10 Things I've Learned About Sex In 6 Months Of Marriage

I decided this morning that I needed to blog about being married, since I still haven't talked about it much. And since getting married six months ago, I'm hearing a LOT from you sweet married women who are having a crisis in your sex life.

It's really bumming me out that the majority of us have no Christian married women to go to when they need to ask "am I alone in this? Am I crazy? How do I deal with ______ in the bedroom?" We need to stop waiting for the church to "take care of sex" for us, and we need to start talking about it amongst ourselves. WE are the church. If you are married, initiate an open conversation about sex with a married friend this week.

It's also really bumming me out that it seems hardly any couples having serious issues in the bedroom are getting marriage counseling. My husband and I started marriage counseling on a weekly basis 4 months into our marriage - and literally every aspect of our life (including our sex life) has improved 23481230 times in only 7 or 8 sessions. Marriage counseling is not for people who are abnormally screwed up, or as a last resort attempt to stop a divorce. Counseling is like taking your vitamins, or working out. Do it before you get sick. Please.

I understand that most of us "just marrieds" are broke, or pretty close to it. We still don't have a sofa, and we don't pay for cable (or have a tv), and we don't go see movies - but I'm indescribably grateful for a husband who views our relationship as more valuable than a sofa and a coffee table.

If you can't afford counseling, seek it out anyway. It isn't unreasonable to find a great marital therapist, and go to your church saying: "We really need marriage counseling because of _______ and we can only afford __% of it for the next month. Can you help us?" This is what church and community is for. And even if your church can't help, ask God - and act on faith. God loves when we prioritize our marriages. (Sidenote: By "getting counseling" you don't need to commit to attend every single week for the rest of your life. Go for a month, and then re-assess.)

Moving forward. These are ten things I've learned about sex in 6 months of being married:

1 - It isn't what you're doing or not doing - it's about how you and your spouse feel.

2 - Sex drives aren't identical. Up to 40% of the time, women have higher sex drives. If you want sex more than your husband, there's nothing wrong with you - and if your husband wants sex more often than you do, there's still nothing wrong with you. Be slow to jump to the conclusion that there's "something wrong" when sex drives don't match up. There's nothing wrong with us when we don't get hungry at the same time or don't naturally wake up or fall asleep at the same time, so why should sex be viewed any differently?

3 - Expectations are a bitch. I'm pretty sure it was Christine Hassler who coined the phrase "Expectation Hangover," but it's a real thing, y'all. Some of us expect sex to be perfect, to be terrible, to want sex all the time, to want it less than we do, etc. Let go of your expectations. Every human being is different, so every marriage is different. Pressure kills creativity, love, and fun - and you cannot have great sex without creativity, love, or fun. I've been noticing that our expectations not aligning with reality that are causing more pain and heartbreak in our marriages than our "problems" actually are.

4 - The first year isn't perfect. Unfortunately, I was told from a very early age that the first year of marriage is pure bliss. This is hilarious, but also responsible for a lot of my crying. Have you ever had a "perfect" year of life? I didn't think so. But hey, our imperfect years are the years we grow the most - and growing together with someone doesn't kill love - it strengthens it.

5 - Love is better than sex. I will admit that I've had sex on a pedestal my whole life. Maybe it comes from a conservative upbringing where sex is taboo, maybe from living in society that literally worships sex, or maybe both - I don't know. I also had sex before marriage, and sex seemed like the best part of my relationships, so it made sense to me to chase it with everything I had. But after 6 months with my husband, I've realized that our relationship - the affection, the best-friend-forever, the support, the encouragement, the always-comfortable-around-you - is infinitely more valuable to me than sex is. I never experienced this kind of love from any of my boyfriends, so sex > relationship. But now, the love I receive and give with Max far surpasses even the most awesome sex we have - which ironically makes sex even better. Hah.

6 - The way it is now isn't the way it's always going to be. Sex seems to hold more weight than most other things in our lives. If something goes wrong in the bedroom, it's so easy to feel like the world is ending - and that it will be like this forever. In this moment, ask yourself what you know of God. God is faithful to change, faithful to give hope, faithful to heal, and faithful to move us forward. Take a deep breath and choose to believe that whatever issue you're having with sex, God is totally capable of fixing it - and that it WILL change. Don't let yourself get sucked into panic and despair.

7 - Marriage counseling is more important than eating vegetables. I could write a book on why marriage counseling is so necessary, but please just take this one bulletpoint and run with it.

8 - Your daily life affects your sex life. Often we have "regular life" and then "sex!" They affect each other, and sometimes we forget. The other day I got a super achy, lonely feeling in my chest and my default thought was, "maybe it's because we haven't had sex in the last 48 hours." And then I started freaking out about sex. (Just being totally honest, you guys.) I checked myself, and realized I was just straight up feeling lonely as a result of not having any alone time to spend with Jesus. Sure, sometimes sex is what's on your mind and you want it and want it now - but if there are sad/negative feelings involved, you might just identify that sex has been a coping mechanism. Pay attention to how you feel.

