EQUALS

“Walking Them Back Into the Garden”

With sub-zero temperatures closing in, I needed shelter—urgently. Sleeping in my car when it was freezing felt like lying in a refrigerator. I’d learned to cover the roof to stop the ice from settling. My 4x4 Pathfinder was set up for sleeping in the back, and that night, I noticed an old bridge. I pulled underneath it and lay there, shivering.

Then the Lord asked, “Are you cold?”

“Yes, Lord,” I whispered. “I’m freezing.”

He spoke again:

“That’s what the men are feeling.”

In that still, sacred moment, I was instructed—divinely—to return to the beginning. To Eden. To atone for the woman who led to mankind’s banishment. Of course, it didn’t begin in flesh and blood. It originated in the spirit. And that same spiritual seed still lives in all of us.

So that’s where I went.

Over the next few days, a stream of angry men entered my space, one by one. Strangers, yet familiar somehow. I listened. I apologized—for the women who had failed them. I wasn’t excusing abuse or overlooking pain. I was holding space. A kind of sacred intercession.

As each man spoke, you could see the weight they carried. Their eyes welled with tears. Their mouths trembled. Their shoulders softened. It was as though they had been waiting—somehow destined—to meet someone who would listen without judgment and say, simply, “I’m sorry.”

Generations of men in my family dominated women. I’ve seen the roots of their anger. I know the road they took to become controlling, fearful, abusive. But eventually, the tables turned. Women rose up. Power shifted. And in many ways, we swung too far in the opposite direction. The pendulum doesn’t pause in the middle.

When men encounter a woman standing firmly in her power, some feel threatened. Deep down, they still remember the garden—the moment everything changed. In religious circles, such a woman is often called Jezebel. Not by name, but by spirit. A label. A curse. A shorthand for a woman who dares to lead, to influence, to refuse to shrink.

But most men have never seen a woman fully empowered—still, soft, sovereign. Not on the way there. Not clawing or grasping. Just… there. Whole. Rooted. Complete.

So they call her what they fear.

But the Lord’s desire is to restore all things. And this thing—this fractured relationship between man and woman—is out of order.

Men, if you meet a woman standing in her God-given identity, don’t judge her through the lens of your past wounds. Some women have been healed.

And women—treat men with more kindness. They’ve been left out in the cold long enough. We, who walked them out of the garden, are being asked now to walk them back in.

Find your equal. Walk side by side. Do not control. Do not dominate. Support each other’s true identity. Strengthen each other’s soul. Restore what was lost beneath the tree.

And men—stop calling us Jezebel. We are not all deceivers. Some of us are already home, waiting in the garden. Waiting for the ones who can return with us, hand in hand, under the tree of life.