The PROBLEM with PORNOGRAPHY

The last time I posted (yes, it’s been a few weeks) I told you that I would soon be generating a blog about pornography.  It’s not a pretty topic, but certainly an important issue to explore when discussing the ethics of Christian dating.  If you are secretly into pornography, then you are not an ethical Christian dater.  No one else may see what you are looking at on your computer at 2 am, but God does.   Another interesting question I would like to pose today is……..  as a participant in a CHRISTIAN SINGLES GROUP – How many of YOU MEN are sitting alone in that group BECAUSE…… BECAUSE…. Your WIFE divorced you because she could no longer tolerate your pornography addiction (or your habitual adultery, which went along with it)???  Right here, right now, in the Gateway Single Adult group in Southlake Texas, I know of about THREE of you….. and I only know a very small handful of you, because I seldom even attend!  LET’S GET REAL HERE, because this is a REAL ISSUE among Christian Singles!!

Pornography is like a cancer in the brain.  It causes twisted thinking, and ultimately, abuse of women and children.  It’s a one-way spiral down.  It does not enhance one’s sexuality, it downgrades it.  In the end, as it progresses, it causes serious performance issues.  It is highly addictive.  Brain scans done on porn addicts look the same as brain scans done on alcohol or heroin addicts.  All three addictions leave large “holes”, or pockets, of dead area in the brain.  That’s scientific proof.  The first time I saw it was while reviewing research done by Dr. Carolyn Leaf, a cutting edge expert on brain studies.  If you also need God’s proof, here you go: 

Matthew 5:28But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

Exodus 20:14 14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.

While attending Celebrate Recovery for almost a year to deal with grief issues after my husband passed, I noticed several men in the program working to overcome pornography addictions.  I befriended a very attractive woman whose husband was battling it.  She had a terrific personality, blonde, beautiful, thin, and could have easily graced the cover of Glamour magazine.  Her husband was short, plump and rather homely.  He was far more interested in his airbrushed computer women than he was in her. This gorgeous woman was totally starved of his love and attention.  Their marriage was on the rocks and their whole family was in turmoil, even the kids, due to his addiction.  A person of logic wonders why a man could only be stimulated by pictures of strange women he’d never met; rather than by a physically beautiful, perfect, warm, loving woman sleeping in his own bed.  Why? This addiction ultimately rots the brain, robs, steals, destroys and kills, just like any other satanically inspired addiction.

This is a topic that I have vast exposure to.  I am well qualified via life lessons to discuss it.  My oldest daughter is very attractive, with thick, curly, waist length chocolate hair and a perfect body most women would kill to have.  Her relationship with her man ended up destroyed, because night after night, month after month, he chose to spend his time and physical attention on virtual women posed on his computer screen, rather than on her.  Not to be graphic, but as the addiction spiraled out of control, he eventually got to the point that he was unable to sexually perform with her at all. She often got nothing for 2 or 3 months on end.  She was devastated and walked away from that relationship with her self esteem severely bruised.  I have another relative with 3 beautiful little girls.  Her husband became addicted to pornography and she divorced him because she feared for the safety of her girls.

My first husband was a pornography addict and a habitual adulterer.  Our 9-year relationship was a hell on earth.  For the last years of our relationship, my skin crawled every time he touched me.  I grew to hate him.  I felt disrespected, dishonored, and dirty all the time.  My self esteem was totally destroyed.  He ultimately ended up sexually molesting our youngest daughter when she was barely 5 years old.  She is now almost 30 and still bears the deep spiritual and emotional scars of his perverted abuse.  I myself was deeply scarred from his evil addiction as well, until I did some serious spiritual work (which took several years) and let God heal me.  This is proof positive that pornography is not a victimless sin, affecting only the viewer.

I was discussing this topic with a Christian friend awhile back.  He was dabbling in some light pornography, and I asked him why in the world was he doing that.  He said since his wife was gone, the photos served as a substitute wife.  He said that the pictures had nothing to do with real women and would not affect real relationships.  He also believed the pictures did not affect how he personally  viewed real women, and he also believed that most men looked at pictures in private.  Thinking back on that conversation partially inspired me to write this blog.  I want to clear up some misconceptions that people have about this issue.

For one thing, most men do not have a clue how devastating it is when a woman finds out they are looking at pornography.  They do not understand that introducing pornography into the marriage is like bringing in a third party.  It is very dishonoring from a woman’s perspective.  Most men do not understand how their viewing pornography is actually  “emotional adultery”, causing a woman to feel like she is not good enough, or attractive enough to keep her man satisfied, so he has to seek something besides HER.  What is even more difficult to deal with is that this THING that her man is choosing over her is not even HUMAN….. thus eroding her personal femininity and humanity even further!!!  Men do not understand how the hurt and deprivation coming out of this rejection of HER womanhood causes a woman to shut down emotionally, and stop sharing her innermost self.  They do not understand how their selfish behavior imprisons and starves a woman’s spirit and breaks her heart.  They do not understand how it destroys friendship, trust and intimacy. They don’t understand how it totally ROBS them of the inner essence of the woman God designed to be their best friend and soul mate. 

Men also do not understand how damaging it is to a woman when they force or coerce her into viewing pornography with them.  It is emotionally like being forced to participate in a threesome.  It leaves a decent woman feeling very demeaned, devalued, disrespected, and dirty.  She certainly won’t love or respect her husband for that!! (Men…. Besides SEX, RESPECT is your deepest NEED.  It is as necessary to your wellbeing as the air you breathe.  You want to eradicate all respect your woman has for you, just bring in the dirty videos and pictures, make her watch them with you, then ask her to do the nasty things you see the porn star do, and see how much she respects you after that……..  Respect will be totally annihilated!)  Pornography destroys countless relationships, it’s a proven statistic.  What makes you think your relationship will be immune?  Are you so special to God that He will change the laws of human nature for you???  I can assure you, He won’t!!

The PRICE pornography costs a relationship is far more exacting than the temporary physical satisfaction or stimulation it provides.   Destruction of trust ALWAYS destroys intimacy.  A woman will never share herself on a deep emotional or spiritual level with a man who has broken her trust with his use of or addiction to pornography.  He is usually left with an automaton with a locked up soul, who merely goes through the motions of being a wife.  She often GAINS WEIGHT, becomes bitter, nagging, resentful, passive/aggressive, or aggressive/aggressive, and emotionally unavailable and unsupportive  --  making the virtual, airbrushed women even more appealing to our addict, because he can project whatever personality characteristics he prefers onto their perfect bodies.

Men may SAY that looking at pornography does not affect their relationship, but it does.  A man, being visual, cannot HELP but compare the airbrushed women he sees on screen or in print to the real woman he has beside him.  If she has had children, or if she is past the age of 35, and has not diligently taken care of her body, there is NO WAY she can even come close to the physical perfection of the images he so desires. If she has borne children, or older, she is often somewhat  overweight, with some sags, some bags, some wrinkles, and some cellulite.  She doesn’t look like the Victoria’s Secret model when she puts on a swim suit.  At that point, when he starts to make comparisons, the man ends up feeling cheated and dissatisfied because his focus has been diverted from what is truly important.  (Face it – most average women do not have 4 to 6 hours a day to spend working out at the gym, nor do they have unlimited funds for various plastic surgeries, nor do they have personal graphics artists brushing away all their flaws, like the porn stars do!)   Show me a man who regularly looks at porn, who doesn’t begin calling his wife “fat”, or criticizing her body in some way, and I will show you an anomaly.

