Fifty Shades of Grey.
Let's just go ahead and throw it out there. The chatter is endless. The stances are varying.
I'm not here to write a critique about the movie or the books themselves. I've not read or seen them, and I do not plan to do so. It's a bad idea for my walk with Jesus and for my marriage.
Some of you are rolling your eyes. You think I'm being dramatic. You think I'm a prude and don't know how to let loose and have some fun. I want to tell you something...
I like sex. I like it often. I like it fun.
I like it with my husband - who is the only man I've ever done it with.
I know a lot of women stand on the side of sex as a chore - but there's not a thing about sex that feels the same as doing laundry to me.
When we first started - y'all. It was awkward and funky. Bless our inexperienced hearts. But it was okay because we figured it out together. It hasn't been without work - meeting each other's needs and loving each other selflessly in the bedroom. It is not without work ten years in. But seriously, it gets better and better the longer we practice. With each other. No one else is invited - not literally, not metaphorically.
There certainly have been seasons when I've felt so discouraged in our sex life that I just assumed it would always be mediocre. Early in our marriage I read tips in Cosmo and more than one cheesy "spice up your sex life" book. I bought crazy lingerie and tried my hardest to "get creative". None of it ever seemed to matter.
Finally, I started praying about it. I mean specifically praying about the details our sex life. At first it felt weird and sort of like writing this blog post knowing that my parents will probably read it. But then, slowly, things started to change. My relationship with Jesus deepened because in inviting him into this area of my marriage, I was inviting him into more of my heart. And Josh's and my sex life - all I'm going to say is - Prayer works, ladies.
I am also very familiar with that feeling of desperation to just feel SOMEthing again. To know fun and thrill and a life different than where you have ended up. I know what it is to want to escape. Running to Jesus is the answer there, too. I'm not saying that in doing so, everything suddenly comes up rosy. What I am saying is that as we run to him over and over again in the midst of our monotony, something in our hearts changes. Our need for adventure and pleasure doesn't diminish, but our focus shifts to the One who placed those needs in our hearts to begin with - to the one who will fulfill them in measures we could not even imagine.
Like I said, I don't know enough about the movies or the book to give any sort of accurate critique BUT I do know that your sex life doesn't need anything but Jesus to be awesome. Your real life doesn't need anything but Jesus to be delicious and exciting. Everything you're looking for - a way to escape, to feel alive again. You're not going to find it in some smutty movie. You will only find it when you start running with Jesus wholeheartedly.
I know from experience.
Fifty Shades of Grey is not the answer.
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