Faith, Hope, Grace and Lovely met at a designated spot
every year for their Girl Power weekend which they started 20 years ago and
though they ranged in ages from 44-54 they were all full of life, in touch with
who they are as women with enough sex appeal to still turn heads. This was their free-fall weekend, nothing was
really planned they just kind of went with the flow and opted more for
spontaneity rather than structure. Most
people might think this might create confusion especially amongst these four
women because of their strong personalities but they have grown so much over
the past two decades that they’re in sync with each other to the point where
they create their own rhythm as a solid unit.
They are all Christians and play an active role in their church.
Hope: is the younger of the bunch. She is 44 years old, but she has always been
dubbed an "old soul" because she is wise beyond her years. This is her fourth marriage. Combined she and her husband have six
children, the youngest of which is their biological child together. She is a registered nurse but her position as
a trainer requires her to travel frequently throughout the United States and
Puerto Rico and two – three times per year to Canada. Her husband is a successful general
contractor for commercial property. His
company is structured well enough to be able to travel with Hope from time to
time. Hope is very often misunderstood
as being a rebel but nothing could be further than the truth. She is simply cut from a different cloth,
marches to a different beat and when people get to really know who she is, they
understand her.
Faith: is a
successful 49 year old tenured professor at a major University and real estate
broker with more degrees than a thermometer.
She’s been divorced for the past three years and is quite content with
helping her adult fraternal twins raise their children, three boys and two girls
all of whom range in age from newborn to six.
She is the most financially sound of the group. She makes six figures a year but her
ex-husband also pays a generous alimony.
The alimony checks are banked and she "lives" off her
salary. Her retirement, long-term health
care and college funds for the grandchildren are all taken care of and she
bought both children a home as wedding gifts.
She values and needs these sessions more than she lets on because it
helps to keep her grounded.
Grace, is 52, she’s been married longer than all of her
girlfriends. She and her husband have
been married for 30 years. They weren't
able to have biological children so they decided to become foster parents and
from the children that blessed their home, God led them to adopt four -- two
boys and two girls. Grace was blessed to
be a stay at home mom because her husband is a corporate executive who worked
his way up the ladder and is the senior manager for a major Information
Technology company. Though she was a
stay at home mom, Grace went to school when the children were school age and
got her degree in business administration.
She uses that degree to provide consulting services for small
businesses, most of whom are faith based organizations. They are not as well off as Grace but money
is not an issue for them either.
Lovely is the eldest of the group at the age of 54. She married late in life at the age of 44 to
a man eight years older than her.
Lovely’s has three children all of whom have different fathers (three
baby daddies) and her husband had one child and combined they have 12
grandchildren, seven boys and five girls.
They were married for 10 years and out of the blue, her husband had a
massive heart attack last year. He alert long enough to say goodbye to all of
his children and grandchildren and then he transitioned into glory while he
listened to his wife and family serenade him with old school Pentecostal
songs. Lovely has been blessed with an
amazing support system but she still has her ups and downs. She would like to be married again for the
companionship, but she isn't ready yet.
All of these ladies knew each other when they were single
and though they were not as close as they are now, they knew each other from
the church they all attended. Over time
and due to circumstances (some good, some not so good) they became closely knit
together and developed into this well balanced incredible group of women. Their trips had been traditionally exclusive
to them but this year they decided to do something different. Each of them invited a young lady whom they
had been mentoring throughout the year.
Similarly, teach the older
women to live in a way that honors God. They must not slander others or be
heavy drinkers, Instead, they should teach others what is good. These older
women must train the younger women to love their husbands and their children,
to live wisely and be pure, to work in their homes, to do good, and to be
submissive to their husbands. Then they will not bring shame on the word of
God. Titus 2:3-5 (NLT)
The first night of their get-away, the eight of them sat
around the pool of Faith's vacation home in Phoenix, Arizona as their aimless
conversation slowly started to head in the direction of marriage. Faith's guest Destiny set it off when she
asked the “Girls” the secret of finding a good man and what she should look
for? Faith was the first to chime in
and said: "Great questions, but let
me answer your question with a questions: Do you want a good man or a husband,
and What do you want in a husband? We
could rattle off a list in about five minutes based on our perceptions and what
we want and/or wanted in a man. Granted
some of the criteria we list might appeal to you but not all of it. Let me put it to you this way, if I lost my
GIA certified 5 carat Emerald cut diamond ring, I would tear my house, car and
office up looking for it. I could
describe it to a “T” and solicit help with my search because I know what I’m
looking for. If I didn’t know what I was
looking for I might see it and not even realize it. The work that needs to be done first is to
decide what you want in a husband not just a “good man”. I know that now, but when I met the twin’s
father/my ex-husband, Ab, I was a freshman in college. He was a senior and it was lust at
first sight, but I played hard to get and that attracted him even more. It's not that I was so deep and spiritual
that I wanted to save myself, it was that I had worked really hard to get to
college and I made myself a promise as well as my mentors and parents that I
wouldn't let anything stop me from achieving my goals. I even went as far as putting an
accountability system in place to ensure that I didn't get off track. Truth be told, I wanted to drop everything
and spend all of my time with him, but I made the sacrifice to focus on school
and he waited for me until I was ready for a relationship or at least I thought
he did. Unbeknownst to me he had several
other women to keep him occupied. We
started getting more serious after I graduated from college. He took me to Paris for my graduation gift,
stole my heart and blew my mind when a man selling roses passed by and he
bought one for me. We went to the Eifel
Tower for an early dinner. There was a
rose on the table when we arrived which I thought was a part of the decor. After our meal he took the rose and plucked
one petal at a time as he said 'she loves me; she loves me not' but when he got
to the last few petals and said 'she loves me' there was a platinum emerald cut
diamond engagement ring secured to the inside stem. He got down on one knee and asked me to be
his Proverbs 31 "good thing".
I could hardly breathe let alone speak so I shook my head yes and when
he kissed me I melted in his arms. The
only thing that brought me back to reality was the people that stood around us clapping,
yelling and whistling.
I was so young and naive that I had no idea what to look
for in a husband because I was raised by a single parent, my father who did an
amazing job. I was the youngest of six
but my mom checked out mentally when I was an infant. I liked the idea of a
wedding more than I did marriage because I didn't see the interaction with a
husband and wife upfront and personal.
My perspective of marriage was from what I saw on TV and from people at
church. I was smart enough to know that
TV couples were scripted, but still part of my expectation came from those
images. The church folks made marriage
seem almost effortless. They always
seemed to be happy kind of like the movie 'Stepford Wives' where everyone had a
house, dog, cat, 2.5 kids and lived a perfectly happily ever after life in a
house with a white picket fence as long as you go to church on Sundays and
bible class on Wednesdays. That’s not
to say that these couples weren’t genuinely in love it’s just that they never
seemed to argue or disagree which seemed unrealistic to me. Our wedding was a major production let me
tell you. Ab and his parents didn’t
spare any expense (it was a networking event and tax write off for his dad's
business disguised as a wedding). I
lived every little girl’s fantasy about a wedding that you can think of right
down to the horse drawn carriage. The
first year things were really good when they were good, but when they were bad,
they were really bad. Money wasn’t an
issue, his father’s fraternity brothers hooked him up with some major players
in the corporate arena so he had the choice of the best employers in his
field. In hindsight all of the warning
signs were there but I was in denial because we had the appearance of the
perfect successful family but it cost me too much to keep up with other
people's expectations and I was emotionally bankrupt.
So in answer to your questions: How do you find a good
man and what do you look for? It's getting late, let's pick it up tomorrow.
In His Excellent Service
Tania not Tanya
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