Great Sex (From Her Point Of View): Part One

Dear Blog Diary:   “My husband and I have a lot of sex, but never make love. My problem is sex is boring and predictable. I have tried everything to spice it up.  How do I get him to become a better lover?  He wonders why I don’t want it more often. I have tried to talk to him, and I have told him exactly what I want, and he continues to do things exactly the same with no effort to change. Please help …”

“Among men, sex sometimes results in intimacy; among women,
intimacy sometimes results in sex”            -Barbara Cartland

Fact:  Most men don’t understand the hygiene of great sex.  Not from HER point of view.   Most men suffer from the over-valuation of orgasm.  They don’t understand that a woman craves copious amounts of relationship, physical restraint, and sexual tension above and beyond orgasm.  Women, on the whole, report that great sex requires a relational connection that ramps-up over time (“good Lord, even hours”).

Guys, remember the Hot Wheel toys we collected as kids.   Think of sex as the longest Hot-Wheel track that you’ve ever seen.  Now make it longer.  Now make it even longer.   Orgasm is the loop d’ loop on the furthest end of the track, miles away.  Making love (from her point of view) is the companionship and conversation of watching the car run off into the distance.

Men may call this, “The Long and Winding Road,” Paul McCartney’s mournful ballad.  Women call it “the rise of emotional intimacy.”  This is the disparity:  Guys can have sex without much “lead time.”  Their female partner needs extended emotional foreplay.  And “extended” may mean half a day.

(tomorrow:  The Foreplay of Waiting)

Six Men Stand

Six aging warriors
Sitting in gold
Consider a great debt with
Tears of gratitude

One long season remains
To give their’ all
Heads bowed down
They stand as one

Hearts flung open
To Heaven’s joys
Hands clasped
In oaths of friendship

To campaign
Against dark shadows
That sacrifice desire
To the tyranny of toys

We refuse to give up
Or yield comfort
We resolve to fight
And act on our dreams

Back to back
Each doing his part
Pouring out a lesser life
For the greater

We’ll spend our gold
And soil our hands
Singing loudly
The song of the Servant

Wrinkled hands plunged
Into The Master’s business
God’s glory lifted high
For the eternal fun of it

Chile Summary

To My Lovely Friends,

Chile Rocks!

I recently got back from a Therapy Mission Trip to “Chee-lay.”  It fulfilled my heart’s desire to spend intensive time with hurting missionary families as a Family and Marriage Therapist.  I found great refreshment in the work, and enjoyed the couples enormously.

Details:

1)    30 hours of therapy split between three families:  God allowed me to meet with three lovely couples around their marriages:  ten hours with each couple.  They were so hungry, and thankful for the attention.  Marriage on the mission field is at least as hard as marriage in your living room.  It had a maximum impact!

2)    I spent another five hours in groups:  two sessions with the wives, and one with the husbands, a mini-seminar around conflict and fair-fighting.

3)    The travelling went well, the experiment was a huge success, and a big “thumbs up” on God’s leading.  I’ll soon be approaching several therapists to consider “assignments” in Ethiopia and Chile.  Let’s get this tide rolling my brothers and sisters!

4)    Finances were a little shy for this trip, but I’m so encouraged by your kind promises of future support.

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you

UP NEXT:  “What Women Think About Sex,” the series, tune in.

Reflections From Chile: Day Eight

Lay out a fruit-roll up and there’s Chile.
Lay it across America and it touches both coasts (almost)
A country shaped like a shoe-lace
Measuring 150 miles wide and 3,000 miles long.
Mountains, desert, oceans, fertile plains, Bavarian forests, and a frosty southern tip.
Dollops of the whole world splashed atop one country.

A land of wine and pure juices,
With fruits and vegetables that even I can eat.
Copper mines and soccer fields,
Lovely colored coastal towns,
And three dear missionary families I just spent a week with.

A quaint hotel surrounded by diesel buses, concrete, and the litter of the 2^nd world.
An inland town bisected by a town square.  My open-air office sits down by the Pool,
A concrete enclosure with a lone flowering-tree and molded plastic chairs
Was transformed into an informal professional office for six days.
A private place to talk with God’s laborers about the wars of marriage.

The landscape:  three husbands, three wives, one teenager, dozens of stories, Asperger’s,
And the quiet deprivations of missionary life,
We struggled to name their ills.
Group times amidst marital work.
Whispers, laughter, tears, and Kleenex
And, by God’s grace, changed lives,
Mine most of all.

Now a couple of quiet days by the sea
Sleeping, walking, writing
Going home tomorrow
Pleased that God lays dreams on our hearts.

A Dear John Letter,

I recently wrote a “Dear John Letter.” It went something like this,

Dear John,
Thanks for your great questions about the blog, the fundraising, and the thing I’m doing with missionaries.   Let me try to answer your questions:

“I was just curious: Are you seeking a one-time gift?  Or looking for on-going           support?  What kind of funds are you looking for?  Would always be glad to help – just curious what you are looking for!”

