In His Likeness w/ AntTBri

I’m sure my mother, three sisters: (Alohndra, Stephanie, and Natasha), two sisters in law: (Dionne and Domita) and soon to be sisters: (Jeannine, Zaheera, and Chaneal) will attest to the fact that I’m intentional about family structure, and setting the framework for strong relationships as we live and love each other. I willingly do the work of connecting the pieces of life and love.  I try to exemplify what it means to strengthen and support the brethren.  So we often talk (passionately discuss) what makes and breaks relationships as we live and love. I encourage them to be his best supporter, to leave their signature up and down his life.  I’m continually admonishing them to allow God the opportunity to love him (their mates) through their actions, words, gestures, and intentional response of respect and honor.

It is a repetitive conversation…revisiting an often overlooked concept that addresses what a man needs to thrive, to become the best man he can be. In one word…if you’re desire is to strengthen the bond you share and support the life God has entrusted to your care…RESPECT him. Be intentional about gifting him with your respect always. Along with taking care of his physical needs (cleaning, cooking, and cohabiting) address his emotional and spiritual needs  be intentionally (responsive and respectful). Hold his opinions, feelings, and aspirations in high regard.  Support him, strengthen him, and secure his position, placement as a priority in your life and love.  Put him first…treat him as God would have him be treated.  Take serious the opportunity to love and live with him.  Do your best to exemplify the care, concern, and compassion God extends…be good to him, gracious and gentle with his ego, eagerness to excel, and enthusiasm about life and love.  Handle him right and hold all of him tenderly, trustworthy, and tenaciously as the Word prescribes to live in God’s likeness. Your respecting him provides a security, a safety net and place for him to rest and recoup from the pressures of life and love.  Honor God by honoring him.  Do everything as unto God…in God’s stead.  Can he depend on you, your love expression and experience?  If so then you too will agree the best gift you can give your man is an intentional attempt to UNDERGIRD HIM.

Respect him for the person he’s been, the person he is becoming, and the person he will be.  Respect the effort he exerts to secure your love.  Respect the sacrifices he willingly makes to make you smile and make life and love easier.  Respect him when he gets it right and respect him when he gets it wrong.  Support his right to think and feel differently from you, to approach life and love from his masculinity which differs in most respects from how you as a woman would approach and accomplish the very same task.  Respect him enough to let him be him…quirks, pet peeves, habits, hang ups and all. Remember you’re privileged to share life and love with him and God gave you him to help meet the vision of life and love.  So his experience through your expression of life and love should UNDERGIRD all his endeavors. Your respect of him could be the wind beneath his wings. I hope your love soars above and beyond your expectation.

The man you’ve been gifted to have and to hold holds his own significance. He is not in competition with your father, brother, uncle, cousin, previous male counterparts/companions. Be accountable to your choice of them…you’re with someone new…hopefully you’ve made a better choice. If you sought God and followed his leading…you have.  He is your bequest, blessing, and the banner of God’s love of, for, and toward you expressed and experienced humanly.  Don’t hold yourself or him to your past.  He is significantly him with both gifts and talents that you will learn to enhance not compete with.  Respecting him doesn’t take anything away from your significance…you were wise enough to give life and love with him a chance.  So give it a real chance UNDERGIRD the possibility of better by respecting his past, present, passion, and the promise on his life.  You are not at odds with experiences and expressions of life and love before you or outside of you.  If he has children outside of the relationship you share with him…be intentional about maintaining the right perspective.  God has blessed and expanded your capacity to love…let it be your objective to make God proud.  His children are extensions of his greatness and creativity…they are his God given gifts…you get to share in that.  It can be a great enhancement and addition to the quality and quantity of life and love lived in God’s likeness. Never see them or their mothers as your nemesis.  If you love and respect him it seems only natural to love and respect those that are a part of him.  Keep your motives pure and avoid being selfish and putting him or them in a position where they feel like he has to choose.  A wise woman builds their house and avoids tearing it down by insecurities and feelings of inadequacies.   Their mothers gifted him (their father first) with legacy so they are no threat to what you will secure and establish in your present…if handled skillfully, strategically, and spirit lead life and love will be what you agree to create in each other’s NOW if you are supportive, sensitive, and sympathetic to his decision making in terms of them. A woman worth her salt expands her capacity to love and shows love advantageously to him and his…they become his strongest support system and formulate an allegiance to the life and love they aim to give and receive. UNDERGIRD his past, while living with him in his present.

