Taboo Topics: Parents of small children – Meet Nicolette Ferreira

Some days, as a stay-at-home mom, I literally find my self walking around the house, doing nothing… Please note: this is NOT because I am lazy or that there is nothing to being a stay-at-home mom (and part-time freelance writer, let me just add – by the way, why do I feel like I have to justify myself?!)

Anywhoo…

If I decide to sit down in front of the computer to do some writing, Alex starts climbing up my leg, crying for my attention or for me to pick him up (yes – I have tried all sorts of interesting toys to keep him busy on the floor).

Should I pick him up… he will NOT magically sit stil on my lap while I type. He will pull everything he can off the table and also try his best to play with my laptop.

So I get up from my writing and decide to sit on the couch and do some constructive reading. I promise you – sitting down on the couch is like an open invitation to your baby to come and play with mommy. He will beg and tug at your leg for you to pick him up.

Should you pick him up, there is no chance of you relaxing for even a moment – he has no idea that he can fall off the couch and he will crawl around like a cute little baboon all over the couch.

So I get up and decide to get some house work done. Disaster. As I move form room to room, for example, packing away clothes, Alex will find it most frustrating – you see: just as he gets to the room I am in, I am already on my way out again. Inconsolable tears.

I decide to stand still and do the dishes. Nope – Alex climbs up my leg crying for me to pick him up or just do something amusing.

So sometimes I find myself just lying on the floor with Alex climbing all over me – I have to do my best to not get permanently scarred or bald as he goes for my hair, my eyes and my nose.

On these days, and there are many of them, I find myself at the end of the day feeling a little unfulfilled. If you think it is easy being a stay-at-home mom – you have no idea how difficult it sometimes get.

That said… I love my Alex and I would NEVER change having him. But please, just empathise with me a little bit today.

Love, Nicolette

[to follow Nicolette's writing, go and visit her blog Nicolette writes: Professional Freelance Writer and Stay-at-Home Mom, click here]

The Invisible Woman [a follow-up to Candi Fourie's 'Parents of young children' post]

so more than 1000 people have viewed the post my friend Candi graciously shared with me about being a parent of small children when it doesn’t necessarily go well or feel good all of the time [which for this little blog is a lot of people which has been exciting to see and will hopefully continue to encourage those out there who may be struggling with some of the same stuff] and so this is a sequal of sorts to that.

firstly Candi has a recently started blog [with just one post] called Moments with a Mom, which she is hoping to write some more for and that first post is really worth a read so please go and check it out and leave some encouragement for her there if you appreciated her story at all.  

but then Candi sent me a video link for a 6 minute video clip by a woman called Nicole Johnson [who i had never heard of before so can't verify whether any of the rest of her stuff is worth checking out or anything] titled ‘The Invisible Woman’ and so i watched it and it got me really close to tears [which as a lot of you know is quite a feat, altho it seems less and less these days, maybe i'm just being exposed to better stuff or maybe this old hard-hearted dude is finally softening a little?] and so i encourage you to watch it. 

i think it is specifically aimed at moms or maybe wives, but i think it’s a great piece for all of us to watch, just in terms of being aware of what we add to the ‘making someone feel invisible’ phenomenon, and also because i imagine each one of us feels a little invisible at some time or other and would love a friendly reminder from God or the people around us that we do matter, that we are seen. so give it a watch and i’d like to hear your thoughts afterwards:

 

 

Taboo Topics: Parents of small children – Meet Candi Fourie

I met Candi as a friend of a friend a couple of years ago and then somewhere along the way we became friends as well which has been great. Candi has been married to Matt for coming up to four years on the 23 May. They have ‘two little ninjas’ – Noah who is nearly 4 and Tyla who is 2. I am really grateful to her for sharing some of her story as a parent of young children with us here:

‘People say that when you get married, you have to commit to “marrying” that person every day. I think it’s the same with motherhood. Making a decision to be a mother before you have your first born is one thing ~ but living in the throws of family life on a daily basis, I’ve had to certainly step back a couple of times and refocus my heart on my kids ~ re-commit myself to motherhood.
The wonderful thing about motherhood is that you don’t know how deep you’re in until you walk through your front door with a tiny, little human being and begin trying to piece the remnants of your life back together. Believe me, if I could’ve taken a ride forward in time and had a look at what my life would look like having a newborn, I might’ve needed a little more convincing!

