Captivating: The Heart of a Woman
Good morning, Friends! I’m so glad you joined me for my first post of Motivation, Marriage, and Mondays. I know Mondays are not always our favorite day, but we have the power to start them off on the right note.
I’m going to dive right into summarizing the first chapter of Captivity, which talks about the heart of a woman, but gentlemen, don’t let that scare you off. If anything this will shed some light on the desires of a woman’s heart.
The first thing that really caught my attention in this chapter was
“that every woman in their heart of hearts longs for three things: to be romanced, to play an irreplaceable role in a great adventure, and to unveil beauty. That’s what makes a woman come alive.”
Please tell me you are all shaking your head just as I did when I read it! I had never heard it put that way, and that’s exactly how I feel.
To Be Romanced:
It’s no secret that women love a little romance. For starters, you are looking at a wedding photography blog, right? We love to see couples in love, but even more we love to be the one who is loved. The one who is sought after and fought for. Think about all the movies you loved and watched growing up. So many Disney movies have a prince fighting to rescue the princess and declare their love. Even as adults, we love to watch movies where the man pursues the woman.
To Play an Irreplaceable Role in a Great Adventure:
While you’re already thinking about Disney movies, I want you to think about Mulan and how badly she craved joining the war to fight for a bigger cause. She wanted it so badly that she disguised herself as a man in order to go into battle.
“There is something fierce in the heart of a woman. Simply insult her children, her man, or her best friend and you’ll get a taste of it. A woman is a warrior too. But she is meant to be a warrior in a uniquely feminine way.”
We want to be needed and we want to be irreplaceable. And, we want to be part of the adventure without losing who we are.
“Whether it be the adventure of horses (most girls go through a horse stage) or white-water rafting, going to a foreign country, performing onstage, having children, starting a business, or diving ever more deeply into the heart of God, we were made to be a part of a great adventure. An adventure that is shared. We do not want the adventure merely for adventure’s sake but for what it requires of us for others. We don’t want to be alone it it; we want to be in it with others.”
When I read the quote above it just made so much sense. I LOVE adventure! And, I will venture out on my own, but I love it even more if I am sharing it with others. I don’t want the adventure just to have an adventure. I enjoy adventure so much more when it is shared.
Beauty to Unveil:
Tell a woman she is beautiful and you will watch her face light up. There is something in us that loves to hear it. When I was a little girl and I would try on my new dresses, I would spin around in a circle. I loved twirling in my dresses. My sister and I had box after box of dress up clothes and we spent countless days dressing up in different outfits. It was fun and it felt good to dress up and feel pretty. Of course, as women, we love to be seen as beautiful, but inner beauty is not to be forgotten.
“Don’t you recognize that a woman yearns to be seen, and to be thought of as captivating? We desire to possess a beauty that is worth pursuing, worth fighting for, a beauty that is core to who we truly are. We want beauty that can be seen; beauty that can be felt; beauty that affects others; a beauty all our own to unveil.”
So if woman desire these things, don’t you wonder what men desire? John writes to tell us (which he goes into much more detail about in his book Wild at Heart). He tells us that every man wants a battle to fight, men long for adventure, and they long for a Beauty to rescue. I can see all of those feminist ears perk up and I want to share this paragraph with you.
“There is nothing that inspires a man to courage so much as the woman he loves. Most of the daring (and okay, sometimes ridiculous) things young men do are to impress the girls. Men go to war carrying photos of their sweethearts in their wallets-that is a metaphor of this deeper longing, to fight for the Beauty. This is not to say that a woman is a ‘helpless creature’ who can’t live her life without a man. I’m saying that men long to offer their strength on behalf of a woman.”
It is amazing to see how the desires of a man and a woman’s hearts were designed to fit together so well.
God designed a woman’s heart to be all of these things. If you only take away one thing, remember that YOU are glorious, YOU are powerful, and YOU are captivating!
