The test most men fail

Good morning dandelion,

What can you teach us about men?

Sure. Let’s try that.

Frank and his girl are walking through a field.

But Frank’s too distracted to care.

So instead, she reaches down to pluck the little dandelion and offers it to him!

…

That’s not normal Frank.

Men are normally the ones giving flowers.

And rightly so.

Yet four women I know have offered one to a guy.

Kinda odd at first, not gonna lie.

But they didn’t do it to pursue him or to reverse roles.

They did it as a gentle test: “here”, a fragile thing she picked from the grass. An invitation… an invitation to approach her garden rightly.

That word, garden, isn't an accident. It's the exact image Scripture reaches for to describe a woman not yet given away. Song of Songs describes the bride as a garden locked¹. And the groom never forces his way in. He waits outside until she herself says the words, come into your garden.

The whole book runs on that same logic these four women were testing for: what's guarded isn't withheld out of coldness, it's guarded so the eventual gift actually means something.

These four women wanted an answer:

How does he receive beauty he cannot use?

Because a flower has no utility.

It is beautiful and delicate, like you. It awakens wonder and requires gentle protection.

There's something almost eerie in the research on this specific point. Researchers at Rutgers ran a study handing out one of three gifts, a candle, a fruit basket, or flowers, then filmed the reactions.

Every single flower recipient responded with what's called a Duchenne smile, the real, full-face smile that involves the eyes, not the polite mouth-only version. Neither the candle nor the fruit came close to that response rate.

Flower recipients also drifted physically closer to other people afterward and were far more likely to strike up conversation, an effect nothing else tested produced.²

Something about a flower specifically opens people up in a way researchers didn't fully expect to find. Which means the four women picked exactly the right object for their test, whether they knew the study or not.

The “flower test” could be an intuitive behavior in women because in a culture that dangles beauty as bait for lust, a flower teaches the opposite.

It teaches the proper attitude toward beauty.

Take the rose, for example:

It has thorns.

If you grasp beauty you will be pricked and wounded. It is meant to be received as a gift, not seized.

That is why the flower is a fitting image for a woman’s dignity.

When a man sees a woman not as a flower but as an outlet for pleasure, she becomes an object in his eyes; reduced to a tool of utility. And she feels it.

Psychologists Fredrickson and Roberts published the foundational research on exactly this in 1997, what they called objectification theory. Their finding: when a woman is reduced to her body or her use, as an instrument to be looked at rather than a person, it elevated shame and anxiety, and a documented drop in what researchers call flow, the ability to actually be present and absorbed in her own experience³. Being used doesn't just feel bad. It measurably pulls a person out of being fully alive in the moment.

A man who objectifies a woman in his heart is, instead of offering himself for her objective good, sacrificing her for his own pleasure.

He twists love into use.

Which is lust.

So here’s the pattern flowers teach us:

Guys, a flower is a small thing. But it reveals a lot about how you love.

Baa,

Stay Holy 🐑

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P.P.S. read also The #1 reason you keep falling. 🤦‍♂️

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