Stories in the Missional Journey of Bruce & Deborah Crowe

A Letter to Girls

Dear Young Girls,

I’ve been married for almost 23yrs, and a father of five young men, and three lovely daughters. I know how girls think. It took about 15yrs of marriage and parenting before I finally got it.

I definitely know how boys think – they are significantly less complicated.

You, however, young lady, don’t have a clue how boys are wired. You didn’t get the memo. Maybe your parents didn’t tell you. Perhaps some of you do know, but just don’t care.  Either way, I’d like to help you.

So, I’ll do this in 3 points.  Stay with me.


Point 1 – SEE

Guys are incredibly visual. Seriously. I don’t mean we can see better. I mean the influence of the eye in our world is powerful. Girls have eyes, but they process the world through a completely different brain.

Guys compartmentalize through the eyes.

For example, we see a beautiful girl – her beautiful eyes.  We don’t naturally see a person; we see beautiful eyes. We don’t see her personality, we don’t think of her character or humor, her creativity or history. We see what we see.

Why is this important? Well, inside every guy who has come into this world, are appetites.  Raging appetites. Some are stronger than others, but we all have them. Many are good appetites, like the desire for eating, sex, and sleep.

The problem is that we are broken, all of us. We have fallen from God’s original design, and our desires are no longer beautiful nor easy to control. In fact, scripture says we are all slaves to our sin, imprisoned.

Our desires are now reflections of a good design gone bad. One philosopher said that sin is actually satisfying a good desire in a bad way.

So, remember this. For guys, our appetites, including our sinful desires, are fed powerfully by what was see. In other words, our eyes are instruments which inflame our desires.

Your desires, young lady, are not only quite different than a guys (point 2 below), but they are awakened through touch, tone (of voice), words, sight, and a variety of more complex combinations.

If girls were computers, you’d be a super Macbook. Guys would be a calculator.


Point 2- WANT

What do girls want, really? You want to be loved. You want to be valued, respected, adored. Girls have been designed with obvious beauty but also a longing to be desired, which can prove to be a weakness.

You reflect God in your beauty; you were made in His image.

This desire to be adored isn’t a bad desire on it’s own. It’s reflective of the desire for a loving, intimate relationship. All men are thankful for this desire to be admired, otherwise I don’t think you’d mess with us.

Yet, like us guys, you too are broken and all our good desires have gone rogue.

Your ‘want’ for adoration has become a form of self-worship. You want to supplant and steal the gaze of others. Instead of finding rest in the love and acceptance of God, you’re tempted to fill this longing with the temporary praise of others.

Click. Like. Ahh, that felt good.

So what about the guys? Well this is the problem. We want sex. We want food. We want fame. We want many other things too, but remember, we are calculators, simple.  We feed our appetites, they grow and drive us. We’re driven by very, very basic wants. It’s pitiful actually, but there you have it. The secret’s out.

We wake up in the morning, get dressed, go to work or school, we do our thing. Inside, however, is a raging battle. Every guy to some extent is fighting this battle.  Our appetites are strong.

We don’t want one cheeseburger for lunch, we want 3. We’re hit with visual stimuli at every corner of the street. Marketers know our weaknesses, and follow us visually everywhere.

They want our money, so they visually blast us with dripping cheese over a juicy burger billboard. This is like pouring gas on our fire.  Chemicals in our stomach begin to prepare, we’re going to eat soon!

The desire for food when hungry is powerful right?  Sex is no less driving for most guys. For a girl, this is often hard to believe, and even disgusts them. For young men, 15-25yrs old especially, hormones are kicking in like a nuclear substation, producing dangerous levels of stupidity on a daily basis.  It takes very little to inflame these powerful desires in a guy.

We walk outside, what do we see on billboards? Sexualized visuals. Curves. Pouty lips. Ads for lingerie, swimwear, nightclubs. If we check social media, forget it. Instagram is a playground of unaware, female narcissists parading their bodies, because they’ve figured out, like all marketers, sex sells.

What this type of imagery accomplishes, girls, is make a guy want more. It doesn’t make us want you. You’ve objectified yourself to that of a cheeseburger.

Posting sexual or tempting images on social media doesn’t make us like you, it doesn’t make us desire to know you, and we certainly don’t respect you.

In fact, we despise you for it, even as we click ‘like’ we feel a sense of failure.  We just want more.  To a guy, you have reduced yourself to a piece of meat. By doing that, you are training a generation of minds to see you this way.

Remember, we just ‘see’ what we see. If you are showing your body shape, your contours and revealing as much of your body as possible, that’s what a guys sees. Nothing else.

What you really want is to be loved, wanted, and to enter a place of real relationship with someone you trust – yet your photo says you want just the opposite. Sexualized photos say you have nothing of relational value. You are just cheap sex and you value yourself little.

When you post sexual or tempting images, you are inflaming an appetite that only wants to use you. You become one of 1000’s cheeseburgers online for sale. When we view, we’ve purchased, we’re done, thank you – you sold yourself for a like.


Point 3 -CONQUER

We see (with our eyes). We want (from our appetites). Lastly, we conquer.

Guys are built to conquer. We love challenges. I remember when I first caught a glimpse of my wife. She was 19, I was 18.  She was, oh my goodness. I knew I wanted to catch her like a fish; I had to reel her in!  Yet, she wouldn’t bite! This only made me want her more.

She refused to cheapen herself by giving in to my advances quickly. If Instagram was back then, she wouldn’t be posting cheap attempts of adoration. She was classy. I totally respected this girl. She wouldn’t even kiss me. I was smitten and the chase was on. I found a treasure, and she knew it.

Like a lion and the prey, my appetite for HER, the person, the whole package, began to inflame. I began to know her, my knowledge of her deepened and my desire to be with her all my life was cemented.

Girls. Who do you want to love you? Why do you fish in a sewer with sultry, cheap photos of your physical design? Do you want a man that is driven by lust and craves sexy bodies?  Are you so naive that you think if you catch such a man, that he will suddenly stop feeding this appetite once he has you? He won’t value you, and he’ll keep fishing, even after marriage, at least in his heart.

Some Final Thoughts to Girls

I love my daughters. They are more precious to me than my own life. I see their value.  God sees this value too.

Men are not pigs. Men are broken, and all who are outside of Christ, are imprisoned sinners, subject to their fleshly appetites.

Jesus, however, changes lives, and even appetites! There is a generation of young men who are walking by the Spirit of God and filled with godly desires. They are swimming in a sea of pollution, upstream, and against all odds.  Yet, they are victorious by the grace of God.

Jesus heals, forgives, and helps us all. We’re not alone in this battle. All believers, regardless of gender, need to fight it together. This world is not our friend.

Don’t fall prey, young lady, to the temptations of this world. Respect yourself. In doing so, respect the young man who wants to love you like a brother, and perhaps someday love you like a faithful husband should.

Don’t cheapen yourself online with sexual photos. Don’t feed the appetites of broken, lost, and deceived men who care nothing for you.

You are loved by a perfect Father; you are adored by the God of the universe who sent His Son to live and die for you on the cross.

I pray a godly young man, the kind that your heart longs for, SEES you, the person, the incredibly complex and desirable young lady you are. That he would then WANT to know you, all of you, and pursue you with the respect and honor you deserve.  That in the end, he would CONQUER your heart, and be worthy of it’s trust for a lifetime of marriage.

That’s something we can all really ‘like.’

1 Comment

  1. Stephanie Stucker

    Amen & well said. Thanks Bruce!! I admire your honesty and straight forwardness. 🙂

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