The man ceases to realize that the soul of the inward woman is far more important and valuable than the average body of the outward woman.  At that point, he begins using pornography to cheat himself, and rob himself of intimacy, and isolate himself, without even realizing it.  You can’t be best friends with, be attracted to, or admire a spouse that you come to find sadly substandard in the looks department, once your focus has been corrupted and diverted to seeking physical perfection because of your pornography addiction. Steal, Kill, Destroy – the primary goals of Satan.  Do you see what he just did here, to the man AND to the woman?? He has stolen love, affection, and intimacy. He has destroyed the spiritual and emotional support of the relationship, and possibly, he has KILLED the marriage!

Let’s have a look at what it says in the book of Proverbs.  I love this verse. 

Proverbs 5: 18 Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.19 Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.

The man is to be SATISFIED with his wife’s physical attributes (even if they are not perfect), and carried away with HER love.  It doesn’t say to be satisfied with the concubine or mistress or porn star’s breasts….it says WIFE. If you LOOK at other breasts, gaze upon, drool upon, EXAMINE other breasts, the breasts of the wife will soon cease to satisfy you. Therefore, you ought to be ONLY looking at HER BREASTS!!!   Satisfaction dies when comparing a wife, especially a middle aged wife, to an airbrushed or physically perfect porn star. Nobody is going to be carried away into ecstasy by any sort of love at all – be it physical, OR emotional, OR spiritual, when a third party is introduced into the relationship to corrupt the intimacy and erode the female self esteem in the marriage.  There will be HURT, RAGE, WAR and DISCORD.  Trust me…. I’ve been there, walked that road!

Understand that I am not cracking on men here, I do realize that there are women who become addicted to pornography as well.  However, it is a much more prevalent and serious problem with men, because men are far more visual than women.  There are probably 50 male porn addicts for every female addict.

Women are more prone to WRITTEN pornography because they are wired to be more emotional than visual.  That is why you can go into any airport terminal or drugstore and find racks of x-rated novels with overflowing bosums and bulging muscles painted on the racy covers , describing intimate relations between men and women in shockingly lurid detail.  Many women have huge collections of these novels, which brings about a whole new set of issues.  If the women addicted to written porn  are married, they can end up expecting their husbands to behave like the super-hero type men in the novels, which the average man simply does NOT do!!  Thus, the wife becomes grossly disappointed in her pedantic, unromantic husband and succumbs to an unhealthy fantasy life.  If the women are single, those books take their thoughts down dark and shady avenues where they have absolutely no business going.  

When I was 12 years old, my mom bought me my first Harlequin romance novel.  Back in those days, Harlequin was clean.  Nothing ever went beyond a kiss, but flowery romance and drama abounded.  Eventually, I ended up with quite a collection of these.  When I was very miserably married to my first husband, romance novels became an escape.  They took me out of the real world.  Looking back on it now, I can see where that was not healthy either.  When I became single again, I occasionally picked up a few novels at garage sales, which weren’t Harlequins, and which did not adhere to the moral cleanliness standards of the Harlequins.  After a point, being a single woman, and trying to live for the Lord and keep things straight, I realized that none of these novels had any place in my life, not even the Harlequins.  They made it more difficult than it already was.  I am not saying that people who read light, clean romance novels are sinful and that they have to stop, but you have to do what you can to PERSONALLY keep things straight, whatever that is.  If you, as a single woman, can regularly read romance novels and keep yourself straight, by all means, do so.  However, God expects ethical morality of you as a Christian serving Him, but if you have something diverting your focus, it needs to go. 

If you are reading novels that are lurid and sexually explicit, ladies, that is the same as pornography.  It is mental pornography, and you don’t need it, it’s SIN.  Eventually, although none of them were what I would call hard core explicit, I ended up throwing out all the non Harlequins in my collection, and taking my massive collection of nice, clean Harlequins down to the old folks home for the entertainment of the shut ins.  Personally, I could not maintain my status quo on the single life while regularly reading romance novels.  I’ve been widowed over 5 years now, and occasionally somebody will give me a Christian romance novel.  Sometimes I read one, but most of the time I don’t.  I usually pass them on to someone else.  If you searched my extensively populated book shelves, you wouldn’t find more than one or two.  I just can’t read that kind of stuff and remain satisfied in my single life.  It has to go.  It’s a personal choice I make.  I don’t want to be miserable, and wasting my time and energy focused on something that God says I am not allowed to have in my life right now.

For men and women, we need to keep this scripture in mind:

2 Corinthians 10:5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take CAPTIVE every THOUGHT to make it obedient to Christ.

Men have a huge problem with lust.  Pornography feeds lust like pouring gasoline onto a pile of smouldering twigs. Am I judging men unfairly and being sexist??  No.  I sometimes talk to them, and I LISTEN to them sharing.  How can men stop lusting?  It's a conscious decision of their WILL.  They have to quit LOOKING with lust.  If you let it run it’s natural course without actively diverting it… the glance becomes a gaze… then the gaze becomes an obsession…  then the obsession becomes action.  Like Barney Fife used to say on the Andy Griffith show “Nip it in the Bud!”  

Men have to take their thoughts captive, not allow their thoughts to carry them away to forbidden lands like a runaway train.  This requires character and self discipline, not spiritual or emotional laziness.  Ladies, the same thing goes for you, too. 

If you look on a person with lust, you have committed adultery with them in your own heart.  That saddens the heart of God.  When you look on a person with lust, you rob them of their unique individuality and the human personhood which God instilled into them.  You are stripping away their soul and spirit, which is what makes them a beloved and fellow child of God, and relegating them to a mere animalistic sex object.  This act is extremely disrespectful.  You should never strip a fellow God-created being of their humanity and soul and relegate them to the status of a mere animal.  It is very wrong, and it is exactly what lust does.  It grieves the heart of God.  View your fellow members of humanity with the respect God requires of you.  In your head, leave them clothed, unless they are your spouse.  If they are your spouse, you can do whatever you like with their clothes, within your head or without your head…. Within decency and reason…. That’s why God created marriage and the bed undefiled.

I had a bunch of documented statistics about the damage done to society by pornography, that I planned to share.  However, due to time and space, I will leave that off.  You can go read the statistics for yourself, anytime.  This is personal.   Blogs are supposed to be personal.  I hope this has given you food for thought.  If you are delving into pornography, even lightly, do yourself a favor….. and STOP before it destroys  your life and your future relationships.  God bless you, and I’ll see you next time!

Are You Qualified to be a Good Christian Date?

Being qualified to be a "Christian Dater" is vastly different than being qualified to be a "Secular Dater". In order to qualify to be a secular dater, there is only one criteria.  You have to biologically be a male or a female human.  That's it. Donkeys and mules don't qualify. To be well qualified as a Christian dater, and not MISREPRESENTING yourself requires quite a bit more substance!!  Most Christian daters DO misrepresent themselves, and THEY are the ones the rest of us  have to watch out for.  Or perhaps YOU are one of the "THEY"?  Perhaps you need to re-evaluate and re-prioritize. 

Most people who are Christian, who are dating, are asking God to send them the right person to spend the rest of their life with.  At least, that's what they're asking if they're truly Christian.  However..... do you really have the RIGHT to ask God to send YOU the right person, if you AREN'T the right person yourself?????  Let's kick this around for awhile......

If you are carrying around a bunch of BAGGAGE from your past relationship(s), you DON'T qualify.  What does that mean, exactly?  It usually means you have resentment seething underneath your surface toward the opposite sex due to the hurt from your past experience.  You've probably set up some judgements in your heart against them. Do you realize that the very thing you judge against is the very thing you will draw and ATTRACT??  That's not a myth, it is a spiritual LAW.

Do you feel you need to collect some scalps, make some people fall for you, to restore your self-esteem?  If so, you have no business dating.

