Dudes Don't

It's common knowledge that men and women are different. Men have greater physical strength. Women are better at relating emotionally. A man's body is a series of angles while a woman is a composite of curves.

But who knew that even the little everyday things both of us face flow differently?

My coworker Bernard broke it down to me:

Dining

"If I go out to eat, alone or with a guy friend, I sit at the bar," he said.

"What!?" I exclaimed. "You wouldn't sit at a table?"

He turned his head side to side in disapproval. "No, we gotta sit at the bar. Especially if I'm eating alone. If I'm by myself, at least I can talk to the bartender or look at the T.V. If a man sits alone at a table, he just looks sad."

Hmm. "Not even a booth though? If there were four of you...?"

He sucked his teeth as he pondered.

Finally, he said, "Maybe."

Movies

"When I go to the movies with one of my boys, we don't sit next to each other."

I laughed. "Why not?" Every movie I've gone to see, whether it was with a man or a woman, we sat side by side, occasionally brushing elbows as we shared the use of the cup holder/armrest.

"Men just don't. He has to be a seat or two over or up. The only guy I sit right next to is my brother."

Bernard shook out his arm as he finalized, "You need that space."

Beds

When I have guests over, I usually give them my bed while I sleep on my couch or an airbed.

But Bernard shook his head at that.

"Only my mother can sleep in my bed," he declared. "I had a friend of mine come over and I didn't see him brush his teeth once...he can't sleep in my bed."

I was intrigued. "Really? What if a friend of yours had major surgery and had to stay with you. Where would they sleep?"

A handful of seconds passed.

"My couch pulls out. They'll be fine."

I told him," Well, there have been times when I'm visiting a friend where we share a bed."

At that admission, Bernard responded with a blank stare.

"No...just no. Dudes don't do that."

Our differences are indeed amazing. 

Change

Whatever they were talking about had to be good. I heard Amy's spirited alto and Bernard's stubborn tenor going back and forth like a game of tennis.  As I got closer to Bernard's desk, I heard, 

"It has to be a certain grade, a certain type."

He wasn't talking about meat. He wasn't talking about a car. He was talking about hair. 

"He doesn't date girls with natural hair," explained Amy, her voice coated in disbelief. 


"No, it's not that," Bernard countered quickly. "But if it's the dry coarse kind, then they have to straighten it." 


His statement made me think.


 I wondered how many gorgeous and wonderful women he passed over because their hair coiled too much. 


I wondered how many of his girlfriends had hot combed their kinks into flat strands.  


And I really wondered, 

How much of yourself should you

modify

alter

 change

 add

 subtract

  for someone else?

Physical appearance is inarguably one of the strongest factors in attraction. Both men and women savor pieces of eye candy that walk into their lines of sight. But I wonder how much of what we do to change our looks is for ourselves.


Is it more to catch eyes....?


Is it more to keep eyes....?  


Even our personalities can be affected by what our significant other thinks. Audacity is carved into meekness. Thoughtfulness is sharpened into selfishness. What's loud becomes soft. What's low becomes high. 

Soon, who you were is gone. 

Relationships can be catalysts for change. But sometimes, they can refashion a person into someone altogether new. 


Not better. 


Not worse. 


But different. 

Be sure that you can live with the difference. 


When the relationship is over, you'll still have to live with you. 

Shift

The text made my shoulders droop. Queasiness snaked through my stomach. Her distress fell on me like a bowling ball and I sharply exhaled from the sudden weight of it all. I staggered into the office stairwell, my vision blurred as tears filmed my eyes.  My heavy sigh sounded hollow in the empty stairwell as I tried to deal with the heaviness sitting on me.

"Lord, what's going on with my family?"

My 16-year-old cousin Lianna has always been such a quiet soul. She's never really shared much about herself to our family, only allowing another 16-year-old cousin, Tia, into her world. She is a proud Mommy's girl, never seeming to leave her mother's side and tagging along happily on tedious and often unnecessary shopping trips and errands. 

We know that she is reserved. We know that she loves music. We know that she loves her family.

But we wondered. 

About her sagging jeans. 

About her triple X size hoodies and T-shirts. 

About her utter horror at having to wear make-up.

About how she had to be forced to wear dresses. 

About her distaste for wearing her shoulder length hair in curls and waves and desire to wear it in cornrows. 


We wondered.


 And we found out when she told her mother that she was interested in women. 


Her mother weeped from the lowest part of herself, her heart broken. Once I heard what happened, I immediately began praying for my aunt and her reaction/thoughts about this ordeal. I  asked God to watch over my cousin, to free her from that spirit and to restore her heart, mind, and soul.


