God’s Sexual Emergency Room:
Healing Relational Wounds
Over the years, boomers have had to come to grips with the basic fact that it’s a broken world and humans make mistakes. Sin and stupidity abound, and we could become jaded and cynical with no interest in risking intimacy. Our wounds extend back into childhood, and unfortunately, every major transition can resurrect many of these old hurts and impediments.We don’t want to waste a lot of time and energy refusing to resolve these wounds.
Fortunately, after Adam and Eve sinned and relationships started spiraling down, our loving Creator gave us skills for healing damaged or threatened intimacy. So when we’re broken and hurting, especially sexually, we can come to God’s emergency room.This ER is equipped with the healing instruments for correcting our distorted situations and helping us get back into God’s love and light and wisdom. Maturity masters these critical skills for healing intimacy. Which of these do you need to work on to deepen your intimacy and create a true celebration of lovemaking?
CONFRONTING
The apostle Paul told Timothy that he should learn to “correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction” (2 Tim. 4:2 NIV).We need to take on the qualities of Christ, who “is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray” (Heb. 5:2 NIV).We all know that there is a lot of sin and immaturity in all of our lives. Being over fifty doesn’t give us exemptions from marital difficulties, broken sexuality, poor boundaries, or real skill deficits.We can help each other conform to God’s guidelines through skillful confrontation—through assertively and honestly surfacing and dealing with issues and feelings.
A hurting, motivated wife came for counseling and stated she had faithfully practiced submission, hoping to help her husband make some needed changes. I [Doug] replied that submission would create an atmosphere in which change could take place, but that submission was not God’s tool for accomplishing change. Confrontation was that needed skill. She needed to get in her husband’s face—not angrily, but rather with “great patience and careful instruction.” She felt she had already told him, but I encouraged that patient instruction meant telling him ten different times and in ten different ways:“Since retirement, your outside interests have pulled you away from me, and I miss regular lovemaking.” Don’t nag—lovingly confront your mate into needed changes.
Confrontation gets better with practice, but it’s never fun or easy. God needs us to be the type of mate and companion who cares enough to wisely confront. Maturity can give us a deeper sense of commitment, a broader understanding of life, and less fear of being direct, which all augment this skill.
CONFESSING
James wrote, “Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed” (5:16 NKJV). “He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy” (Prov. 28:13 NKJV). Confession is crucial to healing intimate relationships that have been damaged by sinful behaviors, lazy neglect, or naive ignorance.
Confession includes two important processes:
1. Bringing secrets to the light of day so we drain them of their power. Satan loves to operate in secrecy and darkness. The secrets we refuse to admit will fester and gain greater destructiveness. If we bring them to the light of day, God gives us perspective.The person who confesses lusting after someone outside the marriage often finds the attraction greatly diminished the next time that person crosses his or her path.
2. Confession also allows God and a caring person to see our ugliness and still love us. We can begin to let go of guilt and shame as we separate sin from sinner.We find out we are not impostors but redeemable sinners when a person knows all of our ugly secrets and still loves us.
An important part of this discipline is seeking out appropriate confessors that are trustworthy and wise. It’s usually not healthy to make your wife or husband your only confessor. Men need a same-sex person to hear their confession and not overreact, bluntly tell it like it is, encourage, and hold their feet to the fire.Women need that female buddy to unload to and feel understood—and also to be exhorted toward growth.
REPENTING
Repentance is a frequent topic in the New Testament:“I hold this against you:You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first” (Rev. 2:4–5 NIV).“Godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted” (2 Cor. 7:10 NKJV). Repentance demonstrates that we recognize and accept responsibility for destructive thoughts and actions as we choose to make necessary changes. Repentance means giving feet to our remorse and making a 180-degree turn in the other direction. We are truly going to turn things around.
Wives so often say to me that their husbands become remorseful and make changes.The problem is that they usually last only about two months, and then they relapse into old attitudes and behaviors. Godly character change that results in sexual integrity is a process with many ongoing choices that will continue over a lifetime. We must follow through on repentance and seek out all the destructive thinking and behaviors that are damaging our marriage and sex life and change them. Lovers can recapture their first love and move on to an intimacy they have never experienced before. Making changes and then continuing to make changes is the only way that a great marriage and love life can be built and flourish.
