Why Black Single Mothers Should Accept That They Are Meant To Be “Second Best”

Yesterday my Boaz was speaking to one of his longtime friends over the phone, and she told him that she has recently started dating a married man. She is an older Ghanaian single mother in her mid 50’s. She’s very successful in both the UK and in Ghana, she works with Presidents, Mayors and Governers of this world, especially within the black community. Both my Boaz and I have been inspired by her, and she has changed a lot of lives within the Ghanaian community, that’s how powerful she is. For the purpose of this article, I will call her Lydia. She kinda reminds me of Lydia, the very successful woman in the New Testament who was a seller of purple, who owned a spacious house and had servants to care for her.

Lydia is very successful in today’s world, she owns a very big house and always has people ready to serve her. When Boaz told me that she had said she just wanted a man to make her happy, and take away her reproach, and was very happy to settle as a concubine, she just reminded me of a reality that millions of black single mothers/women refuse to acknowledge. She insisted that she doesn’t want to break the man’s marriage, she just needs him to be her man.

Black women refuse to accept the fact that when you get to a certain age, it is almost impossible to find a man who is not someone’s husband, more so if you are a single mother.

Lydia is simply saying, “I have my own house, I have my own money, I just want a man to take away my reproach.” (Isaiah 4:1)

My Boaz has a mother-son relationship with Lydia. But through the years sadly she gave us both an energy which made us feel like she wanted more from Boaz, so Boaz withdrew from her. But she always comes back to him when she wants advice or just to talk. Lydia loves my King, that I know. So yesterday as she was telling my husband that she had now become a concubine and was very content with that position, she then laughed and said to him, “I would have been your concubine but you were born too late.”

What I love about Lydia is that she is a woman who understands reality. Lydia understands that with all the money and success she has, she still needs a man. And for that, she knows its better to be a concubine than to be single forever.

If most women of this era where like Lydia, the world would be such a better place. Black women, especially single mothers who have degrees and have professional jobs are always looking up to God to give them a Boaz of their worth.

But let me ask you this, “If you are, for example, 35 years old or above, and you are a black single mother, where do you expect your Boaz to come from?” Most men who are above 35 years of age are married. Those who are not married will not be interested in marrying single mothers, they would rather marry a woman who has never been married before.

Of course, there are single mothers who get married to single men, like in the USA you have single mother celebrities Ciara married to Russell Wilson or Eva Marcille married to Micheal Sterling, but these women are not fully black women and they represent a tiny percentage of single mothers who marry. It’s sad that black single mothers look up to women like Eva and Ciara.

Black women look up to celebrities like Eva Marcille

The unrealistic picture-perfect marriage that black single mothers aspire for

The reality of millions of black single mothers

In America, 72 percent of all black children are raised by single mothers. That’s how bad the pandemic is. Most single mothers remain unmarried for life and end up being used as whores by different men who just use their vulnerability to sleep with them. I know single mothers who have been used by men and the men always leave them after they sleep with them. These single mothers will tell you that they will never be concubines because “they know their worth”, and their spiritual Daddies keeps telling them every New Year crossover that their “Boaz” is coming.

But Lydia, a highly successful woman respected in the community knows that her “worth” is to be a concubine because no Prince Charming will fall from the sky and ask for her hand in marriage.

Christians who believe that what Lydia is doing is a sin, live in lalaland where all single mothers on this earth have a single man waiting for them. Reality tells you that its insane to even think like this. If you follow the “Christian Principles” on this matter, then the fate of most single mothers on this earth is to die spinsters. Physically there are no men to marry them.

Paul the greatest Evangelist of all time concluded that any widow/single mother who is below the age of 60 has sexual desires and should remarry, 1 Timothy 5. He actually said these younger widows will become a problem to the society if they don’t remarry. Notice that he never addressed single men or single fathers because singleness has never been a problem of men, but of women especially black women. To black women, it’s a pandemic.

