Guys, we are going THERE right now. This isn’t a post for little eyes, or my family members (eek!). This is me being super open about personal experience in hopes it helps others.
If sex makes you uncomfortable – click away now.
Or, if you are in a loving marriage yet find no satisfaction or desire sexually because of past abuse, breastfeeding, shame, just being a tired mama, or feel broken like I did…keep reading.
I knew 2018 would be a year of being God being faithful — fulfilling promises to me (us) that I have kept the faith He would. So far, God is blowing me away and it’s only 15 days into the new year!
I write often about birth and how God works through those experiences in me, but, before pregnancy can even begin there has to be that certain action to happen to make a baby– sex.
You would think with having 7 pregnancies all together, we would have an amazing sex life. The truth is, nope. We didn’t. Until now.
I was sexually abused as a very young child, which lead to a promiscuous teenage past– including an unplanned pregnancy at 16 years old and another at 19 years old. It was fun despite the toil I felt about it being wrong, it filled the void in my heart temporarily and helped me feel loved momentarily…so I kept doing it, obviously.
But once our wedding night came at 19 years old, I clammed up and nothing was the same again. I felt ashamed, damaged, guilty– and basically like sex was bad. Gross. Unclean. Embarrassing. I carried the weight of my past choices, and the holes in my heart from each time and each person that I gave my heart away to piece by piece. I became triggered by my husband’s touches, reminding me of other people in my past and my abuser’s touch. It was simply a chore, a duty as a wife to keep him in a good mood and make him feel loved.
I couldn’t undo my thinking no matter how much I loved my husband, because my physical relationships before marriage were wrong in God’s view and I knew that. Suddenly though, once it was “acceptable” to have sex, it wasn’t desirable in anyway because of all the shame I felt attached to it.
Our physical intimacy became our biggest argument. My husband wanted, needed, and dreamed of more now that it was “okay” but I only felt a huge wall around me of protection. A jail cell. I was trapped by the guilt, shame, and everything I felt about sex prior even if I had been having “fun” in my sin. Satan had a hold on me, reminding me of the past chains of sin making me think I was still being held by them, even though Jesus had freed me long ago. It felt like I couldn’t step out in the freedom promised to me. I knew in my mind I had been redeemed but I couldn’t feel it.
We went to a few counselors which helped begin un-peeling the onion layers of healing– starting with learning our love language so that we could learn how to love each other better as a whole. Mark being physical (Of course! Which, only made our disconnect worse), and me being quality time. We learned how to fill each other’s love tanks in other ways besides the bedroom, which all connects into physical intimacy too (but, more on that later). This helped us reach a new level of happiness as a couple, but it still would take years for complete healing. Out of this growth spurt in 2012, Ashlyn was given to us as a gift.
We worked hard over the years to keep our emotional and spiritual connection close, which helped me feel safe in Mark’s arms at times. However, I still often struggled with not just lack of desire..but letting myself be a sexual being made by God. How can a woman be both a “good” mother and a sexual person? It felt like an oxymoron to me, like they couldn’t co-exist at the same time because it made me feel “gross” and embarrassed. And my thoughts would constantly think about, “What if they come in? What if they hear us? What if they know what we are doing?” I couldn’t relax.
In May 2016, we were arguing once again about the same thing. He needed passion and to feel desired, while I needed his grace as I figured out how to keep healing. We both were frustrated that no matter how hard we tried, prayed, begged for healing but it wouldn’t come. For a few days we didn’t even speak and I felt like divorce could even be possible because I–we– didn’t see a way out of this jail cell. We felt it would always be the same because nothing was really working to the level we wanted. I went to a bible study that night and asked for prayer. I came home and the songs on the radio playing confirmed again and again of God hearing my prayers and that everything would be okay. “Broken Together” by Casting Crowns being one of them.
A few days before I was at a used book store when on the discount shelf I found God’s tool to begin the next layer of healing. It was a book called Breaking Eve’s Curse by Frank Hultgren, which is a short book filled with prayers and standing on the truth of Jesus’ reception at the cross. Bottom line: we don’t have to be held captive any longer. Each chapter deals with different aspects of “curses” from the fall of Eve, from women’s infertility to sexual issues. I learned that much of the bondage I felt in my heart was due to soul ties– connections to each person that I had given myself away to in my teenage years and the sin put on me during my abuse.
I had forgiven and released much of my past before, but I felt the biggest tie to Anna’s birth father (understandable, as we have a child together and he was my longest relationship that I had many hopes for back then). When I envisioned what this soul tie looked like I felt it was like a thick rope, where as others were thin strings that were easily cut. With his, I had to saw away at it one thread at a time and I knew it would take a while to completely be free. I would dream of him far too often, but now I never do because the rope is gone with God’s help. Praise!
Anyway, that night when I arrived home from bible study I took this book, kneeled beside Mark, and read a prayer of releasing and cleansing. I read the prayers and believed in the healing God could give. We prayed together and as Mark’s walls of anger came down, my walls of protection came down.
That night–9 year into our marriage– was the first time ever sex felt like the gift it was supposed to be in God’s design of marriage. It was the first time I felt the freedom Jesus intended– whole, exciting, spiritual, enjoyable, like a bird finally out of her cage. It became our new standard of what we wanted to achieve every time. In that night, we also were given the gift of Lylah.
Fast forward to preparing for Lylah’s birth. While another layer had been peeled away leading to her arrival, I wasn’t fully healed and still struggled, especially with now having pregnancy hormones, morning sickness, simply being uncomfortable, being an exhausted mom, etc. However, at the end her pregnancy, God gave me a verse– 1 Timothy 2:15– through A Heavenly Welcome’s childbirth class that I claimed and leaned on. In fact, I kept it right on the tub to focus on during labor. I also felt God say, “The passion that brought her in will bring her out” so we enjoyed each other those last days of pregnancy for multiple reasons and it brought her into the world, just like He told me it would!