WalMart Wives

Have you ever gone shopping? WalMart or HEB or Dillons… somewhere in the United States where they sell cereal? You can picture it, no? You stand there and there are hundreds of boxes and bags and various other containers of cereal. Hundreds of different types of cereal. Different brands, different amounts of sugar.

Some will be made of rice, some of corn, some of wheat… and then there’s oatmeal. There are different brands; so you can get corn flakes in maybe four different brands.

And, standing there, you can read all of the ingredients, the brand names, see the various pictures on the front. And, standing there, you have a choice between all of those cereals. Unless it is some kind of black Friday riot or something, you can calmly reach out, take one of them, walk to the front, pay for it, and take it home.

We see the same thing in the meat aisle, the pasta aisle… and oh, the soup aisle!

But some people have the mistaken impression that that is the way that men can get their wives.

The Checklist

From time to time you see these posts by people, usually men but sometimes women, stating what kind of woman a man should marry. They list ten, or twelve, or twenty-seven qualities that the Christian young man should seek in a young woman he wishes to marry. All of these wonderful things that the successful applicant must have before becoming your spouse.

One of the problems with this kind of checklist (there are several) is that it is treating the young man as if he were standing in WalMart. Perhaps in the ‘Bride’ aisle.

But WalMart doesn’t have a ‘bride’ aisle. You can get decorations for a wedding, I suppose, but not the bride herself. Indeed, unless there is one in some depraved sex trade den, there is not a‘bride’ aisle anywhere in the US.

The Qualities

One thing that ‘name brands’ try to excel in (besides advertising), is consistency. If you get one box of Quaker Oatmeal, it is pretty much the same as every other box of Quaker Oatmeal. Or whatever you call that round thing that Quaker Oatmeal does come in.

And when the side of the box says that one teaspoon of the cereal includes 2500% of your daily allowance of sugar… that had better be because they measured it.

But neither of these is remotely true when it comes to choosing a wife. First of all, she doesn’t have a label. She may have some attributes which are visible from the outside, and more that are visible when she is unwrapped… but she doesn’t come with a brand label, still less a brand consistency. Her table of ingredients… so much patience, such and such an ability to cook… is missing. The attributes are there, but their labels have been removed not by the consumer.

You Don’t Choose A Wife

And unlike WalMart, you can’t just wander up and down the aisle until you have made your decision and then pick one down from the shelf and walk to the checkout counter, scan your item, pay your tab, and take her home.

Indeed this is wrong in pretty much every aspect. There is no ‘Bride’ aisle, the women are scattered all over and aren’t interested in lining up for your inspection. (For all I know the cereal isn’t really happy about being lined up, but nobody asks it.) And even if you eventually figure out which bride you want, she isn’t going to be very happy when you take her to the front of the store and scan her. You can’t even pay for her!

And let us be clear, historically our situation is odd. It used to be that a rich enough Duke, who desired a wife, would have women practically lining up (at a dance, not at WalMart. Possibly because WalMart didn’t exist yet.) for him to examine. He could get together (or send his agent) with their father, discuss marriage settlements, and signed, sealed, and delivered, he had a wife. A very willing wife.

But that is not the situation today. The guy who writes the checklist needs to realise that none of this is true. The Duke might have been able to give his agent a checklist on what kind of wife he wanted… because he could get it. Our modern man… can’t. A sixty-three year old widower cannot merely list all of his advantages and have women lining up for her perusal.

Ten Percent Added Sugar

Now let us look at the list of ingredients. Human beings are not only complex creatures, with complex pasts, but they have complex futures. And hidden pasts. They don’t come with lists of ingredients. You can’t do a google search for an available woman with only ten percent or less added sugar

You have to deal with the woman in front of you. Her complex list of contradictory ingredients. The girl who has been taught to be submissive… might be used to being submissive to her father, not to you. The girl who is modest and pure… might be shy and prudish when it comes to the bedroom.

Conclusion

When we give advise to our young men on who to marry, I believe we need to turn our advise around. Instead of treating this like an exercise in WalMart shopping, we need to treat it like a father hunting for food for his starving family. Our world is NOT full of eager young women standing in a line, any of whom will be glad to tell you their qualities and agree to marry you. It is much more like having to crawl through the muck to find a rattlesnake you can kill… and bring home… and feed your family. It is not a pleasant air-conditioned experience, it is an arduous hunt.

And if you fail to find a wife… you have failed. All too many people pretend that failure is a kind of success. That you have ‘succeeded in ruling out’ or you have ‘avoided a bad marriage’ or somesuch. but that is not what God calls us to. He calls for our young men to rejoice in the wife of their youth, not to rejoice in the wife they avoided.

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Von