Thou Shalt Not Comb

My husband, Ryan, and I have really been developing spiritually in the last few years. One of the things in life that seems to go directly against that growth is television. But, I suppose if we keep it in perspective, stand firm on the things we believe then we’ll be alright. I don’t think God wants us to live in a Christ shaped bubble, blocking out the relevance (or irrelevance) of the world. In fact, as one of God’s “fishers of men” I think it is important to know what’s happening in today’s world. I’ve learned in time that nearly anything can be related to the walk of Jesus. With that in mind, we sat down Monday night to watch some television and see what the new fall season had to offer.

One of our favorite shows had two completely separate story lines going. The first one we thought was extremely witty, entertaining and true. It was about how we as people should be confident enough with who we are that we don’t need to change what we say and do just to make others happy. I whole heartedly agree with this… but I wish it were as easy as it sounds. In my old, drunken life I truly had no idea who I was. I changed my personality completely based on who I was around and what situation was before me. I was a personality chameleon… and I told a lot of big lies. It was hard to keep up with, but it was worth it in my warped little mind because I thought that was why people liked me. As it turns out, I don’t think too many people actually did like me, because… I didn’t stand for anything, no one could figure me out and, oh yeah… I was a liar. I am still a died-in-the-wool people pleaser, and even though I’m sober I struggle with this every day. I don’t ever want to feel like anyone is mad at me. Sometimes my fear of disappointing others causes me to be dishonest about simple things. Think about it, if someone asked Jesus to go to a two hour network marketing presentation He had no interest in, I don’t imagine He’d be so insecure that He would need to come up with 3 or 4 excuses just to feel okay about saying no. I can hear it… “Well, my donkey is lame so I don’t have a ride. And one of the straps on my sandal broke so I really should get that fixed before I walk too far or I might get a blister. Plus Martha is making me a big dinner...” nope… I don’t think so. I imagine His answer would be, “No thank you.” Why is that so hard for me???? The word “No,” then a period. I’m working on that.

The second story line was totally disturbing to me. The one funny part was that a few years ago, I wouldn’t have found it disturbing at all. I would have actually found it comforting… everyone else is doing it… so it’s okay. The premise was that when you are in the committed relationship of marriage that it is totally okay to fantasize about other people. I was very pleased to see my husband shaking his head in total disagreement with this… in fact he said “Thou Shall Not Covet!” as he watched it. We both chuckled! My laugh and gladness at his statement had nothing to do with jealousy and everything to do with God’s wish for our lives. I adamantly believe my spouse is a true gift from God. I am supposed to cherish him and honor him. I am supposed to be committed and stand by him no matter what. My entire relationship with my husband is an act of worship to God… and if I let another man enter that worship space in any way, I am totally disrespecting the gift. I am essentially spitting on the gift! Now, I’m not gonna lie and say I don’t ever see men who intrigue me or catch my eye. I’m not even gonna lie and say I understood this whole concept the first 5 years of my marriage… because I didn’t!!!! I spit on my gift many times before I began to understand. And to this day, I still have eyes to see, ears to hear and interests that are occasionally sparked by others… but it’s what I do with those sights, sounds and interests that matter. I can choose to comb over them slowly in my head (combing leads to teasing and everyone know that too much teasing leads to a big, knotted mess. Even the best brush can’t get those tangles out without a lot of pain and hair-loss)… or I can choose to reject them and refocus on the awesome gift God has given me. If I have a hard time rejecting them, I pray hard, I go to the Word and pick a verse to help me. I repeat it over and over and sometimes I even ask my trusted prayer partners to pray for me to be released from temptation. God is faithful and if I look to Him to help me reject sin, He most certainly will.

Another thing about God is that He has extremely high standards. So high that if I allow another man to enter my thoughts in a lustful manner, I may as well just go ahead and go all the way with him physically. Now, I’m not saying if I’ve thought about it and it’s like doing it, I may as well just go ahead and do it. What I’m saying is… it is of upmost importance to not allow myself to go there at all, even in my mind.

