Strength and Stability
by: Eboni Warren
When a child is born, their complete existence relies on the person or persons who care for them. A new-born baby eats when someone feeds them; they sleep when someone cradles them; they get cleaned when someone cleans them; and they burp when someone pats them to burp. All of which adds to their character and self-preservation. It’s safe to say that a baby’s strength and stability is set in the hands of the caregivers until they learn how to be a stable strong individual. If the caregivers were any good, that time could be considered the most strong and stable time of their lifetime, because they didn’t have to worry about it. But are the two necessary in every person? I mean, do you have to be strong AND stable? When it comes to a relationship between a man and a woman, the two are totally necessary.
Moses, King Solomon, Geronimo, Martin Luther King Jr., my grandfather, and my father are all men who held fast or is still holding to two important pillars. Those two pillars, I believe, is strength and stability. Merriam Webster says strength is being great in physicality, wealth and mental power. Webster says stability is standing steady in a purpose. These men have had to maintain their strength while standing for a cause. Whether it was physical strength to protect a nation, spiritual strength to free a people, or emotional strength to justify a race, they stood strong for a purpose.
Women have to be set in the two pillars as well. A woman’s stability in the home serves as beacon of light for the family. The children may waver with the winds and waves of the world, however the woman’s stability should curtail them back to reality of their family’s lighthouse. Her strength must be something the entire family must look to or lean on when times are tough. An entire nation rested on the strength of Queen Esther as she carefully stood on the faith of her God to save her people. And many other women have strapped themselves and their family down and created a foundation of strength and stability for the entire family to stand on.
The most amazing thing about the world being made up of many different people is that there are so many different ideas. And it shows in respect to strength and stability. However, many of us inherently base our sense of strength and stability on what we learned over the course of our rearing. If you are a person surrounded by family as a support system, you probably see strength as a unit; strength being something attained with other people. If you were raised by a single parent that maintained solidity in the home, you probably see strength as a single person as an icon and you may find yourself patterning after that particular icon. Stability has been said to be knowledge, financial security, sensibility and communication. That’s a wide range of ideas stemming from many different life experiences.
But specifically, men and women need each other to be strong and to be stable. For longevity of a relationship, strength and stability are the groundwork for whatever the two are striving for. The lack of it could very well be the misfortunate truth of many of the current relationships. A rocky foundation can weather a little breeze but nothing more. God forbid an unwanted thunder storm catch the relationship off guard, leaving remnants of the relationship to only be seen in candid photos from the local arcade.
Not that I have the keys to the relationship kingdom, because I certainly don’t. But here’s what I do know. When I have to walk on a bridge, I want to walk on something extremely strong and certainly stable. And when I am walking over the bridge with another person, I definitely need to know that we are not in danger just because we are walking forward. Fear of falling keeps me from stepping in confidence and progressing onward. Walking with a clear conscience of strength and stability makes one less unnecessary challenge to overcome.
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