Untitled.

Marrow sucked the life out of you –

I could not console the
Descent of death;
I did not hold your hand
As chemicals pulsed their way
Through every thriving cell
Poisoning your existence.
I did not watch you lose your hair,
Falling in manes of freshly dyed mahogany tresses.

I could not hold the few feeble strands
clinging to your skull
– as life clings to the soul -
While you purged
Your empty acid – a few sips
Of chicken broth
And unsalted crackers.

Broke you down
Like messy and splintered bones
In dust returning
To the pangs of Birth’s slow murder.

 

I stole this from an old post. Sometimes it reminds me that I used to write more than just exhortations and encourages me to try again.

Sex: Any Thoughts?

I’m a collector. I collect ideas, thoughts, roll them around, try to polish them, make connections and from there deduce new ideas. I love new insight. My favorite thing to do is to sit with someone and listen to them talk about their thoughts on subject A or B or something like that. 

So, I’m looking for thoughts on sex, sexuality, the culture, your experiences -

• how do you think about sexuality?
• What helps you understand sex and the gospel?
• What are your hang-ups? What books have helped you? 

Thoughts?

Lora

Sex: What I’ve Learned.

Probably it’s odd to have so many posts on sex – who knows. In an effort to drop-kick shame, however, I find it important to go ahead and talk about it/write about it.

Before Eric and I got married we asked a lot of questions about marriage – one question that was particularly insightful was this:

Eric: So – tell me one thing that you thought would be easy but has turned out to be more difficult?

Couple A, D, F and so on: Sex.

Of course neither of us were expecting that answer. I figured it’d be something like – communication, or cleaning, or finding time to hang out or financial decisions… but the answer astoundingly was sex.

It seems to me that this says something about where we should be investing research, prayer, time and conversation – at least to some extent – should be about sex.

So, here are a few things I’ve learned on this new quest for knowledge, intimacy, enjoyment and worship:

1. Sex was created to be good – for both men and women.

2. God ordered sex at the very beginning. It is clearly important and creational.

3. We (that is the collective group of humanity) have a very screwed up perception of what sex should be.

4. Our screwed up perception causes all sorts of dysfunction within and without marriage.

5. Sex is primarily an act of love.

6. Love is defined in Corinthians 13 and ought to be within the context of how God loved us -which is unselfishly, giving of himself for our good.

7. Contrary to popular opinion, media, magazines and books – REAL SEX is made for marriage, and real sex can be defined only with in a covenant, exclusive, legal binding – for the sake of love, flourishing, sanctification and trust, and if God ordains – children.

8. Orgasm is not the primary goal of sex. The primary goal of good sex is to love each other, to get to know each other, to bask in the thrill of caring for the other person.

9.  The beauty, enjoyment and pleasure of a sexual relationship with your spouse is cultivated over time – getting to know each other’s needs – emotionally, mentally, and physically, cultivating a lens of compassion and care for the other person.

10. Cultivating a disposition of trust toward God and your spouse is crucial.

11. Speaking openly and honestly about your feelings, your fears, your reservations is utterly important.

12. Seeking wise counsel to help you sort through fears, frustrations, – be they mental or physiological – is necessary and important for perseverance and gaining wisdom and cultivating a glorious and selfless sexual life with your spouse.

13. Relationships are meant to be both private and corporate, that is shalom – the hebrew word for PEACE as in the redemption of all things – is a corporate act, and therefore as people we are meant to be in community working these things out over time with wisdom, discernment and care.

So, that’s all for now. I probably will post more stuff from time to time – but as a general thought, work at this, read about it, be concern with it, make it important to understand yourself and your spouse and your friends – as gendered creatures with particular sexual understandings that DO impact everything.

Things That Get You Through.

Early in the morning, somewhere before 6:00 am, Elise had awaken to the fiery branches outside the window of their guest room. Elise had told Claire that the tree waited just for her, the leaves clinging tightly to the branches, bergamot and ruby leaves, ready to fall, but not until Claire’s arrival. The bottom branches were now shedding their clothes, drips of red and orange sprinkling the front lawn.

The water boiled in the microwave. Elise sat silently for a moment, sniffing the ginger-peach tea bag and listening for Claire’s footsteps on the stairs.

