Desperate Housewives

By Rene Williams

Desperate Housewives, ABC’s runaway hit, features the stories of the ladies of Wisteria Lane. Each Sunday night, fans of the show get to watch Bree, Susan, Lynette, Gabrielle and Edie tackle the trials of relationships, motherhood and corporate America in a dark and cynical look at life in surburbia. Although everything appears perfect on the outside, there is much hiding behind the walls of beautiful homes and manicured lawns.

As one would expect, one theme that repeatedly runs through the show is desperation. And desperation repeatedly leads to manipulation. Women consistently scheme and connive to get people – especially men – to do exactly what they want. I’m not sure if life imitates art or art imitates life, but I’ve noticed that this doesn’t just happen on television. Women have been manipulating men for years.

Case in point, recently I’ve come upon two true stories of women taking advantage of men. One story starts off with a beautiful woman setting her sights on a gorgeous man. Through tactics and scheming, she eventually gets the marriage proposal she’s been planning for. But there’s one problem; the man doesn’t love the woman. He succumbed to pressure of family and friends, gave in and married the woman. Now, they both live a life of misery. She’s sad because he doesn’t give her the attention she feels she deserves and he’s unhappy because he’s tied to a woman he doesn’t love.

The second story is frighteningly similar. This second man is considered “a catch”. He’s saved, attractive, level-headed and goal-oriented. The woman had been eying him from a distance and eventually they started dating. Since that time, she has been trying to get him to “pop the question”. Catching him while he was extremely vulnerable, she eventually gets him to propose. Like the first man, he’s been trying to get out the relationship for years, but through her manipulation and guilt trips (using family members and church members), he’s stayed. Now he finds himself depressed and confused because he knows he doesn’t want to marry her and not sure of the way out.

After witnessing these two incidents first-hand, I turned to the best resource life has to offer, the Bible, to look for answers and for stories centering around this topic. Women like Eve and Delilah were known for convincing their partners to do things that were in the woman’s best interest. Women like Leah, Rachel, Sarah, Hagar, Hannah and Peninnah were part of love triangles and were in constant competition with their husbands’ other spouse. Not only do I think we could categorize these women as desperate housewives, but looking at these examples, I think we can learn from these women as well.

In the story of Leah and Rachel, there’s one lesson that is clearly apparent – you can’t make someone love you. In the 29th chapter of Genesis, the story of Jacob, Rachel and Leah unfolds. Genesis 29:16‑20 recounts part of the story: “16Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the older was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. 17 Leah's eyes were weak, but Rachel was beautiful and lovely. 18 Jacob loved Rachel; and he said, "I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel." 19 Laban said, "It is better that I give her to you than that I should give her to any other man; stay with me." 20 So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.” Through deception on the part of Laban, Jacob ends up marrying Leah instead of Rachel. As the story unfolds, he does eventually marry her as well. What I find interesting is that although Leah ends up having many children by Jacob and Rachel only two, Jacob’s heart still stayed with Rachel.

Another thing I’ve learned from these examples is that scheming eventually doesn’t work; it just delays the inevitable. Reading the story of Peninnah shows us this; she was in a similar situation as Leah. Her narrative is recounted in the 1st Chapter of I Samuel. She longed for the affection of her husband Elkanah, but his heart was with his other wife Hannah, who was initially barren. Peninnah waved her fertility in Hannah’s face and did all sorts of things to make Hannah miserable, but that never changed the fact that Elkanah loved Hannah. As a matter of fact, once Hannah’s focus changed and she talked to God about her troubles, the Lord honored her request and she became a mother.

Ladies, I’m a firm believer that if a man’s heart is not with you, then it’s best to move on. I believe Leah and Peninnah spent their entire lives scheming and trying to get the affection and love of their husbands, but their husbands’ hearts were elsewhere.

Why desire someone that doesn’t desire you the same? Why manipulate circumstances to get what you desire if you know the other person doesn’t desire the same thing? If it’s a God ordained relationship, then God will lay the same love in your heart in his as well. If it’s not there naturally or you have to push and prod to get it, then it’s not true and it won’t last.

Give this some thought – if you have to manipulate to get it, then it’s something God doesn’t want you to have. Just take a look at the story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar. Included in the 16th chapter of Genesis is the story of the threesome. The well-known drama unfolds as Sarah convinces (and manipulates) her husband to lay with her handmaiden so that she can have a child. In the end, the situation turned out quite different than Sarah could have imagined. She ended up feeling worse at the conclusion of the matter than she did in the beginning. Not to mention, at the end of the day she received exactly what the Lord promised her in the first place – making her manipulation totally unnecessary. Unbelievably, the consequences of her impatience and her controlling nature were so far reaching that the Middle East is turmoil today because of it.

Ultimately, it’s about trusting God. Manipulation and scheming is the sign of a control freak. It’s the sign of a woman who likes to dominate everything. But as Christians, we must relinquish all control to God. If we have truly given our hearts and souls to Him, then we must trust Him to make the correct and appropriate decisions for our lives. If we find ourselves trying to encourage circumstances to go our way, then we have in essence said to God, “I don’t trust you enough to have control of my life so I’m going to do what I have to do to make sure things turn out the way I want them to.” We grieve the heart of God when we take matters into our own hands.

So if you find yourself in the shoes of a Desperate Housewife, change shoes. Give up the scheming, the plotting and the manipulation and let God be God. If the man leaves, then let him leave. God has something much better in store. Believe it.

Feedback - Rene Williams is a freelance writer for Gospelcity.com, GTM Magazine and Charisma Magazine. She also is the author of the Gospel News Update, a bi-weekly e-zine about what's happening in the Christian music industry, and the D.C. Gospel News Update, a weekly newsletter about gospel events in the Washington, D.C. area.