But while pondering and praying about them, I had to insert a spiritual addendum for Tia.  


Tia is a natural beauty and charmer. Her honey colored eyes and smooth chipmunk cheeks have given her many a high school admirer, a fact that she unapologetically enjoys. She was born to delight, easily eliciting smiles and laughs from anyone she encounters. 

Life hasn't been so delightful for her lately.

Tia's relationship with her mother has been typical, both rocky and smooth. But their 18 year age difference has put them on a level that fosters deep affection but washes away important boundaries.


 Recently, her mother did something out of the ordinary:


She viciously cursed at her and her 8-year-old sister. 


While physically disciplining the younger girl, her mother turned on Tia, who had intervened. Her mother spat at Tia to 

"mind her f****** business. Who the f*** is she?"

She then announced that she doesn't give a f*** what the two girls eat for dinner because she wasn't cooking s***.

The anger and the language and the viciousness with which it was used shocked the two daughters. They spent that night crying from hurt and fear. Tia had decided that she had enough and wanted to leave home to live with a relative. 


Tia's text about the events collided with Lianna's already spinning tornado and absolutely knocked the wind out of me. I tried to soothe and mend as I could, asking God for guidance, for direction and for words to say. 


Soon, I ran out of words. 


And strength. 


It's funny; sometimes you don't think anyone else sees the strain you feel. 


I asked my life coach to add them to her prayer list, which she did. But she also was concerned about me and told me something I forgot (which I often do):

"You need to shift all this off you and onto God. Cast it on the One who is really equipped to carry it."

Though we are to bear one another's burdens, we certainly aren't built to bear them forever or for long.


Shifting it off to Someone with stronger shoulders...

---


For He knows how weak we are; He remembers we are only dust.
-Psalm 103:14

Pain

As a child, I suffered from severe stomach cramps. My stomach would wrinkle and crunch like an accordion and then stretch out like a rubber band about to pop. The pain would radiate from my belly to my thighs to my belly and then wash all over me, and I would lie motionless in a pool of nausea. 

Besides medicine,  I developed ways to deal with it. Curling up in a ball. Walking back and forth. But most of the time, I would gingerly sit down on our sofa and rock back and forth until the pain fled. In my mind, there could be no feeling worse than this. The stings and bangs and aches of the body were tiers above any other type of damage. 

But then I grew up and experienced pain that I didn't even know existed. 

Bruised feelings. 

Broken hopes. 

A cracked heart. 

I remember one evening where my emotions were in complete disarray. I felt like I was suffocating.  Hurt and sorrow and joylessness were piled, one on top of the other. 

They were crushing me. 

On the phone was my sister, who was trying to lift them. She somehow made sense out of my breathless tear-laced phrases and said, 

"You are emotionally exhausted.

Take a shower and lie down."

 So I did. I laid in my bed with tears sliding down my skin, choking on this pain, praying that relief would come soon. 


I used to think that one was worse than the other. 


Not so.


In all its forms, pain hurts. 

Dollar

I was louder than usual. I was bolder than usual. But the statement was so jarring that I had no time to censor myself. 

"You did what?"

 My coworker Bernard repeated himself, reciting it once again with no shame. 

"I bought salmon from the dollar store."

He smiled nonchalantly and nodded his head. During a shopping trip, Bernard had decided to take advantage of a great deal and purchase some dinner, stuffed salmon, from a dollar store. His previous food purchases from those stores always ended well,particularly when he bought one of his favorite snacks, Fig Newtons.


"You could get a whole fig in one bite," he said, his eyes glazing over at the memory. 


 I appreciate the financial relief that dollar stores bring but I'm scared of buying anything from there that I have to chew, absorb or ingest. 


Their items cost a dollar for a reason.

 "So, how was it?"

Bernard began to laugh. When he got home and began to prepare the salmon, he made a disappointing discovery. 


There was only an inch of salmon meat. More than half of the "salmon" was breadcrumb stuffing.


What have we learned? You get what you pay for. 

In the dark

Growing up, I was afraid of the dark. I hated going into a room that was coated in blackness and especially falling asleep in a lightless bedroom. Things looked so much scarier shrouded in shadows. A pile of clothes transforms into a dripping monster. A teddy bear looks like a gross alien. Without light, everything is


fuzzy...


obscured...


deformed...


abnormal....


not true to form...


When my imagination got too much for me to take, I would jet to turn on a lamp, a nightlight, the ceiling light,  or in moments of deep terror, all three. Visibility would flood in and I would be calm again. I would climb back into bed and sleep soundly, assured that no scary threats could hide in the light. 


