The Miscarried Man #1...

"David danced before the Lord with all his might."

There is a way that a man dances. I call it a “mance”…but whatever it is, it happens with “all his might”. Interestingly it’s the only time this prepositional phrase is used in the whole bible.

It’s a dance that comes out of a couple places. First, conquest. There is nothing that brings a man to life like coming off the heels of accomplishing something great, especially if many others have tried and failed, leaving him feeling uniquely equipped, outstanding. This word “outstanding” happens to be the word used by Solomon’s beloved to describe Solomon in his piece of romantic poetry called the Song of Songs. Accomplishing something outstanding will cause a man to dance like nothing else.

Another thing that will cause a man to dance is leadership. When a man leads a group of people well, he can’t help but celebrate that feeling of fulfillment. Most men feel like fraudulent leaders, so when they pull off something significant in front of people, something oozes out of them emotionally that leads to a “mance”.

There’s only one problem. This dance is often not celebrated by the woman. There is something about the way a man expresses himself when he is fully alive that breeds contempt in a good many women. They watch as the man humiliates himself (her opinion) and embarrasses her (again, her opinion). Often times, the man will be scolded at the apex of his aliveness. He will be expecting affirmation and he will receive a look of disgust leading to a cold shoulder of disappointment.

When a man celebrates personal victory, whether it is a publicly affirmed checkpoint that was crossed or a personal benchmark reached that is only known by the man himself, there is often an “out-of-control” demonstration of triumph that can be sadly placated with diplomatic codes of conduct imposed from without. He wants to cast off the royal robe of distinction, and strip down to the non-constrictive, conservative underwear of freedom.

This grizzly form of celebration for some reason puts off too many wives along the way and creates an ever-increasing battle between the sexes. She is trying to calm him down; he’s trying to rev himself up. She is talking him off the edge; he is trying to live on the edge. She is unnerved by his barbaric yelp; he wants to flex his muscles and scream from the depth of his soul like Michael Phelps after a narrow victory.