Someday you'll have an Anniversary

 Today is my wife and my 14^th anniversary.  I can’t believe it has been 14 years.  As I was on my way to school today I was talking to the Lord about how grateful I am for my wife and our marriage.  I thought of all the things I love about my life.  Next to being loved by my Savior, I am sooo thankful for my wife.  This is why I like to talk about relationships a lot in class, in my writing, my blog, in chapel, etc.  A good marriage is so crucial to life.  You can gain the whole world (i.e. have a great job, make lots of money, live in a nice house, be involved in church, make an impact on the world, touch the people around you, go on vacations, you name it), but if you have a bad marriage those other things seem so insignificant. 

Now, I have known people who have difficult marriages, but have been able to do meaningful things with their lives.  But, that being said, they would all say that healing that relationship with their spouse would change everything for the better.

So what does this have to do with you?  I know marriage seems far off, but building the relationship and personality skills that lead to a good one start now.  Be encouraged that you don’t have to end up in the unhappy relationships that so many TV shows and movies show us. 

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Apostrophe

A little Christmas present for those of you who enjoy my weird videos.

Screwed Up Again

Just the other day I did something stupid.  I handled a situation in a way I thought would be good, but I just made the situation worse.  That screw up nagged my mind for nearly two days.  It’s so frustrating when we find ourselves in these situations isn’t it?  It’s like suddenly we realize just how “not together” we really are.

This, I think, is an important mentality to embrace as we try to figure out how to live a life differently because we love our Father.  We need to realize that we are easily swayed, easily led to poor decisions.  I’m not saying we should just throw up our hands and say, wo is me, a sinner…I might as well keep on sinning.  No, it’s about an attitude of humility. 

It’s a tough attitude to have at any age.  The challenge as a teen is that you’re at a stage in life where your independence is growing.  You are on the move toward individual adulthood (it’s not as far away as it seems!).  So, there is a tendency to fight for others to take you seriously.  You want people to know you’ve grown up and they can trust you.  It’s really hard when people still treat you like a kid. 

Those are all valid feelings, but let’s move toward not losing sight of reality, a reality that all people regardless of age need to see: we fall easily.  For me, it leads me this way: when that situation happened that I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I was angry.  Angry at the circumstances, but mostly angry at myself.  I took my anger to my Father.  I did some internal yelling (and some out loud ones in my car! J).  All in all, though, I was led back to the gracious arms of my Heavenly Dad. 

I had to go do some apologizing to someone, but I also learned not to beat myself up.  But, also, it reminded me how much I need the Holy Spirit.  As we address some issues in our lives, like the issues of sexuality, we need this humility.  It’s not easy.  We all have areas that we’re going to fail in. 

The encouragement, though, is that our Father, our Friend, walks with us.  Jesus said He doesn’t call us slaves, but friends. 

I Knew It Not

I have a quote calendar on my desk and I read one every morning.  A recent quote really struck me.  It's by an author who wrote a lot in the 50s and 60s named A.W. Tozer.

"Jacob saw a vision of God and cried in wonder, 'Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.'  Jacob had never been for one small division of a moment outside the circle of that all-pervading Presence.  Be he knew it not.  That was his trouble, and it is ours.  Men do not know that God is here.  What a difference it would make if they knew."
 

Wow. It's a cool challenge to try to remember that God is with me all the time, not in a generic sense, but in a real, personal way. Consider that throughout your whole day God is with you, listening to you, talking to you, guiding you when you eat breakfast, when you interact with your family, in your classes, at lunch, when you're walking with your friends between classes. Amazing stuff.

The Three Letter Word-Part 6

When I was younger I had this complex about doing things exactly right all the time.  I suppose I got this from several places.  For one I used to get a little extra money by cutting lawns.  However, I had several customers who would watch me while I cut it.  It was so weird!  They seemed to be making sure I did everything just right.

 

I also came from a German family.  I felt a lot of pressure to do things correctly or face disappointment.  I remember how long it would take me to rake leaves because I thought I had to pick up every single leaf.  I didn’t know if I had to do it that specifically, but I always operated on the principle of “If you overdo it, then you can’t be criticized.” 

As a young person, trying to figure out the world, it’s tough when things aren’t explained well.  We don’t know what’s expected of us.  Sometimes we don’t even know what is okay to think about!  This is all the more true in sexuality, especially as a follower of Christ.  People just don’t want to talk about it, and if they do the main idea is: It’s bad.  

On the other hand, you may have grown up in an environment where there is nothing said about, or, even where it is in your face, because of the behaviors of some family members. 

All in all, I want to suggest that if you’re a person who wants to have a life that is different because of your Savior, then we need to talk specifics.  There is much greater freedom in discussion and reflection than there is in silence.  1 John encourages us to “walk in the light, as He is in the light.”  The light is honesty. 

