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This is Intimacy

Posted on by Nicole

What is this life?!

My guest today in the Love and Making It: Holiday Edition series is my one-and-only sister, Robin Chancer. She might be taller than me (I mean, who isn’t?!) but she will always be my little sister. 

You can trust Robin to look at life with both practical and deeply emotional insights.  Her post reminds me of one of my favorite Tyler Knott Gregson’s Typerwriter Series poems (as if I could have a favorite in that series!!)

 

Tyler Knott Typerwriter 72

I want my kisses to be without question marks. I want our passion to make all the questions into exclamations. Really, what I want is to feel those questions straighten up and stand at attention. I want to feel the assurance literally FILL the space between us as we meet each other new each time.  

Keep reading. This post from Robin is a big, beautiful dare to be real and present in your body so that the intimacy between you and your spouse can become an exclamation.  

This is how you make more love.  This is intimacy. 

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I work as psychotherapist, and recently I was meeting with a couple having a common struggle. He caught her sexting with someone else. She felt awful and wanted to fix the marriage. We were trudging through a classic conversation: he wants more sex, she wants less pressure. Well, shoot, I thought. This conversation is definitely not sexy.

David Schnarch in his book Passionate Marriage makes the point that classic marital therapy: active listening, I statements, and so forth is just not that sexy. That’s not what maintains passion, he would say. What maintains passion is a strong sense of self—standing on your own two feet so that you can be authentically intimate with your partner.

It’s the connection, not the technique, that matters.

But intimacy is hard. We all think we want more intimacy. Most couples say that in our first session together. But we forget that being intimate with our partners is scary. It means being radically honest, letting our partner in, seeing and being seen. It means saying things to our partner, and even to ourselves, that we might not want to hear. That’s dangerous. Because the longer we’re with our partners, the more important they are to us. If we allow ourselves to take the leap and be vulnerable, and our partner hurts or rejects us, we have a lot to lose.

So most of us start playing it safe. We keep some cards close. We start working to please our partner, maintain the status quo, be nice, avoid risks. Sex becomes predictable. Or, we retreat into our heads during sex. We focus on our sensations, or our fantasies, or what we know our partner likes. For this woman, I could tell she saw it as one more obligation on her long list of chores.

So I decided to try something. Instead of talking about connecting, I thought, let’s actually connect. Right now.

“This might sound crazy,” I asked her, “but could you take a second to tune in to how you feel right now?”

She thought for a second. “Tired,” she answered.

“Where do you feel that in your body?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” I could tell she was not used to tuning in to her body.

“How do you know that you’re tired?”

“I don’t know. I’m just tired. All over.” Getting into her body was really tough for her.

I gave her some silence so she could try harder. “My chest and shoulders,” she finally answered. “They feel heavy. Like everything is weighing on my shoulders.”

“Good!” I cheered her on. “Could you say that to your husband? If we want to connect , we have to be willing to let our partner see us for who we are right now. Tell him what’s going on inside you right now.”

For the first time in our session, she looked at his face. She told him how tired she was, and he just listened.

“Could you take his hand for a second?” I asked. “Tell me what you feel in his hand.”

They giggled like teenagers.

“Um, I don’t know.” She thought. Tuning into his body was tough for her, too. “It’s hot. And firm. And strong.”

“Good! What do you see in his face?”

She thought for a second. He had a wonderful look of love on his face.

“He really loves me,” she finally responded, like she was just realizing it. They both got tears in their eyes.

“How can you tell?”

“The gleam in his eyes. And the smirk on his face.”

“Good!!” I saw them relax. They kept looking at each other without my prompting now. We paused, enjoying the moment.

“You do it now!” She shouted, squirming to be on-the-spot for so long. We all laughed again at how awkward it felt to really connect.

He verbalized how tired she looked. He talked about how frustrated he felt and how good it felt to hold her soft, sweaty hand, how much he wanted that physical connection with her.

“This is intimacy,” I said. “Right here. Right now. Connecting on who you are this moment. What you really think and feel. If we can be transparent like that, sex will be different every time. You might have a different mood every day. You might be angry one day, serene the next. What matters is coming out of the cloud of our heads and really seeing each other.”

Schnarch suggests trying to keep our eyes open during sex. Most people shudder when I mention that. Why is that so hard? With our eyes closed, we can pretend sex is what we want it to be. We can go somewhere else. Maybe we’re afraid of what we’ll see on our partners’ faces. We might see that they aren’t truly present either, or truly having fun, or maybe that they ARE. With our eyes open, we’ll have to really be there. We’ll have to face our nakedness, to see our partner seeing us.

In this session, I saw her start to do that emotionally. She had let another man start to see pieces of her that she kept from her husband: she shared fantasies with him, told him her deepest feelings, complained and vented to him, confessed her ambivalence about her marriage. Now that she was starting to open those doors to her husband, I could feel the heat building between them. We had no idea what would happen next. It was uncomfortable. Even painful. And scary. And squirmy. And exciting. And hot.

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Robin bio

Robin Chancer is a clinical social worker in North Carolina. She revels in being a sister, daughter, wife, and new mother of a sweet, spunky nine-month-old. She loves singing, pupusas, hugs, and laughter. She clings fiercely to this awesome, crazy thing called life.  She blogs at www.roboinguate.blogspot.com.

Confessions

Posted on by Nicole

It’s an embarrassment of riches, around here, Friends! It’s time for another guest to join us in the Love and Making It series – the Holiday edition. 

Everyone’s story is different and yet from your comments and the posts themselves, I see universal struggles and universal hopes for our sexuality. We are in this together – It’s awkward in the best possible way.  I have words to offer, words that are forming in my heart for you all – and for me – about what to do next. What do we do after we have grappled with the hard stuff, invited God into our sex-lives, reclaimed our wildness, accepted that we are loved, and tried to be brave – even with our boobs?  

For now, we confess. We confess our struggles and our hopes. We flash a little more brave with a twinkle in our eyes. 

My next guest, Candice Jones, a woman of shocking beauty who is pursuing freedom and courage with everything she’s got, has quite a spark to her.  Enjoy her words on Love and Making it.