Do you feel that "most" women (or men) are untrustworthy or manipulative?  Do you feel that "most" women (or men) secretly want to get their hands on your money or your resources?  Do you feel that "most" women (or men) are likely to cheat on you, or let you down?  Do you feel that "most" women (or men) are likely to abandon you when the chips are down? Do you feel that "most" women (or men) are inferior to you in the matter of intelligence?  (Or are you threatened when their intelligence seems superior to yours?)  Do you feel like you need to with hold or hide the depth of your true feelings in order to keep yourself from being hurt, used, or taken advantage of? 

We could go on all day with this list.... but I won't.  This is enough for you to get the idea.  Examine your inner feelings to see if any of these things, or other similar negative things are lurking. If they are, you need to do some emotional house-cleaning. If you are putting negative, personal judgements on the opposite sex, you aren't qualified to be a good, Christian date!

This might help. Realize that any "stereotype" is based on WRONG THINKING, and boot out your stereotypes.

"All women are manipulative, all women talk too much, all women try to get in your business too much, all women are nags, all women want your money, all women are shallow, all women are stupid....etc. etc." 

"All men want is sex, all men reject women who don't look like Barbie, all men are untrustworthy, all men want is a stupid woman whom they can easily manipulate, all men cheat, all men have the potential to abuse and control....etc. etc." 

This is just as closed-minded, screwed up and wrong as saying "All black people live on welfare... All white people are hateful bigots..... All brown people live in squalor... ETC ETC!"  If you are a person operating under stereotypes, you aren't qualified to be a good, Christian date!

STEREOTYPING blinds you and prevents your seeing people as they truly are.  It causes you to miss out on appreciating who they are as a person. The Christian way to view others is to view everyone as children of God, whether they are men or women. Look at each woman or man, and examine the uniqueness and individuality God imprinted them with. No two humans are alike.  Respect and admire the way God created your fellow man or woman.  If you change your mindset to reflect that attitude, it prevents a whole myriad of sins and judgements contaminating your view of the opposite sex, and thus, your romantic relationships. 

The attitude of appreciating each man or woman as an individual child of God, beloved and designed by God, will prevent you from lusting after them. Lusting after another person is a highly disrespectful behavior, especially if you claim Christianity. Lustful thoughts and behavior dehumanizes your fellow man or woman.  It transforms them into an object, rather than a unique, fellow, beloved child of God, deserving of your honor and respect. Lustful thoughts and behaviors prevent your seeing a person for who and what they are.  It can prevent your seeing their GOOD qualities, but it will also prevent your seeing their BAD qualities.  Either way, YOU LOOSE. Clean up your polluted mind, and divert your thoughts elsewhere.  If you are having trouble with that, sincerely ask GOD to help change your mindset! Get help if you need to. There is no shame in asking for help when you need it. The shame comes in when you engage in negative behaviors that could have been prevented had you asked for help when you needed it!  If you are a lustful person, you aren't qualified to be a good, Christian date!

Do you have irresponsible habits or addictions that you are battling?? Are you irresponsible with your money, leaving unpaid bills and operating under questionable ethics?  Do you abuse alcohol or pills? If so, you aren't qualified to be a good, Christian date!

There is one particular addiction that deserves its very own paragraph, and it is a very prevalent one affecting both men and women. Being single can cause it to be even more of a struggle. Do you LOOK at pornography???  I won't ask you if you are addicted, because you'll probably say you aren't.  If you even look at it, it's a big problem.  It probably deserves its very own blog topic, so we'll just hit the high points here today. 

It sets up unrealistic expectations of the opposite sex. It can't NOT affect how you view the opposite sex. Face it --- average people don't have 4 to 6 hours a day to spend working out and laying around in a tanning booth, and thousands of dollars to spend on spas and plastic surgeries in order to look like the porn stars. If you start looking at that garbage, that's what you'll expect your mate to look like. It will contaminate your reality and cause you to be disappointed in the good mate God gave you.  Plus, it is an addiction that can be more severe than any drug. Brain scans show that porn addicts have the very same sorts of "holes" in their brains as heroin and alcohol addicts.

Plus, men, do you have any earthly IDEA the HURT a woman feels in her spirit when her man looks at that garbage?  If you truly knew, you'd never go near it. It makes her feel like SHE is not enough, that you want something more than her. It introduces a THIRD PARTY into your relationship, just as though you were having an affair (but it is even more dehumanizing than an affair, because it is not even a REAL person doing the intruding!). When she feels like that, she will close vital, secret parts of herself off to you in order to protect herself from being hurt. Therefore, you will not have full access to the unique treasure within her make-up which makes her HER.  It is a relationship killer, and an intimacy killer. It's an evil lie that porn doesn't have anything to do with the way you feel about the woman in your life.  It DOES.  It will absolutely trash your relationships. (Yes.... you guessed it... I DO know quite a bit about this topic, I could probably write a book on it!) If you have a problem with porn, if you are a man or a woman..... before you date, GET HELP.  Because it will absolutely train wreck you. If you have any issues with porn, you ABSOLUTELY aren't qualified to be a good, Christian date!

Are you merely a recreational dater, with no interest in developing a permanent relationship?? Do you want to just play the field indefinitely because it's fun? If this is the case, then you have no business in the Christian dating arena.  Most Christian daters are looking for "THE ONE".  It's wrong to set up false expectations in people, thus setting them up for personal hurt and disappointment. God takes a dim view of those who hurt His other children.  If you are just playing around..... STOP DATING!  If you don't want to  make it real, keep your HANDS and your LIPS.....and your PRETTY WORDS to yourself!!! If you DO go on a date, then let it be known right up front that your interest is NOT ROMANTIC!!! And when your interest is not romantic, then DO NOT indulge in romantic speech or behaviors.  If you are outside these guidelines, you aren't qualified to be a good, Christian date!

Are you sincere in your Christianity, or merely paying lip-service to it?  Do you love God/Jesus with all your heart, and are you a committed Christ-follower? Are you willing to work toward performing the Great Commission (if you don't know what the Great Commission is, you're already disqualified...) to be a good Christian example, to love and serve others?  If not, you aren't a true Christian, therefore you couldn't possibly be qualified to be a good, Christian date! If you aren't, then REMOVE that phoney label you are wearing and select your dates from the secular pool!!

There is a lot more we could cover here, but I am writing a blog post, not a book.  These are just some things to consider, for starters. 

If you aren't qualified to be a good, Christian date, please, do the ethical thing and either FIX yourself to become a good Christian date before you date other good Christians..... or leave the Christian dating pool altogether and fish in the secular pool. There are far more people to choose from in the secular pool, and most of them aren't quite as picky.  It grieves the heart of God when He sees His children hurting and abusing one another with lies, misrepresentation and manipulation.  In God's kingdom, there is a spiritual law of sowing and reaping.  If you sow bad seed, you reap bad fruit. Don't heap sin and judgement upon your own head which you will surely have to pay for later.  The temporary thrill you'll get from collecting a belt full of Christian scalps is nowhere near worth what it will cost your body, soul and spirit down the road!

Blessings..... and may God bless your journey of self-discovery!

Top Criteria for Choosing a Date

The topic in this blog may be a very OBVIOUS point, but I think it's something that needs to be addressed in the Christian dating world. Sadly, it seems that the middle aged Christian dating world is plagued with the same divorce-causing cancer that affects the secular one.

Far too many singles are focused on the wrong things. When their focus is skewed, they end up getting into wrong relationships, and end up paying the ultimate price.... another divorce, or a broken heart, looking for someone new to date.

I recently overheard a comment about a guy who resurfaced in the GSA singles group I attend. They said he'd married, but divorced a few months later. I'd noticed that he'd disappeared for quite awhile. Then I noticed he suddenly appeared back on the scene.  This is not unusual. I often see this phenomenon in that singles group.  It generally  means that someone stepped away from the group and began dating.  Either they get married, or, more often, they resurface because the dating relationship didn't work out. In this man's case, he'd married, something had gone terribly wrong, and he very shortly ended up divorced and back in the group.

