The deepest longing...pursuit.

   

A woman's heart...it is a mystery. It was CREATED to be passionate. Full of love and we were CREATED with a desire to be longed for....pursued. Each of us were created differently and yet with the same longings....some of us are sassy and bold, others are gentle and quiet.... Some of full of creativity and others are more logical....but we all long for pursuit. We all long for someone falling head over heels in love with us and sweeping us away into a fairy tale romance with chocolate and unlimited ice teas....:).... So why have we given that up? When did we decide that we would never have the romance that we longed for so we settled for something less? When did we give up all our dreams of love and romance and passion....and just...settle. At some point in our lives, we have made a decision. We have decided as women that we can only LONG for true romance....but we will never truly have it. We will have to watch the love stories in the movies and sigh as parts of our hearts long for that "love"...we will sit up all night to read that book that has the perfect man with the perfect dreadful tragedy that turns out perfectly wonderful. Romance like that is not in our every day lives....because ...well...let's face it. Life is not always "romantic".

       When you have baby poop on you and you have only shaved one leg since the baby was born and your not sure when the last time you washed your hair was....that's never in the movies! When your house is full of dirty dishes and dirty laundry and dirty shelves....and just looking at it causes you to become exhausted....that's not very romantic. When the bills are stacked high and the account is at an all-time low and the teen child is fighting for independence and the boss needs just one more hour of your already booked day...When you are looking into the eyes of your spouse and you are hearing words that shatter your heart with each syllable.....It doesn't really "set the mood" for romance and love. But God is the CREATOR of love, of romance, of the pursuit. He CREATED IT. He is the AUTHOR of it. He KNOWS about it as the master of it. And yet somehow, we find it "not enough".
I think it's our "expectations" of romance that really gets us.
     Movies are just that....movies. They are not real. They are adults playing dress up and pretend...and yet we hold them up to us and find ourselves lacking...our husbands lacking....our children lacking...our marriages lacking. When none of it is even real. The very thing that we are holding up as a standard for ourselves is fake. It is written words that someone has "made-up". It is a script that someone has memorized. The very people that play that role in our favorite romance movie are the very people who have moved from one person to the next because even they are constantly looking....longing for that void to be filled. Longing to know they are....pursued.          
       After talking with alot of women and looking into my own heart, I have decided that the deepest longing of a woman's heart is to be pursued. She wants someone that makes her feel worthy. She longs for someone to make the cold, lonely day....better. She wants to know that she is pursued....sought after....longed for...

 The very definiton of  pursuit in Hebrew is: רָדַף   dabaq: to cling, cleave, keep close
To keep close....I love that part. Because that is what we are truly longing for...to be kept close as a loved and cherished one. To be in our husbands thoughts throughout the day. We were CREATED for this. But as it happens, the world has complicated everything. We have lost something that is critical to our woman heart....that longing for romance and love....that deepest desire for pursuit....it can ONLY be fulfilled by a relationship with Jesus. No amount of movies, books, men, dates, or more will fulfill....it will only deepen the longing. And the search will continue....and then because we don't find it, we can fall into despair,frustration and start looking somewhere else...with someone else....
     When we stop. We when take a deep breath and look into the deepest parts of our heart, we see that what we are really longing for...is Jesus. We are the created...longing for the Creator. We are the student craving the wisdom of the teacher. And somehow along the way, we quit pursuing the King and we started pursuing the "things" that could fill that void...things that  looked sparkly, things that seemed like they worked for others around us...but I have talked to some women that have walked this road before me and the ones that have decided to pursue Christ with a complete abandon to the world around them, are living a life that is full of passion, love, and joy! The ones that chose to continue to seek the next "thing" that would help them finally find "true love"...well...they are still seeking. Some of them years and years and years of seeking under their belts....
When we seek after lies, all we will find is lies. When we seek after truth...we will find freedom. It is proven over and over again...all the way back from the beginning of time. Lies always equal lies. Truth always equals freedom. 