In closing, I’d like to say that thankfully, God allows U-turns…. Phew! I recently joked with some friends that some days I feel like I’m just walking in circles, taking one U-turn after another. I LOVE that Ryan and I have grown to the point spiritually that we are not as confused by what we see on television. I’ll tell you this though, I do plan on keeping my eyes open. I’m sure there are plenty of things I don’t know to watch out for yet and the devil (along with society) would like nothing better than for me to be unaware of their impact. Today I’m so glad I was able to take that misleading story line that Satan was trying to use to desensitize society into not following God’s heart and turn it around in this writing and tell all of you who read this (all two of you) to stand firm on your commitment and don’t let anyone invade your worship space… it’s for you, your spouse and God…. period.

Triple X

Three X’s in a row can mean a few things… a large clothing size… very sharp cheese… the name of a Vin Diesel movie… a ZZ Top album… or a very unpalatable, uncomfortable subject that many of us cringe at the mere mention of… nakedness. Well, I really am going to talk about the last one… although I don’t think it will be what you “expect.” We are in the middle of a series at Community of Hope called “Sex God” and yes… it is about sex. You might think that is odd, to talk about sex at church but as Joe Carmichael so wisely pointed out last Sunday in our opening week… God invented sex… He created us to be sexual beings… moreover, sex is a real problem these days… so why shouldn’t the church be talking about sex? I don’t think any of us really expect it will just go away if we ignore it.

As a young girl, I didn’t like to read very much. In fact, I was a terrible reader, so bad that I had to give up my recess time to go to reading lab. I remember one summer my parents enrolled me in a book club just to try to keep me reading. It was pure torture!!!! The next summer, my mom bought me a membership with a book club. I got a new book every week or so and they just kept coming in. One of the covers intrigued me because it had a cute boy on the cover. That was the only reason I decided to read it. It was about a nerdy high school freshman girl who had a huge crush on the senior football quarterback. She was poor and didn’t have many friends but somehow, against all odds… she landed the affections of Johnny Jockstrap. By the end of the book, they were walking into the sunset together holding hands. I remember actually getting “high” on the ending. I felt all warm and fuzzy inside and was filled with hope that someday I would be that girl walking into the sunset with the guy of my dreams. I wanted more so I picked up the next book. This time the girl was crippled and confined to a wheelchair but by the end of the book, she was holding on tight to Rippling Rob as they soared through the countryside together on horseback. I felt “high” again and got hooked. I’m not sure how many of them I read or even how many times I read each of them but one thing was for sure… I knew for certain exactly what love was going to be like when my prince appeared.

Huh… yeah right. Part of the story line was fulfilled easily… I was a nerdy girl with very few friends… but as for the rest of the script… pure poppycock. I spent my entire adolescence waiting for my Johnny Jockstrap or Rippling Rob to save me from loneliness. I was completely disillusioned! I grew up though, and dated around a bit.

My first experience with this unpalatable, uncomfortable, nakedness subject was in New York City. A boyfriend of mine wanted to go into one of those “XXX” stores. What totally disgusted me became an obsession for him. He would rent those movies every week and I would stand by completely grossed out and baffled at how someone I liked could like “that.” We grew apart for many reasons, that surely being one of them. I thought he had a low value for women because of his fascination with it, like we were just sexual objects meant for physical pleasure. Ewww… where was the love? Where was the emotional fulfillment? It seemed all those movies did was cheapen sex and give an unrealistic expectation of bedroom bliss…to me it seemed like sexual poison. The average woman wouldn’t be willing to do half the stuff those “actors” and “actresses” did. Ewwwww! How unfair! After that, one of my criteria for dating a guy was that he not be into porn… and yes, I did ask before our first date. Of course asking didn’t prevent me being lied to.

About two years before I got sober I began a major slide into my personal hell. I was extremely unhappy with just about every aspect of my life. I was married and pregnant but I had convinced myself that my husband didn’t love me. I remember watching the movie “13 Going on 30” and getting really mad. I mean, I was livid!!!! I remember thinking how unfair it was that this girl in the movie had two guys that loved her so much. And the fact she got to go back in time and fix a mistake she had made, well that made me even more mad (as if that were realistic in any way shape or form). How come I couldn’t have that? Why didn’t anyone love me the way she was loved???? In fact, that movie spawned my complete hatred for Jennifer Garner that is still hovering over me even today. After that I was even more convinced my husband didn’t love me. I wanted what I saw on the silver screen… no… I believed I deserved what I saw on the silver screen; love, real love, the type of love that moved mountains and stayed hot and heavy at all time. That’s right, I wanted MOVIE LOVE!!!! Movie love was the real thing and I deserved it.