Homesickness is a lonely disease. It is unreconcilable but only mildly treacherous. It is a disembodied feeling, as if your heart might be yearning for another country  - somewhere in the inexistent – somewhere where people are living without you and you without them, and yet, you know exactly who they are.  It had been 6 months since Elise moved, and she still missed the open freeways of Houston, the bleary orange lights speckled along the edge of the road at night, and the smell of driving in the city. 

The microwave beeped, and she tossed the tea bags into the matching cups, shoving them deep into the sizzling water with her spoon. The floor creaked above her, and finally she heard soft footsteps pacing the bathroom floor, water running, a few sighs, and then Claire emerged, stepping down the stairs to join her for tea. 

“Finally,” Elise said.

“Hey, chemo is like pregnancy. Morning sickness,” Claire replied, her green eyes flashing. These were the only eyes Elise had ever seen smirk at her, as if she did not need her mouth to smile.

Elise was house-sitting that week, and Claire joined her, caring for an English Cocker-spaniel and a beautiful house nestled into the side of a hill with a forest behind it.  

They sat together in wing-backed chairs and watched the sun as it rose through the trees and lit up dew on the grass. Claire told her about the cancer and the steroids, the chemo, but only for a little while, and began, in her usual and magical way, to draw out Elise’s life before her.

There was a grace that went before Claire, that enclosed behind her and hedged the edges of her life; this grace would bump against her friends, her foes, her family and softy, surely cause a person to think more serenely about the world – to question what was now taken for granted as fiction – whether perhaps there was a God who was real and truly loved His children. Her life could do that. 

Elise knew Claire wasn’t perfect; in fact, as they sat there conversing over tea, snuggled into robes with the dog tucked into Claire’s lap, Elise became profoundly aware that mortality was not a joke for either of them. Thus, this conversation, this moment would transpire, evaporate and leave only neurological traces in the vast expanse of their minds – and even so Elise would always remember Claire differently than Claire saw herself.

Regardless, they sat, murmuring to themselves about men, marriage, life – how it would come quickly and leave – about whether Claire should make plans for the future, how she so desperately wanted to, and Elise would exhort in her ignorant way that Claire should dream, dream wildly and ready herself for life.

“I’m just not sure, Elise, any more. It is so hard to be unsure all the time,” Claire spoke frankly, between sips, “And anyway, who knows? The doctors said this might just work. I mean, I’m on a break before I start just drinking organic mishmash and stuff.”

Elise smiled at her,”Speaking of which, do you need to eat something before you take your meds?” She stood up, setting the tea on the glass coffee table and moved toward the kitchen, “I can make you an english muffin with cheese??”

“That would be great,” Claire responded,”I hate this steroid. It has made me gain weight.”

Elise rummaged through the refrigerator,”You look fine!” she said.

“No. I look oinky. AND, I need a shirt. I need a shirt that has writing on the front that says, ‘No, I don’t eat fast food, I just have leukemia and am taking a steroid that makes me retain water, thank you very much!’”

Elise laughed, and brought her a the english muffin, “Well, this is FAST food…” She winked.

“God is strange,” Claire said, “He uses the most peculiar of broken situations to bring about the strangest of joy. Not to say I feel joy about looking oinky, but I am glad to be here with you.”

“I have definitely missed you,” said Elise.

The words hung delicately in the air, as an enchanted chandelier, twinkling about them; to miss someone is to envision a beauty about them, to dream of experience with them, to imagine a future or to replay a past – it is a dedicated feeling, like love.

It was being missed that made Elise feel like she could be home where she was; as if Claire, from the distance of Houston, could send her the peace of friendship, bring it to her in her suitcase and leave it with her for safe-keeping.

When Claire came to visit, she felt sure she might crack, split right down the middle of her heart and ooze blood and tears for weeks. But, instead the comfort of her laughter settled her soul, and she rested better those nights than ever before.

Sex: They Felt No Shame.

3. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

How many of you feel ashamed of your body just by itself? Now, in the context of being naked in front someone of the opposite sex?

There’s some hidden birth mark across your stomach – way unsexi (not really)! Or, like me, you struggle with acne.  

• In 6th grade, a boy yelled “Hey Fro-Head!” at me from the bus because my hair was short and fluffy.

• I was desperate to look like a woman when I was in 3rd grade, so I stuffed SOCKS in a sports bra. Talk about lumpy!

• Some guy tried to feel me up during a movie (The Mummy!) in 9th grade. I crossed my legs – he told the whole school. I got called slut and/or prude, depending on how the gossip mill turned the story. Very shameful. Very puzzling. 
   