You’re almost automatically hit by the fact that life as you knew it before, will never be as it was ~ and that’s crushing. Having had post natal depression with both of my kids, I can share that that valley is a dark one. I think the hardest thing is chatting to other moms who seem to have it all together and you feel like you’re struggling alone. Moms, who have their kids sleeping through WAY before mine did for example ~ I can’t understand how I got that wrong and my first born was and still is to this day, a terrible and very restless sleeper and he’s nearly 4!

As my kids get older, their lives get larger and oh boy, do they get louder. Sometimes, I feel like I live in a mosh pit of screaming, shouting, crying, juice-spilling, food-messing mayhem. There are times when I want to run to the bottom of my garden, rock myself in the foetal position and sing kumba-yah. Some people say that motherhood is the only place you experience heaven and hell at the same time. Just typing that, I feel like I’ve betrayed my kids in some way, that I’m not grateful for the amazing blessing my kids are. That’s completely untrue. It just means that it’s ok not to be ok sometimes.

It’s ok to feel like you’ve lost yourself in all things baby and forgotten who you are, before you had kids.

It’s ok to feel like life outside of your house or the baby’s room is carrying on without you and no-one knows you’re trapped in a time warp of continuous feeding, sleeping and nappy changing.

It’s ok to feel like you’re never having an uninterrupted night, working a 24 hour day shift, and HATING the fact that it feels like it’s never going to end!

It’s ok to have a living room that always seems to be invaded by Buzz Lightyear space ships, Barbie’s entire clothing wardrobe and shoe collection and you have to climb a Mount Everest of blocks and teddy bears just to find the couch. That’s of course assuming you have time to even sit on the couch, for longer than say, 8 seconds.

It’s ok to feel a sense of relief when your kids are tucked in bed (hopefully to sleep through the night, unless you’re in the same boat as I am! ) and you can sit and stare into space without anyone needing you to pour their juice, find their dummy or get them ready to bath or go to school or to their swimming lesson.

It’s ok to feel like all you ever do is plan your baby’s life, while yours takes the back seat. You plan the next nap time, plan the next gap you have to puree food for the next meal, plan the next shopping trip so that’s it’s in between a nap and meal. Basically, your day is dictated to by sleeping and eating patterns.

Motherhood has been my greatest blessing and at the same time, it’s been my biggest challenge. One of the greatest lessons I want to teach my kids is who they can most depend on in life, who they run to when they need comfort and who will never forsake them, no matter the cost. Of course, us moms fill that space without a hesitation but above us, there’s their Creator who loves them more than we can ever love them, even though that doesn’t seem possible sometimes. I want to teach my children that. But why don’t I ever take that lesson to heart and believe it when I have those “I-feel-I’m-not-coping-as-a-mom” moments? I’ve had nights when my kids were smaller, where I’ve actually called out loud to God ~ I’ve shouted at the top of my voice in the middle of the night, through tears “Jesus, I need you to help me ~ I can’t do this!”. Just admitting that I’m not ok to the One who loves me the most has brought me relief.

Vulnerability is the first step towards strength ~ as paradoxical as that may seem. I’ve realised that it’s ok not to be ok all the time. And it’s ok to admit it. I’m not a robot ~ I’m a mom.

“Being a mother is learning about strengths you didn’t know you had, and dealing with fears you didn’t know existed.” It’s 11pm, my four year old has just woken up for the second time tonight, and it looks like another long night ahead ~ bring it on, it’s game time.’

[Candi has a blog called Moments With A Mom which she has just started and so this mom needs some more moments to be able to post more there but go and check it out so long and encourage her and thank her for sharing this story with us. Click here to visit it.]

