Having Standards
I believe people are put into your life for a reason. I met a woman in the village called Rosa. Rosa is a Jamaican who I met because her mother-in-law passed me in the Co-op and noticing I was black and the right age, asked if I could befriend her daughter-in-law who was new to the village. I was just about to lose my father at the time and needed new friends, so I agreed.
This brought about a wonderful friendship where I have met someone easy going who I look up to. I look up to Rosa and her husband Will for one reason. She is a black woman, married to a white man and they have a healthy, modern marriage based on love, respect and healthy communication.
Rosa, and Will have a beautiful daughter who they welcomed into the world last year, her name is Charlotte, or Lottie. Lottie, is the picture of health, and joy and for me, that is enough.
Nothing makes me happy like a healthy baby. A very old friend had a daughter Rosemary, in 2020, and from the first photo I saw of this girl I knew she was a good, healthy sized girl. Normally babies drop a little weight after they are born in the first week-ish. Rosemary didn’t. I felt proud of her (I did literally nothing to influence her birth weight or any weight she has subsequently held, she lives in the USA and I in England and I have never actually met her) and have remembered all her major milestones ever since. Literally for that reason, when she was born she didn’t drop any weight and she has done nothing to win my affection other than her being her authentic self and loving food.
Next is my cousins daughter Athena, born a month before my dad passed. I knew my dad didn’t have long and I clung to those happy pictures of the healthy girl like nothing you have ever seen. Again, I take a special interest in that girl, because I almost feel like by her being born she has blessed me personally and I intend to bless her back. Again, I have never met Athena. She lives in Sierra Leone.
Anyway, massive tangent. Back to Rosa and Will. Theirs is a love story that actually started in South America, both of them being teachers in an international school. Rosa, being a proud black woman told her man, if he wanted to be with her, he would need to educate himself on what slavery meant and what the struggles of the modern black person are. I repeat IF HE WANTS TO BE HER HUSBAND HE NEEDS TO GET EDUCATED!
How many people, regardless of race set such healthy boundaries. I know first hand what it means to be married to a white man without first requiring him to do the work. My ex husband used to do racist and misogynistic things and then literally justify them by saying “I have a black wife” I would temper his worst impulses but I now realise he was actually a racist. I was being used. Used as a shield.
Which is why I can’t get enough of Rosa’s insistence on healthy boundaries. As a result she is reaping the benefits. (I really believe this, you reap what you sow and what you allow, you always pay for) in that it is her husband, not her that champions her cause to his family. He does not allow the family to mistreat her not just because he loves her but he has put in WORK into UNDERSTANDING HER!!! Absolutely beautiful and the true meaning of love. He can now better support her, his daughter and he has also been enriched by new perspectives on his fellow man.
He has also proven the depth of his feeling for her because guess what? It takes hours to read one book, he had to read several to get a true perspective. That’s a lot of hours. That’s Jacob energy and that shows maturity and I’m here for it. I want Jacob energy for my next husband (Jacob in the Bible worked for 14 years for his wife Rebecca and even had to marry her older sister 7 years in to get the prize, but it was Rebecca he loved and so he worked for her.)
All hail, committed, loving secure attachments. Please God. Long may it continue. Ladies, look with wonder what having standards and boundaries gets you. A happy (not perfect) loving home with a man who truly knows what he’s got and knows that he has to work for it. Continually.
Love that for me, love that for you. Go out there and do.
Grace and Courage.
Annetta Mother Smith.