COMRADESHIP by MI S (jenna bush book club .TXT) 📕

Imagine, just for a moment, the Garden of Eden. Paradise. Perfection. Peace. Do you know the reason it was such pure bliss? Sure, because there wasn’t any sin around, but you know the other reason?

There weren’t any other women around.

Eve had the whole world to herself. She had the only man on earth to herself. She had no competition, no one showing her up, no one hurting her feelings. She didn’t have to compare her children to anyone else’s children. She didn’t have to compare her home to anyone else’s home. She didn’t have to compare her body or her brains or her looks or her man. It was just her.  There are times that sounds like paradise to us as well, doesn’t it?

I’ll confess, over the years working in the trenches of women’s ministry there are plenty of times I’ve told my husband Jeff I’m quitting altogether, and we are moving out into the mountains where I will live the life of a hermit with no one but him and the kids. In fact, I’m embarrassed to confess just recently, in a torrent of tears over some hurt feelings, I actually uttered the words, “I hate women.” Of course I confessed my sin, and Jesus, in His infinite grace and mercy, forgave me. But why do we struggle so often with animosity toward our fellow females?

I’ll tell you why: Because women can be mean! They can be difficult to work with. (And the theyincludes me!) So Eve’s reality, as the only woman on earth, certainly seems like paradise sometimes. And it was.

And yet, in the middle of that paradise, she still sinned. It makes me wonder, If she would have had a good girlfriend by her side, perhaps she’d have chosen differently? Perhaps a good girlfriend would have said, “Girl, what’re you doing?! Stop it! Listen to your man and stay away from that cotton’ pickin’ tree! There’s no good in that tree. Now GIT!” A good friend does that, right? Many of us have been blessed with a true friend who’s willing to say, “Now just stop it!” But without such a friend, Eve ate, and we all know the result.

Brokenness.

Then, after the fall, I wonder what it was like as Eve slowly populated the earth. Now that she was touched by sin and insecurity. I wonder what it was like as she bore daughters, then as those daughters grew and became attractive, intelligent, compelling women. They probably had wonderful fellowship at times, but I have to wonder, Was it hard for Eve?  As she grew older, saggier? (Keep in mind she was the oldest woman on earth! We can always find someone older and wrinklier than we are, but she was always the oldest!)

As the curse wore at her physical body, was it hard to see her daughters grow and take her place? I wonder, in her now fallen nature, what it was like when one of those daughters married Cain and became her daughter-in-law. (Strange thought, yes?) I wonder if she enjoyed the female company but struggled with it as well. I wonder how they interacted as older and younger.

Sadly, the world was never given an example of female friendship before the fall. There is no pre-fall female friendship. So every single example we have is tainted, in some way, by sin. By brokenness.

We never have a chance to see Eve interact with the other women on earth. No commentary is given for us to follow. But we do know that generations later, God calls Noah’s wife to live on a boat, with her THREE daughters-in-law, for more than a YEAR, along with a thousand other stinky animals.

And they manage to all make it off that boat alive, without killing each other.

So there is still hope for the world!

If you’re ever tempted to believe that we’ll never make this female relationship thing work, there is still hope that females can get along, that mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law can get along, that they can even co-habitat without committing murder. This is God’s amazing grace.

But even in that story, we don’t get any inside glimpses into their female relationships. We don’t even know their names. We simply know that these four women, who all came from different families of origin, lived together on a boat with their husbands and 1,000 animals for over a year. I’m sure there were some priceless lessons learned, but we’re not privy to what they were.

Much like Noah’s wife and daughters-in-law, I was thrown into the thick of female relationships without much say in the matter …

Publication Date: 07-21-2013

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