be doing with and in it. Most often this "mean time" is the time before marriage and is quite mean to me some days.

Ok some history, the initial mean time conversation originated in a place far away near Saskatoon, (insert Crystal smile here). We were discussing how it is good for men to work. Hey, whose going to disagree with that. Men love to work. And to do well at their work. (Or so i have read in all the books.) And I love working men. It is something that God created in a man's heart: to desire to work and to do it well. There is something beautifully God ordained in the way a man works, whether in the heat of the day, resulting in many beads of sweat falling and transpiring or as a man works with numbers and people. There is just something wonderfully wonderful about the working man. The ability to work is a wonderful gift from God and many a man, who is demoted, laid off or worse yet... fired, will tell you how lucky is the man who raises from bed to work. Oh sure, they may complain or mumble about work and live for the weekends but when he has no work he wastes away and there is something in his spirit that dies. Oh, you might know a man who is lazy and does not want to work... but that is only what it appears to be, for deep inside, the place where no one can see he fears he may fail at work, at the purpose given to man at the foundations of the worlds creation: he has fallen for the lie that to not work is better than to try to work and fail. Who tells these lies? Sometimes parents, and peers. But the ones who hurt the man's desire to work the deepest is his woman. She has told him he is lazy that he is a good for nothing bum. So why work? Why not prove her right. Prove her wrong MAN, show her the beauty of a working man.

So going back to when the foundation of the world was laid: Genesis 2 gives the expanded account of the creation of man and woman. It is interesting to note here that in Genesis 2:5 it states, "For the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground..." I read some where that when a conjunction is used in the old testament there is equal weight on the first and second statements. It seems here that it didn't rain because there was no man to work. Creation is ordered and caused to behave in a way because there was no man to work.

But continuing on. In chapter 2: starting at verse 7 an expanded version of the creation of man and woman is given. Verse 8 says that the Lord put the man that He had formed into the garden, Eden, that He had planted. Now after a few verses about the layout of the land and some of the rivers in the area verse 15 gets very interesting: "Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it." Verse 15 & 17 are the verbal instructions of which fruits he may eat and which he may not and the consequences of said "if" disobedience.

"OK OK we all know this story. What does this have to do with anything that you were rambling on about before?" You may ask. Well, i am glad you asked. Verse 18, the first time in Scripture that God says that His is not good, states: "It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him." Verse 19 goes on to say that the birds and the animals were formed. When God formed each living creature he brought it to Adam and Adam named each creature. "And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name." Gen 2:1

[Side note: this is why men love naming things: their cars, their bikes, code names, secret club names, nick names... the LORD God designed it into the heart of a man to name things... to speak words of meaning and significance into the lives of others. ]

But in all this searching Adam did not find who he was looking for. He did not find someone to govern and rule the earth with.

[Side note again: This is why men love to search for the one that will compliment their lives. It is a game, a challenge... a hunt to find the one who will fit him. The thrill of the chase. Eve never searched for Adam. It was Adam that looked for that helper to compliment him. It is interesting to note the paradigm shift, most notably in junior high and high school relationships: the girls ask the guys... oh oh oh ... i like your sweater. I know of one girl who specifically drove to a nearby city (the closest one being 2.5 hours away) to attend a college and career group for the soul purpose of finding a boyfriend. And it was not entirely impossible that she would be unsuccessful either! That was the most bizarre part. She didn't succeed, thankfully, but she tired! That is the crazy part: Eve was never created to search for Adam! But we are seeing this more and more. Even older godly ladies, realizing their biological clocks are ticking and the reality of a big family is fading, go searching for Adam. And so they find him, but he is not nearly who they dreamed he would be, he is only a sad glimpse of the man they had once hoped to marry, but he was the only one they could find. Girls are rotten searchers. They usually find a looser who is too wussy of a man to even ask her out: so she takes things into her own hands and she sits alone at night wondering where her night in rusty armor is. One girl, who i deeply admire, is quoted as saying, "If he is not man enough to ask me, he is not man enough to be my man!" Wow! What a girl. She's a keeper. And men sometimes compromise and stop searching for that dear one who is to compliment his heart, only to realize shortly that his compromise has left him with a her nagging like a constant drip and it would be better to live on the corner of a roof. Well, enough tangent for now... moving back to the Genesis account.]

Verse 21 & 22 give account of the creation of woman. Though we do not yet know it is woman that the Lord is creating ... all we know is that Adam is in a deep sleep and the Lord is using a part of Adam in this special creation. Verse 21 & 22: "And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the LORD God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man." It is very interesting that the Lord brought her to the man. After all that searching and looking it was the Lord who brought Eve to Adam. It is in verse 23 that we see that Adam names her. "And Adam said: 'This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man."

[Side note again: This is why women love to be named by men. Ok let me explain: there is something powerful and beautiful and even ordained in God created order for a man to tell a woman who she is. Adam knows who he is before he tells the woman who she is. She is Woman BECAUSE she is taken out of Man! When a man knows who he is and is secure in his identity and position as a man it frees his woman to know who she is because she is secure and safe knowing that her man knows who he is. ]

So now that we have officially gone on the longest, side note ever indulge me as i continue. So Adam was given work before he was given relationship. Going back to the Genesis 1 account of man and woman's creation we are only given a glimpse into the order of events: "So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them. Then God blessed then, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth." Verses 29 through 30 affirm what the Lord has created and how He has given it to the man and woman. Verse 31 states, "Then God saw that everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good..." This is the first time that creation is called very good! Interesting!

So man is given work before relationship and then after relationship he given added responsibilities. BUT woman was created in relationship and then given responsibility in that relationship with her man.

So while man is not yet married what should he do in the mean time? Obviously work. But what should woman do in the mean time? That is the real question that has plagued so many late night conversations. What to do in the mean time?

I made a blog.

Bibliography: I have read way too many relationship books to even begin to remember where the ideas that i have read end and my own start. Some where they have all mooshed together to form the hodgepodge i call my blog. Some ideas did come from Lisa Bevere's "Fight Like Girl", but not sure which ones, sorry.