9 - Don't compare your sex life to anyone else's. Everyone has a different sex life, depending on the two people within a relationship - and depending on what's going on their life. Don't ever judge another couple or the health of your own marriage because someone is having more or less sex. And don't freak out because you're having more or less sex than someone else. Use YOUR feelings to judge the health of your relationship, not someone else's.

10 - The bedroom is the last place in the world you should be trying to "impress" your spouse. I've been hearing that some of you men want to prove how awesome you are by getting her off multiple times, and from you women that you feel like you need to be dressing like a porn star to get your husband's attention or fulfilling all his fantasies. No. :( Sex is for giving, not for proving. For enjoying, not for working. For accepting, not for being insecure. TELL your spouse that they are enough, that they are sexy, that they are hot, that you love them no matter what. Man or woman, we all need to hear it.

11 - Never keep things to yourself. If you're upset, hurt, scared, afraid, or worried about something regarding sex - don't keep it from your spouse. I have been all of these things (and so has my husband) and simply getting the courage to tell one another what we are thinking and feeling has "fixed" a lot of our fears. Feeling ashamed, guilty or hurt and not communicating it to your spouse is never the way to go. Let your significant other love you.

Whoops, that's eleven.

The end!

And hey husband? I love you so much it's stupid. I love that we act like 5th graders sometimes, and I love that you take care of me too. I love that you always tell me I'm beautiful. That you've known from day one that you cared more about who I am, and who we could be together, than about having sex with me. I love that you've handled our budget, and that you've prioritized our relationship over everything else. I love that you care about how I feel, always. That you've never made me feel bad for my awesome emotional rollercoaster rides. I love that you recognize when we're low on quality time, and that you take me on adventures to fix it. Oh, and that you're super hot.

You are my favorite, still.

Modesty, Lust, And Emotional Rape.

The slow thud of pounding bass through my bedroom walls shook me half-awake. I kept my face in my pillow and wondered why it was necessary for music this loud to be played in our family's home at 7am on Saturday mornings. I pulled my comforter back over my head, and drifted off to sleep for all of two minutes before the fire alarm went off.

Breakfast was ready. And that fire alarm dug it's nails into my soul.

15 years old. I stumbled into the kitchen, rubbing my eyes and brushing hair out of my face.

"Back upstairs, Lauren." My mom stood at the stove, waving her spatula at me.

"What?"

"UPSTAIRS. You know you can't wear that around your brothers."

I shook myself fully awake and glanced down to figure out what she was talking about. Sweatpants and a cami. I guess you could tell my breasts were developing. A little late, I might add.

"Mom, I just woke up."

"You can't wear things like that around your dad and your brothers. It isn't appropriate. You're distracting them. Shame on you."

A sickness crept up in my stomach and I felt it in my skin. I pushed memories out of my mind.

Memories like the week after I turned 13, and I shyly put my balled up, polka dotted underwear in my mother's hand because I was too embarrassed to speak the words, "I started my period." She wanted to show Dad, and I was paralyzed. I stood in an aching stillness, cold feet on the kitchen tile floor, while my little girl mind shifted and groaned and made way for a developing normal that felt like being forced to stand naked in front of a man. Memories like my dad reading my diary against my will. Memories like finding naked women on the computer. Memories like hiding. Pretending. Keeping quiet. Shaking. Hush all these things.

Three years later and the boy I loved broke up with me. I thought it was for a girl that would do more with him.

Six months after that, I kissed a boy. I told him he was my second kiss, thinking that it would be something special to him - and I never saw him again. I found out a week later he'd kissed me on dare from his friends. They had seen my picture, I was super hot, and they didn't think he could "get me."

Harassed on the street by a man who wanted me to model nude for him. "I had to." I was too beautiful, I owed it to him.

Being banned from an organization because I wore a shirt too clingy and was making the boys stumble.

A man I viewed as a father figure coming on to me, shattering one of the only safe places I had left.

A co-worker trying to tape me when I didn't know it.

A first date who got violent when I refused to sleep with him after he bought me dinner.

A lifetime of awkward visits to the pool in one piece swimsuits and shorts so that I wouldn't be responsible for causing men to sin when they looked at me.

A close friend's father asking me, begging me, pressuring me, cornering me to watch a movie with him in bed.

Debilitating self-consciousness for years because I was constantly made fun of for how "homeschooler" I dressed.

Men who have put their hands in places I wasn't strong enough to protect.

Four times my life has ended, and I've created a new one out of nothing on the opposite side of the country. And in every life, they find me. These men who take and do not give. These women who shame me into believing it is my fault. The church's endless list of standards that declares my body is at the core of what is wrong with society. These people who wrap their own sins in guilt and shame and lunge them at my heart, commanding me to carry their weight for them. Hiding. Pretending. Keeping quiet. Hush these things.