The interesting thing is, that not long after I began attending the group, about four years ago, while attending a singles dinner, I overheard this man loudly talking with a friend.  It was a very negative scenario. I brought friend to the dinner who'd been out of church for a long while. This man was actually wearing a gold church greeter tag with his name on it. The conversation we overheard was appalling, made even more so by the fact that he was a greeter for the singles. 

This fellow was loudly bragging to his friend about "dumping" a girl  because she had not "rung his bell".  He got quite in-depth about it. Apparently, she wasn't appealing enough to suit. I inwardly cringed for this poor woman being so crassly discussed, and sincerely hoped she was not present at the dinner to experience the personal humiliation such a conversation surely would have caused. The conversation was so loud that everyone within earshot for 15 feet couldn't miss hearing it. My guest was so appalled at overhearing this conversation, she refused to ever set foot in my church again. She insisted that if such behavior was tolerated and unaddressed by leadership at a singles dinner, she did not wish to participate in such a church. Fortunately she found another church to attend to her spiritual needs. Unfortunately, she had a very good point.

I hadn't realized the man in question married someone several months later. I was merely relieved to see his boorish behavior disappear from the Christian singles scene at my church. People really need to be more cognizant of the conversations they have in such a setting. They should always remember that they may be the only Jesus some people ever see, and thus they should exercise at least a modicum of conversational restraint and not behave like total Cretins.

Honestly, I wasn't surprised to see him BACK on the scene. From all indications of his outward behavior, he was looking for the wrong thing in a relationship. And, from what I'd observed, he was quite a jerk to boot.  The top of his criteria list for a desirable dating partner was geared toward appearance rather than character. I observe this far too often. 

I see women dating unsuitable men in Christian singles because the men are much younger, or quite handsome, when the men have nothing to recommend them, character-wise.  It usually ends badly. There is an old saying that you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.  It's very true.  One man attending GSA is outgoing, tall, and handsome enough by some women's standards (not mine....because his flawed character off-puts me so totally I can see nothing desirable about him).  He has THREE failed marriages under his belt due to adulterous affairs he's had while serving in MINISTRY, and people know this. YET, some women in GSA continue to welcome his attentions!! WHAT???? This baffles me! I often see men choose women to date based on their looks alone, with character and personality seldom considered. Then, they wonder why the relationship doesn't last and they whine when their heart gets broken.

I simply do not understand why appearance is at the top of the list and character is at the bottom, when it comes to the majority of Christian dating.  Christ-followers should know better!!!! Is a man balding, or does he have a bit of a paunch? Is a woman a bit overweight, with a few more bags and sags and wrinkles than she ought to have, thus not qualifying to enter the Barbie contest?  Is that a godly, valid reason to DISQUALIFY a person from your dating pool???? Apparently so, at least in the circles I move in!

That bald man with the paunch may be the kindest, gentlest, sweetest man in the group, who'd treat his girl like a queen and lavish her with affection and attention, whereas that swarthy Lothario over there, who is handsome and 10 years younger than you will probably trash your heart because he is a known player. If you pass that bald man up, and date Lothario because you are so flattered he asked you, and you want something pretty on your arm to make your other girlfriends green with envy, you deserve the heartbreak you'll surely get for your shallow standards.

That woman over there who is 40 pounds overweight could have the most loyal, kind, trustworthy heart of any woman in the group. She could be the perfect Proverbs 31 woman, the one who'd hold a man's heart firmly in her hands, never let it go, and help him be all he can be in life. She may be just short of an angel. However, SHE usually gets overlooked and passed over for cute Miss Barbie over there, who is 15 years younger, catty, hateful, spiteful, competitive, snarky, and looking for a nice meal ticket. She'll get it, too, and that man providing it will be miserable and forevermore feeling like he somehow missed out on something special. He'll probably BLAME GOD for not sending him the PERFECT woman.... when God DID send the perfect woman, and he passed her by because she fell just short of his physical expectations.  His misery will serve him right for acting like such an idiot!  That free will will bite you in the rear every time, if you don't train yourself to listen to and follow the still, small voice of God's guidance and His gentle opportunities.

Don't get me wrong, people. I am not saying one should date only the fat or the bald.  What I AM saying is, look at EVERYBODY. Examine character before appearance. Don't dismiss someone out of hand because you don't see them as a Nicole Kidman or a Tom Cruise!! That is such an immature attitude to have, and you'll pay dearly for it, in the long run. TALK to the bald man -- find out what he's all about before dismissing him out of hand.  TALK to the woman who's a little too pudgy and get to know her, before writing her off your list of potentials. When you limit yourself, and go for the potential dates everyone else is going after, you severely limit your choices AND your chances, and are apt to pass up the most valuable gem in the box! Wipe away some of that dust, dig a little, and you're apt to find a gem of great price buried under all that cheap, rhinestone "made in China" JUNK.  The gilt and rhinestone may sparkle more, but the diamond is more desirable any day, because that gilt wears off with use and you end up with broken, tacky trash.

Choosing a dating relationship based on appearance rather than character is what the secular world does. It's also why there is such a high divorce rate.  Such immaturity and ignorance has no place in the Christian life-walk. You ought to know better. Choosing a mate is very serious business. You are talking about, hopefully, the rest of your life here. Eventually, everyone will loose hair, and bag and sag. Even Tom Cruise will loose most of his charm, once he turns 80. Those of us hitting middle age have already begun the process.  What are you people THINKING, for Pete's sake???  Character and the ability to stick with a relationship for the long haul is what really counts here, not the thickness of one's pompadour, nor a few extra pounds resting in the wrong place.  Christian singles need to wake up and smell the coffee on this matter!!!!  That junior-high type behavior ought to be long since passed by now! 

If you are guilty of choosing dates based on the wrong criteria (which you probably are, because about 95% of you men DO, and about 40% of you women DO) you need to GROW UP, lest you be like the pathetic MR. RING-A-DING man hanging out on the fringes of GSA again --- cycling back through divorce court, and crawling back to the singles group in humiliation, trolling the already over-fished waters for a new relationship. (Honestly, I am having a REAL HARD TIME dredging up any pity for that man!!!--Christian, or no!!)  I wouldn't give him the time of day, because I observed him being a horrible jerk.  EWWWW!  If some of you people weren't behaving like clueless idiots in the first place, you could be at home watching TV in bed, cuddling with your sweet soul mate and enjoying the comforts of your middle age.  I certainly know where I'd rather be!! (I do not enjoy attending singles groups ....... behaviors exhibited there by so-called Christian people appall me for the most part...)

So, I, for one, will be talking to that bald man sitting in the corner, or to that quiet man dressed like a nerd and wearing his pants a little too short, the guys that all the other women are passing by because they don't find their appearance quite "up to snuff".

Who are YOU busy choosing????  A year or two from now, will you be snuggled up with your forever sweetie, or will you be trolling the stale, over-fished waters of the tiresome singles group for a new person to date because your last relationship ended up a train wreck?? Could it be that your "picker" needs a godly overhaul??  Just sayin'.......

Talking VS Texting

We live in the modern technological age where everyone under the age of  50 seems to have their thumbs busily texting on mobile phone keypads -- texting at school, texting at work, texting in traffic, texting at the grocery store, etc. etc!! However, some of us who are past the age of  50 are slightly less enthralled with the concept of texting than the younger generation. We were taught, and learned manners, at one time.  Since everyone has gone so text crazy, I thought it would be a timely topic to blog about today. I'm certain it currently affects many of you, because it affects me!