          So when I heard about this book," 50 shades of grey" coming out and I saw the response to it from ladies all over the world...I saw like never before the desire in each of our hearts for pursuit. And it broke my heart. That book took everything that God created our hearts to long for...and it twisted it and made it into an ugly mess of "love". And we have young ladies as early as 10 reading this...and it is shaping the way they view themselves as women, the way their husbands should be, the way their marriages should be....and it is devastating our hearts...sinking us into a hole that we don't even see. It is setting a standard for "love", "romance" and "passion" that is as twisted as it can possibly be and I am tired of being so concerned about hurting your feelings that I will instead let you walk into a lions den with no warning.  We are sisters. We have to fight for each other. We have to teach each other and learn from each other. We have to listen to each other. We have to know it's ok to be honest with each other. 
 We need to not be afraid to talk about sex and passions and longing....as "christian women"....I was recently told that " godly women" don't talk about those things...that my friend is EXACTLY the problem. When did the making love between a husband and a wife become bad? When did we decide that "godly women" don't talk about it....because the day we went silent about this was the first victory for the enemy. Our daughters should know the truth about the beauty of making love between a husband and a wife. They should know that the desires and the longings that they feel in their hearts for "true love" are created to be there and then we should teach them how to open their arms and receive the passionate love that Christ longs to flow over them....they should be shown how to have a beautiful, passionate, pursuing love relationship with the One who loved them enough to give up all of Heaven for them to come  and die for them. Do we even think about the PURSUIT OF THE CREATOR? Every moment...every day....in ALL things....this pursuit from the King of kings.  I want to teach my daughters about falling in love with Jesus....and all other things will follow. If we as women could take back what the enemy has taken away from us...if we would dig our heels in and say," No more!" No more false romance that only leaves us with a longing and void of something that doesn't exist....but instead we will take a stand on what God says about romance, love, sex, pursuit.....then....only then.....will we see the hearts filled. 
       The love that God can put into your heart for your husband....there are no words. The passion that can be in the way you love your husband and he loves you....breathtaking. But none of that comes from a romance book. None of it comes from a chick flick romance movie....I pray that we will quit living a life of double standards. I pray that our eyes will be open to ALL that God longs to lavish on us WITHIN our marriage. What if we took a 30 day challenge and we pursued Christ for 30 days the way that we pursue "love and romance"...what would happen? What would happen if instead of allowing the world around us to determine what love is....we showed the world what love does. The powerful, beautiful, and passionate love that comes from freedom in Christ. I would ask each of you to read this book....and see if it doesn't change the way that you view that next movie coming out that really only has that  "one, little tiny scene" in it....it did mine. I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject....I know we all have many different views on this subject and I honestly love to hear your thoughts...so please feel free to share with me:) 
#pullingbacktheshades 
        

No shades of grey here:

Porn is real. It is affecting us, destroying many, and breaking apart lives with its destructive power. I will be blogging about this subject during the month of January and February so my blogs will be an open and honest talk about what God says about this subject that very few people want to approach...sex. God created it. We know it is good. So how has it gotten so bad? 

    "We want to be very clear: your sexual desire is not wrong. God created you to be sexual. Your body and your mind are wired to long for sexual pleasure and intimacy. Unfortunately, many religious messages separate being a sexual woman from being a spiritual woman. Instead of encouraging you to seek God’s plan for your sexuality, you’re left with only worldly outlets to fulfill your longings.” (Pulling Back the Shades; p. 25)

We need to understand that God CREATED us to be sexual...thus...to ENJOY sex. Did I just say that? Am I even allowed to say that?! But it is truth! God gave us boundaries that are for our good...sex is to be enjoyed in marriage. However pornography has entered into so many of our marriages now....

     

It seems like churches shy away completely from even mentioning the word pornography. Why? Is it not something that is sweeping across our nation totally destroying everything in its path? I think a big part of it is because we have become afraid of the words, " Don't do." We haven't defined what pornography is and because of grace we are afraid to tell anyone that they shouldn't do something. Because we will immediately get called," self-righteous", "judgmental", "harsh", "legalistic" and more "flavorful" words as well. But standing on God's Truth as Truth is never wrong. I personally know how devastating pornography can be. I have dealt and talked with many, many teens and young people and even older married couples who have had their lives devastated by pornography....but we are still afraid to talk about it...well....no more. If we don't start a conversation about this issue then it will continue to grow and infect and destroy. I want that to stop with me. I want to boldly speak about this, even when it makes my face blush or my heart beat with nervousness....because it matters! It truly matters. I want my daughters to know what pornography is and define it clearly for them...whether in a book or a movie or a conversation. Pornography is real. It exist. It is in our churches, our schools, our homes, our life....why are we so easily turning our head the other way as it destroys us and our loved ones?

