Virtuous Woman

            In Chicago on the Southside in the Chatham neighborhood lived a young woman named Nicole.  Nicole was intelligent, pretty and an all around lovely person.  She had a good job as a Marketing Analyst for a Fortune 500 company in Downtown Chicago, and seldom missed a Sunday to attend service at her local church.  Nicole loved going to church ever since she was a little girl.  Her mother would literally have to drag Nicole's younger brother, Tim, to church, but not Nicole.  Nicole arose early to attend Sunday school and even made time to volunteer in her church's daycare center and special events that occurred throughout the year.  On the surface, Nicole was one of those individuals that appeared to have everything going well in her life.  However, this was not the case when it came to men in her life.  Like most women, Nicole dreamed of being married, having children and living happily ever after with the man of her dreams. Unfortunately, numerous failed relationships had left Nicole in a place of despair.  Her last relationship with Greg of two years had left a hole in soul.  Greg was a pharmacist for one of the major She thought that they would get married someday.  After Nicole had poured herself into pleasing and supporting Greg, he left her for another woman.  To add to her woes, Nicole reflected upon all of the women in her life and their relationships with the men in their lives.  None of her female friends and relatives seemed to have a relationship that lasted beyond a few years, and they all complained about how "no-good" men were.  Nicole's parents divorced when she was 12 years old, and her younger brother, Tim, jumped from one woman to the next, never taking any of the women he dated serious, but tended to treat women as objects of play.  Nicole's outlook on establishing a meaningful relationship was bleak.

            One Saturday afternoon while sitting at home alone in her apartment, Nicole glanced at a stack of books on the shelf in her living room.  At the bottom of the stack was an old bible that was given to her by one of the senior women, Mother Rose, in the church during time Nicole's parents were getting divorced.  Mother Rose was a widow, but she had been married to her husband John for sixty-two years prior to his death.  Mother Rose would always share stories about her marriage with Nicole.  She shared the good times and the bad, but nonetheless, John and Rose were a happy couple with six children who were all successful and happily married as well.  Mother Rose would always stress to Nicole the importance of keeping God first, and family second and everything else in life would fall into place.  

            Nicole took the old bible off the shelf, and began to peruse through it.  She reminisced over a lot of the stories she had learned back in Sunday school when she was a child, such as "Joseph and his coat of many colors, Jonah and the Whale, and David and the Giant," which brought a smile to her face and joy in her heart.  As Nicole thumbed the pages of the old bible she stumbled upon the book of Ruth in the Old Testament, which tells of Ruth's tragedy, but ends in triumph when she meets Boaz.  As she study Ruth's story, she was reminded how Mother Rose once taught her about Proverb 31, the proverb about the character and traits of the virtuous woman.  As Nicole reflected, she realized that Mother Rose was the epitome of the virtuous woman.  She then reflected over her own life and realized that she had been everything but a virtuous woman.  Yes, Nicole still attended church, but she was not praying and studying the Word of God as she ought to.  Her relationships with the men of her past where certainly not pleasing to God as she had learned.  No wonder none of them worked out the way she planned.  Nicole had gotten way off track with being the woman she knew God wanted her to be.  At that moment, Nicole got on her knees and began to pray.  She told God that she was sorry for her disobedience to His ways and asked Him to forgive her.  Nicole then vowed to make praying and studying the bible a priority in her life, and committed to living in obedience to God's will. 

            A couple of years passed, and Nicole had continued to keep her commitment to God.  Around this time she met a young man named Craig at one of the Harold Washington Library, Downtown.  Craig was doing his first year of residency at one of the best hospitals in the city.