Passion and Purity by Elisabeth Elliot

Author:Elisabeth Elliot [Elliot Elisabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Youth-Dating and Sex, REL012030, FAM043000, YAN051040
ISBN: 9781493434558
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group

22

What Do Men Look For?

My mother was Spoon Girl of the class of 1917 at Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia when Leonard Carmichael (later president of the Smithsonian Institution) was Cane Man. As best all-around girl and boy of the graduating class, they received engraved awards: she a large silver spoon and he a silver-headed cane. Mother was slim, dark-haired, blue-eyed. She was one of the first women in the city to drive a car. Her father had given her a big Buick, and she cut quite a figure in her raccoon coat and beaver hat. She had an assortment of boyfriends. When I was growing up, she gave me two and only two pieces of advice on that subject: Let them do the chasing and keep them at arm’s length.

But what if they don’t chase? What if they never get within arm’s length?

Here are four stories told me on this subject.

“I want to be married,” said the first person, a college student. “I love this guy with all my heart. But he seems so casual about a relationship which to me is very deep. I hardly know how to pray about this.”

The second, a young career woman, sat at my kitchen table one morning and said, “He didn’t speak to me for days. We had a really great thing going. I mean, he was calling every night, taking me out two or three times a week, sending me flowers. All of a sudden, nothing. So I bump into him in the elevator, in the hall, different places—he works in the same building—and what does he do? Turns the other way. ‘Come on,’ I finally said, ‘Don’t ignore me!’ You know—does that make sense, just to ignore me? I mean, couldn’t we at least discuss it?”

Maybe you could, if he wants to. But if he doesn’t want to, what do you gain by collaring him and saying “Talk to me!”?

The third person wrote me a letter. “Is it all right as a female to ask a male friend out, or is that considered chasing a person? I have done that a few times with a neat Christian friend, but he has paid for something. Plus, I do not consider myself chasing him.”

The fourth: “He was a very positive and joyous young man who makes you feel like you’re the only person who is important to him as you talk. I fell for him, though I had prayed that God would guard my heart with all diligence. We had a wonderful time at the student conference, and one cold but clear evening we went for a long walk all over campus and had pizza by the fire. He also went to hear you speak at one session and couldn’t stop talking about what you said, especially the part about men initiating and women responding. Needless to say, since I’ve returned home I’ve sat here waiting to respond—if he would initiate, by writing or calling. He hasn’t done either.”

Four women in the same boat.

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