My wife returned the other day from a Beth Moore Bible study group. They listened as Beth Moore told them of her interview results.  Beth had interviewed 400 women and asked them what are the top things that they struggled with in their lives.

As told by my wife, they were:

#1. submission.  Now when I said, “REALLY?!” My wife clarified that women struggle with not having control over their lives and having to give up control over certain things at work, parenting kids, and in marriage.  So I said, “They struggle with the same thing that men do: PRIDE.”  We ALL struggle with the fact that we LOVE control but really have very little of it, and we all LOVE ourselves and think mostly of ourselves.  Call it a struggle with submission to authority, submission to others or lack of control, but it boils down to pride.  We want to be large and in charge.

#2. balance.  This again could or should be on the men’s list as well.  We all struggle with balance.  Finding the time for what is truly important (which often is at the bottom of our to do lists): Wife, Kids, & Relationships.  Relationships are HARD work to maintain and to do right.  It is often times much easier to just go to work or tune out checking email etc. than to do the work necessary to have a deep, abiding relationship with your wife and kids.  Not to mention the struggle that most men have trying to develop truly meaningful relationships with other men.

#3. hormones.  This one my wife and I had a GREAT laugh about, but the really sad truth is that men are clueless with their OWN hormones! Yes we have hormones too.  They produce anger, jealousy, frustration, lust, etc.  I have been told that the ‘window to reality is through our emotions’.  We would be much better friends, husbands, etc. if we would embrace our emotions and learn to process them better rather than trying to stuff them down and then using a pop off valve to unleash the pressure–which often looks very ugly.  AND, of course, being more in tune with our wives emotions and hormones.

An interview of 32 Southern California women in my wife’s group came up with a different list but equally important for us to consider change :

#1. High Expectations: Denmark is the happiest place on earth. When researchers went to find out why, they found that it was because they had low expectations.  Our wealth and materialism has driven us to covet and always believe that the “grass is always greener” when we should be focused on watering our own lawns and counting our many blessings

#2. Beauty/body image:  Again interesting and sad.  Our obsession with the perfect figures has driven women mad trying to augment everything.

#3. Hormones