All my stories? The ones I brace my spirit to share, and the ones I don't have enough courage yet to tell? My stories are no different than the average woman. Every woman I know has experienced these things. Every girl I've spoken to is wearing thin from the men in her life who have taken and not given. And all these women march forward in brokenness with a church who blames our injured hearts on our own precious bodies. To inflict pain and then blame the injured for the violence does permanent damage to a heart.

For 24 years my suffocating modesty doctrine has kept me from wearing outfits that I love, has dictated the way I dress, and has now brought me to the morning where I stand in front of my closet as a married woman, realizing that I have nothing sexy to wear for night out with my husband.

24 years of hiding so that I won't be blamed for men fantasizing about me has brought me to my husband wrapping his arms around me, telling me how beautiful and sexy he thinks I am, and that he hates seeing me hide in my clothes because I'm too afraid to wear what makes me feel beautiful.

AND YET.

For the last month, I've been suffering a daily barrage of comments and emails criticizing the way I dress. Questioning my character and my salvation. Challenging that I can't have the influence on women that I want to have when I'm wearing an oversized v-neck shirt on a date with my new husband. Rebuking me for causing men to stumble. Telling me that all the good I am doing is being canceled out by the fact that I have a great pair of legs. That I'm selling myself short by being attractive.

Last night, I received this comment on my blog: "Maybe when you talk about pornography, you could refrain from wearing such low-cut shirts."

The sickness crept back again. I crumbled. And I sat on my bedroom floor in the dark and cried. The ache was back.

The emptiness in my chest. The pain of having it all taken. The shame of being blamed. The desperate desire for someone to stand up and shout, "IT'S NOT HER FAULT."

And He did. You know, He whispered, "It's not your fault." He whispered, "I made you for this. I made you for Me. I made you for him." He told me I was beautiful. He told me I have nothing to hide. He told me He knows. That He will never take from me. That he knows every man that tried to take. He told me that it was never my fault.

And then my husband came and wrapped his arms around me and whispered all. the. same. things. in my ear.

My Jesus has proclaimed that he has given me life so that I can have life to the full.

My God says He looks at my heart and that He loves me sacrificially, and Paul begs of us to be perfect in this way that our Father is PERFECT. (Matthew 5:48, I Samuel 16:7, John 15:13, & Matthew 23:13-28)

Have you missed this? Have you missed what the God of the Universe has deemed as PERFECT?

Perfect is sacrificial love, not shifting blame for a selfishness that ravages through the souls of men, urging them to take take take.

Perfect is knowing we are all sons and daughters, made in the image of God, redeemed and restored and spotless before Him.

Perfect is looking at one another's hearts, and knowing that the outward appearance shows NOTHING of their character, their value, their salvation.

Perfect is living in the freedom that Christ died for. Not under a higher, more impossible list of standards that is so impossibly human it could not have come from our Lover. (Isaiah 28:10)

Dear men: If you believe my neckline is causing to stumble, you have bought into the lie that women are the problem, NOT YOUR LUST.

Dear women: If you believe you are responsible for your fellow man's sins, you have bought into the lie that YOU are the problem, NOT SIN.

Dear men and women: Our struggle is NOT against flesh and blood. It is against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

When you believe that your struggle is against a man or woman's body instead of against the spirit of death, you have lost and will continue to lose.

I rebuke the spirit of lust, of rape, of prostitution, of religion, of addiction, and of immorality that continues to try to shackle the body my Maker designed and gave to me with it's guilt.

I declare freedom, life, joy, purity, beauty and love over my body and my spirit.

Oh, by the way. If you are still following me by this summer, you will most likely see a photo of me at the beach in a bikini at some point.

And I will not be apologizing for it.

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Comments have been disabled for this post out of protection for my heart. <3

Video Series: "My boyfriend is watching porn?!" #2

Second video in the series is up! You can share this link: http://vimeo.com/37043951 or you can view the video below.

The first video is here: vimeo.com/36867113

Recommended reading for this segment is Chapters 1, 2 & 3 in "Living With Your Husband's Secret Wars" by Marsha Means. You can purchase it online, used, for about $5 including S&H at bestbookbuys.com. If you are committed to staying in this relationship with your boyfriend, I ask you to invest in purchasing the book as well as Sex & The Soul Of A Woman by Paula Rinehart, Pure Eyes by Gross & Luff, and Boundaries by Cloud & Townsend.

"My BF Is Watching Porn?!" #2 from Lauren Dubinsky on Vimeo.

In this video, Lauren talks about:
#1 - Validating your hurt, grief, betrayal
#2 - Different types of natural responses - unhealthy vs healthy
#3 - Evaluating your personal emotional health
#4 - Identifying the lies you believe (IE. "this is my fault")
#5 - Co-dependency tendencies & healthy detachment
#6 - Finding community & a confidant
#7 - Coming to terms that you cannot change or save him
#8 - Evaluating the relationship as a whole

You can grab the full outline of the video in PDF here.

New Video Series: "My boyfriend is watching porn!?" - #1

HI EVERYONE! I'm a little tired of writing so I'm beginning a new 7 (ish) part video series to answer the very big, very important question, "I just found out my boyfriend is addicted to porn! What do I do?!"

