Marriage Takes Work

“I won’t have any problems in my marriage,” my 19 year old informs me.  I try not to laugh, but his statement is so naïve—so ludicrous—that I can’t control the chuckle that escapes me.

“Every marriage has problems.  It’s the nature of the beast.  It is impossible to bring two people together from completely different backgrounds with different life experiences, different temperaments—not to mention the difficulties that arise from just being different genders—and try to live as one. In fact, it is nearly impossible. “

“Well, you and Dad seemed to make it work.”

“Only because we never wanted a divorce at the same time.” 

And that is the reality of marriage.  Matrimony can be messy. It takes work and dedication. It takes perseverance. It takes humility. But most importantly, it takes faith.  Marriage is the most difficult and the most rewarding relationship you will ever be in. However, it doesn’t just “happen.” Like any living thing, it needs to be nourished and nurtured. Without those elements, it will die.

Many people look upon my marriage and imagine that Woody and I have it all figured out.  We get along so well and we never complain. Heck, I wrote a book about intimacy, so I must have it all figured out, right? Wrong. Marriage never survives on cruise control. In fact, it will crash and burn with devastating results. Every day, we must dedicate our lives to living inside of God’s will for our union; and every day, we must both commit ourselves to the demanding role of “spouse.”

If you are looking for the fairy tale ending, marriage will disappoint. If you are disillusioned enough to believe that marriage can be trouble free, think again. Anyone who tells you he or she has an effortless marriage is lying. Marriage takes determination, but through the struggle comes satisfaction and great reward.

The Subject of My Next Book

I was ready.  Somehow I had managed to become the proud owner of the book, A Year of Health and Beauty by Beverly and Vidal Sassoon.  Within the pages of that book lay the secret to my future success. I would become fit and fabulous. I dedicated myself to the regiment detailed within the pages and knew that within a year’s time, I would be the most popular girl at Burrton High School.  My dishwater blonde hair and braces would vanish and instead I would have golden blond tresses and pearly white teeth radiating from a smiling face full of health and beauty.

It didn’t work. After about six months of self-discipline, exercise, and skipping the Dr. Pepper, I realized that my 98 pound frame which seemed to have an aversion to puberty would never develop into the full bodied beauty which I could clearly see in my mind’s eye.  I was hopeless.  As if to validate the very low opinion I had of my 15 year old self, I was ridiculed mercilessly by classmates and felt invisible to my parents.  I would never be the “it” girl, surrounded by adoring peers hanging onto my every word. No one would ever ask me for my telephone number. “How many times do you have to run through the shower before you get wet?” a male student queried one day. I was the ugly one, the butt of every joke, the girl from the poor family living in the run down trailer. Not even Beverly and Vidal Sassoon could make a beauty out of me.

All my adolescent self wanted was to be loved and accepted, a feeling which I truly believe every young lady desires. I will investigate those feelings in my next book, and I believe I have the beauty secret the Sassoons were missing.  I am excited for the opportunity to share it with you.

So, here we go again down another road on a different sort of journey.

A Letter to Teen Girls Concerning Intimacy

Dear Beautiful Young Lady,

Developing an exclusive relationship with someone before you are spiritually, emotionally, and financially prepared to commit to marriage is morally wrong. The Bible is very clear that love must be sincere.  Strong emotional attachments lead to physical intimacy which is never condoned by God before marriage. I have seen too many young couples  who have become emotionally intimate struggle to keep from becoming physically intimate, a temptation that never would have been an issue had they remained friends. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, teens who are dating exclusively are more likely to have sex earlier than teens who do not.  

Every time a young person becomes emotionally intimate with another person, she is giving satan ammunition to use against her later in life once she is married and enduring the very real and normal struggles that come from being married. Satan will bring that person from the past into the present and start asking, “What if…?” questions. Every attachment provides more ammunition. Every attachment starts to wear away at the guard rails God put into place to protect the emotional intimacy in a marriage.  Every time you give your heart away, you give away a part of you that you can never get back. You are stealing all those “firsts” from your future spouse—first love, first hug, first spark, first kiss.  Developing romantic love and loyalty with a young man is like living out one of the privileges of marriage without the responsibility of being married. It also tends to quickly move a relationship toward physical intimacy. Also, shouldn’t that exclusive emotional attachment be reserved for your future husband?

I am saying all of this because I ask and I pray that you consider the risks of emotional attachments that may or may not lead to marriage. Proverbs 4:23 says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” Guard your heart as you develop any relationship. Make friendship the goal, not romance. Think of your future spouse at all times and whether or not you will feel completely comfortable in the future revealing every aspect of your relationship with him. He should never feel as if he has lost a part of you to another man. Your heart belongs wholly to him.