You are his present…there was room for you…need of you.  You have an opportunity to make life and love with you a wonderful, beautiful expression and experience. You can be the instrument that helps usher him into new levels of purpose and promise.  Will he benefit from life and love with you? What will you intentionally add to him?  You’re only responsible for the life and love he shares with you. UNDERGIRD life and love in the present!  What will you make it?  Undergird his life by respecting his life and love before you and avoid having or sharing opinions that suggest or confirm mistakes he may or may not have made in his attempts to love and be loved by another (family, friendships, fellowships).  Don’t take issue with what (s) /he did or didn’t do…focus on HIM…the him he is with you. The him that is constantly evolving and becoming more right before your eyes, right next to you. Celebrate the fact that he is there.  Don’t take his choice to love and be with you for granted.   Respect the him that picked himself up after failure and respect that he is trying life and love again in his present with you.  Applaud the strength that takes, and be sensitive to what and how he feels about his past and present. Don’t take him, his struggle, pain or progress for granted.  Respect it all for what it is…life on life terms…sometimes we win and sometimes we lose but the blessing is that you’re not alone in life and love.   Realize that you are not him, you don’t know what it is to be him and you CANNOT change him into your perfect version of who you want or need…desire him to be.  The world does that… be his safe place, his haven, his respite that reassures him, supports, and stands with him for who he is.  Choose to see him as king, Sara called Abram lord.  What are you saying, calling the man who trust you with his heart?  Does God concur your articulation or assessment of him? Are you speaking to his possibility and calling those things that are not readily identifiable into being?  Gideon was called a mighty man of valor when he was hiding.  Solomon Saul was anointed king even though he saw and considered himself unworthy and less than.

Respect his purpose the one God designed and desires he fulfill.  Work to support, strengthen and secure his attempts to be all God has called him to be until what God says becomes the life and love you express and experience together.   Encourage him to honor his responsibilities and ensure that his children, family, friends and coworkers know that your love is authentic, real, dependable available and inclusive of them.  Let them see you loving and respecting their father, son, brother, cousin and friend.  Let them see you preferring him, supporting him, and standing with and beside him and they will come to appreciate the fact that he has you, your love, and respect and possibly they will reciprocate the love you extend toward them.  If you respect his past, present, purpose and promise it will be easy to extend, exert, and put effort into his passion.

Respect his passion.  Respect his blossoming purpose.  Strengthen him by the words you speak, and the actions you take when his weakness is exposed or explored to grow him into another dimension of his purpose.  Secure his strengths by praying to his strong side and standing against the weakness.  Be as skilled as Jael and take the head off the enemy trying to destroy your camp.  Bombard heaven on his behalf…UNDERGIRD him in prayer and intercessions…have a ready in season word to speak upon and to every barren, beaten, bruised, and broken place within him.  Allow God to use you, your embrace, your words to replenish, repair, and restore what life has stripped away.  Cover him with your love…don’t disclose or discount his inadequacies as if he cannot aspire above the temporary setback, setup, situation.  Respect the fact that Gods purpose for his being will always prevail…pray and ask God to give you His heart toward him.  Ask God to help you build him up, keep him up when life is attempting to tear him down.  Can God use you as his healing station?  Will you be a continual cistern from which he can drink?  Ask God to help you stay and be sweet, soft in the strength of your being so you can UNDERGIRD those areas your close enough to touch. May your touch be sensual, sexy, satisfying and strong enough to reach him beyond his groin. Respect him enough to honor him in the bedroom, boardroom, and at the banquet of life and love.  Leave nothing lacking…let him take the lead and allow him to teach you how to love and live advantageously with him.  Your respecting him will hold him accountable to your life and love.  He won’t be afraid to fail or rebound from failure…he will share life and love beyond the need of physical intimacy because he will actually trust that his heart, life, past, present, and future is being UNDERGIRDED by your love and the life he is honored to share with you.~AntTBri