Last October, our family moved basically into the middle of nowhere to a beautiful house on 12 acres of woods. Shortly after we moved in, our parish priest came over to “scout out the land” with my husband and put up a few deer stands. After they finished, he noticed a collage picture propped up against a wall, waiting to be hung. It contains four blown-up pictures of my husband and I, taken in a photo booth long before photo booths became so popular. The pictures were taken a few months after we began dating, and still crack me up when I look at them. My husband has a full head of hair, and we both look like we’re about 12 and don’t have a care in the world. Our priest chuckled and asked our daughter about it. She replied, “That’s Mom and Dad when they were little.” I laughed and added, “AKA, the time of zero responsibilities.”
Looking at the pictures, I can remember posing for them like it was yesterday rather than ten years ago. I distinctly remember thinking I could not possibly love that man any more than I did at that moment. We had only been dating a few months, but I knew he was the one I would end up marrying (something I had told him on our second date, I believe it was…much to his horror). I had already had wise mentors in my life tell me, “Oh, you think you love him now, just wait a few years. It just keeps getting better.” Intellectually, I knew they were right, but at the time, I remember thinking I couldn’t possibly have more fun than I was having at that moment. We’ve only been married seven years, so I know we’re really only beginning, but I have been floored over and over by the greatness of this man.
From the way he held me tightly as I shook, sobbing with grief over miscarrying our first son, to the support he has given me through pregnancies, labors, and postpartum craziness, (a few of which took place while he attained his Master’s degree), his generosity and selflessness for our family continue to amaze me. As I mentioned, we recently moved to our new house with our four children — a feat done in about five weeks with close to 200 apple boxes. Insanity doesn’t quite begin to do the event justice, particularly when one considers that it took place during a seasonal change (read: summer and fall clothing EVERYWHERE). Yet through it all, he has been the steady voice of reason helping me see the trees from the forest of chaos.
I have been thinking about that photo booth collage and the chaos our move brought a lot in the last few months, thanking God for providing such a generous husband. While I know that I certainly am not alone in having married a “keeper,” I also know that our society truly has a shortage of “real men.” Just under two years ago, William Bennett wrote an article full of startling facts, including women surpassing men in college degrees almost three to two and 27% of children living apart from their father, over twice as many as in 1960. Bennett notes that :
Movies are filled with stories of men who refuse to grow up and refuse to take responsibility in relationships. Men, some obsessed with sex, treat women as toys to be discarded when things get complicated. Through all these different and conflicting signals, our boys must decipher what it means to be a man, and for many of them it is harder to figure out.
A few years ago, I read an article that posed the question, “If men would be men, would women let them?” The main point was that our society has gotten caught up in women “having it all,” pushing an agenda that women can “do anything they want to” including being a man. We have reached a point where many women are offended if a man does anything even remotely chivalrous, feeling that it implies that they are not capable of doing things for themselves, etc. As a result of this incorrect understanding of “feminism,” many men have in essence taken a back seat and settled for mediocrity rather than excellence. Rather than embracing their natural role as protector and leader of the family, many men have become passive and less driven than generations of men before them. Our society has adopted a very skewed view of both masculinity and femininity, even going so far as to suggest that gender does not matter at all. We now have entire generations of men growing up not knowing what it means to be a man. This is one of many reasons why we need Guiding Star centers, to celebrate what is good in both sexes.
Society is desperately in need of real men who will sacrifice for their families, who will fight for their marriages, and who will raise their sons to truly respect women. This obviously does not mean that we ladies get a free pass, lounging and eating bon-bons while our real men wait on us hand and foot. Society needs real women who embrace their femininity and their amazing bodies just as much as it needs real men. Society needs Guiding Star Centers.
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