I know someone who has been in a new relationship for about two and a half months. The two of them are what one might consider hanging on the edge of the senior crowd, but one of them has totally bought into the texting craze. The texter always texts the talker GOOD MORNING, and they exchange two or three brief texts before starting their day. They usually text in the evenings, and the texter sometimes falls asleep mid-texting.  Sometimes the texting episodes spread out over the entire duration of the evening, sometimes only for 5 or 10 minutes.  They generally have their dates over the weekend.

The talker is growing quite frustrated with the texting.  The talker can't hear the voice inflections, and finds the casualness and lack of one on one romantic interaction way too impersonal. This issue was brought up a couple of times with the new dating partner, with a request to spend more time talking on the phone, and less time texting. They seldom talk on the phone.  Even though the request was made twice now, the texting continues, and the intimate phone conversations desired by the talker fail to materialize.

I also see this texting craze going on with my kids. I invite my daughter over to my house to see a movie, and I catch her giggling at a point where the movie is not humorous. She's texting with her flame of the moment.  At Thanksgiving dinner, I noticed my son only giving half his attention to the family, and the rest of his attention was focused on his smart phone underneath the dinner table,juggling his texting between TWO girls he was seeing at the time.  I, personally find this texting behavior highly irritating and rude on the behalf of my children, and they are merely doing it in my presence, not doing it TO me.  I can only imagine how irritating my friend finds all this texting to be while on the receiving end of it, especially in a romantic relationship.

My talking friend got frustrated to the point of seeking advice of other friends. A mutual friend agreed that the behavior of the new dating friend was rather inconsiderate.  The question was asked "Well, how do you really know they are not with another date when texting you? On those evenings when you get only a few texts, maybe they are visiting with another date, and texting you from their bathroom!"

This threw a whole new fly into the ointment, making my talking friend more frustrated than ever.  So, when I was present, and some texts started rolling in from the date, I said "Well, you have made it known you prefer talking, not texting, so when the text comes, be very brief, sending only one or two word replies, maybe they will get the idea, and just call you!!  So a one word reply was sent.  One word replies were received in return, and no call was forthcoming!!! This caused more angst than ever.  I thought I should probably refrain from handing out further advice before I got myself in trouble.

All of this got me thinking about the whole etiquette of texting in general.  It's such a new thing, the topic has probably not yet been published in Ms. Manners latest volume on polite social behavior among adults. However, as on most topics I address, I do have a definite opinion on the matter.  Some of you might consider my opinion a little old fashioned, but hey, I'm kind of an old-fashioned girl who lives by old-fashioned Southern girl rules and genteel manners.

I think texting is OK when you don't have time for a phone call, or you are in a place where speaking aloud on the phone would be rude.  However, I find lengthy text conversations aggravating in the extreme.  Unless you are an extremely speedy keypad manipulator, you can verbalize something in 60 seconds that it would take you an hour to say via text.  Plus, if you are texting, you can't do anything else with your hands. It's a lot easier to move your mouth than peck on a 2 inch square keypad.  Also, it does lack the personal touch.  With phone conversation, you don't get the physical eye contact, but you do get the voice inflection. With texting, you get neither. If you are really into the relationship, and it's important to you, and spending time learning about that person, and experiencing the things about them that makes them THEM, WHY ever would you text if you could talk??? 

Now, if you are in the middle of a corporate meeting, and you cannot wait to experience SOME sort of interaction with your special beloved, I can certainly see slipping your smart phone under the conference table and texting "Lovebug, I miss you so much, I cannot WAIT for our date at the bistro tonight!"  That is perfectly acceptable.

However, if you are at home, and you are watching re-runs of "The Iron Chef" on the cooking channel, and your honey lives across town, and you won't have time to go on a real date until the weekend, and you choose to sit there and impersonally text your honey instead of experiencing the inflection of dulcet, loving tones falling upon your ear, YOU ARE NUTS!!!!!!  You are not experiencing your friend the way they need to be experienced, and YOU ARE A BORE!!!! You need to find yourself a boring, lackluster date who doesn't really care whether you date or not. There is no romance in you, and you are in for a dull relationship. Otherwise, PICK UP THAT PHONE and CALL YOUR FLAME. (If you don't want to be bothered with phoning, it's probably not a flame......its a smouldering wick.....about to extinguish!)  Talking builds intimacy.  If you don't call and talk, someone else will call to talk, and you'll loose out on a really great relationship with your lazy, lackluster ways!!

Relationships take WORK -- at least as much work as it takes to pick up the phone and create a spark. We aren't even talking about lighting a flame, just creating a spark.  There won't ever be flame without spark.

Again, this is just my opinion. You are all welcome to share your thoughts!  I'd love to hear some other input on this!

Why you never date the newly divorced!

Even though it may sound like I’m being cold-hearted, I’m really not.  This is a matter of wisdom, discernment, and self-preservation.  Since I am a woman, I can really only speak to what happens when women date the newly divorced.  It works a little differently (but often just as badly) when men date the newly divorced, so I will let the male bloggers out there speak to that one.  And, whether or not a person is a professing Christian seems to have very little bearing on the outcome of this scenario.

This is what you call a text-book scenario. It’s so common that it nearly always happens, that’s the rule. When it doesn’t happen, that’s the exception.  I, personally, don’t jaywalk.  You can jaywalk and cross the street without being maimed, but you are far more likely to be maimed when you jaywalk than when you cross with the green light.  For a woman to date a newly divorced man is like her jaywalking across a 6-lane freeway in high heels right before rush hour, when traffic is heavy, and traveling really fast. 

When a man is divorced, his ego is generally horribly crushed, especially when the wife was the one who did the walking.  That’s one strike.  Strike two is that, emotionally, men can’t handle being alone nearly as successfully as women can.  They are more dependent upon companionship than women are.  Statistics say that most divorced men are remarried within two years, whereas many divorced women never remarry, and if they do, the statistic for them is remarriage in six to fourteen years.  Strike three is that the typical divorced man usually doesn’t take the time to go through counseling or a divorce recovery group – he usually opts to end his pain by hooking up with another woman as soon as possible to bandage his bruised ego, and opts to immediately kill his loneliness with another relationship.  Notice, I say TYPICAL.  There are exceptions.

98% of the time, this scenario turns out very badly for the unfortunate woman chosen to be the other half of this man’s first new relationship after his divorce.  When this unwise woman lets it slip to this bruised man that she is developing feelings, it is first a huge boost to his ego.  It’s confirmation to him that his “mojo” isn’t broken, that he still has the ability to attract and capture a woman’s heart (or her scalp, whichever the case may be) in spite of his marriage going down in flames.  This is generally such a huge boost to his ego, that his second determination flips the light bulb switch of his mind with a  “WOW!  I had no idea that it would be this easy to get another woman to fall for me!  I’ll bet that since I got this one to fall so quickly, the next one will be even easier!  Besides, I think I can do better than this woman, she falls a tiny bit short of my ideal!  I did so well this time, I think I can easily find someone younger, and more attractive!”

At this point, the typical divorced man usually “dumps” his first new relationship within hours of the light bulb coming on, and then goes on a frenzied “woman chasing binge”, where he repeats the attract/reel-in/dump scenario at least 4 or 5 times, until he finally gets tired of the ego-boosting game he’s been playing in his head with himself.  Once he is confident that his mojo is fully operational and his options are limitless, at that point, the average divorced male usually decides to settle on someone attractive and remarry.  Notice I say attractive, because physical attraction is usually the most important criteria; often, everything else seems secondary.  Men are much more visual than women, that’s just how they are wired.  Unless, of course, he’s let his success with the ladies go to his head, and turn him into a real ego-maniac, at which juncture, he is apt to play the attract/reel-in/dump scenario until he has to retire with his walker and bed pan.  At that point, his kids usually check him into a nursing home, where there are 25 women to every man, and the blue haired old ladies vigorously compete with one another for his attentions at the Bingo table.  He remains a Lothario until the bitter end.

