Category Archives: Sex
Humbled by Hope
Today I checked out a blogger that started following me without comment. She is twenty-five and the first post I found seemed to be on masturbating. Actually, it turned out to be about the Love of God that doesn’t shame us no matter where we are in our journey to become the people God created us to be. She also admitted that she kept sorrow away by physical sports and running and that it had become an addiction to avoid her feelings. She proceeded in a just a few blog posts to share wisdom that it has taken me fifty years of my journey with Jesus to learn. I have been frustrated that I haven’t been able to communicate my hard earned wisdom to younger members of my family. Maybe I should have been listening.
Here are some jewels: 1. Jesus is about PROCESS and compassion. Well, yeah, but the problem is that for most of us it’s a very long process to become truly compassionate. Compassion includes everyone. We can disagree, but there’s no room in compassion for judging.
And process is simply another word for change. Ah, there’s the rub! It’s easy to see how others need to change and judge them when they don’t recognize it. I only lack compassion for people who lack compassion. Which is my first clue that I also need to change.
She writes about forgiveness of those who have wounded us and says, “We have all left scars on the people we love the most.” My response was, “Well, ain’t that the truth Ruth!” I’ve been writing a memoir of sorts in order to share some of what I’ve learned, but in writing the memoir, I’m recognizing some ways I’ve hurt others that I was oblivious about. I’ve admitted to enough already that this isn’t a surprise or particularly devastating, just a reminder that I can’t throw stones.
Here’s three things she says God asked her to do:
1. To give my heart a voice.
2.To walk with him alone for a time.
3. To let go of everything I’ve “known” Him to be.
These are three things I too have slowly recognized, but still find challenging. 1. I’m pretty good at recognizing problems, but not so good at letting my self experience the emotional pain. Unfortunately, that’s the narrow gate I don’t want to go through, but it’s the only way to healing.
2. To walk with him alone would seem to be easy while in quarantine, but I find it almost impossible to quiet my mind. Plus, I can escape the challenge by doing what I’m doing now, connecting with the outside world through face book.
3. I thought I did this when I recognized how Jesus realized that he had to change in his understanding of his saving mission as only to save the Jews. He was challenged to change by a woman who was “unclean,” by a heretic uncouth Samaritan, and finally by a soldier of the hated enemy power. Who is “unclean” or unacceptable in Christianity today? Who is a heretic in our mind today? And who is someone with power we hate?
I realize that there is still much I have to unlearn because each generation has new eyes to see what I have not questioned.
Alexis Williams says, “I have to become fully alive in who I am, so I can be who God created me to be.”
I might express it as, “I have to become fully aware of who I am and that I am known and tenderly loved as I am, so I can with the grace of that Love become the unique person God created me to be.”
Her blog is named “Do I Stay or Do I Go?”
Giving the Devil His Due: Senator Alexander’s Response to My Letter on Same Sex Marriage
A Mother’s Plea to Not Reinforce Prejudice and Precipitate Violence
My Letter to our National and State Congressmen and to the Editor of the Tennessean and our Senator Lamar Alexander’s letter in response.
1. Freedom for and from religion are the same thing. We need to protect that freedom.
2. Homosexuality is not a choice. My great-great aunt became a pediatrician and established a clinic for the poor in the early 1900’s. She lived with the same woman all her life. My brother has been in a twenty-five year monogamous relationship with another man. My son and his partner of seventeen years teach children born HIV positive in South East Asia. Legal recognition of same gender commitment relationships is crucial on many levels, from health insurance to the same degree of acceptance and safety from persecution that heterosexuals have. A return to legal reinforcement of prejudice could very well precipitate violence.
3. I want all people to experience the unconditional love of God expressed in Jesus, so He can become their Lord. History shows that making people pretend Christians by law, violence, judgment, or discrimination does not accomplish that. If we could make and enforce secular laws against making pleasure a God, many heterosexual people would be in legal trouble. The purpose of marriage is a committed relationship, not just pleasure. Let’s support that.
4. Married to the same man for fifty-eight years, I have come to believe marriage is designed not to just populate the world, but to challenge and enable us to really know and love another imperfect (not abusive) person. Let’s not limit anyone by law to deceit in order to experience that.
Alexander’s Response possibly indicates he may have actually read my letter.
Dear Eileen,
Thank you for getting in touch with me and letting me know what’s on your mind regarding the Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage.