I do apologize if I have made you feel uncomfortable in any way. That is not my intent. My goal is to ensure that you go into your marriage someday completely pure emotionally and physically.  You are building the foundation for intimacy in your marriage right now. Let that foundation be built on the Rock, by living out the principles He has placed within His word to allow you success.

Blessings,

Kim

Love, Honor, and Cherish?

I have a confession to make.  I have not kept my wedding vows.  I promised to “love, honor, and cherish” my husband until “death do us part,” and I barely made it through our first week of marriage before I broke at least one of those promises.

Love—honor—cherish.  Are they meaningless words echoed while gazing into the eyes of your future spouse while dreaming of the reception and honeymoon?  Or are they words that fall from your tongue while your families and friends witness the exchange of vows—vows which many of us never contemplate even once after the ceremony is over?  What do these three little transitive verbs mean?  I mean, most of us realize what it is to love; but what about to honor and to cherish?

To honor someone is to respect, to revere, and to treat him with deference.  It is to treat him with the highest regard in words and actions.  To cherish someone is very similar.  To cherish my husband, I need to treat him in an encouraging manner by protecting, aiding, and attending.  Even my mind should harbor thoughts which hold him dear and embrace him with affection. 

Proverbs 31:11-12 states, “Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value. She brings him good not harm, all the days of her life.”  That is honor.  You will notice, these verses do not stipulate to bring him good only if he brings you good first.  This is a formidable imperative.  Am I the only one who finds it daunting?  I don’t want to honor Woody on those days when I feel as if he is being obnoxious and overbearing.  And what is this with him always thinking he has to be right?  I hate having to swallow my pride in order to make peace. 

So how do we go about keeping our vows? By going to the source of love.  God is love!  When I consider how He has given me excellence when I deserved death, then swallowing my pride in order to bring about peace becomes simple.  And just as Proverbs reveals, “A gentle answer turns away wrath.”  Once I have replenished my supply, loving, honoring, and cherishing Woody is effortless.

Love, honor, and cherish—if you are struggling to keep these vows, meditate upon what the words mean.  Identify the areas in your life where you are not putting the words into action and then go to the source of all love and wisdom, and soon keeping  your wedding vows will become effortless.

What Does God Have To Do With Intimacy, Part 2

Read Genesis 2:8-25.  In verse 18 what does God say is not good for man?

God immediately recognized Adam’s need for companionship—that it was not good for man to be alone.  God had brought all of the animals to Adam, but Adam had not been able to find a companion comparable to him.

Take another look at Genesis 2:23.  What does Adam recognize immediately concerning his relationship with the woman?  He immediately realized that Eve was a part of him, the intimate connection was made.   What does it mean to you to become “one flesh?”

There is an intimacy in becoming “one flesh” that we have lost sight of in today’s society.  Since the “sexual revolution” we no longer understand the tender familiarity that should take place between a husband and a wife when they become “one flesh.”  It should be a sweet mystery to be discovered within the protective bonds of a marriage.

Verse twenty-five reads, “The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”  I love that visual!  To stand before each other, completely exposed, vulnerable in every sense and to experience no shame, no threat of wrongdoing by the other, to completely trust!  Have you ever stood in front of your husband completely naked, literally and figuratively?  If you have never been able to stand before your husband utterly defenseless in your nakedness, what has prevented you from doing so?

Marriage was created on the sixth day in the Garden of Eden.  God’s plan was for a man and a woman to become one and in doing so, stand unashamed before Him and each other entirely stripped of all pretenses, trusting, loving, and knowing.  We can’t genuinely know another until we have stood before him without any barriers blocking our view.

In Genesis 24:62-66 we can read the story of Isaac and Rebekah.  Rebekah was an answer to prayer.  She went willingly with Abraham’s servant away from all that she loved and knew to marry a man whom she had never met.  All she truly knew was that he was a man of God.  In this passage we are invited to take a glimpse into that first meeting.  We see Rebekah climbing down from her camel and covering herself.  You can almost picture Isaac taking her in, realizing God’s choice for his life.  And then verse 66 says it all, “he married Rebekah…and he loved her; and Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.”  She was his comfort, his love, his answer to prayer.  He took her into his tent without any shame, without any deception.  They became one flesh and completely understood what it meant to be in a covenant, intimate relationship with a spouse. 

Again, we see God’s plan for intimacy in a marriage.  We should be comforted and loved.  Exposed and trusting.  These two passages do not even begin to encompass all that God has planned for us as His children.  How excited I was to discover God’s purpose for my marriage!  He has the same plans for you and your marriage.  Think on that for a moment…God wants you to find love, trust, and comfort.  Do you trust God to fulfill His intentions for your marriage?  If not, ask Him now to give you the faith to know He is a God of purpose and promise.