[Also Candi sent me a link to this video that makes her cry every time and which is a huge encouragement to mothers, and maybe every one of us - that you are not invisible]

Taboo Topics: Parents of Young Children – Meet Steve Wiens

A direct share [thankx Steve!] of the blog post: To parents of small children: Let me be the one who says it out loud [March 12, 2013]

I am in a season of my life right now where I feel bone tired almost all of the time. Ragged, how-am-I-going-to-make-it-to-the-end-of-the-day, eyes burning exhausted.

I have three boys ages 5 and under. I’m not complaining about that. Well, maybe I am a little bit. But I know that there are people who would give anything for a house full of laughter and chaos. I was that person for years and years; the pain of infertility is stabbing and throbbing and constant. I remember allowing hope to rise and then seeing it crash all around me, month after month, for seven years. I am working on another post about infertility that will come at a later date.

But right now, in my actual life, I have three boys ages five and under. There are many moments where they are utterly delightful, like last week when Isaac told my sister-in-law that “My daddy has hair all over.” Or when Elijah put a green washcloth over his chin and cheeks, and proudly declared, “Daddy! I have a beard just like you!” Or when Ben sneaks downstairs in the morning before the other boys do, smiles at me, and says, “Daddy and Ben time.”

But there are also many moments when I have no idea how I’m going to make it until their bedtime. The constant demands, the needs, and the fighting are fingernails across the chalkboard every single day.

One of my children is for sure going to be the next Steve Jobs. I now have immense empathy for his parents. He has a precise vision of what he wants — exactly that way and no other way. Sometimes it’s the way his plate needs to be centered exactly to his chair, or how his socks go on, or exactly how the picture of the pink dolphin needs to look – with brave eyes, not sad eyes, daddy! He is a laser beam, and he is not satisfied until it’s exactly right.

I have to confess that sometimes the sound of his screaming drives me to hide in the pantry. And I will neither confirm nor deny that while in there, I compulsively eat chips and/or dark chocolate.

There are people who say this to me:

“You should enjoy every moment now! They grow up so fast!”

I usually smile and give some sort of guffaw, but inside, I secretly want to hold them under water. Just for a minute or so. Just until they panic a little.

If you have friends with small children — especially if your children are now teenagers or if they’re grown – please vow to me right now that you will never say this to them. Not because it’s not true, but because it really, really doesn’t help.

We know it’s true that they grow up too fast. But feeling like I have to enjoy every moment doesn’t feel like a gift, it feels like one more thing that is impossible to do, and right now, that list is way too long. Not every moment is enjoyable as a parent; it wasn’t for you, and it isn’t for me. You just have obviously forgotten. I can forgive you for that. But if you tell me to enjoy every moment one more time, I will need to break up with you.

If you are a parent of small children, you know that there are moments of spectacular delight, and you can’t believe you get to be around these little people. But let me be the one who says the following things out loud:

You are not a terrible parent if you can’t figure out a way for your children to eat as healthy as your friend’s children do. She’s obviously using a bizarre and probably illegal form of hypnotism.

You are not a terrible parent if you yell at your kids sometimes. You have little dictators living in your house. If someone else talked to you like that, they’d be put in prison.

You are not a terrible parent if you can’t figure out how to calmly give them appropriate consequences in real time for every single act of terrorism that they so creatively devise.

You are not a terrible parent if you’d rather be at work.

You are not a terrible parent if you just can’t wait for them to go to bed.

You are not a terrible parent if the sound of their voices sometimes makes you want to drink and never stop.

You’re not a terrible parent.

You’re an actual parent with limits. You cannot do it all. We all need to admit that one of the casualties specific to our information saturated culture is that we have sky-scraper standards for parenting, where we feel like we’re failing horribly if we feed our children chicken nuggets and we let them watch TV in the morning.

One of the reasons we are so exhausted is that we are oversaturated with information about the kind of parents we should be.

So maybe it’s time to stop reading the blogs that tell you how to raise the next President who knows how to read when she’s three and who cooks, not only eats, her vegetables. Maybe it’s time to embrace being the kind of parent who says sorry when you yell. Who models what it’s like to take time for yourself. Who asks God to help you to be a better version of the person that you actually are, not for more strength to be an ideal parent.