I believe that the states, not the courts, should be responsible for deciding how to define marriage. However, the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruing is now the law of the land. Congress will have to carefully consider the effect of this ruling on religious liberty and religious institutions.
I’m grateful you took the time to let me know what is on your mind regarding same-sex marriage and I’ll be sure to keep your comments in mind as this issue is discussed and debated in Washington and in Tennessee.,
Sincerely,
Lamar Alexander
Maybe he read my letter and this response is his and not an aide’s. It’s the only response I’ve gotten from Senators or Representatives at state or federal level that even slightly sounded like someone actually was responding to what I said. It encourages me to continue writing on other issues also.
I have been calling, emailing, and writing letters and post cards. The responses to my emails didn’t make sense. The calls were answered
by interns politely and were hopefully at least counted. Letters get slower responses because of security checks, but they may be what actually gets read. I plan on keeping on doing all of the above.
Controlling Conditioned Responses
Okay, This probably will be an equal opportunity offender, but sometimes you just have to tell it like it is!
When my co-feminists have said things like, “Men’s brains are in their genitals,” I took offense for men. This was certainly a sexist statement. But recently, I have begun to rethink this issue.
As a little old lady, I’ve made an interesting discovery relating to the differences between conditioned responses and mind over body controls. Little old ladies have little old bladders with diminished early warning systems. So it’s sort of touch and go, or rather see and go, to make it not only into the bathroom, but specifically to the commode. I have discovered that we can maintain control by giving our bladder verbal commands and encouragement. Seeing the commode evokes a primal level conditioned physical response. But language is a higher human ability and engages our minds to respond to the challenge. While it is a matter of mind over body, it seems to require at least mental verbal expression.
Perhaps counting or doing math problems would work. I haven’t tried those. I know that our male counterparts can at least slow down other conditioned physical responses in similar ways. So, I’m assuming, that at least when reasonably sober, they should be able to engage their minds by counting possible negative consequences when their bodies react with a conditioned response to physical temptation.
I think I’ll begin testing this theory at the sight of jelly doughnuts.
Wherefore Art Thou Morality?
When we get into our seventies and eighties we begin to get a different perspective on lots of things. Morality is one of those.
Girls dating in the 1950’s didn’t plan on having sex with boyfriends until married to them. Of course, there was some negotiating room on just how close we would come. And if we went to college, often we didn’t get to go to the same one as our high school boyfriend, so playing the field in college was fairly common. Being popular was considered a perfectly ethical goal in our lives. Unfortunately, a good looking girl with personality often stole and broke the hearts of quite a few boys, boys that were not necessarily high, or even on, the girl’s personal list of marriage possibilities. There was, in fact, a fine line between playing the field and collecting scalps. There comes a time when at least some of us little old ladies begin to question whether we can actually claim the moral high ground compared to girls and women of today.
Once married, our generation of women seldom initiated a divorce. Not only was divorce scandalous, it was seldom practical. Women couldn’t make enough money to support themselves above the poverty level, never-the-less raise children in a safe and healthy environment. Even if a husband was wealthy, the legal system was totally male. And most religions forbade remarriage, closing the door on making a better marriage. Children were trapped along with their mothers in horribly abusive situations. Having to stay in marriages that were destructive to all concerned now seems far more immoral than divorce.
So, wherefore art thou, morality?
We seem to be in an era where traditional (though often dubious) morality has been officially abandoned, but no one appears to have come up with a new way of preventing chaos, protecting children, and nurturing commitment relationships. The most obvious thing is that no size fits all.