“Thank you, Lord, for your unfailing love.  Thank you for planning my life and letting the union with my spouse be a part of Your plan.  Help me to trust Your goals for my marriage.  Let me feel Your loving presence within my home, constantly holding me up and reassuring me.  In Jesus’ holy name I pray.   Amen”   

What Does God Have to Do with Intimacy? Part 1

It is hard to understand what our relationships with others are to look like until we have a personal relationship with our creator God.   Until we have crawled into His loving presence and have experienced His grace, we cannot fully comprehend what it means to completely trust without fear of rejection.  Until we have experienced His unconditional love, it is virtually impossible to understand true intimacy.  Unfortunately, this all-consuming knowledge of God did not happen until after I was married.

To say my relationship with Woody suffered much during the first several years of our marriage is an understatement.  I was a brand new, recommitted Christian, and my husband was somewhat Gnostic.  He believed in a God; he just wasn’t sure how personal or real that “God” should be.  To complicate matters, we had had a child before our nuptials.  To start off a marriage with a child and unequally yoked had definitely not been God’s plan.  

During my first year of marriage, I began to feel God’s loving presence as He wooed me back into a committed relationship with Him.  I fell “head over heels” in love with our wonderful Creator and everything in my life took on a new appearance.  God transformed my ideas as to the type of wife and mother I should be.  The journey, nonetheless, would prove to be difficult and full of obstacles, the biggest obstacle being my pride.

I praise God that during this time Woody was patient and stayed the course.  The new Christian I had become was judgmental, stubborn, and self-righteous.  Woody’s every action came under my scrutinizing gaze.  If he did anything that I deemed “un-Christ-like,” I was the first to notify him of it.  Our relationship did not grow closer as it should have.  My faith had put a wedge between us.  God slowly changed my heart, and as I matured I saw my sin of pride for what it was.  My stubbornness became submission; my judgmental, self-righteousness became humility.  I learned to bite my tongue and let God deal with Woody’s heart.  Regrettably, the damage had been done in my relationship with him.  We had become so emotionally distant that I didn’t know how to traverse the expanse that separated us.

It was during this time that I came to the realization that intimacy has absolutely nothing to do with sex and everything to do with a spiritual connection.  God has everything to do with intimacy.  He created you to have an intimate relationship with your spouse.  Somehow during the course of history, we have skewed the definition of intimacy that God has planned for His children.  The first step in regaining that closeness is understanding God’s plan for marriage and how God is intricately involved in our relationships.  Only then can we achieve intimacy with another person.

Sex Is Hateful

So many people young and old choose to have sex outside of marriage. We are a nation where freedom to choose is flaunted as the distinguishing factor that separates us from inferior cultures.  We may choose to engage in any activity—within the boundaries of the law—even if it is dangerous and destructive. During the sexual revolution we were “liberated” from Judeo-Christian standards which taught that sex outside of marriage was a “sin.” Now we live in a modern society where each man may adopt whatever moral standard he chooses, which means “sin” is an antiquated idea spoken by religious fanatics.  So, the choice to have pre- or extra-marital sex should not come as a surprise to anyone nor should it be spoken against.  However, that is exactly what I intend to do.

Sex is hateful.  It is a physical activity devoid of emotion or commitment. It is about self-gratification, full of lust and devoid of love.  It is a passionate act in which self-control has been disregarded or never existed.  It thinks only of the moment and never of the consequences.  Sex was never part of God’s design.  However, intimacy was and is.  By God’s design, physical intimacy was meant to bind two people together for life as one unit. The act itself was the covenant which made man and woman husband and wife. Making love was and is supposed to be just that—an extension and expression of a married couple’s love.   So why are we short-changing our lives and settling for sex?

Girls, the only way to ensure that sex is not merely a physical act—that it truly is love making—is to wait until he promises not only to have you but to also hold you through sickness and health, through the valleys as well as the mountain top experiences. If he really loves you, he will want to wait and completely commit.  Look at King David’s daughter, Tamar, in 2 Samuel 13.  If you read the story, you will learn that Amnon desired Tamar.  Amnon had sex with Tamar and then threw her away, wasted goods. He stole her youth, beauty, and innocence.  There was nothing left for Tamar to give. Amnon had taken the most valuable thing from her.  Yet, he had sworn he was “in love” and would die without her. However, as soon as he had taken her, he hated her as much as he had claimed to love her. Sex without the sacrifice of commitment is cruel and hateful.

Lust is not love.  It will fade. True love waits and is unwavering.  Why would someone ask you to wait for marriage but yet not expect to wait for physical intimacy? How is that love?  True love commits.  So, what will you choose, a moment of physical pleasure or a lifetime of committed love?