So You Don't Feel Romantic

Developing romance with a spouse isn't about chocolate, flowers, or candlelight dinners (men, keep it coming anyway). It's about communion.

We women want to know that someone hears us and understands us. We want intimacy. We want a man to think we're so desirable that he would ride up on his quarterhorse, six-guns blazing, to save us from the bandits. We want a knight in shining armor who would be willing to rescue us from a fire-breathing dragon.

Why do you think we like the bad boys?

James Dean and other rebels intrigue us. We want a man who's not afraid to be a man. Too many "good boys" seem bland and tasteless. Like white bread or oatmeal, they're good for you, but lack appeal. Forget the whole "sensitive man" thing! Give me a man who joined his friends in a fight to defend his honor. Give me a man who stands up for what's right, no matter the cost.

Women, if you want a husband with a sense of adventure, but feel your husband is as interesting as cardboard, ask yourself what you're doing to help him. Loving someone, being in communion in a Godly way, means encouraging them to be who God wants them to be. God created men to seek adventure. Many men watch football, since they can't play it. They go hunting and bring home a deer. They run around the woods in camo and shoot each other with paint pellets. Do you encourage your husband's wildness? Do you give him free time with the guys?

It may sound a little weird, but when we were first married, my husband played paintball in the woods with a bunch of friends. He'd come home after 4 hours stinky, sweaty, and excited. He'd talk for hours about how he and his team planned an attack and snuck up on the other team from behind. He was so alive and exciting.

I think a big problem for many couples is domination. One or the other spouse tries to be on top. It's the old "do unto others" thing. You don't want to be controlled, so don't control him either. Marriage isn't about control. It's a partnership of two people working in unity. The world says that someone has to be in control. God says someone has to be the head. The difference is that the head takes the responsibility for final decisions when there are disagreements, but when a couple works in unity, they talk through the disagreements until there is unity. They pray to hear what God is saying so that unity preserved. Control is no longer an issue.

When your husband feels wild and free, when you feel united with him emotionally, and when you're working together in unity, flames of romance appear.

Proverbs 31 and the Radical Woman

This week I finally saw a "you can do it" book on Proverbs 31. There are about 5 on Amazon.com explaining how women can't be Proverbs 31 woman."Don't stress out. You can't do it anyway." was a common theme in those books.

How refreshing! Someone who looks positively at P31.

Like all good poetry, there are different correct ways to interpret P31. (One that someone else recently showed me is that the woman in P31 is the church. Try reading it while seeing the woman as the church. It'll open your eyes to interesting new possibilities.)

Let's look at a few verses using the perspectives gleaned from the Theology of the Body.

Prov 31:10 (NKJV) - Who can find a virtuous wife? For her worth is far above rubies.
To me, a virtuous wife is also a radical woman. She is wise and understands her true relationship to her Creator and His relationship to her. She loves her family and knows how to share her relationship with her Creator with them.

Prov 31:11 - The heart of her husband safely trusts her; so he will have no lack of gain.
Are we talking about monetary gain? I don't think so. He's gaining a friend, a lover, a companion, a supporter, and an advocate. They are one as Christ and His Church are one. He knows that she won't intentionally betray him or hurt him out of spite.They are united and in communion with each other and the Lord.

Prov 31:26 - She opens her mouth with wisdom, and on her tongue is the law of kindness.
Wisdom comes from a relationship with the Lord. The virtuous wife has a relationship with God that gives her insight into difficult situations. There is no need for her to snap at her children, her husband, or even rude strangers. She taps into the Lord's love in difficult situations, since she's in communion with God, and can give out kindness even if her first instinct is to be angry, harsh, or spiteful in return. James talks about the power of the tongue. Those who can control their tongues control themselves. The virtuous woman's tongue is RULED by kindness. This suggests that her entire life is ruled by kindness - one part of the fruit of the Spirit.

