I'll just tell you. It's a post on sex. (part 1)

(chalkboard art by my big girl)

To those of you who are the biggest fans of my blog, yes I'm talking to you, dearest parents and in-laws (you know who you are!) please sit this one out. I'm serious, just click over to Words with Friends or watch the Super Bowl replays one more time. I'm not going to say anything inappropriate, but I'm trying to inspire my fellow lady friends here seeing that it's the month of love, and I would just rather you move right along and skip this series. Ok? Ok. Thank you.

I've been thinking a lot about this quote:

"In the area of sex, before you're married, Satan is on a mission to get you to have it. After you're married, he is on a mission to get you to stop."

There's something to this. And I wonder how many of us, myself included, fully understand the power of a healthy sexual relationship inside of marriage. I think it's more likely that we have witnessed or felt the damage from the perversion of what sex was meant to be outside of marriage, be it through previous relationships, abuse, pornography, or any number of other ways the world misuses sex. Well, it wasn't meant to be this way.

I think it's clear to most of us who believe in and strive to follow what the Bible says that God has a very specific plan for sexuality, and it is to be within the confines of marriage. Everything outside of that is not in our best interest, in any way. God says so. Bodies, minds, hearts...all these stay healthiest when we keep sex inside marriage.

But how many couples arrive at marriage with clean slates in this department? I understand that God's forgiveness can make us spiritually clean from anything we've done in the past. Anything. But that doesn't mean that we don't still have baggage, issues affecting or impeding our sexuality. Or our spouse does. Or both people in a marriage do. Sin and its fallout makes intimacy and relationship and especially marriage complicated. Sex, being the most vulnerable point in marriage, the place where our bodes, minds, and hearts are most exposed, is usually most crippled by the complications.

Sex is a tricky business, and I don't claim to understand all the issues that a person can bring to a marriage. But I do understand this: God designed us to be totally sexually free in marriage. He designed sex to be the best earthly representation of his passion and intimate love for us, and He wants us to get that. He wants to bless our marriages through sex, and He wants us to think sex is awesome.

Does it sound weird? That if you're married, the God of the universe, perfectly holy and pure and watching every move you make, strongly desires for you to LOVE sex? Are you willing to wrap your mind around that? It's the truth.

But what is going on, here? God is over here on the matter, wanting us to experience regular joy and blessing and ridiculous pleasure through sex, and we are way down at the other end of the spectrum just trying to muster up any desire in the first place. What I've observed during these last several years of being a wife and mother is that the majority of us do NOT love sex. In MOPS meetings, I've heard tables of women complain and sigh and refer to sex as something a little less desirable than having a clean kitchen. I know there are 101 reasons why that may be true and reasonable in a given household. I know. Don't list them off in the comments as defense. I am only trying to say one thing.

We can do better than this.

We can love better than this.

And we need to let ourselves BE loved better than this (and I don't mean by our husbands).

Part 2 is coming soon, so keep your knickers on.