Not everyone is cut out for marriage and many should definitely not be parents. But most people definitely seem to need sex. I think the basis of sex being wrong outside commitment relationships is that the reality is, One: It increases the incidence of unwanted children and disastrous marriages. Two: Using people simply for our own pleasure or out of loneliness is not only wrong, it can destroy other people emotionally. Three: The danger of sexually transmitted diseases that can damage people for life is very real. The rules for morality were created to protect us and to increase our chances of living in peace as societies. But my observation has been that the rich have always considered themselves above laws and the poor don’t have much in the way of pleasure except sex. So, I think even in the supposedly moral fifties, it was pretty much only the middle class trying to follow the rules. And I’m pretty sure even then, it was more the women than men. My thought used to be to teach our children, One: If you don’t want it on the front page of the local paper, don’t do it. Two: If you don’t want the same thing done to you or your children, don’t do it. And Three: If everyone doing it would make the world a worse place to live in, don’t do it. Sadly, I have come to realize, One: When hormones kick in consciousness of future consequences disappears. Two: Many people have no sense of responsibility for society. And Three: When people holding society’s most prestigious positions of public responsibility or having hero status through sports or entertainment are daily on the front pages for sexual irresponsibility, no one cares about that anymore either. I also see that we seem to have missed the fact that there is a morality for sex within marriage. I have become aware that along with the pleasure, men need sex to feel good about themselves, but women need to feel good about themselves to really enjoy sex. In fact, an important part of foreplay for women includes affirmation, tenderness, and other things that make us feel cherished as a whole person, not just a momentary pleasure or release from stress. But when the stresses of survival take their toll on men, they seek what is for them the ultimate in acceptance and affirmation, physical sex. You can see pretty obviously where problems begin in marriage. For millennia, religion, as the arbiter of morals has been run by men. The predominant attitude was that a wife must meet her husbands need for sex, in some religions, even if it meant losing her life through too many or dangerous pregnancies. Women were considered pretty much dispensable. And men were considered either unable to control their sexual urges or unable to put another person’s life before their desire. In present times women are beginning to be considered equally important in the scheme of things and the physical act of sex is being recognized as only one part of intimacy in relationship. In marriage a lot of things can handicap intimacy. Financial problems, pregnancy, children, career ambitions, exhaustion, health issues, and even unmet needs from our past all sap our physical and emotional energies. But perhaps the least recognized, but most serious challenge is disillusionment. Every relationship, but particularly marriage, will eventually bring disillusionment. Nobody is perfect. Nobody can meet all of another person’s needs. Nobody can keep up an image 24/7. Nobody is the total answer to anyone’s problems, wounds, desires, needs, dreams, and illusions about humanity and life. But often we come into marriage with that exact unconscious delusion. Add to that our lack of awareness about both our own imperfections and our own and our partner’s unrealistic expectations and it’s just a matter of time before disappointment rears its ugly head as resentment and criticism or a roving eye. I am not making excuses for infidelity or abuse. Those are killers of relationships and murderers of the other person’s sense of value. But so is constant criticism from the one person that knows you best. Watching men and women under the stress of a public spotlight and a nation’s expectations fall into those traps over and over with so much to lose, makes it obvious that both lack of self-awareness and no realistic understanding of the limits of any relationship to meet all our needs are a crucial part of the pattern of most marriage failures. Reading biographies of famous marriages such as Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, raised my awareness of how difficult it is for an intelligent strong minded wife to be supportive without it being experienced as demoralizing criticism, particularly when a public figure is the target of constant criticism. And now we are possibly going to witness a woman president being second guessed by a husband who has been president already. The challenges to marriage relationships have increased exponentially in my lifetime. Though affected by childhood experiences, personality differences are inborn. These differences can literally make us deaf to each other’s language of love. We do unto others as we would like them to do unto us, because we assume that will please them as it does us. Unfortunately, that is frequently not true. Surprisingly, I’ve recognized that Jesus made that transition from “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” to “love one another as I have loved you.” That’s a whole other ballgame. He gave his life for us. I think that for us it translates into becoming other focused, willing to make sacrifices rather than make demands. Both people in a relationship seeing this as the ground rules for love will create a lot of room for negotiation and will ensure that both partners experience being truly loved.
