Three Ways In Which I Wish I Was More Like a Man

I’m grateful that I’m a woman, and deeply appreciate my femininity.

But there are times when I wish I was more like a man. It hits me most when I’m all knarled up inside with some kind of emotional stress and also when I’m finding myself pulled in all directions at once.

At those moments, I wish I was a guy. Sort of.

First, a man can for the most part just shut off whatever is bothering him and tend to the task at hand. He can go from a heated discussion about a stressful, emotionally taxing topic to happily moving the lawn in the blink of an eye.

Women (aka, me) will carry whatever is bothering her into everything she does, letting it bother her more and distract her from accomplishing what needs to be done.

Second, a man can look at a situation, immediately beak it into its parts, and tackle them one at a time in sequential order.

Women (aka, me) see the whole picture at once, meld all the components together, and try to complete them all at the same time. What’s more, she’ll fret about all the things that need doing rather than focusing on the most immediate, which just makes matters worse.

Third, men have (extremely) selective hearing. They don’t hear anything they’re not interested in hearing, or that doesn’t pertain directly to the task at hand (see my first point). They also are immune to innuendo. That means they get to skip out on all the snark, gossip, and belittling that women seem to notice all the time and that always is directed at them. It also means they miss out on important stuff, like how upset their wives are when they hear somebody gossiping about them.

Sigh.

God created me to be a woman on purpose, and I trust that he knows what he’s doing. Ninety-eight percent of the time I’m perfectly happy the way I am – or am at least satisfied to work with it, flaws and all.

It’s that two percent that gets me:

– The days when I’m struggling to meet a deadline and can’t get anything right because I can’t stop mulling over an injustice that had been done to me days before.

– The days when I’ve got a major project in front of me and can’t stop worrying about all that needs to be done instead of focusing on the one thing that must be done first.

– The days I overhear gossip about myself or my family and it cuts to the depth of my heart.

– The days when I’m just plain moody and wish I could just forget all about everything – at least for a while.

Men, in general, can do that. I cannot.

When I get stuck in those grumpy pits, I make myself think about to the Book of Genesis, of the creation of Adam and Eve. Adam wasn’t complete without Eve, and Eve wasn’t complete without Adam.

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. The man 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.” (Gen 2:18-23)

God made two separate genders so that they could complement, not copy, each other.

The sensitive and embracing heart of a woman is what gives this world tenderness and motherliness. Our capacity for taking everything in at once gives us the ability to perceive needs that otherwise might be missed. And our ability to hold things in our hearts helps build and sustain lasting relationships.

Oh, sure. There are times I wish I was more like a man. But then I get a grip, review my Scripture, and pray on it.

Would I really want to be more like a man? Nah.