A Call to Lust

The Momalom topic of the day is...lust.

I rolled the word around in my head and off my tongue over and over yesterday. What is lust anyway?

Craving,
Desire,
Ardent Enthusiasm,
Zest,
Relish,
Hunger,
Yearn,
Intense Eagerness...

I thought of how we describe a healthy baby's cry as lusty and the brilliance of an object is its luster. But lust all by itself almost always connotes something sexual. It also almost always connotes something illicit or indecent. Lust has a place though, an invaluable place in a whole and holy marriage. In marriage we find a place where it's safe to crave, to hunger, yearn, desire...lust.

In this unexpected Momalom assignment, another piece of the vast writing that Mango & I have done on marriage has fallen into place - the piece on desire. Though we wrote quite a bit on the value and meaning of physical intimacy, desire is different. It's the relish, the final ingredient without which the whole dish loses its flavor.

It's about wanting
and being wanted
and wanting to be wanted.

It is what sets eros apart from all the other kinds of love. Unlike other loves, eros requires a mutual desiring. Equally, it is giving and being given to, loving and being loved. As such, it also requires that we say what we want...that we, perhaps, lust, for our partner. Lust is going after what you want because you're desperate for it, hungry for it. It's a craving for closeness - body, mind and soul. And this is so essential to a marriage that is alive and whole and beautiful.

You see, marriage is only partly about doing our best to love our partner, pouring out our words and actions to bring them joy and satisfaction and fulfillment. That is only half the picture. The other half is about allowing our own needs to be met, desires fulfilled, wants answered. In fact, we deprive our partner of the ability to fulfill their own calling to love us in marriage if we cannot say what we desire.

I believe that it is the desire of God for us to love and be loved. Scripture tells us that God is love. And I believe that when we refuse to be loved, we are refusing to accept our partner's God-given calling to love us. We're interfering with their life's calling, preventing them from accomplishing God's mission for them here on this earth. So, in fact, accepting love is also a calling. And this is not a passive acceptance, but an active calling. We must take responsibility to ask for what we want, to go after what we long for and desire.

And I don't believe it's always as easy as it sounds. Though lust looks lusty, it isn't always so simple to go after what we hunger for in a marriage. It's vulnerable to say what we want, especially when we're in them middle of difficult or stressful circumstances, misunderstandings, or conflicts. And it's difficult to persist when one way of asking doesn't get us what we want. We forget that spouses are like foreigners, coming to each other from different family cultures, and it takes time to learn the language of the other. Sometimes we have to ask and ask and ask again...but this is what hungry people do. Likewise, our partner isn't always in the position to give, and all of our desires must be rooted and grounded in care and love. We must bind our lust to our love for our partner. They must be inextricable so that we never ask without regard for the person whom we are asking.

Most often, I think one person gets caught up in giving, in trying to be the perfect, selfless partner, the one who takes care of everyone and everything while denying their own hungry self. This kind of thinking, though, leads to a relationship that lacks depth and growth. When a person fails to tell their partner what they want, refuses to pursue their own needs, they don't allow their partner to really know them or to be fulfilled in their own call to love. The giving becomes empty because it doesn't exist in relationship, it lacks mutuality and synergy. It fills up the other person for a while but does not build relationship. Eventually the other person feels empty, too, because they don't really know their partner and, therefore, cannot reciprocate the giving. A refusal to speak your desires is a refusal to be known.

And so, to fulfill the call of marriage, the call of eros, we must risk pursuit of those things we crave, our innermost hungers and desires. We must stop being saints and martyrs and risk being known. We must dare to yearn for those things we want...in fact, to lust for that person whom we are called to love.

Indelible Beginnings

I remember when I realized that the words I was reading meant that you loved me, that you wanted what I wanted, that we had been hoping for the exact same thing. And then I was all shy and embarrassed, like when we open Christmas presents in front of the whole family, everyone watching and anticipating a response. I remember the olive green trenchcoat you always wore and the way it smelled of the woods and your cologne and the way I leaned into you, holding your coat pockets. And there was the Ford Bronco named Elf where we sat together as lightning flashed across a blue black October sky, the whole back a pile of red roses.

It took long moments for me to really understand what you were saying, to know that it wasn't just wishful thinking, that you were really there and I was really there, and you were asking if you could kiss me. I'd never kissed anyone before, unless you counted my parents and all the little babies at church. I leaned in to you, and you leaned into me, and then I pulled back, too overcome with awkwardness mumbling something about never having kissed anyone before. And you said, "It's ok. I've never kissed anyone I loved like this before." And I knew you were nervous, too, and then it was ok.