This may sound a little cynical to the uninitiated, but don’t forget, I’ve been in a position to watch adult singles play their games in church singles group for about 15 years now. I have observed this exact scenario played out more times than I can possibly count.  I even coined a phrase for that first woman who allows herself to get sucked into a relationship with the newly divorced man.  I call her the “Disposable Girlfriend”.  

Ladies, count me wrong at your own peril.  My personal rule is that I won’t ever  be the first woman to get involved with a newly divorced man.  I don’t even want to casually date one.  I set that rule up for myself when I was single back in my 30’s, after I learned about the “Disposable Girlfriend” perils through personal experience, and saw several friends get bitten by it as well.  When I became single again, I quickly observed that it remained the most valid rule in the book. Break that rule…….break your own heart. (I am adding this personal note in January of 2013.  I recently BROKE my own rule, and guess what -- my words proved true. My  heart got broken for breaking this rule!)

I do want to clarify that this man I am describing is the TYPICAL divorced man. There are absolutely exceptions to this rule.  Some very wise, caring, spiritual men, who really love God, who truly care about the welfare of others, realize how broken they are after a nasty break-up, and they realize how dangerous it is to them and to others to begin dating before their hearts are ready.  They are responsible and self aware, and they do not want to hurt anyone, or cause any further train wrecks.  They want the hurt to end with them.  They want their next relationship to be the RIGHT one, and they are not interested in collecting scalps.  They are the ones who take the time to reflect, to heal, and to become responsible daters before stepping back into the dating scene.  THEY are the ones whom you WON'T find dating within weeks, or months of their divorce......or.....gasp....horrors....before their divorce is even final!!!!  A  good rule of thumb to start with in determining whether you should date a man or not is to find out how long he's been divorced.  That should tell you if he's taken the time to do the work.  If he has not taken a reasonable amount of time.....run......and run VERY FAST!

Nothing scares me as badly as a newly divorced man who hasn’t taken the time to let GOD work on healing his wounds before he gets out there and starts dating again.  Women can be equally dangerous, but in a different way.  Again, I will let the male bloggers out there respond to that one.  There’s an old saying “Hurt people hurt people”.  The best chance any single person has of experiencing a successful relationship with the opposite sex is getting themselves emotionally healthy before they date, and making sure that the person they choose to date has taken the time to get themselves emotionally healthy as well.  There is a bit of advice that the counselors used to dole out several years ago. I am not sure if it still applies, but it makes a lot of sense to me.  They used to say that after a breakup, it takes 2 months for every year of togetherness (up to 25) for a person to recover from a prior relationship. 

Of course, a person’s recovery time depends on how willing they are to allow God to heal them, how honest they are with God about their wounds, and how willing they are to do their part to fix what is broken within themselves.  There is no doubt that God can expedite the healing process for anyone, and there are exceptions to every rule.  Some people never allow themselves to be healed, they carry their baggage and bitterness to the grave with them.  But, before you tell yourself you have found the exception, you owe it to yourself to honestly assess whether you really see healing in that person, or whether you are experiencing the delusion of wishful thinking.  We can talk ourselves into a lot of crazy beliefs when we really want something – like a permanent relationship with a person of the opposite sex whose chemistry nearly knocks us on our heels every time we walk past.  The power of self-delusion is limitless when it comes to that.

The best rule of thumb going into any relationship is to ask God what He thinks about it……is it in His plan for you……and to abide by HIS answer, whatever it may be! 

What is our part when people do us dirty?

As I said in my previous blog, I’ve had a long term issue of friends taking advantage of me, and treating me badly.  I tried my best to be a good friend, and to practice the Golden Rule.  I tried to be the friend that I felt Christ would have me to be; patient, long suffering, giving, helpful, kind, sympathetic, and supportive.  It was quite hurtful and discouraging to pour so much into a friend’s life, more than once, and then have them turn around and betray me, or start hating on me for a superfluous reason.  I know there are many of you out there in the same boat.  I am not the only one this is happening to.  You are mystified, wondering what you’ve done to deserve being treated so nastily, especially when you tried to do everything right.

I think that the biggest trap we fall into as Christians is in hearing Biblical teachings that have been taken out of context or presented in an incomplete fashion.  For instance, a perfect example is male despots using Ephesians 5:22 as license to dictate every move and heap abuse upon their wives “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as unto the Lord”.

They conveniently leave off the part of the verse that says “as unto the Lord”, and they also conveniently leave off the rest of the topic matter, including verse 25, which says “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her”.  

These guys aren’t giving up anything when they rule their homes with a dictatorial fist of iron. They are using one portion of one verse in the Bible to give themselves a spiritual right to terrorize the woman living in their home.  Jesus cringes every time He sees this take place. Guess who will end up paying dearly for this sin!  I’ll give you a clue, it’s not the wife.  This subject, if delved into, would require pages and pages of commentary, so I will stop it here .

We hear a lot of so-called Christian teaching that insinuates that we are to tolerate anything and everything.  We are taught that Jesus was MEEK, which many teachers translate as WEAK. We are taught to turn our other cheek to allow anyone who chooses to do so to abuse us TWICE.  We are also taught that forgiveness means mending fences and reconciling your relationship with a person.   This is completely erroneous!  God loves us, therefore He expects us to love ourselves.  We are to be patient and understanding, yes, but we are not to tolerate repeated abuse.  Tolerating repeated abuse is not loving ourselves as God loves us.  Tolerating repeated abuse is actually disrespecting ourselves, which is not within God’s will at all!!

Let me get back to what God showed me regarding this friend who chose to cut dead my relationship with her when I finally called her out, in a very firm fashion, on some unexcuseable behavior she’d displayed toward me.  I tolerated a lot of craziness from her over the course of 3 or so years, but she'd finally crossed the line. 

Let's set the scenario.  She was extremely jealous and competitive where I was concerned, and would often try to humiliate or put me down in public, just to draw attention to herself, or to convince the people we mutually knew to believe she was a more desirable person than I was.  She continually corrected my grammar, criticized my clothes, and made hateful remarks about  my hair. Being a non-competitive, non-jealous person, I tolerated this behavior from her.  Not only did I tolerate it, I made it easy for her by not responding in kind.  Lest I sound "uber-spiritual" here, I will admit right now that I often became HIGHLY irritated by her behavior.  HIGHLY.  Sometimes I would steam for days over the hateful things she'd do.

I am a more laid back, low-key, quiet sort of person, especially in a public setting.  Therefore, it was easy for her to steal the show because she was always loud, proud, and boisterous.  She had the tact and diplomacy of a Mac truck navigating a miniature golf course at high speed.   I excused her public outbursts and put-downs as being due to her own pain and insecurity, and decided that the Christian thing for me to do was to overlook it, to love her and continue being her friend in spite of her orneriness. Therefore, I kept quiet about her shenanigans, for the most part.  Only a very few times, she seemed to realize how ugly she was being, and would provide a half hearted apology.

I loaned her money, and I helped her with multiple household issues.  I supported her through her divorce, and also went to her divorce arbitration with her, where she lost control so severely that her arbitrator asked me to represent her for a major part of the meeting instead.  I prayed over her and with her more times than I could count.  I went over to help clean her house before she moved in, and spent many days cleaning up the most unspeakable grunge, including carpets soaked in dog waste, when my own home sorely needed attention.  I should have gotten a clue as I was sweating out on her patio in Texas August, scrubbing a refrigerator that was infested top to bottom with black mold, when she strolled out onto the patio, dressed to the nines and floating on a cloud of powder and perfume, telling me she was feeling a little stressed, and going out to a “support meeting” and dinner for the evening. 

