The fragrance of Love

We all wonder, Will I be loved when I am not needed?  If you are the parent(s) of adult children you may harbor this fear.  The truth of the matter is the need is still there, but the areas of need have changed.  Although your children will always need you, what they need from you will change.  The once needed to be nurtured at your warm breast; they now need to feast on the bounty of your spirit.  A parent(s) needs faith enough to quit yearning for yesterday and fearing tomorrow.  You can develop a fresh relationship with your daughter or even your son.

Avoid the temptation to attack the people who are a part of your children's adult lives.  Many parent(s) make the mistake of trading the role of mother/father for the role of judge.  They become critical of people who have influence with their grown children.  Jealousy or even genuine disapproval of your children's relationships will not help.  Prayer is a better choice than bickering and nagging!  Remember Naomi, who stood by Ruth, her daughter-in-law.  Her wisdom and gentle encouragement gave strength and grace to the young girl she influenced.  Ruth and Naomi shared life, love, and intimate secrets without Naomi's judgement, criticims, or domination of Ruth.  Ultimately Ruth became committed to naomi's God.  The greatest witness we can have is the presence of grace.  Be gracious and you will see God move in your life.  You are entitled to your opinion, but once you have offered it, release your children to make their own decisions.  Respect their choices and support them as best you can.  Do not allow the enemy to rob you of the riches of your investment in your children.  It would be foolish to lose all you have deposited in them over someone or something you cannot control.. Mary, Jesus' mother, didn't understand her Son.  His decisons led to His death.  Yet she supported Him to the end.  You must be wise.  If not, you will create a cold war that will leave you alone with bitterness and sad memories.  Hostility will cause you to be left with Thanksgiving turkeys to eat by yourself.  It is not worth it.  The fragrance of love is sweet.  With wisdom and grace and prayer, you can enjoy it all the days of your life.

Marriage is at its best when both parties can be naked- vulnerable with each other - and not be ashamed.  There is no resting place for the man who has to hide in his own house.   In the Garden, God asked Adam, "Where are you?" and Adam displayed the tendency of most men to avoid open confrontation when he confessed: (1) I heard Your voice, (2) I was afraid, (3)I was naked, (4) I hid myself (see Genesis 3:9-10) When you become confrontational, it's not that your husband doesn't hear you.  It's just that when he is afraid of exposure, he has a tendency to hide.  Marriage should be transparent.  Both you and your spouse need to be able to confess your weaknesses without fear or condemnation.  Woe to the man who has no place to lay his head.  Let's stop by Delilah's place (see Judges 16:4-20). Most women would not want to stop at her house; most men would.  Most men are not afraid of Delilah; most women don't like her at all.  Her morals are inexcusable, but her methods are worth discussing.  There are some things that every wife could learn, must learn from Delilah.
What was so powerful about this women?  What was it that caused the Philistine government to put her on the payroll because of what she knew about men?  What was it that captured the attention of Israel's mighty man, Samson, and kept him coming back to her bed when he knew all along that she was trying to kill him?  He could not leave her alone.  It was an Old Testament "fatal attraction"  If your husband is in a high-stress position - if he's powerful and full of purpose, the envy of everyone around - you need to learn from Delilah.  Where can the mighty man lay his head?  Where can he be vulunerable?  Where can he take off his armor and rest for a few hours?  Is your home a peaceful place?  Is it clean and neat, warm and inviting?  If not, Delilah's place is ready.  I'm sure she has her own problems, but Samson doesn't have to solve them the minute he walks in the door.  She knows he's tired after fighting with the enemy all day, so she says, "come, lay your head in my lap."  Delilah knows that all men are little boys somewhere deep inside.   They are little boys who started their lives being touched by women.  A women sang your husband's first lullaby with her silky voice.  A women gave him his first bath and, when he was tired, he lay his weary head against her warm breast and went to sleep.  A women talked to him and touched him and made him feel safe - not criticized, not ostracized, just safe.  Men respond to praise.  Praise will make a weary man perform.  A women who knows what to say to a man is difficult to turn down.  For all your husband's tears and all his fears, he needs your arms, your voice, your song.

God grants some women the unique honor and blessing of becoming mothers.  when you have children, hold them, love them, care for them, empower them.  But understand that you are only temporary stewards.  Your children belong to God.  They will grow up and leave.  They were not meant to be grasped or clung to - as if you really could freeze a moment.  No, moments cannot be frozen, but you will be allowed to hold memories.  If you are good at mothering, you will hold the memories and release the child.  If you cannot do that, you will destroy the memories by corrupting the relationship between you and the little chick whose development has outgrown the shell of your parenting.

