Ladies, You’ve Got a Degree — Stop Crying Over a Man With Just a Birth Certificate!

Now, before somebody gets offended, let me say this: I’m trying to help somebody today. And sometimes help comes with a hug, sometimes it comes with a prayer, and sometimes it comes with somebody looking you square in the face and saying, “Ladies, what are you doing?”

There are women walking around with bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees and doctorates — educated, accomplished, articulate and successful — crying themselves to sleep over a man whose greatest documented achievement is that the hospital issued him a birth certificate!

Sis, you defended a dissertation, but you keep defending him. You can manage a department, oversee a budget, lead a staff and solve everybody else’s problems, but when it comes to Tyrone, Pookie, Ray-Ray or whoever his government name happens to be, suddenly all that education goes right out the window.

You’ve got a master’s degree, but he has mastered the art of disappearing for three days and coming back with, “Hey, stranger.” And you answer!

Somebody say, “Help her, Lord!”

You studied four years to earn your bachelor’s degree, another two years for your master’s, and maybe several more for that doctorate. You survived professors, research papers, student loans, group projects and final exams.

Yet this man sends you a text at 11:47 p.m. saying, “You up?” — and suddenly you’re conducting another research project! Stop it!

You know how to read textbooks. Now learn how to read red flags. You know how to recognize patterns in research. Start recognizing patterns in relationships. If he only calls when he needs something, that’s data. If he keeps promising but never producing, that’s data. If you’re always making excuses for behavior you would tell your daughter, sister or best friend never to tolerate, that’s data!

At some point, you have to stop praying for God to change somebody when God may be trying to change your address in their life. Every relationship that ends is not a failure. Sometimes it is graduation. Maybe the lesson wasn’t how to keep him. Maybe the lesson was learning when to leave him. And hear me carefully: this isn’t about looking down on a man because he doesn’t have a college degree. Plenty of good men never walked across a university stage, and plenty of fools have Ph.D.s hanging on the wall.

Character does not come with a diploma. I’m talking about knowing your worth. I’m talking about women who have worked too hard, prayed too long, survived too much and accomplished too many things to keep reducing themselves just to keep somebody who refuses to rise.

You should never have to become smaller so somebody else can feel bigger. You should never have to dim your light because somebody is uncomfortable with your shine. And you certainly should not have to repeatedly explain to a grown man how to treat you with basic dignity, honesty and respect.

Sis, you already passed algebra. Stop trying to solve for X when X doesn’t want to be found! You passed chemistry. Stop trying to manufacture chemistry with somebody who keeps giving you toxic reactions! You passed history. Stop repeating it! You passed economics. So you ought to understand by now that continuing to invest in something that produces nothing but losses is a bad investment!

And please stop saying, “But I love him.” Love is powerful, but love without wisdom will have you financing foolishness, tolerating disrespect and calling dysfunction “potential.” Potential has kept a whole lot of good women waiting at the bus stop for a bus that ain’t coming!

Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is stop asking God to bless what He has been trying to deliver you from. You don't need another sign. The disrespect was a sign. The inconsistency was a sign. The lying was a sign. The disappearing was a sign. The fact that your girlfriends, your mama, your auntie, your hairstylist and the woman sitting three pews behind you can see it — that might be a sign too!

There comes a moment when you have to wipe your tears, straighten your crown and remember who you were before you started begging somebody else to recognize your value. You are educated. You are gifted. You are capable. You are worthy of respect. But more importantly, you are a child of God. And your value was established long before somebody decided whether they wanted to text you back.

So, sis, dry those tears. Take that degree off the wall, look at it and remind yourself what it represents: discipline, sacrifice, perseverance and the ability to finish something difficult. Then apply those same lessons to your life. Because after everything you went through to earn all those letters behind your name, you ought to know better than to lose yourself over somebody whose only official paperwork is a birth certificate.

And if he walks away? Wave goodbye. Sometimes losing somebody is not God taking something from you. Sometimes it is God clearing the stage for your next blessing.