The Female Friendship Crisis

Women drive me nuts.

Some years ago, following an act of civil disobedience, I spent several days in a makeshift jail with hundreds of women protesters. Before long, a couple of them approached me where I lay on a hard Army cot, trying to get comfortable enough to read the copy of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa my husband had managed to deliver. What better opportunity than jail time would I ever have to read the longest novel in the English language?

It was not to be. Instead I was asked to step up as a leader to address the squabbles and discontent arising among so many women of diverse personalities in such cramped conditions. Suck it up, ladies! I wanted to scream. But I didn't. As requested, I played the role of diplomat.

I emerged from jail with greater gratitude for God's creation of two sexes than I'd ever had before or since. To this day, I avoid to just this side of causing offense nearly any event preceded by the label women's: conferences, Bible Studies, retreats, Home Interior parties. I was even a bit skeptical at first about writing for a women's blog.

My difficulties with women go further back than this experience. Because I married young and went directly to graduate school from college, I had a hard time finding real peers. The other women in my graduate program were hostile toward Christianity, something I was ill-equipped to handle gracefully. And while my church included other young women who worked or were going to school, most of the married women did not. I spent a lot of time declining invitations to jewelry and kitchenware parties and softball games, not because I wasn't interested in those activities, but because I felt stressed and guilty about spending time on anything besides writing papers and reading ...