Lent: fasting from sex

When I first began thinking of what I would give up for Lent many things came to mind. Wine? Chocolate? Television? But none of these things keep me away from God or take my focus off of Him. I had to ask the questions “what blinds me to what God is doing in my life?”and “when I can’t feel God’s presence where or what do I turn to for comfort?”

Sex and music.

Today I’ll share about my fast from sex. As a single Christian woman I’m aware and prepared for the questions and even judgment that may come my way because I choose to share this honestly. All I can say to anyone looking to criticize is Bring it on.

I enjoy sex. And I’m unapologetic for it. I don’t shy away from conversations about sexuality and in future blog posts I hope to share more about God redeeming my sexuality and overcoming abuse.

Let me first just state that I normally do not share anything about my relationships on my blog but I have gotten permission to share this particular story.

Here’s why I’m fasting from sex: Earlier this year I began a new dating relationship. We quickly began spending a significant amount of time with each other after initially meeting. We met several of each other’s friends and even family members. We had deep discussions about life, our careers, faith and future. The discussion of a long-term relationship and marriage even happened. And because of all of these things, we both were under the false sense that there was an emotional intimacy that had been built. And when you feel an emotional bond with someone you only want to move forward. Naturally when two people feel love toward each other they want to make love with each other right?

So we had sex. And enjoyed it. And saw absolutely no reason to stop. But God seemed to have other plans as He often does… While on an overnight trip together God whispered a simple question to me Do you want love or lust? I thought about it and answered honestly: “um, both. I want both.” God says “No. You have to choose. Love or lust?”

I chose lust.

About a week later God annoyingly shows up again and says What do you know about my love? What do you know about lust? I responded knowing that God’s love is extravagant, eternal, unconditional and completely fulfilling. And lust is temporary. Fun…but temporary.

I knew in that moment by choosing lust I had taken my focus off of God and what He wanted for me. I also realized that important conversations with the man I was dating had basically ceased to exist. We weren’t trying to deepen that emotional intimacy we thought we had. We were too focused on being physically intimate. There wasn’t time for conversation anymore. We bought into a lie. The lie being that we could use sex in lieu of communication.

It took a few more days after that last wakeup call from God before we realized that we were never going to have the relationship each of us wanted or more importantly what God wanted for us. It was devastating. By not inviting God into the conversation about our relationship, but trusting our own feelings and not the facts, we took something that could have been wonderful and cheapened it. I was personally afraid to ask God his opinion on sex because I had been taught from an early age that God was a prude and sent us straight to hell if we had sex (a big shout out goes to a high number of Texas Southern Baptist churches for this)

Last week I told Jesus I want a God directed and God centered relationship with a man. But I also want sex.

Jesus hasn’t responded yet.

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