I remember the cassette tape of songs you had recorded for this very night. (Remember cassette tapes?) And there was the notebook I had been writing since the night of the Mary Chapin Carpenter concert at the State Fair when we wished on the first star together. I had wished for this moment ever since.

You slid a little gold ring onto my finger. The ring bears the swirling pattern of a Celtic knot, something that's part of your heritage now belonging to me...

...now belonging to the family we have created together. Everything's built on this memory, the starting point, this fragile, tender, indelible beginning.

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This post is a part of...

Memory Outside of Memory

I remember her playing with Mane when we came to pick Mango up from school, and when we drove home Mane said, "I wish Vespera was my sister." Did she know? Is there a memory outside of memory for the things that haven't happened yet? Not one month later we'd be in the process of adopting her. I didn't know that day. Mango didn't know. Mane, at 4 years old, surely didn't know.

I remember back, 4 years prior, my pregnant self walking in a gently falling December snow and thinking that Mane would be born in the snow. I shook my head at myself. Mane was due 4 months from then - in late April. Even in Minnesota, that would be late for snow. She was finally born - ten days past her due date - in early May following a late spring snowstorm! How could I know? I didn't know. And yet I knew...as though I remembered already.

Memories, for me, are something mystical. Sometimes we remember before, sometimes after, sometimes differently than what someone else remembers, sometimes ALL the details, and sometimes only fragments. Sometimes we remember nothing but the feeling, or the smell, or the music. Our memories store themselves in the time of year or in a type of weather, in favorite foods, and in kinds of flowers. And, I feel that even when we can't remember, we have a certain type of memory. Our bodies know things that our mind does not, stores things in our hands and feet, in our arms and legs and the smalls of our backs. So, we remember.

Sometimes I want to make myself remember. And so I write things down and take a lot of pictures. I close my eyes and try to freeze-frame the thoughts and feelings, colors and textures of the moment. Then I discover that memory doesn't work that way, will still come and go as it pleases, with the smell of lilacs on the breeze and changing color of the leaves in the autumn. As much as I promise myself that I will remember forever, I still pick up an old piece of writing and am surprised by the things that happened to me.

Perhaps we'd be crushed if we remembered all the pieces of ourselves all at once, if we could remember everything that ever happened all at the same time. The present would be drowned by the past. Instead we call up only the memories we need to inform the present moment. And then, occasionally, we are blessed by the sweetness of an unbidden memory, the softness of a baby cheek, the smell of old perfume in a box of letters...or, perhaps, something that is yet to come in the gently falling snow.

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This post is part of Momalom's Five for Ten

"Happiness is..."

To get my blog out of its bloggy slump and to connect with some other bloggers out there in blogland (and because Heather of the EO is doing it), I've decided to join Momalom for their current Five for Ten event. (Except it's day 3, and I'm a bit behind...)

Today's topic is "Happiness is."

I'm having a lot of trouble with this one (I know, I just got started, and already I'm having trouble) because I so very seldom use the word happy. I try to focus on joy, on contentment. When I think about the things I wish for my children, I want them to be happy for sure, but even more than happiness I want them to be content with their lives, to be satisfied, to be fulfilled. In the words of Thoreau, I want them to "live deliberately...to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life." Sometimes that isn't always happy work. It's complex and confusing, often arduous and sometimes painful.

"Happy," for me, conjures up images of neatly wrapped packages all tied up with pretty bows. Sometimes we receive those packages in life. And it's beautiful when we do. It's lovely to receive one of those gifts and have the excitement of unwrapping what's inside. It's lovely to have one of those moments when everything is tied up neatly, just for that moment, shimmering and sparkling and just plain pretty. But that's exactly what they are...just moments. It's not a whole lifetime of one beautiful present after another. Often our gifts come plainly wrapped with little fanfare, and we have to work for them. We have to dig up the treasure, get some dirt under our fingernails, sweat a little. And that, I think, is where the real joy comes from, the contentment that isn't just skin-deep happiness.

What it really comes down to for me is that life is really about people. It's about loving others out of the overflow of God's love for us. And loving others, although it can be filled with happy moments, is not always happy work. The depth and strength of the love we build when we endure life's less-than-happy moments is where we find true contentment and fulfillment. It is the true lifeblood, the marrow, of our lives.

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Do not let the sun go down...

