Posts Tagged ‘Love’
Posted by Nicole on April 1, 2014
Submission.
It’s a dirty word to some. It’s a holy word to others.
but can I tell you something…?
I have found new life in it. Let me explain.
*****
“Wives, it should be no different with your husbands. Submit to them as you do to the Lord.”
– Ephesians 5
Submit.
^^That word burns^^
It burns because it seems to go against every other thing I know about our freedom. Jesus is supposed to bring a new kind of life: A free life. A life of fullness and joy and grace and love. A life where there are no power struggles because all people are equal and valued. A life where sharing a meal with your enemy or allowing the lowest to have the highest honor, is THE WAY. This is the life I want to live.
“Submit” feels like control and loss of identity.
“Submit” feels like a foot on your neck and a gag in your mouth.
“Submit” feels like a kennel you whimper in while your owners go on vacation.
“Submit” is the exact opposite of freedom.
For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Gal 5:1
The key came to me just a couple weeks ago and it has blown wide open my relationship to God and to my husband.
As a writer, performer, actress, speaker I SUBMIT my work and my art to companies and publications that I admire.
I put my heart and soul into my presentation, proposal, or piece of writing and I SUBMIT it.
I am submitting to that website. I am submitting to that magazine. I am submitting to that church ministry… for a chance to be accepted and then presented in new, expanded, and exciting ways.
When I submit something, I am saying “Here. Here is a piece of me. What do you think? Will you accept it? Will you take this piece and make it grow – make it even better than it could have been if it stayed inside of me or locked in a drawer somewhere?”
Imagine a book you have written. Your blood, sweat, tears, hopes and dreams are all in that book. An author knows, that book is you in a lot of ways – at least a part of you. You send it off as a submission to an agent or a publisher. You say, “This is what I have to offer. I have been brave and I have worked hard. Will you take this and help it become something bigger and better than I ever dreamed it could be?”
This is the kind of submission I can believe in. Do you see it with God?
Submit to the Lord: I work hard. I am brave. I am honest and covered in terrified freedom, but I am presenting myself – all of me – to God. I say to God, “Here. Here is all of me. What do you think? Will you accept it? I am fearful but I will not hide myself anymore. This is what I have to give. Will you take it and help me grow – make me even better than I ever dreamed I could be?”
This is the kind of submission I can live in my marriage.
Wives submit to your husbands: I am submitting myself to my husband – all of me. I am brave and free. I work hard to be the best I can be everyday. Then, with a mixture of confidence and humility, hope and love, I submit myself to him. It is not a groveling. It is an offering. There will always be things I wish were different. Like any artist, I know the limits of my skills, but I am just me. I can only be me.
Submitting means being willing to stop hiding. You can write a book and never show anyone. You can be married and never really show your spouse your whole, true self; or you can put it all out there – all your words and body and skin and dreams.
This is as beautiful as I am.
This is as graceful as I am.
This is as brave as I am.
This is as broken as I am.
This is as scared as I am.
This is as complicated as I am.
Will you accept me and catapult me to a new level of freedom and success as a child of God?
^^^^That is a Godly marriage^^^^
Maybe Submission is Romance
To you I give … ME. I give my best, my worst, my ugly and my beautiful. To you, like sunlight on a tight flower, I open. To you I turn and face and unfurl until there is no fear left, only wide stretched petals of soul and body and spirit and breath. To you I show the center of me – the part where new life is born. To you I say, Here I am.
And you respond by receiving. You take me and instead of using me up, you expand me. I submit myself to you and I bloom because of your love.
God calls us to more. By submitting to God, we are offering to live brave, open, daring lives – where each day we show up and give our everything. By submitting to each other, we are called to more – more freedom, more confidence, more beauty, more strength, more vulnerability, more adventure.
In a loving marriage, we have someone to speak to us and touch us with the love of God, the kind that takes our submission not as a neck to stand on but as a beauty and power to expand.
“Yours is the light by which my spirit’s born: – you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.”
― E.E. Cummings
*****
Posted in Free Flying Faith, Love and Making It | Tagged: beauty, honor, Love, love and making it, marriage, submission | 12 Comments »
Posted by Nicole on March 19, 2014
Love and Making It in Spring session is over… but we have something hot coming this summer.
