Truth, Dare, or Super-Revealing Truth - A Freudian Discussion on the Sexual Development of a Child

We've all got embarrassing stories from our youth about the time we licked the floor for a dollar or didn't make it to the bathroom on time. Nicknames like bug-girl or pukeshoes rarely lose their sting. But, most of us eventually get to the point where we can chalk everything up to being six and laugh about these mortifying moments. But, some of us... all of us, I think... have things that haunt us. 

You might have figured out the genre of the kind of things I’m going to talk about by the title. 

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to a female friend of mine about lust and dating relationships. I found the Christian teens’ perspective on the subject of sex to be startlingly negative, even beyond what I’ve come to expect from youth-grouper girls. I listened to her talk about how horrible and disgusting various acts were, and how much she hated lust. She admitted that is was excruciatingly difficult for her to touch her boyfriend, a fine Christian young man, or to let him touch her, because she was absolutely convinced that it was going to cause him to burst into flames of lust/damnation. I was going to address this directly, because the prevalence of the assumption that boys’ brains are just walking snuff films, waiting for the sight of some girls’ upper neck to hit the ‘play’ button, is something of a pet peeve of mine. But then she suddenly began to talk about how it was difficult for her even to accept that it’s okay for married persons to lust for each other. After a moment of thought, I looked into her face, her pretty round face with her pretty round eyes and asked her directly, “Why do you hate lust so much?” 

She blinked at the question, and paused for thought. Her eyes began to fill up with tears, but she straightened up and answered, slowly and deliberately, “Because it scares me. Because it has hurt me. It hurt my mother, it consumed my grandfather, it has destroyed my family and damaged my friends.” The clarity of her response struck me, and she went on. “It’s something I used to struggle with.” the tears left her eyes, and seemed to be replaced with disgusted shame. “I don’t anymore, but I used to. Thank God I don’t anymore, but I really used to. I used to do horrible, disgusting things. Awful things. Thank God I don’t do any of those things anymore, I used to be so messed up and disgusting.” Her tone skipped back and forth between shame and disgust; she seemed to be playing the part of the sinner and the judge, being careful to feel guilty and not let herself off the hook for even a moment. 

Finally, I stopped her, and gently asked her what the horrible awful thing she did when she was little could possibly be. “Please don’t judge me.” She begged, shaking her head, her eyes tearing up again. I shook my head and reached for her hand, and bad habit of mine when people become emotional. Note to the planet: if someone’s talking to you about negative sexual experiences, they usually aren’t going to want you to touch them. Just by the way. 

I promised that there was nothing, nothingnothingnothing she could tell me that would make me judge her or think less of her. She caught her breath, and told me about how, when she was a little, this ‘perverting, disgusting little girl’ (another note: no matter what, it’s not good to get on people about their own judgmentalism while they’re making a confession. Do it, but do it later) used to get her to pretend to have sex with her. This was before my friend really had any idea about what sex was, and this behavior didn’t go on long before she told her mom. 

After a moment, I began to say, “It’s normal to experiment at that age (around nine). Something had probably happened to that girl that made her-” “No.” unwilling to let herself off the hook for even a moment, she went on. “That’s not the worst thing that I did.” I prompted her to go on, promising again that I wouldn’t think less of her for anything she had done. After a long preamble about how sickening she thought the coming confession was, and many promises that she didn’t do anything like that anymore, she finally shut her eyes, shook her head, looked me the in face and said, “When I was eleven, I did some masturbating.” 

I was floored. 

She quickly went on to say that it wasn’t that bad, she hadn’t done that much, she only did it for a little while…. but I could not get passed the initial shock.

THAT was her deep dark horrible disgusting perverted secret?! She masturbated when we was eleven?

I honestly had no idea what to say. My first reaction was to tell her, “Oh my gosh, honey, darling, there is NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT.” But, I knew that she did, in fact, consider masturbating a sin, and that most, if not all of the people in her/our circle felt the same way. Maybe you do to. Let’s not go there right now. 

So, instead, after a moment, I said, “At eleven, your body is changing. You have a new, adult body, new hormones, new everything.” I shook off the feeling of talking to an elementary schooler and went on. “It is normal, completely, one-hundred percent normal, to experiment with your own body at that age.” She was shaking her head, unwilling to accept this, until I finally got her to look me in the eye, and I said, “Every. Single. Solitary. Person. In the entire world. Has done that.” She paused and shook her head again, and said she would believe if it weren’t for two mutual friends of ours, because she was absolutely certain they would never do anything that vile…


People, listen to me, I know this has been a long post, but I swear it’s almost over. Everyone experiments sexually to some extent when their growing up. These things can leave a lot of shame and do a lot of damage. But thinking of yourself as perverted or being ashamed of things like that is wrong. I’m going to write more on sexual development stuff, but first I want to talk about forgiveness. 

God is super cools with your past, if you’ve given it to Him and asked Him for forgiveness. Seriously. Jesus did not recoil in horror when He saw you mess around with whatever might have been your secret when you were ten, I promise. The fact that you watched porn when you were fourteen is only a problem if you're still watching it. Jesus does not think you are dirty, He does not think you are perverted, and He is NOT ashamed of you. There is not a hotter place in Hell or an inferior place in Heaven for masturbators. It’s okay. Forgive yourself and move on; Jesus has.  