Let her confessions inspire you to admit your own. 

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I’m Candice Mae. I am happily married, and I rarely enjoy sex.
These are my confessions:

I wore a purity ring through my teen years to ward off unwanted suitors, meaning ALL suitors.

I am still trying to find the little girl in me who decided to hide and never be seen.

I sheltered myself, attempting to be an angel vs. a human being (thank you, Rob Bell, for making that distinction).

I judged and condemned other girls for their promiscuity, while secretly envying their ability to let someone in so close.

I was taught to fear– specifically to fear the regret I would feel as an adult because of the decisions I made as a young person.

I believed being vulnerable equaled the loss of my control and power, so I decided not to be vulnerable. (damn you, twisted truth)

I didn’t kiss a man until I was 22 years old, and it is one the most awkward experiences I have survived. (Right up there with my bathing suit popping off at the top of a waterslide, which resulted in me flashing several young children. Unlike Abby’s previous post, people have seen my boobs.)

I unintentionally absorbed the belief that life is not messy. I can remember painting murals on the inner walls of one of the churches I attended as a child. We painted precise pictures of white people with clear skin and smiles in different settings and stories described throughout the Bible. Even the crucifixion scene had minimal drops of red. Being raised in what is considered a conservative church, and by a strong, single mother, my early days were somewhat void of what I now know are real, messy, and good life experiences. Simple things were unknown to me, like crying in front of someone in complete vulnerability. What was modeled to me instead was going silent and running away from heartache and anger rather than opening up and letting people sit in it with me. As you can imagine, these learned practices did not set me up well for a relationship. I still have a lot of pain stored in my soul. I am unlearning, and some days it feels like I must unlearn everything.

I tend to giggle like a junior high kid when it comes to penis jokes, because I never understood them growing up. I was terrified of them. Penises, that is. It was a word never explained to me. I think I even blocked out what I learned in my Human Anatomy class because it made me so uncomfortable. I blushed a fiery red in those days. The only reference I do remember was during a video, while explaining semen, a pirate flashed on the screen and said, “ARRGG!” … oh right, I get it. Like sea-men. Ha. The semen thing stuck with me, and totally grossed me out. I was convinced that I would never be able to do that, ANY of that. Hollywood did not help either. The way sex was (and is) portrayed is completely ridiculous to me. Really? People make THAT much noise?! I didn’t get it, and in my walled-up heart, I rejected it. However, I am also a realist who has always loved children. I knew I couldn’t keep my eyes shut and hands to myself forever, though I never anticipated how much work the undoing (and undressing) would actually be. It took a lot more than my man’s good looks to get me into bed. After an enormous amount of prayer & soul-searching, married friends sharing their hearts & newfound knowledge, and an intense Christian therapist, I am in a much better place. But as I confessed in the beginning, sex is a rare thing for me to relish in.

My husband and I are opposites. From food, to hobbies, to energy levels, we usually seem to interrupt the other’s rhythm more than encourage our differences. It is the same with our physicality and sexuality – he is all in, all over, building up, while I am slowing down, breathing, and letting go. I tend to emphasize the X in sex, wanting to cross it out, move on, or get it over with quickly. As I dive deeper into myself and into my story, I know for a fact that my X-ing tendencies are directly impacted by two words: beauty and belonging.

Why do I strive for beauty in this space? Shouldn’t I be convinced by now that he loves what he sees, feels, knows? Why am I still working to make every inch of my skin soft and smooth and clear, keeping my make-up on instead of washing it off, going for the lacey cover-ups instead of letting him see me completely natural and bare?

As I process these questions, Light pours into my heart. Bare – I equate this word with “empty.” I compare nakedness to having nothing, not like admirable humility but more like disgusting poverty. I feel awkward. I am raw. Even in my youth, I am a bit saggy and dimpled in places. I fear the effects of age, because I still believe that beauty is formed on the outside and fades away over time.

Belonging. I can count when I have felt this, truly and deeply, on my two hands. Insecurity is my consistent friend, found in the dark days after my dad left. Thankfully, a village of brilliant, loving people raised me, and my need for and delight in authentic community has also been constant throughout my years. In these spaces of friends’ hearts, in living rooms and around tables, I belong. In my shared bedroom, nestled beside the man I am learning to trust with everything I am and have, I belong. Pursuing this truth in these places and among these people is my saving grace.

 

I have this belief about life:

Wherever we are in our stories is exactly is where we are meant to be.

 

& I am here —

where beauty is freely growing as well as striving,

where love is longing and awakening, failing and fighting,

where sex is becoming a mystical and God-breathed miracle between two beings who choose to show up, to enter in, to stay, and to heal.

I am unlearning my shame. The shame that tells me I am empty. The shame that perverts my nakedness, causing me to see poverty instead of purity and divine creativity. Shame focuses on the broken, rather than the being made whole. Shame hides my breasts under the blanket. Shame keeps me in the lie that I am what I feel. To all of this, I am saying no more. I am waking up, rubbing the false and easy out of my eyes, and opening my heart to truth. Messy truth. Trusting that I am loved more than I know, that I belong here, and that I am beautiful beyond words and beyond my youth.

I am growing away from Shame and growing into Shalom.

And reminding myself that relishing is a good thing.

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Candice Jones

Candice resides in Minneapolis with her fellow adventurer & husband, Kip. Living it up as newlyweds, they are avid dog-sitters and baby-holders, since neither of these gifts is in the plan yet. She’s a Southern Belle turned City Dweller who currently hopes to make it through another long winter. She enjoys traveling at every opportunity and continually exploring all of the unique places and faces of the Twin Cities. A proud thrift addict, she hopes to soon find a creative career that supports both her passions for the world and her coffee appreciation. You can find her words (for now) at http://candiceloves.blogspot.com. 

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Candice, Abby, Esther, Jennifer, Sarah – they are all Story Sessions Sisters. If you need a group of friends who are wildly creative, brave, funny, loving, and accepting. Come check out Story Sessions. We are pursuing writing, story telling, artistry and God without forgetting that sometimes it’s good to make a full on career out of what you love.  Come check it out. And let Elora know I sent you, if you decide to join us!

