I’ve had to suppress how i feel sometimes, i’ve seen things that one would think are obvious and yet to many they are not. I live in a culture which celebrates evil over good, a culture that to a large extent has rewarded those who can manipulate others, systems that do not work for the justice of the deserving you name it. At a very young age i leant to address inequality, unGodliness usually that has befallen girls and women. I’ve seen inconsistency in treatment of girls and boys, and at a younger age i learnt to question that, but a large extent i really did not know what i was doing (a story for another day).
For the first time i’ll tell you how i feel about one of the most important issue that is dear to me, to many young girls, young women and even our mothers! In my opinion the reproductive health and sexuality of women has never been about them, its really been about men. Had it been reciprocal, that the girls’ bodies be for the men and the men’s bodies be for the girls, as is required in the bible that i believe, i would not write, i would be VERY quiet, because there would be equality, everyone would be happy!! Many girls and young women have been oriented to do it for the men, never for themselves. But young boys and men can do as they feel like, well never for the women. Its the same man who can trash the girl he marries and yet all her life she’s been trained to play it good for ‘the men’, her future husband! I talk to a young girl who is so scared to talk or open up about this issue, i am addressing it anyways! It has taken me a lot of thinking, a long time of accepting who i really am, well i’m called to speak for the Girl Child who will never admit that this is a problem for her, because she is trying to play it good according to what society expects of her! Society expects us girls to play in nice and safe, never to complain or voice what seems not right.
I’ve come to appreciate and live with who i am, i am who God has called me to be, to be the voice to the voiceless especially the girls and women and anyone vulnerable in my community, to be the comfort to those in need, and hense ‘nyaradzo-yangu’, (my comfort to you)!. I come from a religious background which expects me to be a ‘good girl’, and the definition of being a good girl from my religion often means ‘Do not speak out or question inequalities or oppression and violation of girls and women’, violation under the premise of bad doctrine, that teaches the girls to be sooo good such that, when a marriage fails its said to be her fault. Therefore she will try as much as possible to be the ‘good girl’, against all odds. At that point the man can cheat, bash her, violet her, and the tetes(aunts), the pastors and mothers sometimes will tell her to hold on! You’ll be told to be submissive to the husband who often does not know what love is, or laying down his life for his wife, meanwhile, this is believed to come from the bible that ‘woman ought to submit’, and thats what it is!! Well to the woman who’s held on and prevailed, i thank God for you, but am speaking of the millions who’ve suffered domestic violence, poverty at the hands of oppressive men, some who’ve died as a result of domestic violence, some who’ve suffered torture and abuse, those are the ones am speaking out for!
Well i deliberately made this my very first article on my blog because this issue is too close to my heart, and i believe that is exactly one of the issues that will set the world free, that will honor God and promote truthfulness, because as it is, the world is failing at marriage because it is teaching a short changing doctrine. When i grew up i had issues with marriage, until i had the most liberating preaching of one of an elderly pastors who had visited my church then. I silently grew up a girl who watched a lot of things happen around girls and women. I realised how women were soo oppressed that marriage was never an attraction to me, i viewed it as a sick prison which women enter and then either die silently or loose themselves. It was all under the thought of this what most of the church today have termed ‘submission’. I heard this more than i heard about love, about men laying their lives for their wives as the bible commands, for me the greater than SUBMISSION!!.. Well this pastor taught me the scripture as it says. Eph 5: 22-25 says; “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing[a] her by the washing with water through the word”(the greatest submission which the church should teach to the men if true salvation is to fall upon the families)..,
He taught about what submission is for a woman and love is for a man, and that that is a circle, the two go hand in hand, you do not demand one and leave out the other. When a wife submits a husband should love, that on its own is not difficult in my opinion. The hardship comes when a wife is expected to submit and them man does not love, which is maybe a large percentage of these marriages, and one wonders why there is such violence and hatred, there is toomuch demand from women to perform and little from men, and society has gotten away with that. But is that the standard that should be, a big NOO!
So let me break it down right here right now. For me i am not keeping quiet at the expense of pretense and watch women’s lives be ruined. As a young woman it is God’s order if i want to get married, to do so, but not to any jack, not to any jerry, but to a man who fears God, in the truthfulness of fearing God. Who embraces truth, who does his part. I will not marry a man who is selfish, who expects me to submit and does not love me or lay his life for me. i am better off as a Jewel in God’s eyes if i kept myself forever rather than fall into the hands of an unworthy man who does not respect me as a beautiful creation of God, as one who’s made in the image of God and one who is equally a human being like him. I will marry a man who acknowledges justice and equality of human beings, a man who treasures me as the creation of God, and man who will adore me and love me to bits, that man will not demand submission because it will come naturaly. Let me continue this a little later, i just wanted you to hear my heart out.. I shall speak out, i shall not stoop law, Not in this life, never!!
nyaradzoyangu 