So the next time you see your friends with small children with that foggy and desperate look in their eyes, order them a pizza and send it to their house that night. Volunteer to take their kids for a few hours so they can be alone in their own house and have sex when they’re not so tired, for heaven’s sake. Put your hand on their shoulder, look them in the eyes, and tell them that they’re doing a good job. Just don’t freak out if they start weeping uncontrollably. Most of the time, we feel like we’re botching the whole deal and our kids will turn into horrible criminals who hate us and will never want to be around us when they’re older.

You’re bone tired. I’m not sure when it’s going to get better. Today might be a good day or it might be the day that you lost it in a way that surprised even yourself.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

You’re not alone.

[for the link to Steve's original blog post and access to his blog, click here]

Taboo Topics: Infertility – meet Steve Wiens [The Actual Pastor]

I stumbled upon a blog by Steve Wiens a while ago, about parents and little children, and it was really great so i emailed him and asked for permission to use it as part of the Taboo Topics series and he graciously said, ‘Yes!’ and also sent me a link to the Infertility blog which he wrote which looks like it will be really helpful for people who have been struggling with that:

Ten words that describe infertility by Steve Wiens aka The Actual Pastor

Two weeks ago, I wrote a post about the hilarious and exasperating journey of parenting small children. But for seven harrowing years of infertility, Mary and I would have given anything to have children, no matter how hard it was.

Here are ten words I would use to describe how infertility feels:

1. Lonely. We saw couple after couple get pregnant before us, our best friends included. When they told us, we high-fived them, then we went home, and hardly knew what to say to each other. We felt lost, sad, and even lonelier than before. We were excited for them; we were just very sad for us.

It’s okay to go home and cry your eyes out when your friends get pregnant.

2. Exposed. Everybody wants to give you advice, and some people say incredibly stupid things. My favorite: “You just need to stop trying so hard!” Some people want to know every excruciating detail of what you’re doing to get pregnant. Suddenly, your most private details are the subject of casual conversation. Once people know you’re trying, people want to know how it’s going, if you’ve done artificial insemination, if you’d consider IVF, and how it felt in that small white room with the gross leather chair & the bad magazines.

It’s okay to avoid the question, smile, and change the subject. Keep as many things private as you can (except to a few trusted friends).

3. On Hold. We were always checking the calendar, wondering if we should plan that vacation, or that work trip, because what if we’re pregnant? Then we stopped doing that, because we would have never lived if we would have scheduled everything around a “what if.”

It’s okay to miss a month or two; you have to live your life. This is hard, but over the long haul, it will create more stress if you feel so trapped that you can’t plan anything. We even found that it’s good to take a month off now and then.

4. Invaded. For women, there are so many things entering your body (probes, needles, drugs) and so many people measuring your progress. Even sex, at the mercy of a calendar or a temperature reading, can feel invasive. The loss of control can almost merge into a loss of self. But, it feels like once you’ve started down this road, there’s no stopping until you get pregnant.

It’s okay to say what you need, and it’s okay to shore up your boundaries in whatever ways you can.

5. Awkward. During one of the first visits where I was given the small cup and ceremoniously ushered into the small room, I actually ran into some people from my church afterwards. Of course they had their baby with them. I had a small cup that contained very personal contents with me. They asked, “What are you doing here?” I mean, what do you say?

It’s okay to laugh at yourself sometimes. And when someone catches you with your cup in your hand, that’s all you can do.

6. Angry. Unfair is the password that gets you into the infertility club. Mary tells a story of a friend asking her if she was angry with God. “No!” she blurted. “I’m angry at pregnant women!” She knew this was irrational, but she also knew that it was good for her soul to be honest in safe places. You actually may be angry with God, and you may need to find some safe places to be honest about that.

It’s okay to express the darkness, even the stuff you’re terribly embarrassed about, because it’s good for your soul. But in the right places, with people who can handle it.