A friend, who is in the middle of a painful and profoundly sad divorce, told Mango & I this morning that the biggest thing we could do for our marriage is to follow the Bible's advice to not let the sun go down on our anger. I thought about that in light of another conversation I had with a married friend the other day. We were talking about how sometimes you're just too tired to talk about whatever it is that's making you angry. Or, in mathematical terms, tired + angry = completely irrational and unable to reach any sane solution. Things tend to look so much better in the morning. Problems looks smaller in the light of day after a good night's sleep. Except...

By either ill fate or a stroke of luck, I am constitutionally unable to sleep while angry/upset/frustrated. So, try as I might to take a break and let sleeping dogs lie until morning, I can't do it. I won't sleep anyway. I need to solve things RIGHT NOW. Or, as Mango will confirm, three hours from now after a whole lot of crying.

My method isn't entirely sane. It certainly involves a lot of drama. Problems look so much larger than life at the end of a long and tiring day. Not to mention that I know that I'll know in the morning how small the problem actually was in proportion to my emotional response, and that could be embarrassing. I know this, and I stay up late wrestling things through anyway. Fortunately, Mango is somewhat similar and isn't interested in the restless and unsatisfying sleep of the angry. Mostly, though, I know he just loves me, and so he paces with me through the emotional drama so we can get to the end of it and sleep in peace.

Our friend this morning said that he went to bed angry many-a-night, and this led to a sort of syndrome of sweeping things under the rug. Because the issues looked so much smaller in the morning, they never really get resolved until they were much, much bigger. In his case, unsolvable.

So, maybe, the whole thing about not letting the sun go down on our anger makes it so we wrestle over the small issues before they become big issues. All the little things pop up when we're tired. Is it possible that this is the right time to deal with them - tired, stressed, overwhelmed, and emotional, though we are? Is this, perhaps, the time when we let our hearts and emotions rule over our reason? And this is the place where we, therefore, get at the "heart" of the issue, the driving force, the internal hurts, fears, motivations, and insecurities? Is this the place where we can speak to and bring healing to each other in the deeper places of our souls?

I can't say that I know the answer because I know that waiting it out DOES sometimes prevent us from saying the wrong things, from speaking hurtful words that we don't really mean. I know, not because we ever go to bed angry, but because sometimes our disagreements are interrupted by the demands of daily life. We have children, after all. And when we come back to them, the issues no longer hold such emotional fire. And sometimes we even find that we don't need to have that argument at all. It was silly and unimportant, and we find grace for each others shortcomings.

So, what's the balance? There seems to be something to letting the small stuff slide sometimes. Some things we ought to simply forgive and keep moving. But, there's also something to not letting ALL the small stuff slide. Because some of that small stuff turns into big stuff. We need to distinguish between something that's going to get bigger and something that truly isn't a big deal. And how can we know when we're too exhausted to think straight?

Thoughts?

Resurrection Eggs

We decided to dig out the mosaic circle that we use for Advent and use it to display the Passion story symbols from the Resurrection eggs. There's always been something powerful about keeping the circle of candles on the table for Advent and displaying the symbolic ornaments on our Jesse wreath. And there's something powerful about using the same mosaic plate for both Advent and Easter. It draws the whole story together. I see why cathedrals have been built with stained glass windows that tell the story of Jesus, and the Catholic Church employs the use of incense, music, icons, candles, and so many other tangible objects. We are human, and we need reminders.

Thoughts on Marriage

Thoughts on Marriage by Mango and MidnightCafe

This was primarily composed by Mango. It's a "guest post" of sorts, though I edited, and we collaborated on many thoughts as the writing happened. Mango included some references to Catholicism, as the Catholic Church is a point of reference for Vespera & Niteo. It seems a timely post, very much related to Easter and the salvation we receive through Jesus, which allows us to love and be loved by the God of the universe and to, in turn, love each other.

Love, the highest calling

The highest calling of God is love. Jesus said that the two greatest commandments are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind & strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. 1st John 4:7 tells us "Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." We know that God is a God who honors and values relationships because God, within the self or person of God is a trinity (3 persons): God the father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. In the middle of God is a relationship, and love between those different personalities is what defines God. The whole creation was made as an outpouring of that love. That is why people, the crowning accomplishment of God's creation, are designed and commanded to love. This is essential to what it means to be created in God's image.

