Wifey: The role or the part?

As a young girl my mom always told me, if I kept myself, a man would respect me more.  Well, that had a very vague meaning in the mind of a young teenage girl but once I became a woman, I understood. This word respect went farther than that man still being with you after your promiscuity.  The definition for respect is: “A feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements.” In order for someone to have a feeling of deep admiration for you, it would take time for that feeling to really take root.  The first time that my ex-husband grabbed me and choked me while I was pregnant, was evident that he had no such admiration for me.  Where did I go wrong?  Didn’t he know that I was a good woman?  I mean after all I was carrying his child.  It was at this point that I realized that maybe there was more to this respect factor after all.  The truth of the matter is that most women are looking for something in a man first that should be first sought from God. Our priorities are twisted.  You won’t know how a man is supposed to treat you, unless the one who constituted the union of marriage give you a tour first. There may be a mindset that has to be changed before God can give you what He has for you, otherwise, you won’t be able to keep it.  It seemed as though every time I looked around, I didn’t have a man.  What?  I am doing everything to show this man what a good woman I am, so where am I going wrong? I said God why can’t I keep a man?  Am I not good enough?  Am I doing something wrong?  One day, God asked me, “Why are you playing a role you don’t have the part to?  You cook, clean, have sex with this man and do all those things that a wife would do.  Yet you are not his wife!”  I must be honest, I didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or just plain ashamed.  A role is defined as: The function assumed or part played by a person or thing in a particular situation; A part is defined as: Some but not all of something. The bible says: “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting for those who belong to the Lord.”  The bible did not say “girlfriends” submit to your “boyfriend”, but “wives” submit to your husbands.  I want to encourage you that if you are single don’t play a role unless you have been given the part, or as the world would put it, unless you have a ring on it!