The Crowd in the Bedroom

Posted on by Nicole

The Love & Making It guest essays are rocking my world. These women have written from their guts, helping us all ask hard questions and enjoy our sexuality with more honesty.  Have you read them all yet? Go here!

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Today’s guest, Tara Owens, is an expert in spiritual direction, sexuality and God.  She lives in the professional and spiritual halls I want to roam.  Her words are smart and insightful. THIS IS HOW YOU MAKE SEX MATTER IN THE BIGGEST WAYS. Beware, you will read them and not realize how deeply they hook into your psyche.  But, do not fear, Tara leads by going first.  

If you want your sex life to be more Godly, let Tara’s words guide you there today.

Love and Making It is a series all about sex and sensuality.  Join us in finding the way back to confident joy in our bodies and in our bedrooms. 

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The Crowd In The Bedroom

By Tara Owens

 

Here’s what I’d been telling myself: I’ve already done this work.

I’d gotten up early, picked up a few friends, and driven two hours north for a day-long workshop on sexuality and desire led by Dr. Dan Allender, a Christian therapist and author. It’s a topic I care deeply about, one I teach and speak about, one I write about often.

And slowly, quietly, I’d gotten more than a little self-righteous about it.

Oh, not publicly. Not in talking with and sitting with those whose stories I tend. Not as I taught, not as I read or wrote.

No, it was worse. I’d been slowly getting more and more self-righteous in my marriage, in my own bedroom.

If you’ve never heard Dan Allender speak or read any of his books, let me compare his workshops to being in the presence of John the Baptist, without the hair shirt. He is intense and brilliant, bent on redemption but unwilling to flinch away from sin, kind and fiery all at the same time, unapologetic in pointing not to himself but to Christ. I’ll be sitting with many things from that workshop for a very long time, statements and questions like:

 

“Dogmatism is the comfortable intellectual framework of self-righteousness.”

“You have to grapple with how stunningly beautiful you are.”

“What do you do to escape the passions of desire God has put in you?”

 “God’s design is for us to be worlds more playful with desire.”

“The result of male and female engaging is art. What is the art that has come of your relationship?”

“Most people’s definition of faithfulness is just boredom.”

 

And that was just the morning session.

It was affirming for me, I’ll admit, to sit and listen to someone who teaches, thinks, counsels in this area. I’ve worked hard to reclaim my own sexual story from the ways the world and the church have both sought to define and name me, claiming my past either as a place of false empowerment or false shame.

Coming to Christ as an adult, I lived out the narratives of my culture that sex was powerful, a means of control or connection. My sexual encounters were attempts at both, and the stories that I’d learned and taught myself about the worth of my body (an object to be used for power and pleasure) drove my actions. Once converted, though, the church’s narratives seemed no less about connection and control than the world’s—my sexual history was something to repent of (hide from) and speak of only with shame.

Thankfully, those narratives satisfied for only a short period of time before I began to question and reject them. Instead, God lead me both gently and intentionally through a process of revealing my own search for Him in my sexual story—those nights with boyfriends (I was a serial monogamist, if nothing else) couldn’t be reduced to “sin”, named as encounters to be ashamed of, they were shot through with a redemptive reaching toward communion, toward intimacy, toward God. As I sought Christ more deeply, I saw in my own story the ways I’d been seeking Him in my sexuality, naming and blessing my desires (both physical and emotional) as good and holy, even if I was reaching into places that could never meet those desires.

My husband and I talked a lot about our sexuality before we married. We spoke candidly about what had worked and what hadn’t in both cultural and church narratives in our lives. We chose for desire over control, for union as a path to holiness, and—as is the way of the Kingdom—it actually worked.

But here’s what happens if you camp only on what’s worked before in a living relationship, without following those quiet (and, let’s face it, easy to ignore) urgings to keep reaching for more redemption. What happened to me was a slow shift from redemption to rules, from vulnerability to certainty, from gratitude to entitlement, from union to selfish isolation. I could be talking about what happens in the sanctuary or what happens during sex, and maybe I’m talking about both.

 

“Self-righteousness is more decadent than the worst sexual sin.”

When Allender said it, I went cold, remembering my self-satisfied thoughts earlier that morning. I’ve already done this work.

Maybe I had.

But I wasn’t doing it any more, and I’d been robbing both my husband and my Jesus because of my own entitlement.

Hear me rightly—I haven’t been cold in the bedroom, nor have I been performing just to make our sexual relationship work. What I haven’t been doing is digging into my own desire for more in my sexual relationship with my husband. I haven’t been asking the questions that lead to hope and healing. I’ve been content with what is, instead of asking what else can been restored and redeemed.

And there’s a lot of what else.

Why? Because there’s still a crowd in our bedroom.

Without leading you down the circuitous road that got me there (that would take another 1,000 words or more), one of the things I realized after spending the day thinking about my own sexual story is that I haven’t really left my mother and father. Neither of us have. Genesis 2:24 gets quoted in some form or fashion during most wedding ceremonies: “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.” It’s the leave and cleave passage. We nod, we smile, we bless this new union.

But leaving isn’t that easy—and most of us, myself included, haven’t really done it. Not relationally, not emotionally, sometimes even not financially—but most perniciously and most destructively, not sexually.

And I’m excited. Not because I’m suddenly aware of these influences my parents still have on my sexuality and sexual intimacy with my husband, but because seeing them means that both he and I can begin to reach for more. We can ask each other questions about how our parents’ lived sexuality (not their words, we’ve talked endlessly about that) affect our hearts and our bodies even now. What kinds of physical touch (or the lack thereof) sent messages about intimacy and how it was to be expressed? How did our mother’s sexuality (or hatred of it) form us? How was each of our innocence shaped by the way our fathers related physically to our mothers and to other women?

These are the questions of my story, of our story, that tumbled out as I saw the ugliness of my own certainty, my own belief that I knew what the story of my sexuality was got exposed. Stripped of my self-righteousness, I could have pointed and blamed, and boy, was I tempted. But I’d much rather come to my marriage naked, broken, hopeful and reaching than covered, certain, entitled and isolated. I’d much rather reach and wrestle together than grow silent and still.

