Can Appreciate the Difference Between Men and Women AND maintains relationships with her girlfriends

In college, I took at sociology class where they taught me if you treat a baby the same as the next regardless of gender the result would be children who were more uniform in behavior...or some sort of nonsense. You have to treat them differently from the time they are born. Think about it...when you change a baby boy's diaper, you are more likely to get sprayed than you would if you were changing a baby girl (and that is just the physical nature). During a diaper change, my son FOUND himself at 6 months of age! When Pearce was about 1 1/2 years old, he grabbed two of Erin's baby dolls and started slamming them together making car noises. Did I teach him that? Heavens NO! At age 2 1/2, my son started sporting a mustache that would make most teenagers jealous. I had to stop buying little jon-jons and the cute little baby boy clothes because they just looked ridiculous on him with his mustache. His mustache is the barometer I check for his behavior. When it is dark, I can expect a phone call from day care. When his mustache is missing, I expect a visit to the doctor's office because he is ill. So, I'm pretty happy with somewhere in between. Boys, especially mine, fascinate me. I can sometimes see the wheels in his mind rolling and connecting the dots to the next mischievous event or adventure.

I'm not so mesmerized by girls because I am one and I grew up with a sister. I just finished reading a book that I bought at the She Speaks conference this year titled Shepherding a Woman's Heart by Beverly White Hislop. She identifies the difference between very succinctly. Women are relationship-based, and men are task-oriented. When men try to "fix" a problem a woman has and goes about it the way he would another man, it's going to get screwed up. I don't want Patrick to "fix" my problems. I want him to listen to me. I want him to empathize with me, but sometimes he just can't for whatever reasons. This is why girlfriends are so crucial, so critical to the mental well-being of women. And when I say "girlfriends," I mean the kind of girlfriends you can call in a crisis or when something wonderful happens. A girlfriend who has seen you without your make-up in the morning or during a physical labor day. A girlfriend who will sit with you and let you blubber like a baby when the pain feels like it will swallow you up. A girlfriend who can make you laugh so hard that coke comes out your nose or make you almost pee in your pants. A girlfriend who is not threatened by you in any way in any area, and you aren't threatened by her in any area or any way. A girlfriend who is genuine and transparent, whose friendship lasts decades.

Women need women and that is okay. Women need to love on women. Women need to realize it is great being a woman and stop trying so hard to fight like a man, be in the business world like a man, and to be in the professional world like a man. Women like Condoleeza Rice who embraced femininity and was still able to earn the respect of her peers which were primarily MEN. I work in a field that when I started was primarily men, and I loved it. I had an edge where they did not. Celebrate being the woman God created you to be. You are a daughter of the King if you've asked Jesus into your heart, so act like it. Your value comes from Him who made you fearfully and wonderfully. We are women, and it is good!