Prov 31:29 - "Many daughters have done well, but you excel them all."
The virtuous woman's husband praises her with this comment. Don't we all want our husbands to tell us something like this? Unfortunately, we women often think that effort and perfectionism can get us there. But it can't. Living in romantic relationships with our Creator and spouse gives us the strength and ability to live lives of love without the stress of TRYING. Don't misunderstand me, it does take work and sacrifice, but the idea that WE can do it must disappear.

Our romantic relationship - our love relationship - our true communion - with Christ gives us the strength, ability and desire to fulfill our mission as radical women. There are several verses that come to mind. I'm going to paraphrase a few. "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." (aka - When you do things with God, He carries the weight while we work with Him.) "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." (aka - God gives us the strength to work through even the things that seem impossible to us.)

I have a friend, she's about my mom's age, whom I believe has a love relationship with the Lord. Her life hasn't been easy or perfect, yet she radiates love and peace. She sets firm boundaries in her life to keep others from stealing from what God asks her to do. She prays through decisions as people request her time (many women do, because they see something special in her and want to learn from her), and is never afraid to say no.

The P31 woman seems so busy, but she does it peacefully and in God's time. The Great Romance between humans and their Savior involves peace, not hurry and bustle.

Equally Mary (who rested at her Savior's feet) and Martha (a hard-working and productive woman), the P31 woman lived a balanced, full, and peaceful life.

With the Lord's help, we too can be blessings to our families, accomplish much, yet live in a state of peace.

The Point of the One Flesh Union

Let's be blunt. What's the point of the One Flesh Union? Is it merely an itch we need to scratch? Is it only for procreation?

Of course not. It's the most intimate way we can express communion with another person. God created the One Flesh Union to be a way for us to express a relationship as intimate as the one He will have with us.

Don't get me wrong. There won't be anything "s-e-xual" about our relationship with God in heaven. But on earth, it's the closest we can get to a complete body, mind, and spirit melding of two beings into one.

Why did God create us? Genesis tells us that he wanted to be in communion. He wanted to create children who would choose to love Him as He loved them. He wants a romance with us. He wants to live the Song of Songs with us.

God is a Father caring for His children, but He also wants an intimate love relationship that is most closely imitated by marriage between a husband and a wife. (Singles, you have a special role revealing the current relationship between the Church as the bride waiting for her bridegroom.)

God wants communion and created us to desire and long for communion - both with other people and with Him. God is in communion between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He wants us to join that communion in a way that allows us to receive all of the love that He has to give.

In marriage, physical union is a sign of the spiritual union that already exists. Physical does NOT come first. It expresses our spiritual need for union.

In a way, the physical union creates healing in our souls. As we unite with each other, the damaged places in our souls find love, peace, and acceptance. Two loving spouses who care for each other, through communion in the one flesh union, can find healing from the hurts and damage of the past. This healing carries them closer to wholeness in Christ.

When do we commune most closely with God? When we eat the body and drink the blood of Christ during "communion". What could be more intimate? There are other ways that we commune with our Lord, but through communion we are restored to His presence and renewed in our spirits.

Receiving Love

Why is it that many Christians find that the women in their churches tend to be more "spiritual" than their husbands? Are they truly more spiritual or are their husbands just quiet?

I believe that many women are closer to God or farther from God than men. Most of us don't stand in the middleground of "doing ok" with God.

Why?

God gives everyone love in equal measure, but women can receive it more easily. We're designed to receive. Our physical bodies are stamped with the ability to receive love from our husbands, which is also a part of our invisible, spiritual natures.

Receiving comes with more striving to men, who are given the earthly role of initiating love, penetrating, and discovering. The role they play in representing on earth the heavenly relationship between God and man is different than our role.

I think of it like a symbolic play, where humans are the symbols playing out the greater meaning of the relationship between God and man.

We're on stage with all of creation watching. The husband initiates the courtship. "We love because God first loved us." The woman reciprocates the love. The result of God's love was the Creation - our creation, our world, sunsets, animals, stars, and more. The result of the love between men and women is also creation - the creation of children.

God loved his Son and the product of love was life. Men and women love and the product of their love is life (this is the primary basis for the Catholic stand on abortion and contraception). Life is to be appreciated and loved as a magnificent gift.