When I returned home, my husband and I talked over a bottle of wine, and I cried a little. We held hands in the middle of the messiness and risk of it all.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was process, and together we’re naming what went wrong, naming it without shame or hiding, and turning toward the redemptive, playful, glorious hope that in sex and in the Kingdom there will always, always be more for us. More healing, more joy, more play, more desire, more life.

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Tara Owens

 

Tara Owens, CSD, is a spiritual director, author and speaker. She accompanies people in their journey with God through Anam Cara Ministries. She’s the Senior Editor of Conversations Journal, a spiritual formation journal founded by Larry Crabb, David Benner and Gary Moon. She’s written a book on spirituality and the body that will be published by InterVarsity Press in late 2014 or early 2015, and she lives in Colorado with her incredible husband, and their rescue dog Hullabaloo. She’s a step-mom and a grandma, a Dr. Who fan, and she would love it if you dropped her an email, tweeted or Facebooked her.

 

Naked Truth

Posted on by Nicole

Love and Making It is a series about wholeness and love, even more than it is about sex. Since sex is really about wholeness and love, anyway.

This post contains pictures of partial nudity.  This is a simple warning. Now you may proceed as long as you are over 18-years-old.

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After adultery.

After years of secrets.

After hard choices.

There is still hope and healing.

When you need a reminder that miracles are possible through love and perseverance, return here and see.

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The Story:

After ten years of marriage, a husband and wife each committed adultery.  It took them six more years to tell each other everything and come clean.  Instead of running… instead of fighting each other to the death… they decided to fight FOR each other.  Now, they are still married and choosing every day to focus on how to heal rather than the wounds of the past. This is not everyone’s story, but this is theirs. 

 

In this guest post conceived by my dear friend, Jennifer Upton (in partnership with her husband, Tony, and a talented photographer named Kathryn Nee), we see another side of intimacy. We see what it looks like to let yourself be loved despite history, despite failures, despite self-doubt.

This is what it looks like to fight FOR your covenant love. This is what it looks like to allow words of affirmation and adoration to seep into your skin… the skin you didn’t think could be forgiven or beautiful or chosen ever again.

 

Words, truths, finally becoming part of YOU – seeping down deep into your heart.  Forgiveness. Beauty. Love.

 

Below are pictures of Jennifer as her husband writes words on her skin.  This entire process was not easy for Jennifer, but it has been holy and sacred and used by God to knit her and Tony even closer together. Tony telling her the truth of how he sees her now; she vowing to believe his words and let them become a part of her own truth.

The pictures have no filters or touch ups. They are simply black and white. The naked truth.

In the light of day, one man and one woman chose to express trust and love to each other in a manner that they hope will help you do the same.

 

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And so, she lay bare and he began writing.

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One word after another.

 

1-1000strands

 

After another.

 

2-1000 Strands

 

Truth of her talent.

 

3-1000 Strands

 

Truth of her gifts.

 

4-1000 Strands

 

Of her goodness.

 

5-1000 Strands

 

Of her.

 

6-1000 Strands

 

Words to confirm renewed promises.

 

7-1000 Strands

 

And God’s design.

 

8-!000 Strands

 

Truth she vows to believe.

 

9-1000 Strands

 

As they soak into her skin and heart.

 

10-1000 Strands

 

 

11-1000 Strands

 

 

12-1000 Strands

 

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Jennifer Upton

 

 

Jennifer Upton is a storyteller, an excavator of the sacred, exploring the world with an open and listening heart, diving deep into the jungled areas of life to uncover the stories hidden there. She writes as an act of faith, sharing the gritty truth and beauty of life on the pages of her blog, Spiritualglasses.me and her photo blog Asharedlens.smugmug.com

Making Love

Posted on by Nicole

“You sure do write about sex a lot.”

Yes. That’s true, but I didn’t expect this. I’ve never cared much either way about sex, honestly. It’s not on my mind that often… not that you’d believe me with all this Love and Making It talk. 

But something happened to me after my second baby was born and sex has become my yoga, my running, my self-care, my way back to loving my body and learning that my “self” is more than what is just in my head. I am not just a soul or an intellect. I am a body too.  And this body is good – as good and perfectly created as my soul. Sex has become a the way I grow as a human, a Christian, a woman. My body and soul are reuniting and getting to know each other.  This is why I keep talking about sex. I believe our bodies are good for way more than short bursts of pleasure from food or quick orgasm.  Our bodies are much wiser and complicated than we give them credit for on a normal day. 

Ask anyone who has a workout they absolutely love (a runner, a yogi…) and they will tell you how that exercise brings them joy and endorphins and knowledge and self confidence and health.

Movement. Courage. Vulnerability. Fun. Play. Appreciation.

This is sex. It’s not just mechanics.  We are making love. It’s not easy, but it should be fun. And it can grow us as humans, if we let it.  Growing in the areas that make sex great, also make life great. 

The keys to great sex are trust, bravery and love. 

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Sex is complicated, for sure.  No one has been handed a clear and grace-ful sexuality. Sex can be the opposite of freeing and loving if we are not careful.  We have to fight for it. We have to trailblaze through the jungle of confusion and false messages, fears and pride, hate and power-struggles. 

This is why I’ve started the LOVE AND MAKING IT series. This is why I talk about sex. This is why I’ve invited other brave, wise people to participate and share their struggles and triumphs in this area. We need each other’s permission to process and grow. We need each other’s safe spaces. This is a safe space to become fully human – body and soul.   Everything is connected.  1,000 Strands. 

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The LOVE AND MAKING IT Series:

 

(lovely guests)

Sarah Wheeler – Beauty and the Porn Beast

Esther Emery – Wild Girls Dancing

Abby Norman – Don’t Touch My Boobs

Jennifer Upton – Naked Truth

Tara Owens – The Crowd in the Bedroom

Candice Jones – Confessions

Robin Chancer – This is Intimacy

Ellie Kay – Never Been Kissed

(from Nicole)

For You, I Will

Tonight I Can

When Your Body is a Minefield

 

With many more to come from me and from other powerful writers…

 

Don’t Touch My Boobs

Posted on by Nicole

Friends, this post is a huge part of why I wanted to start this series in the first place – the topic here is universal and it is also secret.  My guest is a woman who rocks my world with her powerful writing, friendship, teaching, and hilarity.  Enjoy this next post in our Love and Making It Series!

