I've got a lot to say recently. About Jesus, about sex, about being a wife.
I'm a person with a big mouth of strong convictions and with that requires confident discernment.
In the past, I've been able to speak my mind (and get my point across...more or less). But I've got words rattling in my brain overflowing from the guttural disturbances in my soul waiting to explode out of my fingers and from my mouth. But quiet I have been sitting. A little bit haunted, a little bit anxious.
You see, being convicted is not an easy thing for me.
I HAS THINGS TO SAY. But will anyone hear them?
GOD IS STIRRING STUFF UP IN ME. But will it hurt everyone around me if I share?
I am often seen as young, naive (rabbit trail, I only know how to spell "naive" because of some 90's movie that went off about how bottled water is stupid and "Evian" is "naive" backwards), judgmental, uneducated... I could go on but I'll stop before I get personal.
Let me give you an example.
I don't masturbate. Neither does my husband.
I would be willing to bet (based on personal conversations) that most of you who read this thought the same thing for two reasons.
"Oh, you poor thing."
Because you think I am self deprecating and my sex life must be unfulfilled and boring and that I sleep in pinafores and I've probably never had an orgasm.
Or because you think one of us is lying and that I'm naive enough to believe that lie.
But I can stand before you and yell and sing and fall on my face declaring my fulfillment in the obedience of my conviction.
But I don't feel qualified. I married young. Only slept with one man, my husband, on our wedding night, I didn't tear and bleed, I wasn't locked in my bathroom crying to my mom because I didn't know what to do. I've only been married five years, my husband has not had an affair with anyone and neither have I. I'm blessed to have a husband who admitted to his pornography consumption- and stopped it. I don't have to constantly forgive an abuser for using me sexually as a child, or myself for using my body to gain love from men in previous relationships. I don't know that hurt. I don't know that grief. Who I am to speak on this?
There is an urging in me like I've never had before- and the doubt to match it. To speak about my convictions- because they aren't mine alone. Most of them on the Christian Sexual Identity, but also less scary stuff that doesn't involve fun words like "fornication."
The conversation I want to start about what the Bible has to say about a lot of the REALLY IMPORTANT STUFF that is viewed as "nothing" I fear will turn out much like some of my conversations with Norah. She is a sweet girl. She doesn't eat any junk food. Fruits, veggies, meat and some rice and legumes. That's it. But sometimes she has a sweet tooth. And she really wants a banana. A banana is a fruit. It doesn't have high fructose corn syrup, red dye #40, and is seen by most as a health food! But is is high in histamines. Norah's body is very sensitive to histamines so allowing her to have a banana is a dangerous game. We never know how many is "too many" or where to draw the line because on any given day that number changes. It won't send her into shock, but it will cause her to break out. And if she does break out too frequently, she will go into shock.
Who wants to be the parent to tell their kids they can't have a banana?!
I have to be that parent. Maybe I have to be that disciple.