An interesting point here is that God is Triune (1 God with 3 parts). He is One and yet separate, and created the marriage relationship to show us how this could be true. A husband and wife are separate and distinct beings, yet they are "one flesh". The procreative act is more appropriately called by Catholic mystics the "one flesh union". For it is at that moment that God is present most powerfully in our marriage relationship.

Chew on that for a while!! I'll write more on that tomorrow. It took me a little while to not be weirded out by the fact that God is present at that most intimate moment. At first, it felt like an invasion of privacy.

Radical Day to Day

Yesterday, I failed to be a radical woman for much of the day, but succeeded at the end. How?

It started when I didn't pay attention to my children for an hour or so. They were there, I was there, but I didn't walk around and monitor them. (That's important, because there are 4 under the age of 6.)

While I was putting a bunch of kids clothes on e-bay, my 4 year-old decided to cut her hair. She managed NOT to give herself a bald spot in the process. So all-in-all, I suppose it could have been much worse. Still, I flipped out. Then, I got depressed because I flipped out.

I hope I'm not the only one who gets mad at herself for losing her temper.

We were on the way to my inlaws house. I took the kids by myself and left my miserably sick-with-the-flu husband at home. The visit went well. We saw my kids' grandparents, aunt, 3 cousins, great-aunt, great-uncle, and 2nd cousin. We took the kids on a half mile walk to the local playground (the kids rode in a wagon).

When we got back, my niece asked me if we were going on to visit another relative with them. All I said was, "No", but inside, the dialogue continued....

"No. We never visit that house. In the 3 years since they moved in, we've never seen them because they won't see us. They've avoided us since your cousin was born. Can't you see how unfair it is that everyone invites us over and then visits them? No one says anything. No one confronts them. They enable it, and you probably think that we don't like them instead of it being the other way around."

I drove home with my kids as the rest of the family went on to visit this other relative. We've never confronted this relative, because my husband wants to leave the door open to them. He wants to reconcile the relationship, and we pray that one day it will happen.

It hurt. I felt like I'd been slammed from my happy, Christian world to the "real" world. A "real" world of pain, suffering, and damaged relationships. A world where no one wins and everyone loses.

When I got home, one of our priests was at the house with his wife to bring my husband communion. He'd missed church and communion that morning. I told him about the situation.

"That's not the real world," he said. "This is the real world." The world of love, communion, and friendship is the real world. The world of pain and suffering is the fake world.

My heart lightened immediately.

People who live in the "real" world know a lot about pain and suffering, and it's a part of them. I live in Christ's world. It's a world where beauty exists in every moment, Christ carries my heavy burdens, and I can be open to receive love from God and man without fear of hurt or sorrow. I'll experience my share of hurt on earth, but there's no need for me to fear it.

Last weekend, a prophetic priest named Father Jacob Danner taught the School of the Holy Spirit at my church. He gave a testimony about his wife's pain and suffering. She has migraine headaches non-stop. Her pain never ends. Even morphine won't take the edge off. Why won't God heal her? No one knows except for God, but when we plow through the pain, as we "walk THROUGH the valley of the shadow of death" we gain.

Archbishop Randolph Adler, the patriarch of the Charismatic Episcopal Church lost his daughter and her unborn child in a car accident 2 years ago and says it was the best thing that ever happened to him. Through the pain he saw the love, compassion, and grace of God in a way he'd never seen it before.

As women of Radical Femininity, we walk through the pain of life - we don't run away or try to avoid it - and God blesses us with strength, peace, and knowledge of Him. We strive to live in His presence moment by moment and bring heaven to earth.

Radical Femininity brings Christ to earth as we live our lives in His overcoming strength and power. We submit to His authority (and our husband's, pastor's, and those in authority over us) and we ACTIVELY forgive, love, and share. Radical Feminity is about DOING and not about passively being tromped on.

With my relatives, I choose to actively forgive, actively love, and actively experience peace. I can even actively wait for their change of heart. Actively wait? Absolutely! Because I will be praying and expecting reconciliation.