So let me first just brag a little on my growth – to write or say the word “vagina” has not been something I have been particularly comfortable with, not too sure why I just haven’t. I think it’s probably because I have lived so disconnected from this part of me for so long. So I am pumped I can write about this and say this word right now on my sexual healing journey. Ok, that’s it…enough bragging!
I love brain science, neuroscience, it fascinates me the way God made our brains. He thought of everything and I love learning about it. I heard something last night in my “sex class” about neural pathways that I didn’t know before. So there’s a connection between our genitals, vagina for women, penis for men, and our hearts. I mean, it makes sense, think about it. When we give ourselves sexually to our husband/wife we open ourselves to them, we become vulnerable, offering, receiving, surrendering our bodies and hearts to the process of lovemaking.
These parts of us are supposed to be connected.
But many of us have been living disconnected.
Unfortunately, I do not have a testimony of waiting. I didn’t save sex for marriage, I was promiscuous and broke my connection. Sex outside the safe confines of marriage forces you to.
You can offer your body, but you must guard your heart.
Broken connection.
It becomes a physical act void of spiritual connection. Neural pathways created in those years that disconnected my vagina from my heart, disconnected the physical from the spiritual. Of course I have been embarrassed to say the word “vagina” –
my story is full of shame, my story is full of loss, my story is full of disconnection.
The neural pathways connected to sex are intertwined
with dirty,
with discarded,
with covering up and hiding,
with used.
There is nothing sacred, nothing saved, nothing spiritual about these neural pathways.
Broken connection.
Disconnection.
And sex is not sacred when these parts of us are disconnected. I have never understood the idea that sex between a husband and wife is a beautiful form of worship between the two offered to a holy God.
What?! Weird! I haven’t understood that because there has been a disconnection between my physical and my spiritual, my sexual and my heart.
So what’s a broken girl to do?
Well, like I said earlier, God thought of everything, He really is the coolest! So He made this amazing, miraculous process that our brains can rewire, make new neural pathways and change the way we think. It’s known as platisticity. It makes no difference how old you are, how long you have been thinking the way you think, it can be changed!
You can “grow” new ways to think!
You can connect what has been disconnected!
He thought of everything. He knew we would be broken in a fallen, deceived world and He made a way out. Isaiah 43:19 reminds us, “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”
You don’t have to live disconnected!
It will take work but you can change it.
Have you heard the saying, “It takes 21 days to create a new habit” – do know that it takes 21 days to create a new neural network? Your default thinking, your default reactions, your default disconnection can be changed in 21 days if you purpose to renew your mind and look for the way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
Sanctify your marriage bed, sanctify your sex life, sanctify your sexuality.
Take it from the hands of the enemy of your soul,
offer it to a holy God who not only created it but delights in it!
Worship Him with your spirit, soul, and BODY!
Marc and I have come a long way from where we started 16 years ago but I still have work to do, new neural pathways to grow. I struggle with looking him in the eye in intimate moments, I look away, it’s uncomfortable and now I know why…it’s that disconnection, it’s that old shame creeping up trying to steal my today and go down the path of that old neural network, that default thinking.
Taking my thoughts captive,
finding rivers in the desert,
making new pathways,
changing my brain chemistry,
looking my husband in eye,
vagina-heart together,
Connecting,
Sexual is spiritual, spiritual is sexual.
Sanctified!
