Ten Months Married

I started making our wedding scrapbook this month. We have a LOT of good pictures. We have a LOT of good stories, good times, and good people. I also spent a lot more time reflecting this month, on my birthday, on advice to someone who just got married, on really bad examples of couples, and on the traditions Caid and I have started as a couple. It has been a wonderful month. But my favorite time, every day, is every night when I snuggle up with him and we talk, laugh, and pray.

I might have told you about Ann Voskamp before (www.aholyexperience.com), and how her writing has blessed me. This one did it again. Some highlights:

"(I read how this woman) regretted waiting until she was married. How she’d waited until her wedding night and how she wished she hadn’t.  How waiting wrecked a deep and real part of her. How all those years of no made her ashamed of when she finally said her marital yes.  

I get it. I really, really get it. I waited and I was her. After getting it into your head that you don’t — it can take a long time after you say “I do”….  for the rest of you to say I do.  The soul of a woman needs to feel a deep safeness before you ever touch the skin of a woman. 

Your skin is the outer layer of your soul. Your skin and your soul are profoundly connected and this is a profoundly beautiful thing. There is no shame in this — only the glory of God who made your body art to reflect your soul.

There’s nothing casual about giving away your soul. The union of two bodies is nothing less than the union of two souls. Physical oneness is a holy God-created ceremony to express nothing less than a soul oneness. When someone isn’t willing or ready for spiritual oneness, emotional oneness, legal oneness, financial oneness — why let them steal physical and soul oneness from you?

 “Great sex is a parable of the Gospel—to be utterly accepted in spite of your sin, to be loved by the One you admire to the sky.” –Tim Keller

As God calls His people to exclusively commit to Him alone — so we’re called to commit to exclusive intimacy alone — an echo of Belovedness. As God commits to wholly, unconditionally, and covenantally accept us forever in spite of our sin and flaws, to love us passionately to death —- so physical intimacy mirrors a whole, unconditional and covenantal acceptance of us forever in spite of our shortcomings and flaws, to love us with a passion that is willing to die-to-self.

The exclusive communion between husband and wife is to reflect our exclusive communion between soul and Christ. But hear me — no matter what’s happened in the past —  Jesus wants you, Jesus chooses you, Jesus holds you, Jesus keeps you and there isn’t one of us that hasn’t been broken and there isn’t one of us that doesnt belong, that He doesn’t stop calling “Come, Beloved.”   No matter what’s happened to the rose — Jesus desperately wants the rose. 

A relationship needs something stronger than feeling for it to endure and flourish —- Relationships need the safety and strength of a binding, legal covenant to thrive. A covenant is the most powerful infrastructure to be powerfully intimate. And as the covenant is necessary to be powerfully intimate — so being powerfully intimate is necessary for the covenant.

Your naked body deserves the honor of being shared only with someone who is covenanted to never stop loving your naked soul.