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out different plots at different stages of their lives. There is no definitive path to tread, just multiple possibilities.” 14 All of this shouts a huge question: How do you manage these options, choose between them, and not get burned by big regrets?
    Everyone needs help when it comes to navigating this maze of unlimited choices. In chapter 9 we will offer practical ways for you to get your hands around it.
Conclusion
    Most of the problems women deal with today spring from the five issues I have introduced in this chapter. My experience has been that many women never come to terms with them. Instead, they expend their energies battling circumstances flowing from these issues, many times with very few positive, long-term results. A better way—one that unleashes a better life—is the one that can identify these issues and find sound solutions for each of them.
    This is the path a New Eve chooses to take. She is a woman who knows the issues and has discovered how to address each in practical, real-world ways that work for her. As a result, she is a woman who is able to define her womanhood with biblicalconviction, is clear about what she is living for and why, has wisdom and know-how in engaging a man and raising children, and possesses a biblical grid for making good choices and finding a healthy balance. In short, a New Eve is a woman who has learned how to manage her life. And she has done so by employing five bold moves, the first of which we will now explore.

4
    A Gender Journey into Genesis
    Y ears ago America was captivated by the television miniseries Roots. Based on the best-selling book by Alex Haley, the series followed one man's riveting quest for personal identity. As a black American, Haley longed to know his family history. Where had he come from? What were his people like in their original setting before slavery and subjugation cut them off from their culture and took them away? To find answers, Haley traced his ancestral heritage to its beginnings in early Africa. The whole premise of his journey was this: unless you understand where you've come from, you can't fully appreciate or accurately grasp who you are now. The past is crucial to the present.
    In this sense Genesis is to the human race what Roots became to Alex Haley—a helpful piece of personal history we must understand if we want to rightly orient our lives to the present. Here preserved in print are the social and spiritual roots common to every race of humans. The first three chapters of Genesis in particular offer us helpful insights. They summarize in story what the rest of Scripture labors to explain and resolve. With eachverse we discover truth about first moments, first purposes, and first life. Here at the headwaters of both history and the Bible, we grapple with the fundamental explanations behind why we are the way we are. We can believe it or disbelieve it. But here we are offered a user-friendly way of understanding what life is really all about, including God's purposes for gender. It's all here in the Genesis “myth.”
The Genesis “Myth”
    I know what you're thinking. If Genesis is a myth, why look there to find answers for my life as a woman? Good question. Let me begin answering it by noting that myth is not synonymous with fiction , as we often assume. Webster's dictionary defines a myth as “any real or fictitious story that appeals to the consciousness of people by embodying ideals or realities.” Did you hear that? Some myths are real! Genesis is that kind of myth—a real story about real people and real events.
    But real or not, all myths are special. That's because they are used to establish standards for life against which we can define and measure ourselves. For instance, what woman comes to mind as being America's gold standard for feminine sexuality? What woman's sensuality is part of our cultural lore? Her posters are still found hanging in shops and restaurants, and her story is still being told in books and