God Can Transform You and Your Marriage
One of the first things I tell women taking Awaken-Love is, “What I say will not change you. The books your read will not change… Read More »God Can Transform You and Your Marriage
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Helping Your Husband Battle Pornography
I am going to be perfectly frank with you, my husband has never struggled with pornography and I have never experienced the pain of betrayal. But because I teach Awaken-Love, I have walked beside a lot of women that have. It breaks my heart to see the pain that pornography causes for these women, but it also breaks my heart to see how pornography has impacted their husband.
God keeps calling me to speak into this arena, I don’t know why. Maybe it is because I haven’t been personally impacted and so I have a different perspective. Is it possible that what might be most helpful for a wife to do to help her husband battle pornography is the exact opposite of what every fiber in her body is telling her to do? Read more about How to Create a Safe Place for Your Husband to Share about Porn.
Simple yet Profound – Keep Your Love On
I can’t stop thinking about the Keep Your Love On conference that I recently attended. Danny Silk talked about how to stay in relationship – whether with your spouse, your child, your friends or even your coworkers. The concepts we learned were both simple and yet profound and I can’t wait to read the book. Here are a few of Danny Silk’s concepts….
Tapping into the Senses for Better Sex
God created our bodies with amazing capabilities to taste, see, feel, hear and smell – and yet many of us miss out. Life is so busy, so garbled up, that instead of experiencing more, we experience less. Life is a blur and our senses become numb. We just move from place to place, keeping pace and yet missing out on so much.
Sometimes it takes intentional choices to create enough time and space to truly connect with God. I need to settle in, take a few deep breaths, release my thoughts and just be for a moment. If I want to encounter God, then I need to be still and listen for His voice. When I am out hiking, I ask God, “let me feel you”, or “let me see you”, and sometimes His answers blow me away. It takes time, it takes intentionality and it takes stretching your senses.
Sensuous Massage
Giving or receiving a sensuous massage can be more vulnerable and intimate then having intercourse. To unveil yourself and relax into the touch of a spouse requires immense sureness and trust. Sensuous massage has been used for years by sex therapists as a launch pad for growth. It removes the intricacies and mechanics of sex and simply focuses on being present and experiencing what you feel. If you want to relaunch or refocus your sex life, sensuous massage is a great place to start.Read More »Sensuous Massage
God’s call to Newness – The Seasons of Sex
We have made it through another long winter in Minnesota and Spring is in the air. God created the seasons as visible evidence that time passes – the old has gone, the new has come. Seasons are God’s reminder that he is not stagnant. He blesses us with fresh starts, shows us His abundant creation and calls us to something new. The change of seasons is also God’s call to newness in our sex life.
Why Share your Sexual Baggage
A profound change happens during week 3 of Awaken-Love, as we take turns sharing baggage that has impacted our marriage. I ask the women to share whatever they like, large or small, but to focus on how the baggage has impacted them or their marriage bed.
We share our baggage for several reasons…
Sharing our stories helps us to realize we are not alone. Every woman in the room has something that has impacted her marriage bed. Stories of shame or pain are received with grace and love. Stories of bad messages are greeted with nods that know and understand. Women recognize their own story in each other. Even though the details of our lives are different, we have much in common.
Healing comes from sharing hurts and sins with one another.
Thirst
God created us to thirst. He gave us a drive that causes us to reach for something that will truly satisfy. When we reach for all kinds of other things that distract us, our thirst doesn’t go away. It continues to drive us toward what we really need, toward what God wants for us.
To Know Our Spouse – Our Deepest Desire
Do you think you can have sex without getting to know your spouse?
I think a couple could figure out what works and then just stick with it. They could rely on mechanics and physical responsiveness for a while… But eventually, things aren’t so great, because they get bored – because they aren’t getting to know each other. And if they are like most couples, they don’t talk about sex, so they just adapt. The wife may begin to check out mentally and fantasize about whatever creates enough excitement for her body to work. Or she may just decide she doesn’t like sex, so she puts it at the bottom a very long “to do” list.
Women are very intuitive about whether you are getting to know each other during sex. Many women relate to the frustration of a husband going through his routine without any clue whether his wife is actually enjoying things. She is laying there thinking, “here we go again. Yep. Here we go again”. Because she knows every step that is next. And because the husband is more intent on getting her to the finish line, then discovering something new, he just keeps at it. He tries harder and harder, while she becomes more and more frustrated. He is not paying attention to the signs of her body, and he is not getting to know her.
How to Help Your Husband Lead Spiritually
Most Christian wives have a deep desire for their husband to lead spiritually. Many of us have this romantic idea that when we get married our husband will suddenly transform into the spiritual leader. Daily, he will gather the family around the table for an evening bible study to share deep insights. He will intuitively sense when we are struggling and gently lay his hands on us to pray. He will energize the family to get to church when all we want to do is sleep.
But why would getting married suddenly change our husband into the spiritual leader?
My guess is that leading spiritually is another area that men feel they can never live up to their wife’s expectations. It was an area that I found myself critical. After I took a hard look at myself, I realized I was a big part of the issue.