Fufilling Expectations.. not What You'd Expect

I was having a good little chat with my dear friend Jan-er, and, of course, had a revelation. Talking to Janelle actually induces wisdom and understanding, just by the way.



I'm sitting here, on my last day at Elim Bible Inst., packed up dressed up and ready to go home. Next year I'll start going to school with Bryan, and we'll both get associates degrees. Then.... then?



I'm all about education. I am a teacher, I'm going to school for teaching/counseling, I will always be a teacher. I hate teachers but what can I say, Jesus is a seriously funny Guy. There is NO. EFFING. WAY. I could not get m y bachelors. I am going to have five years of college. For realz. Not graduating with at least a four-year degree, not going to college, are all completely impossible for me. My parents wouldn't love me anymore, my fish would all die, I would get malaria and a cold sore. There's just no way. Not getting a degree equals EPIC FAILURE. Besides, I WANT to get it. I will get tremendous satisfaction from it. Graduation ceremonies, certificate thingies; I love them. 

In order to live a happy, fulfilling life, and to feel like I had done what I was supposed to [which is important to me], I absolutely have to go to college for four years. And I'm happy with that.



So, you can imagine my internal horror when Bryan implied that he wasn't particularly planning on getting anything beyond an Associates. My first thought was, if I can be a crappy person real quick, that his parents didn't do a good enough job teaching him the importance of education. Seriously, like I said, I would be promptly disowned if I quit school [as in, didn't go for at least four years]. But, thinking of his parents that way made me squeamish.... besides, seriously, of COURSE he was going to go to school for four years. I mean, DUH, of course he would... of course he would...



And I, being the magnificent brat I can be with Bryan sometimes, would say that to him. 'Yeah, honey, I know you don't feel like it now, but of COURSE you'll finish school.' Whenever it came up. 'Oh, I know you want to do the band thing, you'll just get your bachelors online.' 



Flame me, please.



And then, I was talking to Janelle, about the kind of work Bryan and I hope to do in India. I confided in her that I was completely confident that Bryan would be fine, providing-wise, because he is such a hard worker, and he's humble enough to do anything. Ministry-wise, I think he'll pastor. I went on to explain to Jan-jan that I figured that he would be fine in a manual-labor type job, because he would get his God-fulfillment from Ministry, and his generalized self-life-gratification would come from the music thing he is beginning to be involved with now. I went on to say that I, as a person, will get mine from my career, my job.... and then it hit me in the face.



Bryan doesn't need to go to college for four years to be completely successful. He will get fulfillment from other things, and in fact, would not get that must gratification from a degree at all.



And so, mon amis, I realized once again that Bryan and I are different, and that that is just dandy, because that is the way Jesus designed us.


Love!

I love Valentines Day...

I am one happy cupcake.

And you should all (both....) pray for us to have confirmation from God that we are supposed to be together. 

Thankies much.

This is hard work.

La gasp!!

I know that I'm mostly a retard when it comes to relationships. But, please, bear with me. I am honestly ridiculously shocked that we are having problems because of being apart. Seriously. Floored.

Now... there are two problems. 

One: breakdown of communication. SUPRISE!!!!! There is nothing ideal about our communication situation.

See, I had one of those crazy war-time fantasies that girls have, about how distance and longing would bring us closer together, how it would test our love and prove it to be sound.

Now, again we come to two problems. 

A: We are selfish. Not crazy selfish, just... human selfish. Like, 90% of the time we are awesomely selfless, but, underneath it all, we can't help being human.

B: We are different. 

Maybe these are really the top two problems people encounter in any relationship.. or maybe not. I dunno. Being selfish is a sin, one that God uses relationships to violently rip out of us. But I'd rather have my relationship brutalize my selfishness than my pride. Sucks to be me, I came into this thing with both... ANYWAY. Yeah, selfishness is no good, and it will most definitely destroy your partner and your relationship. If you're selfish, it isn't going to destroy you; it's got you right now. You just have to watch it set your life on fire.

On being different... this is not a problem, per se. But you knew that. You're savvy. You read relationship blogs. 

But for realz. Focus. It is not a problem to be different, but your glorious acceptance of the fact that you and your love are going to be different does not change the simple fact that it's secretly actually really hard to live with people that are different. Focus. Don't you dare let your brain go 'oh but it would just be so boring to be with someone who was just like me and I'm so happy that will never happen to me so I can have an exciting love life!!!' Because that is not the point. The point is, it is still hard to be with someone that is not like you. 

Example: I express my love to my boyfriend by bringing up problems between us. To me, that displays my intense desire for a strong love, untainted by small problems. To him... that's nit-picky. Oops. He displays his love to me by ignoring my character flaws. To him, this shows that those little goof-ups don't matter, my awesomeness or whatever just makes him blind to all of that stuff (if only if only...). To me, that seems like he doesn't care enough to try and fix problems.

I am not nit-picky, I swear. IswearIswearIswear. But, I do want these little things dealt with before they turn into big things. And he DOES care about our relationship. We are happy any we love each other. Yay for us.

More on this later. Goodnight!