I'm intro-ing the series with this little video below. I wanted to do a bit of an explanation, as well as share some stories of girls who just found out their boyfriends are watching porn, and establish the foundation of the next 6 or 7 videos. If this is an issue you are dealing with, please watch this first one just so we're all on the same page and know what our perspective and goal is. I'll be posting them hopefully once or twice a week, so make sure you follow me on Twitter (@laurendubinsky) or Subscribe to my blog via email so you don't miss them.

Oh, and please pardon that I looked exhausted in this video and kind of sound like a 7 year old. I'm trying really hard to grow up, y'all. I even got married and everything, but I'm still clearly not there yet. :P

Intro to "My boyfriend is watching porn!" from Lauren Dubinsky on Vimeo.

BOOKS I'LL BE REFERENCING:
Boundaries - Cloud & Townsend
Pure Eyes - Gross & Luff
Living With Your Husbands Secret Wars - Marsha Means

Purchase them for ~$5 at bestbookbuys.com or on Amazon.

Future Videos: (subject to change)

#2 - Emotional Safety & Security
#3 - Becoming Educated About Porn
#4 - Setting Boundaries
#5 - Confronting & Communicating
#6 - Leaving or Staying
#7 - Stories & Resources

LOVE to you all. If you have something important to share, feel free to email me at laurennicolelove[at]gmail.com. If you need to share your current struggle with someone, please reach out to a woman in your church (or any church in your community - sometimes anonymous is very helpful) to ask to meet her in person. I am trying very hard to set healthy boundaries for myself and protect my time with my husband, so I am unable to answer emails on this topic right now. Thank you so much for understanding. <3

- lauren xoxo

You Can't.

For whatever you are going through today, whatever makes you say, "I can't _____."

Know that you are right. You can't.

You can't stop thinking about your weight. You can't just "know" that you are beautiful. You can't stop sleeping with your boyfriend. You can't stop watching pornography. You can't make enough money to pay your bills. You can't get out of bed and face that person today. You can't make it through this breakup. You can't make it through this divorce. You can't overcome your depression. You can't.

There is no solution, no formula, no magic number or word or "thing" that can move you from "I can't" to "I can and I did...now look how far I've come!!"

And yet we all know someone who did. We do know someone who isn't binging or purging anymore. We do know someone who is abundantly full of life without sex being part of the equation. We do know someone who is sober from pornography for 2 years. We do know someone who paid rent last month when it wasn't possible. We do know someone who made it through a break-up worse than this one and is now in the best place of her life. We do know someone who is divorced and still fulfilled in their single life. We do know someone who has overcome severe depression and extreme grief, and now knows joy and contentment and peace.

So what happened? What happened when "they couldn't _______."

Christ moved.

These are not physical battles against our bodies, our beauty, our eyes, our skin, our genitals, our brain, our blood-pumping hearts. These are battles of the soul, where an enemy is daily waging war against our value, our peace, our worth, our contentment, our comfort, our belonging, our love, and our LIFE.

What you don't need is world-acknowledgement that you are the most beautiful woman on the earth. You need the heart-belief that you are created to be beautiful and have inherent value despite what just-as-broken people may tell you.

What you don't need is to white-knuckle it against sex and pornography. You need the heart-belief that you are not alone and that you are deeply truly loved, and that your Father is proud that you are his child, despite how it feels.

What you don't need is one more person telling you to just be happy because you have a pretty good life and you should be ashamed of your unwarranted depression. You need the heart-belief that your spirit was covered in dirt and pain before Christ himself fought the greatest war of all time to present your spirit before God as pure, complete, and wholly loved, even if you can't get out of bed. And that God will never see you as anything other and pure and valuable. He will wait for you.

What you don't need is one more sermon on how pre-marital sex is sinful. You need the heart-belief that Jesus hasn't left your side a single moment and is willing to do a supernatural work in you the very moment you begin to slip into behavior you feel you cannot control. You need the heart-belief that God never forgot about you, and that there is a man who will love who you are more than he will love sleeping with you.

This is not a physical war, and there is no physical solution. This is a war for your heart, because there is nothing in all of existence that is more valuable to God than the heart of a man or woman. This is a war that we cannot win unless we let Jesus fight it for us.

I was the girl who couldn't stop sleeping with her boyfriend. I was the girl in the ER having a panic attack that she couldn't control. I was the girl who thought the earth would swallow me up because the break-up was too painful. I was the girl who skipped meals and hated to see herself in the mirror every morning. I was the girl who watched pornography because I had no other way to cope. I was the girl who couldn't get out of bed and was numb from the anti-depressants. I was the girl who lost her family and could not see a future for myself because the grief was too heavy.

I was the girl who couldn't.

And I am the girl that learned that Jesus could.

We Are Abominations.

Everyone keeps asking me what my beliefs are on homosexuality. And everyone keeps telling me that it’s an abomination before God. "If you are a Christian you must preach that it is an abomination! People must know the TRUTH! Stop with your washy Jesus-just-loves-everyone-new-age-love-fest Christianity!"