*****
Love and Making It – All Women – July 1st {single, married, don’t matter}
Love and Making It – For Couples – June 21st {for both partners to do together}
*****
Listen. We are bombarded with sights and sounds that tell us we are just not good enough and neither is our spouse. Let’s rebel against all of those messages together.
Let Love and Making It give you hope and show you the beauty you already have inside AND out – whether you are single or married.
If you are married, let Love and Making It help you and your spouse find the fun and desire and communication skills to really take your sex life to the next level.
Interested? Let us know. We are want to start a revolution… a rebellion… where all the people who thought they were disqualified from the “good” or “sexy” or “beautiful” life ALL get together and say, “Starting TODAY we are making new rules.”
We can show you how. This is about us choosing ourselves because it’s just a total waste to let one more day go by feeling bad about any of it.
Sign up to be the first to hear more info on classes and for a few inspirational words to make tomorrow even better than today.
(your time is precious. I have over 50,000 unread emails in my personal email from unnecessary things I signed up for. The emails you get from 1,000 Strands will be infrequent and useful and your information will be private)
THIS IS THE POST FOR OUR SPRING CLASS BUT IT’LL GIVE YOU MORE OF AN IDEA OF WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT… KEEP READING.
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees. – Pablo Neruda
LOVE and MAKING IT in Spring
(If you already know you are ready to join us, scroll to the bottom to sign up now.)
It’s time, my friend. It’s time for a renewed sense of wonder and connection to spring up in you. It’s time for your body to feel like home. It’s time for you to have greater experiences in your body than you thought were possible. It’s time to feel more awake, satisfied, open, and passionate.
What is the Love and Making It eCourse all about?
Well, sex, mostly. And your body. And your fears. And your marriage. And your sense of humor. And how sex can actually be medicine and dessert. How sex can be more than an obligation or something you do when you love someone and are not currently angry with them… How you can feel sexy and fulfilled NOW in THIS BODY.
It’s time to love your body. It’s just time.
It’s time to look forward to having sex with your husband. It’s just time.
It’s time to learn ways to overcome the obstacles in your sex life. It’s just time.
It’s time to switch from fixing yourself to enjoying yourself. It’s just time.
We spend so much time, money and energy trying to get fit, get smart, get holy, get beautiful… Get through it, Get over it, Get it out of the way.
This class is different. This class is not about getting – although you will get some. This class is about being given gifts.
You will be given gifts. The gifts of FREEDOM, SEX, BEAUTY, SAFETY, COURAGE, PLAY… you will finally own your body and sensuality in a way that allows you to give your whole self – not out of obligation or routine – but out of a bubbling, joyful, sexy desire to share.
In the body you have RIGHT NOW, you can feel beautiful and have truly great sex.
Do not let fear or busyness stop you from receiving this gift.
After years of research and indepth conversations with 100’s of women, I know this class, and the space it creates, literally changes lives and marriages… not because I am awesome (which we can discuss further) but because this way of looking at our sexuality and our bodies works. This is not a prescription, it is a new description of how all of this is meant to be – how we were designed for so much more {in bed}.
**********
A few words from past classmates:
“I think the thing about this class that has given me the most hope is that there is no assumption that some people will never get there, which is the message often given. Here, it has always been ‘Yes you can. And here’s how. And it will be uncomfortable but keep going.'”
**
“He looked at me and said, “I’m SO glad you are taking this class. Because no matter how many times I tell you these things, I know you can’t hear them from me. I’m so glad you’ve heard them from Nicole.” We went on to have the most amazing, connected time together ever. EVER. I’m celebrating because even though there have been high highs and low lows throughout this course, we have never had a dialogue that open about this, and I have never felt so connected to him and to my body before.”
**
“So even though I knew we were both so exhausted, I said to my husband, “Can we go to bed together tonight?” and when he asked why I said, “I really need to feel connected to you tonight, I really need to have sex and be held and know we’re in this together” and I was super nervous, but he didn’t shame me or question it or anything. We just put our laptops away and went to bed. And last night nothing changed with our situation, but something holy happened. I felt connected and known by my hubs in a new way. I finally got what Nicole’s been talking about when she says sex can be therapy and healing.”