God created us to be the messengers of God’s perfect love to one another. We were created to love and be loved, and only in relationship with other human beings do we experience the hands, feet, eyes, and ears of love in a tangible/touchable kind of way. This is the 2^nd most important commandment, the purpose for creation, and God has placed it in our frail hands and hearts. We are the only hands that God has to love one another - frail, imperfect, sinful and broken people. We have been entrusted with this most sacred and important task.

Sometimes it is hard to get our minds around the fact that love is really the most important thing. We often only see the truth of that when extreme circumstances bring life into sharp focus, like seeing our lives flash before our eyes. Sin has come into the world to distort the meaning of our existence and our calling. The distortion of sin makes it seem like there are many other purposes for us and our lives: being successful, work, education, money. What is the purpose of these things, though, if it is not to worship God and provide for the people we love? Without love, these things are empty. 1 Corinthians 13 tells us that even our good works are nothing without love. The real, genuine, and most important thing is love. We all know the old saying that "all you can take with you is that which you've given away."

In our broken, sinful, and frail selves it is easy to lose sight of this or just mess up. This is what is meant by 2nd Corinthians 4:6-7: "For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us." We are those fragile jars of clay.

When Jesus died on the cross, he purified and sanctified us before God, making us holy people, acceptable in the sight of God. In accepting this sanctification, we become more able to receive God’s love and to share that love with others. When we place Jesus first in our hearts it is God’s holy and perfect love that we are able to show to others. We continually mess up and need forgiveness from God and those that we love. It is often said that the ones we love the most can hurt us the most. And we are more likely to hurt those we love because we feel most safe with them. When we call on God, we can draw from the infinite wells of God’s love to love each other. When we run out of ability in our humanness, God enables us to keep loving.

Marriage the deepest expression of love

Jesus tells us in John 15:9-12 that:

"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

Jesus gave his life for us on the cross, and this is the kind of extreme love that God calls us to when Jesus told us "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." Matthew 16:24

In just this way, the Catholic Church orders the sacraments: Baptism, Communion, and then Marriage. First follow Jesus; then love each other. Baptism and communion symbolize our commitment to God (baptism) and our commitment to fellowship with God and other believers (communion). From this place of being grounded in God, we can answer the call of marriage, of loving another person fully and completely with the agape/unconditional love we receive in unlimited supply from our Creator.

Aside from death, marriage is the final sacrament. So, in this final sacrament, we are called to live out that deepest love – to lay down our lives for another. Jesus did this in his death. He died so that we can carry out this love in LIFE. In marriage we give our lives, not by dying, but by committing to another person forever. Through a lifetime of putting another person first, placing the love of that person before our own desires, we give our lives to each other in marriage. When two people do that for each other marriage becomes the beautiful thing that it is meant to be.

When two people love each other like this, they complete part of what it means to be created in the image of God. This is why marriage is so important and transforming in our lives. We live in relationship, in love. We work always to give, love and satisfy our partner, and they do the same in an endless loop of giving and receiving from each other. It is this beautiful synergy that makes a couple into a team. Each spouse is much more than they ever could be alone. Again, in the image of God, it is from the overflowing of this love, and this firm foundation of trust and support that a couple reaches out in love to others, children, friends and community.

However, we are broken and imperfect, so it is not on our own that we can love each other like this, it is only through placing God in our hearts. We have all been hurt and are in need of healing. In our brokenness, we turn our hurt on each other, we lash out in anger, we blame, we are selfish, we refuse to listen, and we shut each other out of the hurt places in our hearts need healing most. Because of this imperfection, our partners will hurt us, and we will hurt them.

Nonetheless, in a marriage we are called to bring healing to one another. Just as Jesus came to bring healing to us, we are to bring Gods healing and love to our spouse. Ours are the only hands God has to show Gods holy and transforming love to our spouse.

We bring healing, through struggling through our own and our partner's pain, loving each other through it, being willing to be vulnerable again even though it may mean being hurt again, and never giving up, as long as their partner is fighting to improve and to do the same.

A spouse is God's greatest gift to a person. When we understand that we are the one chosen by God to bring love, healing and joy to our spouse it is a huge and wonderful responsibility. God's plan for us and God’s deepest desire for all of us is for us to be deeply loved, and deeply happy, full of joy and peace. We were created to give and receive that love, of which there is none greater, our whole lives lived for each other. That is the reason that God has placed partners together. Our job is to love each other, fulfill each other, and be God's messenger of love to our spouses. Through healing each other and loving each other we become the beautiful union that God has designed marriage to be.