Do you know why this is a knife to my heart? Do you know? Do you feel this knife?

Because very few of you seem to understand that a human being’s sexual orientation is so extraordinarily intertwined with their very existence, that every man and woman hears nothing but, “you are an abomination to God.”

Bear with me for a moment, and imagine that your family and best friends shun you because your desire for the opposite sex warranted the label of “Abomination.” Tow’ebah, in Hebrew.

No one stopped to ask you if you chose Abomination or if Abomination chose you, but what does it matter? You are.

Where is the verse that says Jesus died for every man but the one who loves men?

Where is the verse that says God is a father to every child but the one who will realize his sexual orientation 7 years down the road from now?

And where is the verse that says once we love Jesus enough, our sexual orientation will be miraculously reversed because our sexual orientation bears weight on our eternal spirit?

To ask a person to walk into a church gay and then walk out straight is as outrageous as having someone pray over me and have me suddenly be “turned gay” in order to be a better Christian. Or worse, to prove that I am one.

To ask a person to be prayed over, and then judge the condition of their heart for the lack of miracle that you decided needed to take place in order to confirm their salvation, is to play the role of God. God promised to create in us new hearts, not new bodies.

We will receive our new bodies in paradise, but until then, each of us will live in the brokenness that we were born into, strung painfully between heaven and hell.

Coach a small child to despise the color purple, and have him shun its every appearance. From day one, speak out against it, barricade your church doors from it, pray against it, and refuse to touch any garment in the color purple. And then, introduce him to a man wearing a purple t-shirt. What response could you possibly expect from your child?

He will despise, judge, and run from this man in the purple shirt.

At the very best, he will welcome the man into his home but sit uncomfortably and offensively in the corner, terrified of nothing but a shirt.

I challenge you to stop using the phrase, “hate the sin, but love the sinner.”

I challenge you to simply love.

I challenge you to stop adding buts to your salvation. To stop saying outrageous things like, “But if ______ was really saved then ______.” To stop re-interpreting scripture to make someone feel accepted as they are, because THE SCRIPTURES ALREADY SAY THEY ARE ACCEPTED AS THEY ARE.

I challenge you to recognize that as we grasp for heaven with gravity pulling us ever downward, we MUST let our brother and sister stand on our shoulders in all of their brokenness, and we MUST stop looking at the outward appearance, as God looks at the heart.

I will tell you what is an abomination to God.

I will tell you what is tow’ebah.

People that cause conflict. (Proverbs 6:19)
Believing that we are better. (Proverbs 6:17)
Dishonesty. (Proverbs 11:1)
Lying lips. (Proverbs 12:22)
Meaningless church attendance. (Isaiah 1:13)
Worshipping things instead of God. (Isaiah 44:19)
Oppressing the foreigner, forgetting the fatherless and the orphans. (Jeremiah 7)

God has made it clear in hundreds of verses what he considers tow’ebah: We are tow’ebah without Jesus. And with Jesus? We are stainless, spotless white.

No conditions. Pure, permanently, forever accepted.

Bring me the verse that claims one man's actions are an abomination, and I will bring you the Creator of your Life whose very skin was shredded for all of your tow'ebah.

Our un-grace, our conditional love, our chronic handicap of evaluating and hating someone else’s sin while we can barely see through the plank in our own? We choose tow’ebah every day, over choosing our forgiveness.

Oh, dear church, I beg of you to love as your Father saw fit to love you. To die for you despite knowing that you would continue to sin, continue to play your own little god, continue to fall in the dirt - as we all do, children of God with bodies of dust.

Oh, dear church, I beg of you to know that we were all tow’ebah, before Jesus became tow’ebah in our place.

I Showed My Husband Pictures Of Naked Women, And I Didn't Mind.

I had a weird thing happen, several weeks ago. And I keep thinking about it, so I wanted to open a discussion about it.

Yep, a discussion. Something I never do here on my blog. I prefer to tack up my crazy, open heart and peace out before I read any responses that sting just a little bit too much.

But I have a question for you, because I'm having trouble getting to the bottom of this thought.

To explain.

I was reading articles on Retronaut (one of my favorite websites) and found one of Sexual Album Covers from the 1950's. I found the album titles hilarious, and slid my laptop around to show my husband.



I didn't think twice about him seeing a page full of photos like the one above. The sick pang that runs through my gut when I see women in their lingerie in the sidebar of GQ wasn't there. The hurt, the anger, the betrayal, the loneliness that we women feel when slinky, perfect, 24" waist 36" breasted women throw themselves in our men's faces...I didn't feel it.

And so I've been thinking about this.

Why did I not feel instantly thrust back into the "never sexy enough" category?

Why did I not feel like I had to compete with these semi or completely nude women, the way I feel when I see this week's celebrity's leaked nude photos?

Why could I feel like I could flip through a 1947 Playboy with my husband?

What is it that makes one woman beautiful and one woman a slutty threat?