**
“I have waited for these words for ten years. Asked the question “what in the world is sex? Why would God make it? What does it have to do with his heart??” It always seemed a separate thing from him, from relationship with him. Shocking, yes. But I’m ready to engage it. Thank you.”
**
“Nicole, I hope you plan on offering this regularly! My husband and I do premarital mentoring at our church and I just suggested your course as a resource for our ladies.”
**
“This is epic….transformational!”
**
“And then after we made love last night and were laying there a realization hit me. I told him that I feel as if I am waking up from a long sleep. That my whole body has been asleep, numb, and that I feel connected to myself again. Being awake is wonderful!”
**
“My husband said Nicole is a genius!”
**
“Nicole that is a huge breakthrough. Huge. Your influence led to REAL, practical, hands on healing.”
**
“I was raw. I told him what I was missing and needed. We decided to give ourselves permission to laugh in bed as we navigate our physical challenges. We are just now getting out of bed and one of his last comments was “thank you for being brave and telling me what you were feeling. I think this is a new day for us.”
**
“Your love and making it series is setting me free. My husband has never felt so loved and frankly I have never been more satisfied. I think this is your gift. I want you to talk about bodies and sex all day every day because your truth is seriously beautiful and deeply needed.”
**********
If you think the church only gave you instructions on how to NOT have sex, but never the tools to help you LOVE sex, take this course with me.
If you need a reboot in your sex life, take this course.
If you love your husband more than life, but still don’t always look forward to having sex, take this course.
If you need a safe community of women to talk with about sex and body challenges, take this course.
If you want to find new, fun ways to make sex hot, take this course.
If you want to turn to your husband in a few weeks and say, “Honey, I have a headache. Can we please have sex?” Take this course.
HOW WE WILL DO THIS THING beginning April 10th:
-
28 Days of PASSIONALS (A Worksheet/Love Letters to inspire and challenge and ignite you… Think of it like a waterfall of new, beautiful ways to see yourself and sex.)
-
4 Live Video Workshops where we discuss the Passionals and other issues that have come up in your class. (Recorded in case you miss any.)
-
A Secret Facebook group where we will cheer each other on, laugh, share our stories and basically talk daily about all the amazing things you are doing throughout the month.
**After you sign up, you will also have the chance to sign up for a one-on-one coaching call with Nicole**
THE COST:
For the 28 days of Passionals, workshops and daily support the class price is $65.
As with all my courses, there are a few scholarships available. Please send an email to 1000strands@gmail.com if you want to apply for a scholarship.
WHAT TO DO NOW:
SIGN UP TODAY. Use the button below to go to Paypal and please fill out the form below with the email you use on FB so I can add you to the cozy secret group. Any questions? Email me at 1000strands@gmail.com
Posted in Beauty SOS47, Love and Making It, Uncategorized | Tagged: beauty, body, eCourse, Love, love and making it, sex | 2 Comments »
Posted by Nicole on January 23, 2014
I need to ask my body for forgiveness.
As I finalize the plan for our “Love and Making It” course, I’ve been more aware of my body. I’ve noticed that I tend to see my body as separate from “me”. There’s ME and then there’s this body I am inside that has been connected to ME by nerves and ligaments, like I am in a sci-fi movie and have been assigned this body. Do you think of yourself in pieces like that ever? Is your body YOU or a separated part that you observe from outside sometimes?
I think it’s normal to acknowledge our different elements: body, emotions, ego, mind, spirit, soul – whatever you name them.
The problem comes when we start hating one of our own pieces.
I need to ask my body for forgiveness. I’ve been divided and cruel to that piece of me. (You can read some of my story here.) Sometimes it is our own divided selves that need forgiveness and reconciliation. We cannot go on living with hate inside us and expect the rest of our lives to be full of love and passion.
Being kissed is way better when you are fully connected to your body,
like it is yours and it is good and it should be kissed.
I cannot receive love through a body that I hate.
And I have hated in the past. So, here goes. I am asking for forgiveness.
*****
Dearest,
Will you please forgive me for not loving you? I have not loved you.
I have used you. I have hurt you.
I am sorry.
I was so disappointed in you that I could not love you. And that was weak of me. And so selfish.