There are no Prince Charmings to sweep black single mothers off their feet

So when Paul was urging these younger single mothers, under 60, to remarry, who was he expecting to marry them? Was things different back then were there was a lot of young single men just waiting to be the Boaz’s of these widows? Was Paul expecting a 45-year-old widow to marry a single man? Is that even practical? Obviously, the only men available to take in these widows and single mothers are men who are already married. These women are second best.

The famous Ruth who was a widowed woman, whom I doubt was in her teens or twenties when her husband died, ended up getting remarried to a very wealthy respected businessman called Boaz, of which a lot of black single women take inspiration from the story.

But they ignore all the factors surrounding this story. The story of Ruth was set in an era and time where polygamy was rife and the norm. The culture in Israel was that if a man dies, especially without a son, his widow had to be given to the deceased next kinsman for the purpose of producing an heir. This man who takes over the widow of his brother will obviously have a wife/wives of his own and his own heirs. So there is no way a man like Boaz, with such wealth and status, would have been single until Ruth came along. He obviously had his own wife/wives and his own sons and daughters. But because Ruth was a special woman, chosen to bear an heir to Isreal’s lineage of the Messiah, that’s the only reason we know of the story of Ruth and Boaz.

If you read the story well, the one who was supposed to redeem Ruth even refused because of the “baggage” she came with, hence Boaz, because he was a good man, ended up marrying her.

Whilst Christians misuse the Boaz story and single mothers are made to believe that there is a magical single “Boaz” out there waiting to put a ring on it, sadly that Boaz doesn’t exist. The one who exists is the one like the one Ruth married, a man who already has his own family. That’s the most practical, ideal picture of what a Boaz is.

I always say my King is my Boaz because he truly is, he was given to me by the Most High to redeem me because I left my people and my father’s house to follow the true God of Israel. What I did is not the norm, no woman today will ever do that. No woman will openly denounce their culture, religion, family, and country for anything.

Women always write to me and say, ” How did you do it Jean, you were a single mother of 4 and you got yourself a younger single man. I want to be like you, I want my own single Boaz as well.”

Well, I am sorry to say this reality, but my story is not ordinary, just like Ruth’s story wasn’t ordinary. I do not represent the reality of black single mothers and can never be used as the standard.

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My story is not ordinary so I do not represent the average black single mother

I remember when I first got with Nino, my ‘sister’ in Zimbabwe said to me, “Jean une lucky rekuwana varume,” translated “Jean you have the luck of getting a man against all odds.”

But it’s not luck, it’s anointing. It’s proof that some people are chosen and some are not. Those who are chosen are chosen for a purpose for their stories to be told.

Some will say to me, but you invited Nino to come to the UK, and I say, “Well look around you, the women in the Zimbabwean community for example who use their money and status to lure younger men into their bosom, it always ends in utter public disgrace and humiliation. An older single mother Edith Chibhamu used her money and status to date young Ghanaian Elikem Kurmordzie and it all ended in public humiliation and disgrace, in fact Elikem publicly denied he ever dated her. Then there is Zimbabwean singer Tytan who ended up exposing his older single mother wife that she was HIV positive and an abuser. It all ended in utter disgrace. There are more examples I can give.

This older black single mother and younger Boaz fairytale taught by Christianity doesn’t exist. In the end, when all was said and done, Edith chibhamu had to say “Ben 10’s must fall!” and tried to imply that these older richer single mothers were actually victims of younger black men, when in reality they are victims of their own selfishness and feminism.

That is why the biblical story of Ruth and Boaz is not meant to be an inspirational story for black women to be all married to a single Boaz, rather the moral of the story is about Ruth and what she did to be chosen, denying her culture, her religion and her country to follow her Hebrew mother-in-law.

Women should just learn to accept that they all have different callings, some are meant to be wives, first wives, Queens, more honoured and loved by their husbands, and some are meant to be second wives or concubines. The sooner black women accept this reality, the world will be better for them, just like Lydia. She is wiser than most black women I know, and a lot happier as a second-best, or a concubine than a lot of black single mothers who know their so-called “worth.”

The Genesis Of The Revelation By

Mary-Tamar Was Jean

Originating at jeangasho.com