Last week while running errands with my husband, we talked about how this generation has taken everything beautiful and tried to sexualize it. He told me how a woman with her hair up in a sundress will turn every man's head, simply because we are women, and we are beautiful. Beauty is meant to be admired. I know what he's talking about, too - because I've looked at women and admired their beauty. But for both me and my husband, just because a woman is beautiful, doesn't mean we want to sleep with them. But we struggle to believe this now, as women, because feminine beauty barely exists anymore without the thick presence of sexual competition.

And in competition, one person wins, and everyone else loses.

The everyone else? It's our husbands. Our boyfriends. Me. You. Our daughters. Our sisters and brothers and mothers and fathers. Every woman who is real. Even the woman on the billboard who looks at her photoshopped image and skips her dinner to work out, using her own fake image to motivate her further towards an unattainable, loveless, beauty-less sexuality.

Maybe when I look at curvaceous women in these 50's advertisements, I see women who are sexy because they are beautiful. Beautiful because they are women with a womanly form.

Maybe I don't get that sinking, broken feeling because when I look at those women I know that I am one. Instead of seeing a woman I can never be, I see myself as a woman who is part of the female race everywhere, inherently possessive of beauty and sexuality.

Maybe the fact that our men look at other women isn't what's really destroying us the most. Maybe it's that our men are learning to compare us to a woman that doesn't exist.

And maybe, deep down in our souls, we've known all along that other women aren't our competition - but we sit helpless, having no one else to hate and blame for our loss, as we watch our beauty be stripped from us because we are unable to play by the new rules.

But I don't know, still, really. What are your thoughts?

---

Oh and PS. If you want to leave a comment and tell me to stop being threatened by other women, or that my husband was lying to me and really does want to sleep with every beautiful woman, and that I'm just an insecure woman blogging about my problems, you can please leave and never come back to my blog again. Thank you for understanding, and for not being ridiculous.

Thoughts On Getting Used To Marriage - And Confessions On Not Seeing God.

Disclaimer: I adore my husband. I love that we are married. Marriage is incredible. But marriage is neither "just so amazing!" nor "always so terrible." It is both. Life is life, and the ups and downs are ever present, regardless of our relationship status. This is my attempt to be honest about both.

- - -

Last night, I shoved my feet into the boots I was married in. I don't notice anymore that my socks don't match. When you dig them out of a duffle bag for the 428th time, socks are socks and the color of the toe doesn't matter much. I did notice that my socks were too thick for these boots, and I cursed them for it.

It's been 10 days off the road, 10 days in Hollywood, and 10 days in our first apartment. 133 days of being married.

My socks should match now, but in furnishing an empty apartment with our income, new socks are not on my priority list.

So, I fought about how much we should spend on a new dresser with my husband, standing in my wedding boots, on the corner of Sunset and Vine.

Just like we'd fought about everything else this week. Food, groceries, carpet cleaner, sex, the color of our clothes hangers, the brand of garlic salt, bath mats, cash vs credit, and parking.

We were late for church. We'd spent too much money. We told the girl with the dresser "maybe," and then my phone died.

I told Max where to park. I picked where we sat. I mentally bitched at the announcement-giver and churches everywhere who ask you to "squish" down to seat people that walk in late. Our collective "squishing" just opened 247 seats for 4 people.

I recited all the lines in every song, thinking only about the days when single-me attended a church with enough room down front to go sing my heart out to songs I knew and loved. Thinking about how I used to go to church alone, sing alone, and disappear alone. I met God, and I met God every single Sunday. I loved it. I missed when my life was just me and God. My life. I could do what I wanted. I could make it an entire 24 hours without speaking to a soul.

And then I looked at the entire row of single girls in front of me.

I imagined what they were feeling when they sang. Praying to be able to pay their bills. Praying for boyfriends. Praying for husbands. Praying to not be alone. Waiting on God. Because that's what we do when we're single. We wait upon God. When we're single, heartbreak is ever present, and that's okay. Present in our past break-up, present in our single-ness, present in what we dread in the future. And we find God there, with us. It's rich.

I wanted to join them.

I wanted to shout that I was confused. That being married isn't a solution to The Great Ache. That love is beautiful but so broken, too. That broken and alone was easier than broken with another broken person.

But then God whispered: "Lauren, when you're lonely, it has nothing to do with other people. It has to do with you and Me."

Lauren, when you're lonely, it has to do with you and Me.

Lauren, when you're angry, it has to do with you and Me.

Lauren, when you're selfish, it has to do with you and Me.

Lauren, when you're worried, it has to do with you and Me.

Lauren, when you're bitter, it has to do with you and Me.

Lauren, when you're jealous, it has to do with you and Me.

It has nothing to do with other people. It has only to do with our heart and His.

I slowly stood and followed my husband up to communion. I stood behind him in single file line, in the dark, like I was just another girl at church. Not his wife. I felt like he didn't want to be there with me. I hoped he felt that. Because I was feeling it. And then he reached out his hand behind him and took mine, and my heart broke.