My brain, my ego, wanted you as a trophy to trot around at parties and in fancy clothes. My ego wanted to show you off. I needed a Beauty to reflect my power. I was using you. And when you couldn’t pass as a trophy, I hated you. I wanted a divorce. I wanted a new life without you, but we were stuck – you and I – and rather than learning to love the real you, I just resented you. I withheld love to punish you.
Why couldn’t you just be beautiful? Athletic. Graceful. Healthy. Attractive. Why couldn’t you do that for me? That would have been so much easier.
When someone else wanted to love you or touch you, I allowed it; sometimes I pushed you into it, but I hardly ever participated. Their hands touched you, but never me. I watched. I judged that other person for finding you attractive. I told you they were lying about finding you beautiful. I told you they were using you too; I thought they were. And you believed me too.
Will you please forgive me? I am realizing slowly just how wrong I was. Will you be patient with me as I learn?
Please forgive me. I cannot live without you. I do not want to live dead lives alongside each other. I want to live totally connected, united, healthy, excited to spend another day together.
I am learning to be grateful for you – the real you, but first I must ask your forgiveness.
My dearest, soft, warm, Body …. Will you please forgive me?
I must confess, I wrote you off. I decided long ago that you were the weakest link in “me”. I would focus on my strengths and play up my best features: My imagination is gorgeous. My laugh is pure joy. My words are wise. My perspective is flexible and empathetic. My humor is just the right amount of dirty.
These are some of my strengths. They make me a great member of society, a good person to have around. Alive. These make me feel alive.
And I have used them all to escape you whenever possible.
Body, you have felt like a prison.
I have dreamed of escaping you. Escaping into another body or just no body at all. You. With your asymmetrical spine and tiny height. With the parts that hurt and will not behave. I wanted out.
The only way I can be touched is through you, and you feel wrong. I want to be loved through skin that is smooth and tight and shaped just how I like – I want to be touched through a body that feels graceful and functional, without pain or embarrassment.
I want things you cannot give me and I have hated you for it.
I. Am. So. Sorry.
I am ready to learn to love the real you. Will please forgive me?
I choose You.
I Choose you.
I CHOOSE YOU.
Will you be mine?
I vow to love you every single day of our lives. I will be proud of you and boast about you. I will take care of you, protect you and let you protect me. I will learn to love the real you, just as you are. I will find my worth in the breaths I take and the courage I muster each day – not in the shape of your legs…..
Until the day that I DO find pride in the actual shape of your legs! Yes!
These legs. This breath. This hair. These hands. This smile. This age. This day. Today. Tomorrow too.
I am grateful and proud of your strength and your beauty. This shape. This moment. You are precious and miraculous. You are mine and you are good.
I love you.
*****
My ego and psyche needed to ask my body for forgiveness. Do you? What do you need to ask the sweet animal of your body to forgive you for?
Posted in Beauty SOS47, Love and Making It | Tagged: body, forgiveness, hate, letters, Love | 6 Comments »
Posted by Nicole on January 17, 2014
Then, don’t forget to email 1000strands@gmail.com
to let me know you are in!
*****
We think we have to love our bodies in order to really enjoy sex. But…
What if we had sex in order to enjoy our bodies?
What if our marriage {bed} could be the place where we bring our whole selves, without fear or pretense, to experience freedom, fun, excitement, healing, passion, and beauty… LIFE to the Fullest?
What if you were allowed to feel beautiful in bed?
After talking with hundreds of women about this topic (online, in small groups, around dinner tables, in secret FB groups, and even on stage) I can tell you without a doubt that women, especially Christian women, are not at home in their bodies and not enjoying sex the way we could. I bet that doesn’t surprise you. We know we are not happy in our bodies. We know we drag ourselves to “business time” kinds of love making. We adore our husbands, but sex is just… complicated.
We go into the nights of our marriages with a familiar conversation between ourselves and our spouses… sometimes these happen out loud with the actual husband… sometimes they are all in our minds.
“Hello, I am me. The me that you married. Still me. I didn’t magically grow breasts or lose weight since last time we met here.”
“Hello, I know. I like you.”