How do you flip on the light switch in a relationship that grew in the dark?


Two of my friends are in secret relationships, romances that are, for the time being, kept hidden. Their reasons for it are valid: 


Age differences. 


Outside parties being attracted to one partner. 


Wanting the connection to be kept out of the mouths of others. 


But the secrecy is spilling doubt and misgivings into their hearts. One friend expressed, 

"I don't feel like he cares for me."

Another believes that his girlfriend loves him. But, 

"Not the way I need to be loved."

I wonder if the dark is smearing what's true and what's actual into something altogether different. Maybe once the romances are brought into brightness, the curves will turn into angles, the basins will morph into crescendos and what's in limbo will land on earth. 

Lessons

At least once a week, I wander into my coworker Rebecca's office for a teaching session. Over the years, we've grown from coworkers to friendly colleagues to true blue friends. But I'm beginning to believe that God's placed her in my life for an additional purpose: a life coach. Maybe it's because I mirror herself at my age. Or because I'm admittedly tender in a lot of the ways of the world. Whatever it is, I've scribbled dozens of pages of mental notes from her tales of life experience. 

Lesson #290: A man who cooks is a man you hook. 

For the past couple of months, a temp has been working in our department. James is extremely congenial with a warm smile. It is hard not to notice him: his 6-foot frame towered over most of us and his rich baritone made eardrums tingle. Recently, he nailed a permanent position at another organization. As a farewell present to us, he made an incredible batch of deep dish bread pudding. The cinnamon and raisins and vanilla swam beautifully together and before I knew it, I had swallowed the last bit on my plate. As I stood to go to my desk, I saw Rebecca wiggling her fingers, motioning for me to come into her office.  She lowered her voice and said, 

"And he cooks....!"

James had been another one of Rebecca's dating recommendations that I passed on.  I laughed and headed back to my desk but not before she wagged her finger at me, silently instructing me to take notice. 

Lesson #367: If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. 

Rebecca pulled out this story to teach about not letting bliss blind you. At a different place of employment, she was in a relationship with a fellow coworker. Ty was a dream come true. Besides being handsome, he was kind, taking extra steps to get presents and necessities for her young son.  

They did spend time together in the workplace but used discretion to throw coworkers and supervisors alike off their scent. They spoke via phone after hours, conversing and joking about everything under the sun. Ty was 

attentive and most important to Rebecca, he never pressured or asked her about sex.

But that's what made her alarms go off. 

(The first lesson Rebecca taught me was "Christian or not, if a man doesn't ask, mention or try, something's up.") 

As time went on, she noticed fragments of concern. Phone calls at certain times. Sudden departures. A woman answering his phone. Finally, she prayed and asked God to show her if this man was His man for her. Shortly after, she got a phone call from a friend. Her friend was sitting in a beauty salon and overheard a conversation between a customer and a stylist. The customer had just moved from South Carolina to be closer to her fiance. As the conversation went on, her friend realized that this woman's fiance was Ty. 

So Rebecca got up early the next morning. She took sweet time primping for the day. Dousing herself in more perfume than usual. Brushing on one more coat of mascara. Styling her hair just so. That day when Ty came into her office, her beautifully painted face told him to leave her life. Rebecca recounted everything her friend told her and with each sentence, Ty's face grew more and more stricken in disbelief. He asked her, 

"How did you find out?"

Her response?

"Does it matter?"

It didn't. Ty went back to his fiance and Rebecca went back to her life with one more coin of experience in her treasury. 

Lesson #455: Don't settle. Wait for God's best.

 

 Once, Rebecca was deeply in love with a man named Lawrence. She knew he was no good for her. She knew that he had another woman in his life. But she couldn't shake him. His presence lived with her and it seemed there was no way she would ever get over him. One day, she spoke to a older coworker about her dilemma. When she was done venting about the relationship and her entanglement with Lawrence, her coworker spoke very simply to her:

"Sis, you are in a triangle. And that is not God's best for you." 

The older man took her hands in his and prayed. Prayed for her spirit. Prayed for her future. Prayed for God to cut the thread that tied her so tightly to Lawrence. When Rebecca let go of his hands, she said everything she felt for him left instantly. 

"He fell off me like a change of clothes, 

like dead weight." 

The older man continued to encourage Rebecca, never failing to remind her that God's script for her life included a leading man, someone who will love her the way she should be loved.  

I know my mental notepad will continue to be filled with tidbits of her wisdom. 

----

When she speaks, her words are wise, 

and she gives instructions with kindness.

-Proverbs 31:26