I wanted this. I asked for this. I prayed for this. I begged God for this. I am blessed. I am fed, clothed and sheltered. I am loved. I am recipient of the greatest gift in the universe. I have everything. I know this. What is wrong with me?

And so, I went to where the prayer team was, sat in a corner, and cried. Until someone offered to pray for me. If you have never poured out your hurt to someone you've never met, and had them pray with you - for you - over you - with you, you have missed out on what it means to have brothers and sisters in Christ. You have missed out on bearing one another's burdens. Overcome your fear next Sunday and just do it.

"I have never left you. I have never forsaken you. I am not a God who punishes his children without reason. I am not a God who turns his back on you. I am not angry with you. I am not disappointed with you. I know where you are."

I sobbed and asked God if I'd done the right thing. If everything was going to be okay. If I would feel Him again like I used to. If I would learn to be close to Him all over again, now that I'm married. If our bills would be paid. If this was Right. If this would be too hard for me, for us.

"Seriously, Lauren? I have stripped depression away from you. I have removed you from the place you didn't want to be. I gave you a man that you love, who loves you. I gave you passion again. I gave you Good Women Project. I gave you a Story. I gave you new friends who know my Love. I let you travel across the country. I did miracles in front of you. I gave you the awe-commanding sunset behind your wedding on a cliff. I gave you Family. I gave you a new home. And tonight, I brought you to be with children who love me - and sat you at the feet of a woman who would pray over you until you Felt me again. - - - And you ask where I've been? If this is right? If I still love you?"

I saw Him again. I heard Him, where I should have heard him a dozen times before. We forget what he has done when we do not intentionally sit at his feet in our mess. We are blind, until we ask Him to let us see. I re-learned unconditional love.

We went home silently, and I held onto his hand for dear life. Remember your first love. I kissed him and I apologized. I made dinner, and I apologized more. I refused to let him help clean up. I sent him to bed to watch what he wanted to watch and found joy in doing the work so that he could play. Love. Not-about-me love. This is what happens when we see God. It is necessary to see Love in order to give love.

I could write a book on last night, and the perspective that God righted in my heart. On marriage and learning to confess everything. On knowing that really, really hard doesn't mean really, really bad. On how it is not human nature to believe that someone is going to love you unconditionally, and that it isn't human nature to love them back unconditionally.

But instead, I share my little story of Sunday. A reminder of the blessing we have in one another. Of seeking God until we find out He's been there the whole time. And of being thankful for what we have, because it's so much better than we know.

And to say thank you to my husband for letting me pick out the bath mat. That we still don't have, because I'm unforgivably picky.

I love you. And I love that we are re-learning to love Him together.

One Of My Greatest Fears

I get scared, talking about my life sometimes. I get scared that people see a shadow of the truth in what I've done, in how I've chosen to live, and say, "I want exactly that."

I am scared that people will hear I've sold everything I owned this year to travel the country in a little car with a man - and decide that THAT is the best way to live.

I am terrified that girls hear the story of how I met my husband on Twitter - and start scouring the Internet for the perfect man who blogs, is wickedly clever, and wants to talk to them too, a pretty girl online.

I worry about sharing how I decided to drop out of college (temporarily) for a second time, and chose to leave my 9-5 job - not wanting for a moment for any woman to trample the sparks of opportunity she's been blessed to receive.

Yes, I have been inspired, moved, pushed, refined and bettered by listening closely to other women's stories; by observing other women's lives. Life gives birth to life. Fullness swells to create new fullness. Iron sharpens, truth speaks, love heals.

But please. Do not be tricked into attempting to replicate life in order to escape death. You are not a clone.

God is too creative with his daughters. The heavens plan and whisper and lay foundation for you, your life, your story.

My life has become more beautiful, my awe of God's work has increased beyond measure - as I hear story, after story, after story of women who live utterly opposite lives as that of mine. What a God we serve. No one could weave a story like Him.

Rarity increases value.

There is not a woman walking this earth who has an existence identical to yours.

And there is not a woman in the world who can fulfill the Creator's intricate, intentional plan for you.

By plan, I do not mean a clearly marked path in which you choose to walk daily until the day you die, with a pre-determined life-story utterly outside of your control.

By plan, I mean your birth, your childhood, your brokenness, your character, your personality, your hopes, your passions, your gifts [ trust me, they are there, whether you see them or not yet ], your body, your mind, your spirit - - - all of these things fall perfectly into place to make possible a life that could never be lived by another human being.

We do not serve a God who wastes resources.

You are not wasted.

We are beloved children of a God who treasures and counts carefully - who rejoices in indescribable pride - over the value of his sons and daughters.

And all these little things? Every detail, every heartbreak, every rush of joy, every word He has whispered to you in the dark places - they make you a resource that would break His heart to waste.

You are rare.

You are of value.

Where we see our worthlessness, He sees an entire life composed of endless spaces to fill with his overflowing Love.