“I’m all you’ve got, I suppose. Wanna have sex? I hear you like sex because, you know, you are a male. And I’m your only option. Sorry about that. Here. Here’s my body. Let’s do something with it, but I’m tired so please don’t take too long. And please ignore the ugly parts so you can get turned on and I can feel like a good wife. Ok? Bring the lubricant.”
There’s so much more for us! It does not have to stay that way! It can get so much better! Mind-blowingly better.
Join me for 28 days of support, counseling, laughs, hands-on activities, and soul-searching. In the end, you will feel more convinced than ever (maybe even for the first time) that YOUR BODY is BEAUTIFUL and the link between your body and your soul is much stronger than you knew.
You get to create your own world where YOU are the definition of beautiful. YOU are the definition of sexy. Your spouse is the definition of sexy! You are not his consolation prize. You are spectacular.
*****
This February, choose love for yourself and for your spouse. Come, spend a month with us as we learn to love this body and love with this body. It’s time to come alive {in bed}
*****
Love and Making It is designed to:
*Help identify what keeps us from enjoying sex
*Inspire us to excavate our desires and passions
*Free us from the lies we believe about our beauty and worth
*Give us tools and practices to help us find our BRAVE in bed
*Tattoo truths on our hearts so we never again forget how BEAUTIFUL we are
*extra bonus: Your husband will be very, very, very grateful and happy.
*****
WHEN: February 1-28, 2014
WHAT: Daily inspiration and prompts from Nicole. A specifically designed, confidential FB group for community and support. Three group video conference calls with everyone who can make it, designed to encourage and challenge. One heart-to-heart with just Nicole.
WHO: Married women will get the most out of this course, but all are welcome.
PRICE: $28, Honesty, a Sense of Humor, CONFIDENTIALITY (there are 2 scholarships available for the money. No one can give you humor or integrity)
28 days – designed to provide a new freedom and beauty {in bed} for $28
(CLASS IS NOW CLOSED. A NEW CLASS WILL START IN THE SPRING. EMAIL 1000STRANDS@GMAIL.COM FOR MORE INFORMATION.)
HERE’S HOW TO SIGN UP:
1. Pay through Paypal.
2. Send me an email at 1000strands@gmail.com letting me know you paid and MOST IMPORTANTLY with the email address you use on Facebook so I can find you and add you to the group.
Once you sign up, you will soon receive a welcome email from me and an invitation to the secret FB group that will start to heat up on January 31st. Be sure to send me an email at 1000strands@gmail.com with your name and Facebook email address.
I will close the sign ups on February 1st or when we reach our maximum. I want to know each woman and talk to every one of you one-on-one so the class will be limited. SIGN UP TODAY!
**Plus! Because of a generous donor, we have 2 scholarships so please email me if you’re stuck in a really rough patch. (1000strands@gmail.com subject line “Love and Making It Scholarship)
Posted in Beauty SOS47, Love and Making It, Uncategorized | Tagged: beauty, eCourse, Love, sex | 8 Comments »
Posted by Nicole on January 15, 2014
Take Care of You: Body and Soul
Free Pictures and Art to inspire the love and bravery, passion and beauty in YOU.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: art, inspiration, Love, pictures | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Nicole on January 13, 2014
God, when I sit in this room, I can feel both alone and the opposite of alone.
I can be aware of the table and my coffee. I can feel the air moving in and out to my nose. There is a chair beneath me and a black cat walking back and forth around it all.
I can choose to be aware of You, too: The I Am, The Presence. The One who is always here. I can choose to feel you in that air and in my bones.
God, when I sit in this room, I can feel both alone and the opposite of alone.
I can choose to see you as separate from me. In this way, you are here and yet different from the Me I consciously know. You are a loving relationship that requires space between us. I pray and you come. I request and you give.
I can also choose to see you as essentially in me. In this way, you are here as surely as I am here. You are a loving Presence in my cells that requires a connection with my own mind and body. Here, to love myself is to be loved by you. Here, to accept the body I am in, is to accept that this body is Us. Here, to pray for peace is to know that the peace is here waiting to be accepted already in my guts. To ask you to be with me would be like asking myself to go hang out sometime.
You are here. You are more here in and with me and available to me than my own thoughts and emotions and needs. You are the beautiful, quiet option that I don’t always know how to pick.