One thing too often missing from dialogue among Christians is the specifics of managing sexuality.  Looking back on my teen years, I wish someone would have just talked openly about specifics and accompanied it with grace and freedom instead of hard and fast rules.  Unfortunately, I’m going to not be as specific as I’d like, not because I think it’s bad, but I don’t feel a blog is the place for it.  But I do want to open the door by mentioning the issues at hand.

Below are the main areas I mentioned in a previous post.  After each are some examples of specific issues that need some management.

Your personal sexual feelings and thoughts

1. Areas to manage: thinking about sex, fantasizing, masturbation, watching movies, shows, or online videos with sexual jokes, scenes, or clothing, surfing sexually-themed stuff online, drawing sexy characters, so-called sexting, music or video games with sexual overtones (or blatant ones).

Your sexual feelings about other people

2. Areas to manage: thinking about others, what to do with attractions, obsession, the sense that ‘I can’t get him/her off of my mind,’ reading into the way someone acts towards us.

Your interaction with the opposite sex (whether acquaintances, friends, or a boy/girlfriend)

3. Areas to manage: interacting with people you’re attracted to, flirting, the things you ‘talk’ about online, images of yourself that you post on facebook, hugging or touching the opposite sex, what you wear, what it means to ‘look’ good, how far is too far physically when you’re dating.

I hope to address some of the above in more specifics in some future posts.  However, I hope there’s some freedom in just hearing some of these things mentioned.  It’s easy to think you’re a weirdo.  No, sexuality is a huge part of who God made all of us and, like other things in life, it brings up all sorts of questions for everyone. Also, the above list is not a list of all bad things.  The key is, if you love God, your life will be affected by it.  We are Christ-followers so we don’t say, like so many others: who cares?  We say God cares.  He is raising me up to be a life fully lived.  He loves me and He loves my sexuality.  Let’s not assume “it’s all bad,” nor should we assume, “it’s all good.”  Instead, as always, I encourage you to “find out what pleases the Lord.” 

The Three-letter Word-Part 5

So you want to find out what pleases the Lord.  How do you do it?  The following applies to lots of things, but I’m going to focus it on managing your sexuality.
1. Ground zero: ask God.  James wrote “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives graciously.”  How will he give that wisdom?  Probably in lots of ways, including the rest of this list. 

2. Check out Scripture.  No, the Bible does not have the answer to all things.  Its primary purpose is for God to say “Hey, here’s what I’m like.”  With that, it’s a history of how he interacts with us and, specifically, how he wants to build a Kingdom on earth and how he enacted his rescue plan with Christ dying and coming back to life.  That’s a grossly small summary, but the point is: you won’t find a section on “How to manage my sexuality.”  But there are things you can catch here and there that will help.

3. Get advice from others.  This is probably one of the hardest things on the list and, yet, it is one of the most important. 

I know you’re going to hate this, but your parents are probably a great place to start (This will work for some and not others.  I get that).  Remember that, while they look old and sexless to you, you were not born through spontaneous combustion.  Your parents, as weird as it may feel to think about it, are two people that found the other hot and found a personality that they thought was pretty awesome.  Hopefully, they still feel these things (I definitely do about my wife!).  The point is they have had (and still do have) a sexuality that they have had to manage throughout their life.  It would be worth chit chatting about.

Who else?  Think about it.  Outside of your parents, whose life do you respect?  Is it a relative, a pastor, a youth leader, a teacher, an upperclassman, a friend?  You may think to yourself, “I’m just going to be bothering them.”  Imagine someone asking you for advice.  You’d feel totally honored!  Go ahead and ask someone.  Of course, you’re dealing with a sensitive and awkward topic, so you’ll have to gauge who you feel comfortable with.  But, regardless, you can start up a conversation by asking them any advice they would give about dating (or something to that effect).  If comfort grows in that conversation or subsequent ones, then you can take it a little more specifically.

4. Observe yourself.  People, Christians included, love to give cookie-cutter ways to manage sexuality, but you’re a different cookie!  That was a terrible analogy.  Sorry.  Anyway, the point is you have to create a strategy that works for you and to do this you have to know YOU. 

So, what turns you on?  What do you find attractive when it comes to personalities, words, clothes, parts of the body, settings, scents, etc.?  You might even ask, well what does it mean to be turned on?  There will be and, for many, already are things that we have a hard time keeping our eyes off of, or our thoughts away from in relation to the opposite sex.  You are being ‘draw to’ those things.  That is the idea of ‘attraction.’  

Attraction is not bad.  It just “is.”  When you know what you’re attracted to it will help you know things you like, but also to know what you need to be careful about.  You may know a guy, for example, that you are attracted to, but you also may know that he’s not a good guy.  It’s okay that you’re attracted to him, but you have to recognize that it will be all too easy to fall for him, even though you know better.  Those are situations to be aware of, but that’s the benefit of knowing yourself: you can see those challenges in ways that other less self-aware people cannot.

There’s so much more to say, but I’ve gone on too long!  We’ll pick up the conversation another time.