Well, I’ve been sober for over two years now and a lot has changed. Yes, I still hate "those" movies but after all my husband and I have gone through together, no one can ever tell me he doesn’t love me. I know he does, for if he didn’t, he never would have put up with what I dragged him through in the process of wrecking my life and then getting sober. Our trip to hell and back is what showed me exactly what love really is.

One weekend, the movie “The Notebook” was on television and for some unexplained reason I started to watch it. See, that is another thing that changed with my sobriety. I came to despise chick flicks that painted such an unrealistic picture of what love was supposed to be. As I watched this horrendous movie, I went to my imaginary bucket with violent dry heaves at least 100 times. I was seriously nauseous as I watched it. Now, don’t get me wrong… it’s okay to like a good love story… as long as you realize that it is a bunch of unrealistic crap. If you can watch it, let your heart swoon and bawl your eyes out then get right back into reality afterwards… go for it. But for me, and I’m sure many other ladies out there who don’t have even a pinky toe dipped in reality…these movies are emotional poison that set up unrealistic expectations of love. These movies ruin perfectly good relationships every day.

So here is my point, as much as I hate the triple X industry and don’t understand it, I was once very guilty of partaking in the same addiction. It’s just that my high was achieved from the emotional variety instead of the sexual. My movies gave me unrealistic emotional expectations of my spouse. It gave me an illusion that he wasn’t being all he could be, that he wasn’t ever going to love me the way I deserved to be loved. Basically, he couldn’t do anything right, especially after a fresh viewing of “Titanic.” Lord help him! One step worse was this… I not only watched emotional "porn" and let it seep into my soul… I also wrote an emotional XXX book and passed it on to others. When I was wrote DESCO, I was at my expectational worst!

I think one of the biggest things that contributed to my unhappiness up until the age of 34 (that’s a lot of years of misery) was the fact that I had majorly distorted and unrealistic expectations of everything. A big part of that was just that I was born with a brain that doesn’t think the way it should, but there were other factors that contributed over the years. Reading books and watching movies that gave me that “high” certainly didn’t help. Drinking booze helped me numb all the disappointment I felt over everything in my life. In my 20’s I thought I had gotten a little bit better with my expectations by simply hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. While it may have been slightly healthier than expecting the world on a silver platter… I learned later, that mantra was just as bad for me.

The best way for me to live life is to try and have no expectations at all. When that approach was first brought to my attention, I rejected it completely. Why? Because I thought it was a negative way to walk around. In reality, having no expectations keeps things going upward no matter what. I have a great trick to learning how to have zero expectations… so if you’re interested… ask me and I’ll share it with you.

In closing I’d like to say, if you are a person who watches “The Notebook” and then goes on with life happily, able to make love to your husband without pretending he is Ryan Gosling, then I think you’re safe. But if you’re a person who adores “The Notebook” but feels totally unfulfilled by your totally normal, generally good natured spouse just because they don’t make you feel the way the movie makes you feel… you might be suffering from unrealistic expectation syndrome… and you just may have a little unhealthy addiction of your own.

Let me be clear… movie love is not real love. In addition, no person can or will ever fulfill you completely. While porn (sexual or emotional) can be visually stimulating, physically arousing and enjoyable in the moment, it is fleeting and leads to dangerously unrealistic expectations of others.

Only God can fulfill us. His love can make you feel true joy. His love is real and therefore never fleeting. I believe with all my heart that we were meant to feel as though a piece of us is missing when we don’t allow Him to complete us. If that seems unrealistic to you then I have a question… how’s what you’re doing right now working for you? Enjoy your triple X theater, whatever variety it may be. Just remember who will be there waiting for you when all the credits have rolled and you’re stuck with that horribly empty, frustrated, unfulfilled feeling… God will be waiting.