I think that part of the problem is that we don't have a clear definition of pornography to stand on. Many times one person may view something as pornographic and someone else doesn't think it is even close. So what is the definition of pornography: this comes from the merriam-webster dictionary:

1. printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.

   synonyms:

   erotica, pornographic material, dirty books;

If we have a clear definition of what pornography is then we can truly evaluate whether what we are reading, listening to, watching, ect...is falling into that category. The other thing I think we need to ask ourselves is this....why...why do we want to read, watch,  listen to this? Does it satisfy something in us that cannot be satisfied without it? I have done alot of research on this topic and I have come to learn that by watching even small amounts of pornography releases a chemical in your brain called," Dopamine" which basically tells our brain what is enjoyable....it can give you a feeling of being "high" so to speak. But then those same levels that were so high, crash down resulting in depression like behavior but each time you watch, read, ect..with porn you will need more and more to get the same "high" feeling which also means those feelings of depression and loneliness get worse and worse in between "views" until finally you are so filled with loneliness that and depression that you can go into deep despair....so then back to my original question....Why?
      As women I think many times we hold a double standard. We don't mind "reading" porn and calling it a romance novel, but we would never want our husbands watching what we are reading...another thing I feel we need to think about is how this is talked about in our churches. If it even is....statistically 90% of all men sitting in a church struggle in some way with porn and yet we rarely if ever hear it talked about. It is like knowing someone has their shirt on fire but refusing to tell them because you are afraid they may get upset with you...so we would rather they just get burned or killed...but at least they are not upset, right? I know that sounds silly but think about it...isn't that what we are doing by not talking about pornography when it has been proven over and over again within our churches that it is a HUGE struggle. Shame and fear keep people silent...so what if we threw open those doors and took away the silence? What if we started Bible Studies and accountability groups and we talked openly about this struggle...because it is real....and many of us bear the scars of it already...
 I recently had a friend say to me that to call intercourse or sex the same as making love or intimacy is just wrong...its like saying that  being boiled by oil and anointed by oil are the same thing...because they both involve oil. But one will kill you and one will revive you. That is such a good point! We cannot ever let pornography into our marriages...and expect anything other than loss to come from it. Loss of intimacy. Loss of the gift of being completely satisfied with our spouses. Loss of freedom to love each other in ways that involve no shame or fear. Loss of so much more than we can ever imagine. 
       When I first started blogging about my husband and I's journey through addictions, God brought amazing beautiful people into my life that bear deep scars from this very thing. Some of those wounds still haven't healed and Dannah Gresh says," the quickest way to a heart is through a wound"...and she's right. We can reach down into someone's deepest heart.,...the part of them that aches with frustration and fear...shame and loneliness...uncertainty if anyone will understand and still love them.  And we can show them the truth. The truth of God's pursuit of them. The truth of God's redemption and redeeming grace. We can shout it out to all the world that you CAN have a beautiful, passion-filled marriage without pornography having any place there. You can be deeply in love with your spouse and stand beside them hand in hand through each journey because of the covenant that we made with God on our wedding day. We can offer them the beautiful, satisfying, overwhelming HOPE of Christ. 

      I will no longer be able to sit by and watch my brothers and sisters in Christ struggle and be silent. I won't do it. I will take a stand and I will fight for our marriages. Billy Graham once said,"Our society strives to avoid any possibility of offending anyone...except God." And he is right as well. But I pray that isn't how our churches are...I pray that we will speak boldly the truth that can set people free! Many of the young people I have talked with honestly have no idea that it is wrong to read a romance novel that goes into a deep sexual scene, or that by watching a movie that has explicit nudity or sex scenes in it is slowly but surely a slow fade away from the heart of our Father. How can they know unless we teach them? Many of them have never thought that having sex outside of marriage is really THAT big of a deal....and they never will know, unless we tell them. We need to make a stand on this. We need them to understand that pornography is devastating....and that there is a way to become free...because out of those teens...more than half are already addicted to porn. 
   God created sex. God created a husband and wife to enjoy sex with each other. He created us to be creative and passionate and satisfied with each other in the most intimate way possible...and satan has worked very hard to corrupt that beautiful gift. I won't just stand by and let him...I will fight. Will you?