7. Stressed. Even though it seems like a stressed out couple is less likely to get pregnant, The American Society for Reproductive Medicine finds that there is no proof stress causes infertility. Besides, trying hard to “not be so stressed about it” never worked for us. It also didn’t help to “just stop trying.” Everybody has a friend who was infertile for 73 years, and the day they stopped trying, they got pregnant. That never happened with us.

It’s okay to be stressed. Don’t stress about your stress. Trying hard not to be stressed is silly.

8. Despair. The cycle of hope and despair with infertility can take you out. I remember getting so excited when Mary was 2 days late, and just knowing that this time, it’s going to happen! Then, a few days or hours later, when she told me she got “it,” I would plunge into despair. The alternative is to temper your hope so that your despair doesn’t get so low. After about a hundred months of experiencing this cycle, we found that the best route is to keep hoping, and if it doesn’t happen, keep crying. It’s too hard to pretend that you’re not excited and that you’re not depressed. Be excited. Be depressed.

It’s okay to hope, and it’s okay to cry. Keep hoping and keep crying.

9. Loss. This was not how it was supposed to be. This was not what you dreamed it would be. And you don’t know how it will end.

It’s okay if you don’t know how to wrap your mind around your emotions. Be gentle with yourself for not totally having control of how you feel from moment to moment.

10. Ambivalence. Every time you have to go through another kind of treatment, you ask yourself: “Is it worth it? Do I really want it that bad?” And then in the very next breath, you are taken out by the sheer magnitude of how much you want a baby.

It’s okay to want and not want. That’s normal.

If you’re struggling with infertility, it can be such a dark time. You have to be out loud with each other about what you need, and every journey will be different. You have to give yourselves permission to do this journey in whatever way makes the most sense for you.

My blessing for you as you struggle: May God give you what you need, when you need it, over and over and over again.

[To catch more of Steve's blog, The Actual Pastor, click here]

Taboo Topics: Sex in Marriage – Meet Steve Graybill

Val and I met Steve during our time at the Simple Way and although we have spent a really short amount of live time together, he has quickly slotted into my folder of ‘Favourite people.’ Steve is someone who really strives to live out the Good News of Jesus practically and is an absolute inspiration. He jumped at the chance to share his story here and I hope that it will encourage and challenge many of you as it has me… On his second visit to the Simple Way we got to meet his lovely wife, Helene. Here is a glimpse into their story from Steve’s point of view:

My pastor has a saying: “Sometimes you have to let a dream die before God will resurrect it.”

I became a Christian shortly before my 19th birthday. Being somewhat of a high-school nerd I had still – had my virginity intact without much threat to it as I entered my college years. Truth be told when I became a Christian it was mainly because I wanted to date a girl who would not date non-Christians — we were best friends and there always seemed to be the ambiguous friends-more-than-friends paradigm/angst to our relationship. Of course, it was me who usually had the more romantic interest in her. Needless to say that romantic part of our relationship never worked out with any longevity, but being close Christian friends we made a covenant with each other that we would remain virgins until we found the person that we would spend the rest of our lives with. And we would wait until we married that person. She held up her end of the covenant while I did not. I was close, but I blew it. Of course she did get married in her early 20s, while I would wait until I was nearly 40 to have God give me the person that I will spend the rest of my life with.

Finding the woman that I would marry was the number one goal of my twenties. It was frustrating to see my male friends that were not holding to my standards of sexual morality fall in love, and get married. I would pray and ask God, “My friends are sleeping around and getting rewarded with wives. You know this is the desire of my heart, I am not sleeping around with anyone – Okay I did buy that Penthouse magazine, but geez I threw it away the same night I bought it and even went back to the store clerk and confessed that purchasing it was wrong—so when do I get rewarded with the woman that I get to spend the rest of my life with?”

By the time I was 29 I had had it! Most of my guy friends were married and my closest friend who I was living with had just gotten engaged to a possessive and jealous woman and I had to move out and our friendship eroded quickly. In the process of this, I began dating a non-Christian woman who I was up front with about waiting until marriage before having sex. She was fine with this agreement. But my anger and resentment toward God for not giving me what I deserved with my chaste lifestyle boiled over. I still remember the night that I had sex for the first time. I remember my girlfriend honoring me – three times she said “You don’t need to do this if you don’t want to. Are you sure?” I was sure! It was obvious that God was not for me and if God was not for me, than I was not for God.