PUTTING EMOTIONS IN PERSPECTIVE
Emotions motivate and are given by God to be our servants. Some are short-term catalysts and can quickly sour if we hold on to them. These are God’s tools for mending losses in those broken places, as He moves us back into places of joy and peace.Anger shows us justice has been violated. Guilt makes us aware of needed changes. Fear helps us to be protective, and jealousy can guard what is important. Envy shows us something is missing, while grief cleanses. Some emotions, like love, joy, contentment, and desire, are long-term, and we cultivate them for creating and nurturing intimacy.
In the ER, emotions are tuned in to and encouraged to do their servant function—but with cognitive guidance. The sooner we understand the purpose of the emotion, the quicker we can learn what we need to learn. Old age can be a boon and a detriment. Maturity can help us not hang on to false guilt but make necessary changes, and accept our situations without undue negative envy. Some feelings can also become bigger ghosts in later years because they have such a history, and aging has its many challenges that can trigger deep fears and anger. But God gives us the grace and wisdom to understand and manage even our most haunting feelings as we tune in to His bigger picture and gain perspective.
GRIEVING
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matt. 5:4 NKJV). “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep” (Rom. 12:15 NKJV). Because we live in a broken world, we have to learn to cry. This grieving can take many forms, but all are filled with cleansing, healing tears as we work through those grieving stages of denial, anger, and hurt.
It is so comforting that God knew we would need to cry and heal our souls in this messy world. He promised that we “will be comforted.” In older age grieving can be a complex process.A multitude of losses can confront us with parents in their eighties, aging bodies, and transitions into new lifestyles. These losses may be real or may be more abstract with a threatened or feared loss. Our grieving may also be cumulative, and the present loss may trigger grief over many past losses that have not been properly grieved and healed. Grieving is not a process that can be worked through totally alone.We need others to share the process with us. Hold each other and cry those comforting tears.
FORGIVING
Sexuality and intimacy are so full of mistakes, both sinful and immature, that we have to master forgiveness as one of God’s healing arts. The psalmist describes our loving Father and His gently forgiving way as He compassionately operates in a fallen world: “The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love . . . he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities . . . For he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust [human]” Ps. 103:8, 10, 14 NIV).The apostle Paul adds,“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive” (Col.3:12–13 NIV, emphasis added).
A genuine part of maturity is learning to live with all this ambiguity of human error and disappointed expectations. It is not by accident that Scripture encourages people to lovingly cut one another slack and learn to live the gentle, flexible life.The word pardon is an apt word for forgiveness. It is reconciling the ledger, even though justice has not been satisfied, as you keep a short account and quit blaming or resenting.We really aren’t given an option on forgiving because God knew it was a necessity. We forgive because we are forgiven; we forgive in order to be forgiven.“Judge not . . . Condemn not . . . Forgive, and you will be forgiven” (Luke 6:37 NKJV).
The other person does not have to be repentant for us to forgive.We do it so we don’t get eaten up with the cancer of resentment and revenge, thus blocking God’s best for us. Remember that forgiveness is a process, and the most difficult person to forgive will often be yourself. Forgive your mate for his or her shortcomings, but of equal importance may be forgiving life and your aging body that lets you down at times. Maturity knows that a part of individually enjoying lovemaking is acceptance of present challenges and gently letting go of old realities to embrace new opportunities. It’s about living forgiveness and flexibly opening up to new creative solutions.
BECOMING WHOLE
Two whole people create a whole marriage and a great sex life. Another function of God’s emergency room is overcoming immaturity and skill deficits—growing up! Reading this book and finding other helpful teaching will go a long way in overcoming ignorance. One man came to counseling totally upset with his present sex life and the way his body was performing—with orgasms less powerful and his penis responding differently. He was afraid his sexuality was rapidly leaving him.What a relief as he discovered he was simply going through normal changes in aging and they were manageable. His sex life rapidly picked up after this counseling session.
Appropriating maturity is a lifelong process. More than knowledge, the paradigm shift of attitude and approach makes a whole lover. Learn these ER skills, especially grieving and forgiving. These skills aren’t fun or easy, but we think you will find that your maturity will assist in attaining their mastery.They will help you build the passionately intimate marriage and sex life that you desire.