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I flinch when my husband touches my boobs. I don’t know how else to tell you that except for just outright. So there it is. I flinch when my husband touches my boobs. Even when I am enjoying it (yes, I just went there and you don’t even know my name!) Now, that we know where this is headed, let’s back it up a little bit.

My name is Abby Norman, I am the mother of two hilarious girls and the wife of one great man. We met during my freshman year of college when I was not looking for a man. When my grandpa asked me if I was dating anyone, I told him no. I was dating everyone. I don’t think he had ever been prouder of me. I was not going to date seriously until I was a junior.

God had different plans. I was engaged a year after that conversation with my grandfather and married a year after that. I wasn’t dating anyone my junior year. I was married to him. That was almost nine years ago. And still, when my husband touches my boobs, the automatic response from my brain is “no-touching!” Perhaps I need to back up even further.

My parents never shied away from the sex talk. I knew that sex was for married people before I even knew what sex was. Anytime those semi-awkward “making out in bed then cut to black” scenes showed up on the tv when we were in the room my mom would tell us. That is sex. It is good. It is for married people.

In the third grade, sitting in the Target parking lot, I learned that sex was for making babies. I mentioned that I was excited that my teacher said we were going to learn about that. My mom saw no reason to wait, and the birds and the bees were explained next to the red cart corral. No blushing, just the facts.

In middle school I remember my dad mentioning that married sex was about as much fun as you could possibly have this side of heaven. When I was engaged and my mom and I were on our way to Victoria’s Secret to pick out a white teddy for the first night. We had this conversation:

Mom: Do you know where your clitoris is?

Me: Yes.

Mom: Good. After you know that you can figure the rest out.

I say all this to say, I was raised in a pretty body positive environment.

I was encouraged to save sex for marriage, and I did. I saved a lot more than just sex. In high school I invented “the bathing suit rule.” If it was covered up by a bikini on me or mens swim trunks on him, we shouldn’t be touching it until we were married. Kissing was about as far as I wanted to go. This rule wasn’t perfect and I wasn’t perfect at following it. But for the most part it worked for me and thus getting to the wedding night with my husband having never touched or seen my boobs before.

I didn’t date a million guys, but I did date a few in high school. I don’t know how else to say this but they all wanted to touch my boobs. Though we would talk about “the rules” prior to becoming officially boyfriend/girlfriend apparently that wasn’t what either of us were thinking about while making out in someones basement. I learned to have a healthy defense. The hand went to far up the shirt…my elbow came down pretty hard. Problem solved. I learned to have automatic defense mechanisms and they worked for me. And I want to take the time to say, I was grateful for these rules and the frank conversations I had about them. They kept me out of a lot of places I didn’t want to go. And those were firmly my decisions, not something someone else just decided for me. I think it saved me a lot of heartache and frankly spared me a lot of jerks who were not interested in dating someone who wouldn’t take her pants off for them. I am glad I had the rules and made the choices I did regarding my sexual choices.

But now, how do I turn off the rules? It has been nine years and two babies. You would think they would have turned themselves off by now. But they haven’t, when I get turned on. So does the track in my head. “DEFENSE! DEFENSE!” Only, there isn’t any need for a defense. There is nothing to protect me from. My husband is loving and caring and respectful. There has never been a moment where has he has done anything I have ever been uncomfortable with. And yet…I flinch when he touches my boobs. I have to remind myself that it is allowed.

I don’t bring this up very often but I have found a few friends who have the same problem. Why is no one talking about this? I was given solid and practical advice from the church when it came to keeping my pants on, but no practical advice when it came to taking them off. While I appreciated the soundtrack when it was necessary, how do I turn it off now?

Pray it away is the only advice I have ever been given. (Which is sort of lame considering the church promised me a perfect sex life if I just waited.) Sometimes prayer cuts it. Sometimes it doesn’t. I have noticed a direct correlation between how I feel about my body and how likely I am to bat a hand away. I am aware of the connection between the emotional connection I have felt for the past few days and the reaction I have to my husbands touch at night. I can work on those things too, but we both have jobs and two toddlers. As far as exercise routines and romantic getaways are concerned, we are already doing the best we can. Still, the flinching.

As a couple, my husband and I have talked about this recording in my head, and we work through it when we need to. But I wish we could join in on larger conversations already happening. The church is the place where I was taught to think like this. Now, can they please help me stop?

 

****

abby-norman

Abby Norman lives and loves in the city of Atlanta. She has two hilarious children and a husband that doubles as her copy editor and biggest fan. If two in diapers and a full time job teaching English at a local high school don’t keep her busy, you can find her blogging at accidentaldevotional.com. When Abby grows up she hopes to see her words on a bookshelf somewhere. She is finally working toward her dreams.

Wild Girls Dancing

Posted on by Nicole

Welcome, Dearest Friends, to the next guest post in our Love & Making It series, written by Esther Emery, a woman after God’s own heart.  I began stalking (aka following) Esther through twitter long before we became friends through the Story Sessions.  She fights lions and tigers and lies for the sake of her family – not just with words but with her bare hands and brave guts.  She gives me courage and has helped me find my own voice. The following words are hers; read them and let them read you.

Enjoy the force she harnesses to clear the fog and reclaim her story. You will agree and you will disagree. Pay attention to what and why you feel the way you do.  Read yourself as you read her story.

Love and Making It is a series all about sex and sensuality.  Join us in finding the way back to confident joy in our bodies and in our bedrooms. 

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Wild Girls Dancing by Esther Emery

I wrote a post recently that triggered a pornography firewall. Exciting, don’t you think? It fits with my rebel image. The trouble is, that post wasn’t about sex. At all. It was about my four-year-old.

 

Girls. Wild. Dancing.

 

Those three words. That’s all it takes to trigger a firewall.