But as unaware as most of us are of the differences between our needs and our prospective partner’s guarantees trouble. A friend of mine, who divorced a former football star,told me that she just couldn’t measure up to those stands full of cheering crowds to meet her husband’s need for affirmation. Another friend, who was just naturally able to see and accept reality, including the reality of her own and even her spouse’s different way of being in the world, married an idealistic personality. Idealistic personalities see everything as improvable, so automatically attempt to improve both themselves and their spouse. Another tremendous challenge is the chasm of difference for those who respond to their world with logic and those who respond from their feeling values.As one husband pointed out to his wife, there is just no logical reason to get a kitten unless you have mice. Another wife confessed to going into shock when her flower sending, poetry writing, compliment giving fiancée never did any of the above from the moment the wedding ceremony was over. It seems her husband is a problem solver. A very good one obviously, since he figured out what he needed to do to win her. But once the problem was solved, he saw no need to continue the behaviors. Of course even couples with similar personalities have difficulties. Some are totally unaware that they are both so competitive that even the smallest thing becomes a debate they need to win. Writers and artists are often so sensitive that showing their work to a problem solver/critic spouse is like having surgery without an anesthetic. Often those of us that tend to live in the future, imagining even every negative possibility, may be attracted to personality types that live in the present moment. They can respond calmly to a crises without becoming overloaded by negative possibilities. But that same person will often make ‘in the moment’ choices without considering the possible consequences for the person they love or even for themselves. These are just a few examples of the challenges we face, when we seek relationships that will not only be stable and long lasting enough to provide what children need to become loving adults, but are secure and nurturing for the adult partners. Both self-awareness and the ability to understand people different from us are vital needs for good relationships. We educate for careers, but not for relationships. Yet relationships are the foundation stones of society. And sustaining society was actually the whole point of having guidelines for morality in relationships to begin with. With human progress and development comes the need not just for laws, but also for understanding. There is a difference in how you keep a one year old from sticking a fork in an electrical outlet and how you teach an adult to work with electrical tools. Humanity needs better understanding and not only acceptance of the diversity in our shared humanity, but appreciation for all the different gifts for the good of all of our relationships. Unless we, as both a society and as individuals, seek greater understanding to overcome the problems in creating and sustaining healthy relationships, society itself will continue to disintegrate. With understanding, we have a better chance of knowing when and why we may need to put the other person’s needs before our own. And that is the heart and core of loving. This, then, is both the new and old morality.
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You Are Loved, But You Can Bet Your Sweet Bippy, Bad Choices Still Have Bad Consequences
Just because God loves you, doesn’t mean that whatever God is won’t let you suffer the consequences of bad choices. And I would put money on the reality that God is not a Wizard of Oz with a carrot and a stick. Consequences to choices are simply built in. And, if you keep on ignoring consequences, you can bet your sweet bippy, they will become worse until you learn. Life is about learning to love. And love may not mean having to say you’re sorry, but it sure means you better be sorry enough to change, when your actions hurt others. And unfair as it may seem if you are now, were, or ever will be parents…..the way you treat other people will come back to bite you even through and on your children and your children’s children. I have seen this and suffered it. It’s a law of nature. It’s built into the system. It’s Universal. Smart/Inspired Hebrews figured that out and tried to pass that information on down. Unfortunately, we are too soon old and too late smart. Even though genes may in some way be related to patterns of behavior, that is not a “get out of consequences free” card. It simply means most of us have either inherited or chosen new ways to try to escape the normal pain of living, instead of going through it and learning from it. This is addiction! And it has to be overcome. The sooner the better, because addictions quickly acquire their own pain on top of what we used them to dull temporarily. This is the core course in the school of life. Learn it or weep, cause nobody’s sure there’s a do over.
Sex and Jelly Doughnuts or the Face and Voice of God? That is the Question.
It’s easy to lose sight of God in our lives and when we do, we become vulnerable to idols. These days an idol isn’t a golden calf, it’s anything we become dependent on, other than God. In the book of Jeremiah, God warns that not only will we suffer if we choose worldly idols, but so will our children and even our grandchildren. That part about grandchildren really gets me where I live. Though I don’t hear this as punishment, but rather as a natural consequence. So, let’s consider some modern worldly idols.
A very popular idol is pleasure, which isn’t bad in itself, only when we turn to it instead of God. Pleasures we turn to when feeling insecure or unhappy can vary from sex to jelly doughnuts, but if they become a dependency they lead to adultery or diabetes or other equally bad consequences.
Another potential idol is financial affluence and while there’s nothing wrong with being successful, it can grow into a need that becomes the focus of our lives to the point of destroying our relationships.
An even sneakier idol is an attachment to social acceptance that leads us to surround ourselves only with people just like ourselves, which not only gives us a warped view of the world, but isolates us from those in greater need.
How can we protect ourselves from idols? It’s a discombobulating world and sometimes I feel like the child of Christian friends, who when told to wash his hands muttered: “Germs and Jesus, germs and Jesus! That’s all I hear about around here and I can’t see either one!”
One thing that helps me, I call putting on “God Glasses.” That means consciously working to see God in everything. Surprisingly, the beginning step can even come through finding God in the hard things.