Are you getting the picture here?  She was Christian, and I was Christian, and I thought I was doing the GODLY thing by helping her out, being her friend, and tolerating all of her nonsense. Echoing in my head continually was the misapplied "turn the other cheek" rule.   Right about now, you are probably thinking that I needed to have my head examined for not walking away from her craziness after the first incident. You probably wonder why I tolerated that insanity for three years.  Honestly, I was too close to it, and did not grasp what I was doing wrong!! I thought that I could "love her into loving me", if that makes sense.  I am also a person who will tolerate lot, but even I have my limits.  

I got angry one time and one time only, after years of her abusing our relationship, and after years of people believing negative things about me that were untrue, due to her jealous innuendos regarding my character.  When she finally crossed my line, which really took some doing, as you might imagine,  I called her on her behavior, and told her that it was inexcusable, selfish, and irresponsible.  I know she must have been shocked, as I had never before said such things to her regarding her ugly behaviors.  Her response to me was that she no longer wanted to associate with me or speak to me, and that she’d NEVER ask me for anything again!  (Can anybody say “Thank you Jesus” to that??)

I was very angry with her.  I don’t mean to say by sharing all of this that she never blessed me in any way, because she did.  We had some really good times, when she was on good behavior.  We helped one another through some really difficult days.  I was there for her through her messy divorce, and she was one of the VERY FEW FRIENDS (who could have been counted on my thumbs) who was actually there for me after my husband died.  She’s like the little girl in the nursery rhyme with the curl…..”When she was good, she was very good, when she was bad….she was HORRIBLE!”

I actually cared a lot about her, and believe it or not, I still do.  I understood why she did some of the things she did, because I knew some of the hurts that were hidden in her heart.  That is the type of thing that  happens when you carry unhealed hurts in your own heart.  You hurt others.   I believe she genuinely cared about me as well, she just was not able to overcome her own selfishness and angst when it came to our relationship.  I miss her a lot, and I wish we could still be friends, but we can’t.  

My friend is simply a scorpion.  I know you all have heard the story of the scorpion who asked if he could ride on the frog’s back across the stream.  The frog told him no, that he was a scorpion, and would sting him, and they’d both drown.  The scorpion fervently promised that he would do no such thing, that it would be crazy to do that and drown them both.  Thus, the frog was convinced, and gave the scorpion a ride across the stream.  In the middle of the stream, the frog felt the paralyzing stinger pierce his back, and as they both sank, the poor frog gasped “You promised not to sting me, now we both will die!”  

The scorpion replied “You should have known I’d sting you, I am a scorpion, that is WHAT I DO!”

Anyway, the Lord showed me this very clearly on the Saturday I took the time to work through this issue.  I was very upset, so I was up at 5 am.  I started praying, journaling, and reading my Bible.  I was asking God to help me understand, and to help me forgive her, because I did not want to harbor unforgiveness, which I knew would turn to bitterness, which I knew would affect my walk with the Lord.  After journaling for a few hours, I briefly dozed off and had a vivid dream.

I dreamed I was walking down dirt road, on a beautiful, silvery, moon lit night.  Beside the road was a very tall, rock wall, about 20 feet.  It was covered with ivy.  I could smell flowers and a nice breeze was blowing.  It was the perfect summer night from right out of the pages of a romantic novel. 

I heard the sound of thundering  hoof beats in the distance.  I stepped off the road, just as a huge, black battle horse in full regalia thundered past me.  On its back was a ferocious, helmeted rider, in full metal body armor, carrying a huge spiked ball on a chain, along with many other weapons.  I saw a break in the wall up ahead.  I watched as this fearsome destroyer thundered through the break in the wall.  I followed them through the break, noticing that there was actually a well-worn pathway underfoot, where the fallen stones of the wall had been trodden deep into the ground by the horse's heavy hooves.  Apparently, the warrior traveled this route regularly.

As I stepped through the break, I saw down below a picturesque village, full of beautiful little cottages.  The moonlight gilded the roof tops with silver, and mullioned windows reflected the starlight.  I watched the warrior thunder down into the village, and suddenly, I was transported down there as well.  The warrior fiercely swept through the dark, quiet streets, violently swinging his mace in all directions.  (Picture Mel Gibson in the movie "Braveheart", riding into his enemy's bedroom on his battle horse, and crushing his enemy's head with his swinging mace as the man lay on his bed, and you get the picture!)  The spiked iron ball smashed through beautiful, mullioned windows, splintered wooden doors, and crushed stone flower pots resting on patio walls.  The warrior wrought havoc and destruction throughout the village.  Terrified people looked out their windows, but did not venture outside.  Dogs ran out from yards and began to bark.  They were cruelly kicked aside by the pounding hooves of the battle horse.  After spending several minutes accomplishing his tirade of destruction, the warrior rode his battle horse out of town and through the wall, the same way he’d come.

As the warrior rode back through the break in the wall, he pulled the metal battle helmet off his head to enjoy the balmy summer night.  When the helmet came off, I saw the warrior’s face.  It was the face of my friend.  

After a little while, day broke, and people started coming out of their houses to clean up the mess.  They swept up piles of broken glass, dirt, and crushed flowers, and bandaged their injured, whimpering dogs.  As the people cleaned up the mess, neighbors were angrily talking to one another over their honeysuckle hedges.  “Why doesn’t the mayor do something about this?  It happens nearly every time the moon is full, and he knows it.  Our mayor is completely useless, he is not fit to be mayor of this town!  He offers us no safety or protection whatsoever!  All he needs to do to keep this from happening to us is fix that broken wall, and he just won’t do it!”

As I stood there, listening and watching, I heard this voice, which I knew was God, say to me ”Twyla, you are the mayor!  This is your city.  YOU need to secure your broken walls!”

Then I woke up.  I immediately knew that God had given me the dream, and I knew exactly what it meant.  It was very clear to me that my friend was abusing me because I was allowing her to wreak destruction in my life, and I needed to repair my walls to stop her.  I didn’t need to try to make peace with the fierce, angry warrior.  I needed to repair the breech in my wall so the warrior would be unable to return to the inner city that was me, unable do further damage.  The warrior was a destroyer, and like the scorpion, destroying was its purpose, destroying was simply what it did.  Period.  I love my destroyer friend, but I’ve said my final goodbye.  Our relationship will never be what it was.  I will be polite when I see her, but it will never go beyond that.  I wish her well, and I hope she will allow the Lord to heal her from her hangups, but there is nothing I am capable of helping her with.  Her brokenness goes far beyond anything I can affect.  She is undergoing some very tough circumstances right now, but I know it is not my place to intervene.  God has got her situation.  She belongs to him.

I know that some Christians out there might disagree with me, saying I should reconcile with her.  However, that is not what God told me.  I knew this friend very well.  And, I know as well as I know my own name that if I allow her into my life again, she won’t be able to prevent herself riding her battle horse down those old, established pathways of jealousy and competition, and  swinging her mace of rampant destruction when it comes my feelings and my sensibilities.  I have a Christian responsibility to HER as a friend…..and that is to not allow her to increase her sin debt by causing further damage to my soul.  Even though He forgives us of our sins, God usually allows negative circumstances to befall us when we deliberately sin, when we deliberately disobey, and when we deliberately cause hurt and damage to others.   

God loves her, and God loves me.  From now on, though, He will love us from different sides of the pond.  I have a responsibility to follow through on what God taught me.  When God led me to that book that very evening at the bookstore “Safe People: How to find relationships that are good for you and avoid those that aren’t” by Henry Cloud and John Townsend, and I read through it the next day, I recognized my part.  I saw very clearly my personal tendency to ignore the warning signs of “unsafe people”, and my tendency to tolerate their bad behaviors, thus allowing them into my life to crush and wound my soul.  This was my responsibility.  This was something I needed to change about myself.  Yes, others sinned against me, but I sinned against them and against myself by allowing it. 