I tried to think it was funny. I tried to say, “Oh, that’s the way the world goes, isn’t it?” But I couldn’t let it go. It kept reminding me of something.

How old were you, when you learned about the dark power of a woman?

The stain? The sin? The trouble that came in through us like an open gate?

We had a power, they said. To incite. To attract. To distract. Who knew? We were just twirling in our skirts. But we learned that the dirtiness, the exploitation, was ours somehow. It lived in us like some kind of a beast we had to control.

How old were you, when you first heard about the dark power of woman?

Were you just four, like my daughter? Or were you eight, trying on your mother’s high heels and makeup? Was it later, when they told you not to wear that, not to stand like that, sit like that, not to walk alone in the streets at night.

Or was it earlier? Was it when someone did something to you that you knew was wrong and told you that you couldn’t tell?

It was a lie. It died under bright lights. But it thrived in the shadows, underneath the surface. As a collective, especially among Christians, we swallowed it. We tucked it in pockets underneath our breasts, under our thighs, beneath the skin.

It is a lie with teeth.

 

Pornography is what happens when wild girls dance.

Sin is what happens when wild girls dance.

Satan – the King of Darkness – has a vision for Woman. She is the door into darkness, the foothold of evil in the world, the one that takes the blame, the creature abused, humiliated, silenced.

But God has a vision for woman, too. She is the last-created thing, the pinnacle, the crowning jewel of a masterpiece, the creature who when created makes the mud man burst into the Bible’s first love song.

I have seen Satan’s vision for womankind. I have seen it spread parent to child. I have seen it lifted up by the church. I have seen it laid on women by other women. Mother to daughter. Sister to sister. Friend to friend. This lie.

Sin is what happens when wild girls dance.

But I have seen the opposite as well, and I lift it up. Women reaching out our hands to one another. Voice to voice, stories told in bathroom stalls and over baby bottles. From a whisper to a shout, women sharing freedom instead of shame. Encouragement. Hope for healing. The promise of redemption.

We take back our pride, and our power. We take back the beauty of our sexuality. We take back our sacredness. Our createdness.

Free.

And wild.

And dancing.

 

We are wild girls dancing.

In the dark, in bedrooms, underneath the covers. In the light, in churches and at microphones, telling our stories. Alone with a mirror.

We are wild girls dancing.

We claim the arched back and the swinging hips – even this, as safe space. Our space, God’s space. This moan, God’s breath.

We are wild girls dancing.

Reclaiming, inch by inch, our own skin. Unbinding our breasts and wiping off the paint. A free woman is not Satan’s woman. A dancing girl is not Satan’s girl.

We are wild girls dancing.

Not white sheets to be stained by whatever a man spills on us, but living, breathing image-bearers. Our God lives here.

We are wild girls, dancing.

Make room for us, men. And other women. It is a slow dance to healing, and we bump into our triggers in the dark. But redemption calls us all to freedom. And we are walking our way.

****

Esther Emery

esther_emery 

Esther Emery used to direct stage plays in Southern California. But that was a long time ago. Now she is pretty much a runaway, living off grid in a yurt and tending to three acres in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. She writes about faith and rebellion and trying to live a totally free life at www.estheremery.com. Also, connect with her on Twitter @EstherEmery.

True Love and The Princess Bride

Posted on by Nicole

Princess Bride is one of the best movies in all of movie history. On this we can agree.
On true love…

 

Westley: I told you I would always come for you. Why didn’t you wait for me?

Buttercup: Well… you were dead.

Westley: Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while.

Buttercup: I will never doubt again.

Westley: There will never be a need.

 

I believe in true love. I believe in fighting for each other against all odds. I believe in never settling for mediocre. I believe in soul mates. I believe in kindness and respect. I believe in romance. I believe in sex as good. I believe in protecting love against all resistance.

Wedding Dress

My husband is my soul mate. This does not mean we have it easy or we naturally get it all right. Usually, nothing that I have thought would be natural and easy has actually been natural or easy. Well, “natural” but in the way that lions eating zebras is natural.

Birthing and caring for babies, for example, I thought would be natural and easy. We would sleep and feed and play and cuddle and we would just KNOW what to do next. It would be “natural” – As in easy… because those two words were synonyms in my head. This was so so wrong. Natural is usually hard work. Natural is of life and death and struggle and perseverance. Natural is of failure and commitment. Natural is of frustration and the will to live despite all odds. Natural is not easy. Easy is easy.

So, when I say that my husband and I are soul mates, I mean that our marriage is natural. Our guts said YES, get married. And it has been hard work ever since. Smooth sailing is not sailing… it is drifting. We refuse to drift. We chart our course and we fight for it every day. Despite storms and fights and disagreements and waves, we sail.

We are soul mates because we fell in love and decided to fight to stay that way.

 

Wedding us

It’s funny. We all fall in love for different reasons, reasons that take our breath away. Reasons that fill all our requirements and hopes and dreams. This person is everything we’ve wanted. They make us better. They inspire us. They turn us on. And then, over time, every little thing you loved will change. And that’s when you decide if you really love this person… their core… their very center. Because the outside definitely changes. Their abilities change. Their opinions. Their mannerisms. Everything changes. And you must wake up every day deciding to stay in love with their core and fall in love with everything else anew.

 

Love his or her face? Good. Enjoy it today and learn to love the one you wake up to tomorrow.

Love his or her abilities? Good. Enjoy them today and learn to love the talents you wake up to tomorrow.

Tomorrow, her face may change. Tomorrow, his ability may change. You do not know. And you do not get to choose which parts you love. Once you are in, you are in.  

If you do not choose to do this, every day, you will wake up one morning and wonder where your spouse went… the one you agreed to marry. The one you loved so deeply. This is not that person anymore. And you will feel cheated. Lied to. Rightfully allowed to leave.

But…

Watching your spouse unlove you is horrible. It happens slowly or all at once. They say little comments about how your face or body has changed. They mention how someone else is so successful at their job. They stop lighting up when you enter a room because you are a new version of you and they cannot accept it. They mourn the loss of the previous you so very much that they cannot love the present-tense You. They are stuck in time, wishing they had married a robot – an immortal god – who would be their idol or servant forever. But instead, they married a human. And humans change, they grow old, they adapt, they are injured and heal with weird angles to their souls. And sometimes your spouse simply does not know how to be married to a human.

