It's been interesting, since then, the types of comments, emails, messages I've gotten. A lot of women with similar stories, a lot of women comforted that they weren't alone in their mindset, a lot of advice for how to move forward. Helpful tips, books to read, personal struggles. It's cool. And weird.
If there's one thing I can take away from all of it, it's that sex matters. I can't pretend that it doesn't, and I can't pretend that it's not a vital component to a healthy marriage (or, often, a vital component to a struggling marriage). I can't pretend that this isn't going to have an impact on my life and our relationship...and how I view it, respond to it, and even initiate it matters.
One married friend of mine recently encouraged me to begin praying about it. To be praying that my fiance would be my standard of sexy...that everything about him would be the epitome of what I deem attractive. And so, as I began thinking about what this might look like, I realized that I not only needed to be praying about my heart in all of this...but that I wanted to be praying about this aspect of our relationship with my fiance.
So, I brought it up last night. It went like this:
"Hey, I think that we should be praying together about having sex." Because this is the type of thing you just tag onto the end of a conversation when both of you are already exhausted (clearly...).
"I'm already there" he said, "I don't know why you're there, but I'm on the same page."
Whew.
He asked me why I felt like that, and so I elaborated.
In my talking about sex with the rest of the world, in my recognizing that sex is such a crucial part of marriage... I was suddenly aware of how much I needed the Lord to be involved. I needed the Lord to prepare my heart, to prepare our hearts to become one. I needed to be at a place where I was recognizing sex as not just something we get to do once we are married, but something that is deeply intimate, deeply spiritual, and deeply mysterious. I wanted to be a place where I was able to go to the Lord with my fiance and admit my fears, my insecurities...to confess the ways my past has caused me to distort it at times...and to allow the Lord to be the one who radically changes me and heals me.
Because sex isn't just sex.
It's personal, intimate, vulnerable.
Other things are always attached to sex, whether we're willing to admit it or not.
I guess I recognized that my own sins and imperfections can weigh a great deal and can easily have a negative affect on sex within marriage. My selfishness, my insecurity, my unforgiving heart, my spirit of entitlement...all of it has the ability to rob us of the joy that I believe the Lord intended a husband and wife to have. Not just in sex, but in all things.
I guess I recognized that if we're willing to go to the Lord about everything else that seems challenging within marriage, why would we not also want to go to Him about this?
And so we will.
Because the Lord is faithful in aligning our hearts in desiring the same things, of letting the same things matter to us. And while my fiance already views sex as nothing less than what I described, his desire is to be vulnerable as we turn this physical intimacy over to the Lord together.
Sex is weird.
I never thought I'd be praying about it...and I most certainly never thought I'd be praying with someone else about it... but I know it's good. I know it's the only way that my mind, soul and body will be ready for such an intimate, vulnerable expression of love. It's the only hope we have of ever having a healthy sex life and, ultimately, a healthy marriage.
We're praying that the Lord would go before us, walk beside us, restore us and heal us, and that He would show us the fullness of what it means to become one way He intended us to.
Because sex matters.
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