I Don't Pray for a Husband: A Compassionate Response

By Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodriguez

I recently read this cute article titled: The Husband I am Praying For that was published on the online magazine The Odyssey, some time last month.  I had this triggering moment because articles like these need Trigger Warnings, because the Church has royally fucked up a lot of women and the ways we relate to our bodies.  So here is my counter narrative, my service to the universe, to provide young girls with an alternative perspective.  

When I was younger, I was given this idea that I was suppose to make a list of the attributes I wanted in a husband and then pray for it, fervently.  Much like this author is inadvertently advocating her readers to do, because finding a husband is of utmost importance.  When I was younger I was given this idea that the universe would take care of granting me a wonderful husband if I made the effort of praying for the person on a regular basis.  I was given this idea that if I stayed virtuous and worked to become a buena mujer, then my husband would notice me among the weeds and life would become what every girl can only dream of.  I was given this idea when I was only 12 years old.  This idea was highly volatile and it took me a long long time to relinquish this concept for myself.

In my feminism, it is okay to want to be married, and it is perfectly okay to want to be a wife as your life goal.  But my feminism has only come from this place from having religion shoved down my throat so often that I needed to puke it out, for three years, before I could finally see myself again.

So as I move through the world, as a trained theologian and ethicist, I am making some rules for my own teachingsas I begin to have very real intentional conversations around having children: I will not raise children, daughters, to pray for husbands.  

I will raise hijas who will run with horses.  I will raise hijas who will question authority, because a title/paper/degree/stole does not make anyone ruler of anything to anyone but only for those few who they have managed to fool into believing their shit don’t stink.  I will raise hijas who will view their futures as solely theirs.  I will raise hijas who will view their futures as bright and unstoppable.  I will raise hijas who will cook and clean, fuck and read, and curse while chewing with their mouths wide open.  I will raise hijas who will not be afraid to be alone.  

For too long our wings have been clipped because we were taught wrongfully to pray for husbands.  Too long we stopped teaching our daughters to dream and fly, and made them focus on catching themselves a man.  Too often this theology comes with a gendered male God making that decision for your female body and life, and whether intentional or not, perpetuating the idea that you do not know what is best for your life and male God does, is wrong and violent.  Because the result of this is that dad also knows best, and then husband only knows best.  A prayer to God for a Husband comes from a baseline understanding of God, where only he will always know what is best for you.  [Insert Eye Roll]

I pray, often.  But when I stopped praying for a husband, I saw that I had so much to offer and that I was enough.  Having a husband is wonderful, and being single is wonderful, just as being poly is also wonderful, but praying for a husband triggers girls like me who were told that I was nothing without one.

Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodriguez is a chonga Mujerista from Managua, Nicaragua currently living in Miami, FL. She recently graduated with her Masters from Vanderbilt University, and is looking to take some much needed time off to refresh. She is also the founder of Latina Rebels, a blogger for HuffPo Latino Voices, and a columnist/editor at Chica Magazine. Her interests are within biopolitics as it relates to Latina embodiment, specifically concerning models of conquerable flesh around narratives of naturalization for women of color. Thus her work is around reclaiming and upholding embodied resistance, particularly within chonga and chola subcultures. Que viva la mujer!