I am a Family and Marriage Therapist 45 out of 50 weeks a year, seeing clients in St. Louis.   Five weeks a year I work as a Family Therapist overseas with missionary families.  So far:  Greece, Ethiopia, Chile (this month), and Thailand in the works.

CrossRoads Christian Counseling, in St. Louis is the sponsoring mission agency (Mission2Family); the non-profit that “loans” me out to mission organizations.   I earn a small salary ($5,000.00 a year), and fund travel expenses ($8,000 a year).

The missionaries get the counseling for free, the mission receives free missionary-care, and Mission2Family  pays the bills through donations.  I raise the donations through friends, family, and Bruno, a large man I send to people’s houses.

In the next ten years, Mission2Family will send out dozens of therapists on working- trips.  Why?  Because missionaries tell us “it’s a jungle out there.”  So we’ll hack our way through the undergrowth to find them.  We’re committed to it, and believe God will bless it.  Next step?  I’m hiring a part-time Ministry Assistant who will help Mission2Family think through counselor-recruitment.

Yes, I am seeking one-time gifts, AND ongoing support, $13,000 a year.

Thanks for asking John.
Signed your friend, Bob.

Mission2Family
c/o CrossRoads Counseling
1023 Executive Parkway, Ste. 10
St. Louis, MO  63141

So from time to time,
You’ll receive a pesky note,
Asking for help
For missionaries in “deepest, darkest Africa.”

Your Beautiful Borderline Friend

You owe the borderline a living.  They live in an unjust world, and they have borne the burnt of injustice.  A universal human sense tells them, “I have been wronged.   Wronged in a way that has left an outstanding debt, a debt that someone must pay.

You’re a good person.  You could help.  Isn’t the responsibility of the fortunate to help the less fortunate?  Doesn’t the Good Samaritan help the victim?

Perhaps you’re a loved one.  You know their difficult life.  You are a good person, and the good help the unfortunate.  You know their story:  their past, the family history, the mercenary government, and the various power brokers who have done them dirty.  Thank goodness you love them.  Thank God you understand morality.  You have witnessed (and perhaps added to) their suffering.  Heavy are their sorrows.   They can’t catch a break, except for you.

Their story is compelling.  They were just starting to get ahead.  They saw an opportunity and bravely moved towards it.  They took on the dragon, and just as they were about to slay him, something went wrong.  The help didn’t show up.  Someone broke a promise.   The funding dried up.  You wouldn’t believe the tragedy.  The world has sinned against them—again.

They’re not as fortunate as you.  You were the lucky one, the favorite one.  Somehow things always work out for you.  Look at your blessings.   You’ve made it.  The dragons in your life just fell down at your feet.

You’ve not always been a saint; you haven’t loved perfectly.  If you think about it, you personally owe them.  You’ve added to their misery, at least that’s the implication.  “If you’re good, and caring, you ‘ll help pay down the debt the world has tied to me, extracted from me.  I can’t do it myself.”

They have no debts of their own.  The borderline has committed no real wrong, except where mistreated.  All they have done “wrong” they have done for good reason.  The person with the easy life can’t understand.  “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen,” they complain.  If they hadn’t been wronged, the borderline reasons, they could be more generous.  But alas, the borderline has paid a heavy price, and hopes you’ll see their plight.  If you have a good heart, you’ll understand, and will assuage their need.  Thank God you can help.

“You’re wonderful to help.  Thank you, thank you, thank you, you don’t know what this means to me.  This will fix everything.”  But just remember, you owe the borderline a living.  Everyone does.

The Starbuck Generation And The Starbuck’er

Hang around a coffee shop and you’ll learn something.  Starbucks is the home of a new, young-adult stage of life:  folks under thirty years old disguised in body piercings, magnificent skin-art, and unisex clothes.  I thought they were the lost kids on the Island of Lost Children, but they’re not.  They are the Starbuck’ers.

I thought them exceptions:  Emo Caleb, the gay girl with streaked hair, and the bouncy kid with the nose plug.  Turns out they’re mainline.   Normal.  The same people you and I would be if we were under thirty years old.

They’re married and single, gay and straight, religious and irreligious but unified.  They share one mind.   The Church could learn from them.

They love each other and understand grace.  They don’t call it “grace,” and we might mistake it for an uncritical tolerance, but it’s lovely.   You don’t have to perform to please them.  Come as you are:  lost or found, boring or colorful and they’ll accept you.  They assume your brokenness.  Your acceptance is based on your broken failings, the gospel of Jesus strangely embodied in the people who work for a coffee company.

Starbucks wanted to invent a culture and they did.  The customer is the part-timer looking for a retreat, but the employee is the full-timer looking for sanctuary and community.  They are a generation looking for “more,” more than a job, a paycheck, a degree, or a career.  They want meaning, fellowship, and community in a place that won’t judge them (store managers excepted).   They create a place of refuge from meaninglessness.

It’s only slightly misguided.  The Gospel not only accepts us, but moves us into greater purpose.   It goes to Starbucks and beyond.  But don’t underestimate the Starbuck’er.  They know how to love, understand community, and could teach the middle-class Church a thing or two.