Intimacy in Marriage

The Bible continually refers to us as body, mind, and soul. So God created men and women to make love together as a way to give themselves to one another on all levels of being: body, mind, and soul. It is so personal and private that we can hold back nothing of our selves. This is why we consider people truly married when they have given themselves to each other in this deeply personal way. Though we promise ourselves to each other in a church, marriage is consummated in that intimate private moment when we first truly give ourselves to each other. To consummate means to make real or to fulfill a promise. So the real requirements for marriage are that two people make a promise together before God and make love together.

Because sin has brought a curse of imperfection on our world, that first time can be painful, awkward, and frustrating. Really experiencing the wonderful connection that making love is meant to be can take practice, patience and working together. But it is, nonetheless, the first time when we take down all our barriers of privacy to give all of our selves to one another.

When we give ourselves to each other when we make love, we give fully from all that we are (body, mind, and soul), and we give each other a love that is perfect pure and holy. God has created us to be physical beings with body, mind, and soul all joined in one person. That is the reason that God has created us as sexual beings with bodies designed to match with another, male and female, people designed to fulfill another. Part of being a fulfillment to our partner is allowing them to live out God’s calling to love us, by letting ourselves be loved in all levels of our being. This can mean being vulnerable and open about our feelings and letting go of ourselves to really desire our partner. Often it is in the vulnerable times when we choose to stay open anyway that deep healing can really happen.

We are chosen by God to show God’s love to our spouses. God perfected us through Jesus’ death and resurrection, and God affirmed human love through Jesus’ birth, by becoming one of us. If Jesus can be born, in all the humanness of birth, and he could eat and sleep and breathe like any other human, then being human is right and good and holy. Human beings were created by God for the glory of God, and this means that God created sex and pregnancy and birth. These are the means God chose for the expression of love and the creation of new human life on earth. As creations of God, these things are holy.

Making love is holy. It is both acting out and recommitting to the covenant between spouses. It is a covenant of giving. When we make our partner feel wonderful, we give to them, honor them, and adore them, in the deepest way a person can. This is true whether it is wild and playful, slow and gentle, or intense and quick, as long as it is done with love, desire, honor and adoration. This is the reason the feelings from lovemaking make partners feel peaceful, relaxed, and contented.

The Need for Continued Connection with God

When we see ourselves like this we see what a problem it is when couples are not able to give themselves completely to each other with their body, mind, and soul. When we start to hold back, marriage stops being what God intended it to be. Because we aren’t perfect, and we live in an imperfect world, we struggle sometimes to stay close. We make mistakes, and we have to forgive each other. We never stop needing God’s salvation.

Through God’s forgiveness we are made perfect and holy. Yes, we still make a mess of things sometimes. Romans 3:23 says, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” and we continue to do so. But if we continue ask God’s forgiveness and each other’s forgiveness, we are already forgiven once and for all. The debt that was paid on the cross for us is forever. Through God’s salvation, we are made holy, and through God we can love one another with God’s perfect love. This is why God shows his love to us through people. That is why to love God and to love one another is our highest calling and the most important thing we can ever do.

This makes all the ways that we show love for people really important, but the love between husband and wife is exceedingly important. This love is the foundation of our families. It is through the over flowing of that love that we are able to be more together than we could be on our own. A marriage with God’s love in the middle will always be greater together than the sum of its parts (the two of you). You already see that that is true.

And, so, whenever we struggle with something, it is good and important to pray about it. We ought to make a habit of this. One of the things that C.S. Lewis says about praying is that God already knows our situation, but that God wants us to ask for the help we need. Sometimes the answer to prayer changes our situation, but more often it changes us to give us the ability and the wisdom to change our situation.

The Bible also makes it clear that God holds a special place for people when they pray together. Praying together places two people together before God. In the words of the Bible, it places God as the third strand in the "cord of three strands that is not easily broken." (Ecclesiastes 4:12) That is what your wedding was all about, but it shouldn't end there. Praying together is something you should do all your life.

God’s design is for marriage relationships to be deep and fulfilling. We help each other, support each other, challenge each other, and, most of all, love each other. We must always live for one another more than for ourselves and recognize that, aside from salvation, and the gift of our own life, our spouses are the most precious gift we will ever receive from God.

In marriage we are finally ready to be the person to bring God’s love to another. Each of us is the person that God has chosen to love our spouse. When we ourselves have been made holy and pure, we are able to love another with a love that is from God. We are able to be God’s messenger of that love, God’s agent on this earth to fulfill that purpose.