"You were bought at a price. Do not become slaves of human beings." (I Corinthians 7:23)

Do not become the slave of another human being's life. Of another human being's story. Of their success, of their failure, of their talent, of their beauty, of their skill.

You were bought at a price.

"Live as a believer in whatever situation the Lord has assigned to you, just as God has called you." (I Corinthians 7:17)

I am a believer. A believer in a furious love, a scandalous grace, and a God I do not understand.

I am a believer. A believer in a Savior who walks with me daily, who leads my feet to places only mine can go, and who holds your hand through a life that I could never live.

We are beautiful. Bought at a price. Claimed for freedom.

And asked to live as believers in the places that our Father has powerfully created for us.

Why You Shouldn't Read My Blog Unless You're Friends With Me

Okay, well. I didn't really mean that. I adore that people come to this little space and listen to my rants, my confessions, and my lessons. It is nothing short of a gift to me, and truly - I covet your time here. So thank you.

But, I had an epiphany today, and I want to share it with you.

I've been struggling this month, kind of a lot. Yep. Because saying Yes to God this year for me meant marrying an amazing new man in my life, leaving everything behind to travel the country, and starting Good Women Project.

Oh, I know how blessed I am. My life sounds perfect in that pretty sentence. And my life is incredible, because grace makes it so, even when I can't see it that way. Because Jesus daily gives me the life that is everlasting. The life that I cannot find in the gaps of an imperfect marriage, an imperfect life plan, and my imperfect leadership skills.

And so, I am so grateful. I am.

But it's still really, really hard. Did you know that? I want to talk about it.

Did you know that no matter how amazing something seems from the outside, it gets pretty un-amazing really fast when you take responsibility for things that are God's?

The potential of my life is infinite with God, but it has been dying quickly with a lie that I've bought into.

A little lie that says "this depends on you."

I fell back into that lie's little sister that says, "you delivered something people love, now it's your job to deliver it every single day."

But it doesn't depend on me. It depends on God, because He is the one who promised to carry out on to completion the good work that HE began in me. (Philippians 1:6) And when we focus on the "me," everyone and everything else fades out from our periphery. When we focus on the "me," we begin to isolate ourselves, and the expectation falls on ourself alone.

I accidentally put the burden back on my shoulders, for the hundredth time in my life.

I forgot that there is a world of Life behind the dullness of the digital to come alongside me and shout out that they've found the same Source of all this Life.

I've used the I-Can't-Be-Your-Friend-Because-I'm-In-A-New-City-Every-Week excuse for not investing in the unbelievable women I've brushed fingers with in my life. And the We-Can't-Talk-Because-I-Have-Too-Many-Emails thing, too.

I've had the joy seared out of me with the disagreements, fights, hate, differences, conflict, misunderstandings and crap that comes so easily from people that we've never known personally.

And man. I'm exhausted. My heart is pretty worn out. You guys, it took me three hours to get out of bed this morning. Two more hours to get off the sofa. I don't want to write today. I don't want to edit posts, and I don't want to design, and I don't want to answer people's questions, and I don't want to sift through the bottomless pit of the Internet that daily reminds me I haven't learned even 0.0001% of what I wish I knew.

I don't mean to complain, but today is the day that I have found no life in anything I am doing.

And there we have it.

There is no life in anything I do.

There is only life in what God does through us.

There is no life in what we do alone.

There is only life in what we do with others.

My heart needs a witness to all its good and all its bad, just to be alive. Can I get an amen?

So, I chose to accomplish nothing today.

Instead, I unloaded my problems and my complaints on Haley and Kelly. I sat at the table with my husband and we dug and scraped pieces of debris out of one another's hearts as best we knew how. I picked up my phone and called - YES CALLED - sweet Amber to ask her advice on an issue with Good Women Project because I can't do this alone. And I emailed back and forth with Lore about the busy-ness of life and the beauty in resting, while I struggled to silence the voice in my head that was wrangling me back into believing I had too many other emails to reply to.

And in that, I found SO MUCH LIFE that I had to write, and tell someone out there about it.

Somewhere in the midst of my mistakes and mis-prioritizing, God has given me the grace of women (and an incredible husband) who have made their hearts and love and support available to me, even when I don't return it well. Even when I've put so much weight on my own shoulders that I've had no more joy left to give. Even when the dread of unwelcome comments has kept me from writing what has been trying to push its way out of my heart.

So really, what I said about not reading this blog unless you're my friend? I just meant that friends you can unload on are necessary to survival. That asking for advice is exponentially better than making a decision on your own. That talking to someone - real, human connection - is much more beautiful and life-giving than we give it credit for. I meant that no amount of reading other's stories of healing can come close to the rawness of sitting in someone's presence and putting your own heart on the table. I meant that your friends' opinions of you mean infinitely more than an anonymous commenter.

I meant that I've been reading and doing more than I've been being and loving - and if you're overwhelmed and feel alone, if you feel that the online world has sand-papered your heart - maybe you have too?

- - -

They asked him, "What must we do to do the works God requires?" Jesus answered them, "the work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent." John 6:28-29