Many women come close to losing their relationships with their children.  They feel betrayed by the growth of the children they trained.  They have trained the children to be productive and then have failed to prepare themselves for that growth-not just the growth of the body but also the growth of the person, the development of personalities and preferences.  They feel tht their children are belligerent when in truth many of the children are just independent.  Of course, there are children who grow to be callused.  I pray that you will be spared the disappointment of that experience.  But even if your parenting goes well, there will still be moments when you see your children slipping through your fingers like grains of sand.  For many mothers who once struggled to wean the child from tender breasts, it is later a struggle to wean the mother from the child!  Letting go is especially painful when you allow your relationship with your child to become cluttered like an attic stuffed with things that belong to compensate for loneliness in other areas.  Because there was no place to put them, they were shoved in to the attic.  Often it is love that should hae been invested in a spouse, but there was no spouse or no capacity in the spouse to be loved.  So the love was dumped on a child.  This is not a healthy love; it is obsessive.  

Every good mother, sooner or later, must understand she is denied ownership; she is merely granted stewardship.  This is so important.  This is the understanding you need to mother God's children God's way.

I wonder how many women realize that they have a Father who never slumbers nor sleeps.  He has assigned angels to compass about you and to ensure your safety.  He will spare no expense to insure that you are safe.  He will not rest.  He will arise with healing in His wings.  He will come to you in a flash and stay with you through the night.  He is the Everlasting Father.  He doesn't leave, He doesn't desert, and He doesn't forsake you.  What you must come to understand is that He cares so much for you.  He wants you to have all that you need.  A thousand so-called feminists may erase Father from the Bible and replace it with a neutered term the find less offensive.  If God represents Himself as a father, perhaps it is because He knows best what a Father's love should represent.  The offense taken to the term father is born in the heart of someone who has failed to understand that a father is a compliment to a women and not an insult.  Sadly, we have come to a time when the role of the father has been so mutilated that we have lost any real revelation into the breadth and depth of the Father's heart.

I repeat, a good father is not an insult to femininity.  A good father is an avid fan of his daughter, a source of insulation from insult and adversity.  He is there for her.  He nurtures her. Hear me when I declare to you that the Father loves His girls.  His heart cried through the prophet Jeremiah for the healing of His daughters (see Jeremiah 8:21-22).  He is broken at the thought of their brokeness.  He is longing to restore them and to provide for them.  Whatever the need, He longs to see it met.  He is Jehovah-Jireh.  He is the Father of blessing.  He is the giving God who loves to know that all of His children are blessed.  He will bless His sons, who are created directly in His image and after His similitude.  How much more would He have respect for the woman as the weaker vessel?  She is not weak in terms of substandard, but weak in terms of softer.  A silk shirt is more delicate than a cotton one.  But it is also more valuable.  Weaker doesn't mean lesser - just softer, more satin-like.  Rejoice in the softness of our femininity.  The Lord is your strong man, your hero, your Father who loves to bless you.  And He never goes to sleep.

Married women, satan will try to rob you and your husband of the passion God created for you to enjoy.  The enemy will try to callous your soft, supple flesh with stress and unforgiveness and leave you with a hard shell that imprisons a broken heart.  He is afraid for you to love and give.  There is a level of romance and chivalry in marriage that the Father meant for you to enjoy - not just sex, but sensitivity.  More than obligation or performance, I am talking about the return of passion.
If you are not careful, life will cause you to leak.  Your marriage will be drained by the leaking passion and wilted excitement produced by hard times and struggle.  Your mommyhood will try to rob you of your womenhood.  Satan wants to leave you drab and aloof, hiding behind religious excuses rather than fighting your way out and being the wife and woman you were created to be.  Perhaps you do not need to know this now.  But someday when you feel a heavy depression about to descend upon what was once a vibrant love, you will need to turn to God as your friend.  When that day comes, you may suddenly realize that your husband is longing for the woman you used to be.  Somewhere beneath your problems there is another women screaming "let me out! I wan to love and live."  This is the women who has been trampled by low self-esteem and fear of rejection.  She is the women you were before.  Remember her?  She is soft and sensitive, fanciful and frilly.  she is bright-eyed and full of mischief, creative and sensual.  Your husband has been on a fast, waiting for her to step out of the freezer.  If ever there were a time you needed to stop suppressing her and let her loose, it is now.

I can't leave you lying in the bed of despair with your emotions dead, your passion subdued, your attitude cynical, your disposition critical.  God says, "Arise."  You are about to have a resurrection.  It will be so strong that your husband should feel it.  Your children should feel it.  From the prayer room to the bedroom, a loosed women is free!

PmoneyandTT said:

If you are not careful, life will cause you to leak.

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epends:

Could you all try to remember that this is the Religion Forum and not Chit Chat. Of late, many of the comments are less than appropriate. Read the guidelines.