Jesus, I have no choice but to believe you are here in whichever way I manage to choose. You are present. YWHW – Presence.
Your bible is confusing. Your people are a mess. And yet, impossible as it seems, as real as this table or the lungs in my chest, God, You are here.
Sometimes I think you just want to be noticed. To be witnessed. I recognize the need in me to be noticed and I wonder if this is part of your image in me now – something holy demanding to be noticed in the pain, in the love, in the people, in the dirt.
I see you. In the trees. Bursting sap. Falling pine cones. Strong branches with kids hanging off them.
I see you. In the blue sky. Endless whispers. Wind from the atmosphere’s edges all the way down to my face.
I see you. In the people. Hand-holding. Laughing so hard they can’t open their eyes.
I see you. In me. Skin upon blood, ligaments, muscles and bones. A heart that beats. A body that breathes. Hopes. Loves. Hurts.
I see you in this body you made to fit this soul just right.
God, you are here as surely as I am here.
Sometimes love is just choosing to see.
Run with Joy 1000strands.com
Posted in Beauty SOS47, Free Flying Faith | Tagged: faith, God, hope, jesus, Love, Presence, seen | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Nicole on January 10, 2014
Linking up again with Five Minute Friday at the lovely Lisa-Jo Baker‘s.
The rules: write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking. Hop over to her place to find out the full scoop behind FMF, and to visit other posts that were freely written in just five minutes.
****
This week’s prompt: SEE – a Five Minute Friday Post
You are not invisible.
When you clean Barbie hair out of the sink after her impromptu trip to the kitchen scissor salon.
When you search over an hour for the missing toy, place it proudly on your son’s pillow, and he barely flinches – despite throwing a full-on fit about it that morning.
When you collect all the pink cups for a special-request tea party, that your kids play for exactly 3 minutes before running to another room.
When you clear off the dining room table, again.
When, on January 10th, you remove and wrap up the Christmas ornaments by yourself.
When you are sick and make your own tea but don’t drink it because you’re needed in the living room to find that one episode of that one show that we love and can’t find, but nothing else will do.
When you clean all afternoon and it looks the same.
When the cat pukes and you Clorox the floor and no one ever knows.
You are not invisible. As long as all of us, working all day long to make the lives of our families just that little bit better, remember and SEE each other,
we are not invisible.
While I do dishes, I remember you are too.
While I clean up cat puke, I remember you are doing gross things too.
While I clean off the table AGAIN, I remember you are too.
While I search high and low for the “lucky shirt”, I remember you are too.
While I read through every episode of Jake and the Neverland Pirates so we can find the current favorite, I remember you are too.
We may each be serving different little families, but we are all serving the same big Family.
More About Family: HERE and HERE and HERE
Posted in Honest Home | Tagged: faith, family, Five Minute Friday, invisible, kids, Love | 5 Comments »
Posted by Nicole on December 18, 2013
One week til Christmas. One week til we celebrate God being with us.
For some people, their lives are so full of family and friends, hot chocolate and Christmas Lights, that the darkness is just a shadow in the corner or a fading streetlight down the road. For others, this is a time where the darkness threatens to swallow them whole.
Light flaunts its warm power in the life of one and barely flicks the skin of another covered instead in cold, dark loneliness.
Advent is the waiting. The waiting 100s of years for God to come and make things right. Waiting generations for triumph and light and love to flood the world. Waiting for God to be with us – really with us. We need God with us. God, who says He is Light and Love, and yet seems to leave us lonely and scared in dark places.
God, are you avoiding me?
Where are you when I need you? Psalm 10:1-2
Advent is the waiting. We have no choice. Reminded of our powerlessness against the speed of time, we wait. We cannot save ourselves or our friends from the pain of waiting on God to BE WITH US.
With Christmas comes the promise of a future where we are whole and full. Christmas is the promise that while the pain is still here, God is doing a new thing. He came down to sit in the dark with us.
And this is what He also asked us to do for each other too. While we wait, we wait together. I will wait with you.
The light breaks through dark’s hard shell at the exact points we meet each other. At the loving touch of a friend, a spark ignites.
The spark that says we are going to make it.