It’s challenging because so many of us didn’t realize we were marrying humans or that we were really mortals. We’ve seen more tv characters and advertisements than we have seen real people… we believe the media more than real life.

But people are meant to change and grow. Our cells fully replace themselves approximately every 7 years, so if you’ve been married over 7 years, you are actually married to an entirely different person.  It’s never too late to rediscover the person sitting next to you, sleeping next to you.   It’s never too late to turn to them and ask who they are now….

I believe in true love. I believe in looking at what you have and deciding today, right now, “How much do I want to keep this thing going? How much do I value what I have?” The best gift in the world is to look into the eyes of your spouse and decide you both want it more than anything. That’s the miracle. That’s true love. 

 

“Sonny, don’t you tell me what’s worthwhile–true love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops. Everybody knows that.” 
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

Beauty and the Porn Beast

Posted on by Nicole

Welcome, Dearest Friends, to the first guest post in our Love & Making It series, written by Sarah Wheeler, a woman of valor and heart.  Through a truly awesome writing community called Story Sessions, I have gotten to know and love Sarah.  The following words are hers – about her journey with her husband through the trenches of sex and porn addiction and marriage.

Read her words and let them read you. This is her story and one told with thoughtful attention to detail in her reactions and her husband’s.
You will agree and you will disagree. Pay attention to what and why you feel the way you do.  Read yourself as you read her story.

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Beauty and the Porn Beast by Sarah Wheeler

If I’m honest with myself, I knew about his porn habit when we were dating. There were a stack of magazines in his closet, and I acted as though I was cool with the whole thing. Because, really, he’s a single guy and what do I expect? Every guy I’ve ever known looks at porn, at least he didn’t have a life-sized poster hanging on his wall. I told myself that this was what he used to cope with being single and allowed myself to believe that if we became more than just this “thing” we refused to label, the magazines would disappear and he would be enamored with me (and me alone) and we would live happily ever after. I blame my obsession with Beauty and the Beast for that mindset: “if you love him, magical glitter will melt away all his ugly parts and he will be perfect and you will be happy forever.” Dead wrong. You can fast forward to six weeks after our wedding night when I stumbled across the videos through the google image search history, and you can see how wrong I was.

Our premarital counselors had talked with us about issues within our sex-life during our marriage. I had laughed. Neither of us were able to keep our hands off the other before marriage, so I doubted our sex-life would ever be anything we needed to be concerned about. Dead wrong again.

But something changed the night I found those videos on our laptop in our first apartment together: the fairytale was shattered. I had a husband with a porn addiction: that was the painful and embarrassing truth. And in that pain and embarrassment, I began the task of preventing all images from ever wandering into this house again. I blamed the culture for constantly inundating men with these images and told myself that it wasn’t his fault. They were emailing him pictures, they were posting them in their feeds. It was them. We had a long discussion (in which I cried a lot and he sat confused) about how those videos made me feel undesired, unappreciated, and cheap being among the main descriptions. “I just feel like you want those girls more than me,” I remember telling him. I remember his response being, “I’d like it if you did some things like those girls, but I don’t want them more than you. I love you.” Our talk had left me even more bruised, and ignited a panicked fear inside me. I was afraid that if I didn’t do what those girls did, if I wasn’t what they were to him, that eventually he would leave me for someone who was closer to his image of “sexy.” I wasn’t going to allow that to happen.

I took control of the situation by making a list. Of course. The first thing on my list was pass-coding the internet access in our house. The laptop could now only be used for non-internet purposes while I wasn’t at home. We also installed an app on his phone that would notify me if he wandered onto any unauthorized cites. Also on the list were random and unannounced entrances into rooms, in hopes to keep him on his toes and off of porn sites. All of my efforts were responded to by him saying, “Ok, you can put a passcode on the internet and whatever you want. It just makes me feel like a child, though.” I honestly didn’t care and thought he was being remarkably whiney for all of the pain he had recently inflicted. I continued in my pursuit to defend our home from certain wreckage by changing things about myself. My husband is attracted to women with round butts, this was not a shock, but it became an obsession. I spent hours researching ways to “tone, tighten, and lift” and even more time studying pole dancing routines in order to hold his interest. I was certain that all my efforts in keeping him interested in me and blocked from them would be enough. Do I need to tell you I was wrong again? I think you get it. Changing myself may be the single most harmful thing I have done in our marriage; even today, I am struggling to regain the girl I lost during the months of trying to meet someone else’s view of beauty.

He came to me the next time he had a “slip.” He had found a hole in my online defenses. He told me because he “felt guilty,” he “knew it was wrong,” and he “wanted to make things right and not keep secrets.” I was shattered: I was sure I had made it clear how his addiction made me feel and this felt like a full rejection. This felt like him telling me, “I don’t want you, I want them.” To say that there was a distance in our relationship would be a gross understatement. I didn’t want him anymore. When he wanted me, I pushed him away; when he told me he was sorry, I didn’t hear him; when he swore he would stop, I didn’t believe him. Sex simply didn’t happen- for a very long time.

I was talking with a friend one afternoon about it, a friend whose husband struggled with the same issue, and after listening to my fear and pain she said flatly, “you know this isn’t about you right?” I was taken aback, but after letting it sink in I realized that she was right. This wasn’t about me. All of these things I had been doing were to protect myself from being hurt, but the battle had nothing to do with me, or even them. This battle was inside him. She encouraged me to pray for him and to start mentally fighting the lies that ran through my head every day. The lies that said “you are not enough,” “he wants someone else,” “this marriage has no hope,” “he will never love you.” These were very real and destructive thoughts that needed to be pushed back against. So, during the next few weeks, every time I had one of those thoughts, I would pray (the tight-chested and terrified kind of pray) that God would bring me peace and help me push back the lies and that He would begin to change my husband’s heart: I was begging God to make the porn-beast disappear. When we walked through the aisles at Target and walked past the women’s underwear section, I prayed. When he was alone at the house, I prayed. When I saw him on his phone and my mind began to convince me that he was looking at other girls right in front of me, I prayed. When I was falling asleep alone in bed, I prayed. This was a struggle, constantly.