When heart break or pain has kept me awake all night, the first glimpse of morning light coming through the window often brought relief. Recently, after finally getting over several weeks of insomnia from the pain of a broken shoulder, I would wake up momentarily at sunrise each morning remembering that feeling of relief and thanking God with quiet joy that morning had come again and yesterday’s sorrows were behind.
Ever since an ice storm left us without hot water for eighteen days some twenty years ago, whenever I feel that first marvelous spray of a hot shower, I treasure it for a few moments while thanking God profusely.
Some months ago, our hearts were heavy when a beloved grandchild stopped chatting and smiling because she sensed family conflict. Last weekend, she kept me awake once again cheerfully chatting about her favorite books and beamed with glee at trouncing Granddad at UNO. Now, as I go to sleep each night, I cup those memories in my heart with tears of joy and thank God.
Please, while you can still hear birdsong, stop and listen with your heart and thank God for it. Thank God not only for flowers, but the strength to water them and even to cut the grass. Thank God for the joy of that first taste of morning coffee or tea. Age can take all these away from you. Enjoy them now and let them bring you to God. Thank God for faith to pray. What a wondrous gift that is. And definitely thank God for laughter, which will be your saving grace in old age.
Watch, listen and thank. All these small things are the face and voice of God. And more and more you will experience the deep joy of finding Him in each moment. Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God. And joy trumps idols every time.
The day of my Spiritual Awakening was the day I saw, and I knew I saw, all things in God and God in all things. A quote from an unknown Author:
Adolescent Sex Is as Addictive as Crack Cocaine
Adolescent sex is as addictive as meth, crack cocaine, alcohol, or nicotine. Once teens start having sex it’s like two right handed children playing left handed catch with a live hand grenade. I was a “wait ‘til you marry” person, not because I was a “goodie two shoes,” but because I was a devout coward. In my day there were immediate unpleasant consequences for getting pregnant outside marriage And we weren’t surrounded by people selling sex as the only reason for living. But today’s world is simply saturated with sex in almost every ad, book, movie, and on line site. The culture no longer supports abstinence or even monogamy. No matter how good, articulate, loving, and supportive we are as parents……it is like sending our children into war with water guns. Kids have way too much freedom at very young ages, both the opportunities and stress of unchaperoned situations, and less immediate consequences than older generations had. And like all adolescents they live in the moment, oblivious to any life long consequences. Or they are like most of us are about death, not believing pregnancy or disease will happen to them.
Short of locking them up from 12 to 21, I have no simple solutions. I believe and talk about a loving forgiving God, but what I probably never stress enough is that neither love nor forgiveness protects us from the consequences of our bad choices. Without obvious consequences we will just keep making them. That’s not what a loving God wants or allows for us.
In our teens most of us aren’t yet sure who we are or if who we are will turn out to be sufficient in this world. Sex isn’t just amazing pleasure, it makes us feel like a hero or princess…..we are #1 with someone. We are not alone anymore as we do the work of separating who we are from who our parents are.
We don’t realize that need is not love and that infatuation doesn’t last. Learning to love takes years of learning to make unselfish choices. When we make our lives incredibly harder by creating another life that we aren’t yet equipped to nurture, finance, and protect by putting their many needs before our wants, our infatuation seldom has a chance to become love. The overload of challenges may well freeze us in our immaturity and lock us into remaining overwhelmed immature children making bad choices for much of our lives. So many lives are stunted from choices made in the teen years.
And for most youth the danger of disease has no more personal reality than death. No matter what medicines are available, the consequences of STD’s and even the side effects of medicines for them can permanently diminish the joy of sex and complicate relationships. Today even many adults assume there’s a medicine for everything. But the reality is that as soon as we find a cure for one disease, another disease appears. The sad reality is that often the victims are youth who plan to abstain from sex until old enough to make a life commitment, but are overwhelmed by cultural circumstances.
Many people of all ages assume a fetus is not a person and if we are the type of person who doesn’t naturally consider possibilities, we may not worry much about emotional repercussions from having an abortion. But in my 78 years of life, I have witnessed the changes in personality traits that people experience as they enter different stages of life. I am convinced that even those that do not feel guilt, worry, sadness or even curiosity about their unborn child at the time of making the choice for abortion, will eventually have to deal with those.
I think society has pretty much obliterated fear of hell. What no one warns is that bad choices can turn our life here into a hell,.
Parents, tell it like it is. They may not hear you, but at least you will have tried.
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