Every day this week, I will be posting a story or an essay on advent and waiting and God with us.
Today’s first story is written by Melissa Hawks. A friend I met through adventure and spontaneity. She knows how to tell a story and she knows how to find God in the dark.
This is a story of sitting in the dark and waiting together – seeing the sparks of God’s great love in our small acts of faith.
****
Hookers, Heathens, and Me by Melissa Hawks
I left early that dark morning, stopping to get gas on my way. It was freezing and rainy as I stood next to the gas pump, tears threatening to spill over and mix with the drizzle. Standing on tiptoe to keep my too long yoga pants from soaking in the puddles, I was so lost in my own painful thoughts I almost didn’t hear her.
I was jerked from my inner turmoil when an “Excuse me,” escaped her chattering teeth. She was beautiful and had a black eye. A leopard print chiffon shirt bared her stomach, a tiny skirt, and platform heels to rival the ones I tend to wear covered the rest of her. Her blonde fro curled wildly in all directions and her eye make-up was smeared from tears she had cried. At the moment, mine was a mirror image.
“Can I pay you $10 to give me a ride to my car in the parking garage over there? I just got beat up really bad by the last guy I was with. I don’t mind riding in the backseat.” The pain in her eyes.
“Get in the car, girl, and don’t worry about paying me. A girl’s got to help a girl out.” I didn’t really put any thought into it. She was shivering and in pain. “Of course, I’ll drive you. And no, you’re not sitting in the backseat. Get up here in front.” I tossed my bags in the backseat and made room for her.
She climbed up into my Jeep and began to cry. “This man. He just started slamming my head into the TV. Why am I still here? Why am I still doing this? I need to go home. Back to San Jose.”
I was empty. Beyond empty. I was at the bottom of the pit called empty, broken open. All I could offer was this “Our choices, baby, we make them all by ourselves and we have to remember we are in control of our destiny. We have to choose better.”
Sitting in my car with a prostitute/hooker/call girl who had just been beaten up by a john, I’ve never felt more broken. There were no words to her about God. There was just an understanding about her brokenness because I was experiencing it myself.
I think that’s what love does in the face of broken. It doesn’t look away. It holds the face of pain in its hands and says “you’re not too much for me.”
She must have seen that deep pain in me too, because right before climbing out of the car she leaned over. In a cloud of perfume she hugged me and kissed my cheek. “We’re gonna make it, girl. We’re gonna be okay,” she whispered in my ear.
Some days we can only make one good choice in the midst of a dozen awful ones. Some days we can’t rescue someone else. Some days we can not even rescue ourselves. Instead redemption comes from the most unlikely of sources.
No promises that we’ll be unscathed or that we’ll come out whole on the other side. No false illusion covering the a fact that it’s a brutal and ugly process. Not even a pledge of some small beauty that awaits at the end. Only one simple truth.
“We’re gonna make it.”
God speaks to me through hookers and heathens. Maybe because I am one.
****
Melissa Hawks is a curator of brand and story at Hawks & Rock. She is discovering what it means to write her own story and how God lives in the detours.For her personal brand of awkward, space geekyness, and inspiration follow her @melissahawks account Branding wisdom can be found at her company’s twitter @hawksandrock and the Hawks & Rock website and blog can be found at hawksandrock.com.
Posted in Free Flying Faith, How Can I Help | Tagged: advent, Christmas, community, darkness, faith, God, jesus, light, Love | 7 Comments »
Posted by Nicole on December 2, 2013
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!
****
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.
****
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.
****
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.
Posted in Free Flying Faith, Love and Making It | Tagged: Anam Cara, Dan Allender, discipleship, Love, marriage, sacrament, sex, spiritual director, Tara Owens | 8 Comments »
Posted by Nicole on November 29, 2013
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.
****
****
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.
****
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.
****
And so, she lay bare and he began writing.
****
One word after another.
After another.
Truth of her talent.
Truth of her gifts.
Of her goodness.
Of her.
Words to confirm renewed promises.
And God’s design.
Truth she vows to believe.
As they soak into her skin and heart.
****
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
Posted in Beauty SOS47, Love and Making It | Tagged: adultery, art, heartbreak, hope, Love, marriage, photography | 26 Comments »