• In 10th grade, my best friend asked me if I was a virgin. I said, “Yes.” She laughed and said, “Well, I guess I’m way ahead of you then. Can’t you get any?”

Me, The Legalist?

Legalism is the damning lie that says God’s pleasure and joy in me is dependent upon my obedience.
It is legalism that causes the Pharisee to look proudly into the sky in the presence of a tax collector.
It is legalism that causes a missionary in Africa to think God is more pleased with him than the Christian businessman in America.
And it is legalism that causes the preacher behind the pulpit to think God is more pleased with him than the tattooed Christian teenager sitting in the back row. Legalism is the lie that God will find more pleasure in me because my obedience is greater than others or that God looks at me with disgust because I am not growing in grace as quickly as my friends. It is the failure to remember that God’s pleasure in us comes outside of us (in Christ). Legalism causes the heart to forget that God sings over us because of the work He has done, not because of what we have done (Zeph. 3:15-17).

-Tony Reinke

Have you ever read the story of the woman caught in adultery? I’m not sure if I ever implanted myself in that story – who would I be in this scenario? Am I the woman about to be stoned or the Pharisee about to exercise the law over someone’s choices, or am I Jesus who sees both the Pharisee and the woman as equals?

I was talking about this with my great friend Rose, with whom we both exclaimed jokingly, “You mean I’m not Jesus in this story?!” Perhaps it never occurred to me that the Pharisees were just as guilty as the woman.

Now, I take the variables A for the the adulterous, B for the Pharisees and C for Jesus, and find new people to fit.

Redeeming Make-up.

I was a make-up artist for 3.5 years of my college experience. The end of my senior year I quit. This was for a few reasons, but mostly the general dissatisfaction people had with their bodies convicted me that perhaps rather than helping, I was making people feel more uncomfortable with themselves.

It’s taken me almost 2 years to feel comfortable doing make-up professionally. I’ve also taken up doing hair again. I can thank Eric solely for encouraging me and giving me a redeemed venue in which to create.

 

 

 

My aunt Klydell, whom I love, told me one time that if Esther and all of the women who went before the King took two years to prepare themselves to meet the King, it was acceptable for a Bride to prepare herself beautifully and purposefully for her husband. 

I have meditated on that for a long time, and I have come to agree – though I think that preparation of body should never overshadow preparation of the mind and the heart, but neither should the body be denigrated to a place that is less cared for than the soul.

So there ya go – my thoughts on make-up.

Lora

Sex: One Flesh.

God created us with bodies. God Himself incarnated in a human body; Jesus was raised again from the dead with body; and one day we too be will resurrected with our bodies.

That is the beginning of any Christian Ethic – any moral theology – of how human beings with bodies interact with other bodies.

-Lauren Winner, Real Sex

Bodies. It is a strange idea to think of two flesh becoming one flesh, two bodies melding into a single fluid movement forward.  But, before I think of that – leave and cleave…
 

Leave and Cleave…
 

The one flesh verse is preceded by leaving father and mother. I always found this intriguing because… well… Adam and Even didn’t have a mother or father.
 

But the foretaste of humanity is in this verse, and the author is deliberate and particular about letting us know – there will be mothers and fathers, and we will leave them to become one flesh. The companionship aspect of mother and father  to child is not the fundamental relationship.

The fundamental relationship is marriage between man and woman. This is why the leaving and cleaving aspect of marriage is so important because it releases us to invest priority where it ought to be.
 

One Flesh – this imagery is so dense with meaning. 

This verse is twofold intriguing. It was written post-fall. So it has the added benefit of seeing sexuality in its broken state as well as recalling it’s beauty in the created state.

Therefore, when addressing man and woman – he assumes perfection and lays it out as such. Becoming one flesh, where now it is this painful and frustrating laying down of self – was, at one point, natural, easy – in fact, Adam and Eve were ONLY able to submit themselves perfectly.

 

But, this verse, because of its post-fall insight, also foreshadows  the relationship between Christ and the church; the verse on being evenly yoked. It foreshadows submission, the sacrificing of self. This is the underpinning for Ephesians 5:21-33. In effect, it is all of that. To become one flesh, you must defer your particular individuality for the sake of the other. That is, each person must lay down their flesh to be drawn into unity with the other person.