I had heard stories about how if you have sex before marriage you will wake up feeling guilty the next day. This was not the case for me at all — I woke up feeling great, in control, and like a man! However, our relationship would begin to fall apart soon after this decision. Despite me being the initiator of sex, I gradually began to lose respect for her and I think that was the primary factor that led to me breaking off the relationship.
It would be two years before I would have another relationship at the age of 31. Christina* was a divorcee, 6 years older than me, a recovering alcoholic, but a Christian. We both agreed to wait until marriage to have sex. We also agreed that we would date for at least a year. While we never had intercourse, I would not exactly say that were not sexual. Regardless, we were dating for 11 months and I was beginning to think about buying a ring when she abruptly cut the relationship off. I was devastated—It was one of the most difficult times in my life — God had again shown that he is not for me.

Somehow, I took to heart one of the things that Christina told me when she broke up with me. If you want to understand me you should attend Al-anon — a twelve step program for families and friends of alcoholics. I don’t know why I would take the advice of the woman that just broke my heart but I did. Al-anon literally saved my life. It was in the Al-anon meetings that I began to realize how egocentric I was! For a solid year I was at Al-non twice a week and on bad weeks more! One of the biggest turning points was on Good Friday — I attended a meeting that I did not normally attend because it was just a really hard week for me. I remember gushing tears after that meeting and going up to Val, who was always knitting through the meetings, and flat out told her, “I am unlovable!” She immediately gave me a hug and reassured me saying, “You are totally lovable.” She meant those words and somewhere inside of me I knew she was right.

Things did not get instantly better after that night but that was the turning point. I began the process of realizing God is for me — a process that continues today. Somehow, it occurred to me that maybe I was not meant to get married. I decided for the first time in my life that I would trust God with this. If I was meant to be married God will make it happen in his timing, but I was really willing to accept that maybe I might be called to be single for the rest of my life. That latter scenario was a bit hard to swallow but I was okay with it. I was okay with it until gradually I started to really enjoy it.

I would not go on another date for more than six years! I had gotten used to single life and I was loving absolutely every minute of it! And then bam! I asked a woman that I barely knew if she would like to share gas money to a river festival. This was the time when gas was more than $4.00 a gallon, I was driving a gas-guzzling SUV and the festival was three hours away! We were both avid whitewater kayakers and would be able to hang out with our respective friends once at the festival. Helene was a “safe” option — I was sure of it!

God had other plans! It did not take long for us to realize on the ride up that there was a connection between us. We talked the entire way without either one dominating the conversation at any point. I remember being excited and confused at the same time. Needless to say, the river festival was the catalyst to us beginning a relationship. The big problem for me with this though, was that Helene was an atheist, had a promiscuous past and had also recently dated a good friend of mine. Again, I laid out the boundaries of no premarital sex and was shocked to find another non-Christian agreeable to this.

I was committed to loving Helene for who she was and not for what she believed. I was very hands off with respect to sharing my faith with her. I was open to sharing what I believed and why I believed what I believed and would recommend books that had influenced me — mainly so that she could better understand me. Regardless, God began to enter her life.

I happened to be what is commonly termed as “dechurched” at this time. Al-anon was still serving that purpose for me at the time, albeit more like 2 times a month. Helene heard about an Alpha group at National Community Church (NCC) in Washington, DC and started attending. Before long she was going to services and then this atheist girlfriend started asking her Christian boyfriend why he did not go to church — weird how God works sometimes! God uses atheists to get Christians into church — NCC is still our church home today!

It was not long before our relationship would fall into the trap of what I call the “Bill Clinton” school of sexual abstinence. Everything but intercourse is not waiting until marriage, but it would take us a while until we realized this. We dated a little less than two years before we got engaged and moved in together not long after. About 8 months before our wedding we went through a six week prepare group with our church for engaged couples. The group leaders are empty-nesters and they are awesome and they do a great job with the group! However, it would be the week after the group ended that I would pick up Lauren Winter’s book, ‘Real Sex,’ off of my wife’s bookshelf. I will not go into details about the book other than to say that it was the kick in the butt that I needed and that it is a great read for dating couples! I read the book in a few days and immediately gave it to Helene and said, “You need to read this and then we need to talk.”

