You Can...You are Married now

He says I am short. At 5’3’’, I am one inch under the USA average for women. To me, this makes me just a little under average, not short. We have agreed for him to call me petite.

It is the little joys of him sweeping the floor while I do the dishes. Cheering when fixing the oven. High fiving it when the toilet finally flushes. Rolling over in bed and finding someone there. Having an arm wrap around you in the dark. The honeymoon was really nice. We slept alot, and didn’t go out and do anything. Sex is exhausting.

He shakes his head and mumbles “Type A” under his breath again. I like getting things done. Before our honeymoon, the longest I’d been able to last at the beach (without internet, without doing work) was five days. The honeymoon was nine days, and I was sad to go. This marriage stuff could be really good for me.

We have started our own collection of secrets. I’ve never done that before. Growing up, I never really had secrets. All my awkward quirks were already obvious. My friends and I giggled about boys, but I was too shy to talk to them. But now I have this friend—this best friend—and we read about keeping some things secret. Sacred. Just me and him.

They all have the same look on their face as they hug me: “How was your honeymoon?” (Smirk) “It was fantastic! So relaxing and fun!” (More smirk) “Oooooh, reeeeeeally?” And I turn red not because I know they are thinking about how we had sex, but because we can’t say it for what it really is. No one ever says the S-word. Our culture is so interestingly screwed.

I am the product of either sex-overload or sex-silence. Culture and movies have created 30 years of what I thought sexuality was. A few good conversations with a few good people gave me some perspective, but most everyone else was silent.

And then a man and a woman come together and have sex for the first time, and it is like a whole pot of issues and confusion is opened. 95% of what we knew was wrong. It is so much more and so much less than what we were told.

Christianity told me to “Just wait and then it will be great.” What? I put on hold a whole part of my life—my sexuality—because I figured it was just to be ignored until it was unlocked on my wedding night. I have come face to face with a huge part of ME, who I am, that I have never met.

I’ve read every Bible verse there is about sex, I have read every popular Christian book about it—and yet, I still feel like I have no idea what God thinks about sex—and wants me to think about it—while I am actually DOING it. And in the end, this is no one’s fault but mine. And so I am getting to know myself.