I have always believed I could do for myself, and always (perhaps not consciously, but definitely) told God that I didn’t need his help with this. “I got this, God, I have a firewall, I have check points, and I have all of it under control.” It is painful when He takes away my control, but I love Him for doing it. Oh how I love Him. These weeks, months even, I was an infant and God fathered me as such, with gentle whispers of “I have you and I have him. I joined you. I will not let this come apart.” He wrapped strong arms tightly around me and after thrashing and fighting a bit, I believed Him. I learned the futility of my control and the absoluteness of His, and when I finally let go and stopped fighting, the shame went away and I could see things a bit clearer through His eyes. This was not about me, this was not about the onslaught of images from the sex industry: this was about my husband’s heart wandering from God. As I let go of more and more control, a strange thing happened. My control was replaced with compassion, not only for my husband, but the girls that lay bare on the screen. This is a pit that so many fall into and from which few escape because we tell ourselves that this pit is safe, it’s harmless, its sexy, its human nature. What terrible little lies we tell ourselves.

After months of praying, seeking, and crying (rinse and repeat), there was a shift, however subtle. I noticed it on a night when my husband came to me, again, confessing that he had “slipped,” except this time he said: “I hate it. I hate this addiction, I hate that I can’t stop myself, it’s disgusting and I hate it.” I knew he meant it, and I knew that this was God working in him. I knew that he wouldn’t have the strength to fight it until he hated it as much as I did, and as much as God does. And you know what else? This time, I prayed with my husband. I spoke over him the words that I had been whispering to God night after night, and again, no magical glitter, but there were tears and apologies and forgiveness and grace… and sex.

This isn’t over. There will be more days of confession. But we are finally in this fight together, we are struggling side-by-side instead of face-to-face. I’ve learned that no matter what my husband choses, I am beautiful and damn sexy just the way I am, and I’ve learned that one of the greatest and most powerful forces against the addiction my husband faces are my whispered prayers. And when (yes, when) it overcomes us again, we know that He has picked us up from the destruction of ourselves before, and we know Who to reach for when we fall in again.

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Sarah WheelerScout 275

 

I’m a wife, a mother, and an Austinite, writer, and lover of the little things. Fun fact: I often dream in movies complete with musical soundtracks, and, occasionally, my dreams roll credits at the end. That should say something to my love of movies, but I’ll let you get there on your own. While on the topic of dreams, I hope to one day visit Greece, Australia, and Israel. I like puppies, love wine, would die without music, and am fascinated by the tangled parts of life. I’m working on a memior and I blog at sarahbellewrites.com.

 

Holiday Magic (in bed)

Posted on by Nicole

… aka…Holiday Magic…in bed.

People want to be special and powerful.  We want to surprise and delight. We want to be magic.

It’s ok, you can admit it.

We each dream of being able to access magic, because “magic” does not always mean spooky mind-bending or casting spells.  This kind of magic is not anti-God.  Magic is when time stands still.  The kind of magic we want to be a part of is when God shows up in us and we feel loved. 

MAGIC is: a quality that makes something seem removed from everyday life, esp. in a way that gives delight.

Magic is the MORE the SPECIAL the DIVINE. Magic is that moment when we have taken someone’s breath away, inspired, and saved. Magic is when this happens to us.

To harness immortal, divine power bigger than ourselves and grab on as it pulls us from the dull normalcy of our existence – this is what we desire as human beings. We long for magic to be IN us.  We are made of spirit and dust; made to feel the Divine coursing through our veins, but most of our days are covered in dust.

We are consumed by bad jokes, computer screens, carpools, and calendars.

We can never quite access the power and beauty in the magic of life from underneath the mounds of dust.

Except in rare moments.

Art and music give this experience to the artists. The masters can dance or sing or play and experience being a conduit for the divine.

Mothers and fathers experience magic. Children are wide open life-forces for the Spirit of God and eternity and breath to come rushing through.

But nothing is like sex… well, not just sex… Sex between people in love who are committed to each other’s GOOD.  And then, when that kind of commitment and love are set on fire, that is magic.  When the eye-contact that punches your gut becomes a kiss that melts all your frozen parts… when your commitment to this one person is not just symbolic but literal…  Falling in love doesn’t hold a candle to creating it.

Together with one more soul we bring excitement, faith, joy, depth, and passion like we never see in the plain world of the day-to-day. It’s beyond us and yet OF us. We are special. We are magic. 

It requires bravery and trust, understanding and a willingness to play…. Not just all that, it takes fortitude and perseverance and creativity and a wicked sense of humor. 

Nothing else is as powerful or fun as laying ourselves bare in 1,000 different ways with one person doing the same.

****

Now, I realize this is absurd to some people. It is either an unattainable ideal or a laughably old-fashioned concept: sex as an ongoing, magical, powerful experience with only one person forever and ever.  

For you, my friends, who see how it may be absurd but still want it anyway… this is the place for you.

For you, my friends, who see so many images of so many people all day long that you never have sex without their pictures in your head… this is the place for you. 

For you, my friends, who have so much love for your spouse that you overflow with gratitude but still avoid sex whenever possible… this is the place for you.

For you, my friends, who look forward every day to getting in bed every night… this is the place for you.

****

This morning, the morning after Halloween, begins the holiday season. We will probably spend a lot of time and money looking for some holiday magic in these next couple of months.

Here, at 1000 strands, we will find some magic of our own. “Love & Making It” will continue – The Hot Holidays Edition.

I’m inviting some of the writers I trust to speak about their lives – about making love, about the struggles, triumphs, frustration, and magic.  We will speak honestly about how to improve our lives in bed… how to grab hold of some magic. We will bring both the positive and negative sides of our sex lives into the open: Learning ways to have fun, develop a taste for new things, and embrace the roller coaster risk of sex AND still address the hard things too as we wade through issues with porn, body image, or physical limitations.

 

And in the end, I hope we all find some holiday cheer… in bed.

-CHEERS!

 

-Nicole