We agreed that waiting until marriage to have sex is not about doing everything but intercourse. We were cheapening what it means to honor God with how we were approaching our physical relationship. We set up an appointment with the leader of the prepare group and he let us have it. At that meeting, we agreed that I would move into the spare bedroom starting that night. The only problem was the Helene’s mom was visiting and staying in the guest room at the time. So instead we agreed that I would sleep in our bedroom but on the floor on a camping pad until Helene’s mom’s visit was over. We very specifically agreed on body parts that were off limits to the other until we said “I do.” We also wrote confession letters to each other that we would burn together as well after reading them aloud to each other.

The decision to do these things was paramount for the health of our relationship. Showing love physically is easy. It can be a challenge to show love in other ways. Helene and I had to be creative. Notes around the house—putting them in sneaky places where one would least expect it was one thing we did. Reading Gary Chapman’s Five Love Languages and learning what those are for each other was also good for us. Moreover, the decision to step away from the physical aspect of our relationship was a step of faith in trusting that God knows what is best for us. Instead of seeing God as wanting to take away the fun things in our life–in this case sex—I decided to go all in (no pun intended) with trusting Him!

I will admit that it was not always easy but it was certainly amazing! I gained more respect for Helene. I gained more respect for myself. It was a catalyst for me to allow God deeper into my life. I also learned how to make Helene feel loved beyond the scope of just being sexual. And I felt redeemed — even all the mess that Helene and I created with keeping God at arms-length in our premarital sex life — God was able to redeem it once we invited Him in!

God had truly resurrected the dream that I had let die!

[*Name Changed to protect the innocent]

[To follow Steve's musings in his regular blog 'Steve G's Eclectic World', click here]

[to get a glimpse of part of Helene's story, click here]

Taboo Topics: Sex in Marriage [Intro]

Wow! So this one should get people clicking on it. It may seem like a bit of an unusual topic to list under ‘Taboo Topics’ which after all was a series designed with the aim of talking about some of the issues that are very prevalent in the world, but that the church [and often even the outside-of-the-church world] rarely speaks about, or into. But think about it for a second. Preaching about sex in church? In any context other than the ‘Thou shalt not!’ of pre-marital sex… I certainly can’t remember the last time i heard a good preach on how to have good sex in marriage.

I know what a lot of you might be thinking – of course not, how inappropriate would that be, that is something for a counselling sesssion… or something like that.

It certainly is something for somewhere. And if the majority of married people are not receiving any form of counselling, then chances are it is not being spoken about. At all. Does the bible have anything to say about sex? Absolutely, and it definitely has a lot to say about how we should be treating each other.

So I wanted to get the ball rolling and so i sent out a general email to a bunch of my married friends, and Steve and Helene responded almost immediately and having read their stories i am so excited to be able to share them with you as there is so much Love and Grace and Redemption within them, that I really believe these are going to change lives and hopefully share a bit of an ‘I get it’ with some of you who may have felt as if you are the only one who understands what you’ve been through. While each of our stories is different, sometimes it just takes hearing the story of someone who has gone through something similiar, to be able to feel a little bit encouraged and have a lot more hope that this can turn out alright…

I should say before we begin that I really do believe that marriage is the place God created for a man and a woman in a committed relationship to have sex in. That is how God designed it to be. Although at the same time, it is important to acknowledge that we do live in a broken world and we live with a lot of that brokenness in us {which God is bringing to redemption], and so it doesn’t always end up that that is where sex happens. Fortunately we have a gracious and loving God who is able to enter into our stories where we have messed them up…

This was the original blog post and two responses that invited the whole focus on this topic – click here to read ‘How much Sex in Marriage?’

Click here to read the story of Steve Graybill and his wife Helene Scalliet

Click here to read the story of Helene Scalliet and her husband Steve Graybill