Unsafe people often ARE Christian people.  Just because someone loves the Lord, it does not mean that they are not treacherous, horribly messed up, and embroiled in sin!!!  Just because they are Christian, it does not mean they will be a good friend to you.  You must be responsible, and learn to protect yourself from such people!!  I felt somewhat ashamed for not having recognized something so clear, but we start from the point where God gives us new beginnings.  We can’t change the past……but with God’s help, we CAN change the future!

Bless all of you………and if any of you are continually being hurt, again, I stress to you, buy that book.  It’s the best $14 you will spend this year!!!  I could reiterate their points on how to avoid unsafe people, but why do that, it’s all there in the book!!  If any of you read it, and decide to make some changes, I’d sure love to hear your stories!!

Do People Seem to Do You Dirty?

Are you a person who seems to always have trouble with people lying to you, taking advantage of you, and doing you dirty?  I am not talking about just dating relationships here, I am talking about family, friends, co-workers, co-church-members, etc.  That’s been a huge struggle in my life, and I know that some of you out there have the same issue.  We wonder why we keep encountering people who dump on us, no matter how we try to nurture them, accept them, love them, help them, etc.  We feel like we are doing everything right, but that we must just have been born jerk magnets.

I went through a time back in my single mom days when I felt like jerks were the only men who were ever attracted to me.  I felt like I could be in a room of 250 very nice people, but if there was even ONE man in the crowd who was selfish, irresponsible, a jerk, and an alcoholic, he’d find me and attach himself to my elbow within 10 minutes of my stepping into the room.  

I refused to even date for almost 3 years after my divorce from my first husband because I knew I was really messed up in the head from spending 9 years in the middle of his insanity and abuse.  I knew I needed to pull my life together and do some work on myself.  I went to school and I got a great job working for a contract company who did training out at Lockheed Martin.  I started at the bottom of the ladder and worked my way up into a really good position.  I was involved in a good church and went through some helpful workshops there. 

One that really helped me along the path was a group book study called “Search for Significance”.  Some of you may be familiar with it.  My self-esteem was almost completely destroyed during my abusive marriage, I’d been brainwashed into thinking I was nothing and worth nothing.  That is how abusers and controllers gain control over you, they erode your self-esteem and self-worth until you end up thinking you don’t deserve any better, and you’ll tolerate anything. 

There came a point when I thought I was “well”, and that I could begin dating.  I tried dating for about 4 years, but none of those relationships ever worked out well for me.  I was still active in church, still working on my spiritual growth, yet still attracting only jerks.  Irresponsible, or controlling, or manipulative, or deceptive, or dishonest, and yes, even the alcoholics were still attracted to me, even though I’d done all that spiritual work on myself.  After about the 5th train-wreck,  I decided I was done with trying to find a decent relationship, it was a complete waste of time. I decided that all men were jerks, none of them could be trusted, and I’d be better off spending my life alone.  So, for two whole years I completely stopped dating. 

Then I met my second husband, who died from cancer 5 years ago. He was definitely God-sent, because I learned from him that all men actually were not jerks.  Men were human, same as women, good and evil, same as women.  Men could love, the same as women could.  

He wasn’t perfect, but he was a good, decent Christian man who treated me like I was queen of the universe.  He totally doted on me, telling me at least 10 times a day how much he loved me.  I almost always had fresh flowers on my table. We were best friends, and we did everything together.  He was a recovered alcoholic who had done a lot of work on himself.  We regularly visited a Christian counselor for the first 14 months of our marriage, just to work through any kinks, and to deal with the blended family issues. We had a great life together, and I learned and grew a lot.  (So did he.)  After he died, for 2 years, I was determined I’d never love anyone else again, and that no one would ever love me as much as he had.  Somewhere during year 3, my own company got a little old.  I decided that I would like to find someone special to spend the rest of my life with.  I wasn't desperate, but I was open.

When I started venturing out again, I found that I was much “safer” because of all I’d learned through my own study and counseling, and all that God had divinely showed me and healed me from.  It was fairly easy for me to spot the men who were jerks, players, and liars, and thus avoid them, or at least walk away shortly after encountering them.  With God’s help, I was certainly able to prevent their making any harmful inroads into my life. Believe me, there are a lot more loosers out there than what you think!!!  So, there I was, with God keeping me from making a train-wreck of my life with the wrong man!  Hallelujah!!

However, I found that I had another problem.  That other problem was women.  My friend pool was severely diminished by my husband’s death.  All my married friends walked away from me, no exceptions.  I was very hurt by that at the time, but I have since come to understand and accept it.  Marrieds and singles simply do not mix.  It is what it is.  I learned within my widows support group that this friend abandonment scenario is very common with widows.  The very same thing happened to every other widow I knew in that support group.  Married friends no longer wished to be a part of their lives, they were cut off and out.  I forgave, moved on and made a few new friends to replace them.  Few means a small number. 

I became close friends with two single women, one who was in the middle of a divorce, and one widowed.  Within a couple of years, both of these women ended up treating me very badly, using me, taking advantage of me, abusing my friendship, and betraying me.  I did everything I could to be a loyal, accepting, loving friend to both of these women.  I poured a lot of myself into their lives.  I was always there for them when they were crying and lonely, I gave and did for them.  I kept their confidences, no matter how shocking some of them turned out to be.  So you can only imagine how very surprised and hurt I was when both of these women ended up knifing me in the back.  I am not talking small needle puncture wounds here, I am talking gaping gashes that left my entrails hanging out. 

The last betrayal left me very, very hurt.  It was really messing up my serenity.  Yes, that is a “buzz word”, I know.  I was involved in a Christian support group called “Celebrate Recovery” for over a year to try to deal with my grief issues when my husband passed away. We quoted the Serenity Prayer at every meeting.  My “serenity” was very disturbed by this woman's behavior.   I felt  anger nesting in my bosom, and I knew from experience that it would grow. Unforgiveness leading to bitterness would ensue if I did not address it immediately.  I had to work far too hard to gain my serenity in the first place to allow someone to steal it.  What is the old saying, "Unforgiveness is like drinking poison, hoping the other person will die"?

So, I took a Saturday morning to pray about the incident, and God showed me some amazing things.  I prayed, studied my Bible, and journaled for several hours to try to work through it. The result of all that was God showing me what part I played in the betrayal.  I’d been convinced the betrayals were their problem because they were just jealous, hateful, deceptive women.  Surprise surprise!!  They were jealous, hateful and deceptive, but I had a part in the way they treated me, too.  It’s amazing what God will show us when we ask Him!! 

When I went to church that night, I decided to walk through the church bookstore.  I don’t go in there often, because I am a Christian self improvement book addict.  I have shelves and shelves of them, and probably don’t need more.  I immediately spotted a little blue book called “Safe People: How to find relationships that are good for you and avoid those that aren’t” by Cloud and Townsend.  I immediately knew I was supposed to buy that book.  I did, and I read it through the next day. It became even clearer to me while reading that book what MY PART was in drawing people into my life who were “doing me dirty”.  

During my prayer and journaling that Saturday, before I bought the book, God gave me a most amazing epiphany.  An epiphany is what I call it when God puts a movie clip in my mind about what’s going on regarding a given situation.  I will share my epiphany with you in my next blog. I've already shared it with several friends, so my virtual friends get to hear about it next.  Meanwhile, may God richly bless you and provide direction.  And, if you have problems with people "doing you dirty", I cannot recommend strongly enough that you visit your Christian Bookstore and buy that book!  It will give you a new perspective.

Be blessed, my friends.  Until next time.