Everything Happens For A Reason - An Emily Rant

Ya’ll need to hold on to your hats and buckle up for this one. I have had it, and I am gearing up to sound harsh, judgmental, and downright mean, but you know what? I don’t give a flying rip.

Yesterday, I sat with a woman in tears. And if you know me, you know I would just assume you pull my fingernails out rather than try to comfort someone sobbing their eyes out about how their life is falling apart, but I did because while I can be rather cold hearted at times, I thought it was the right thing to do. I let her go until she calmed down, and then she said something to me that made me want to slap her – “I have been doing everything right and following all the things that God has told me to do, and not breaking any of the rules he has laid out for my life. I just want to know when is it going to be my turn to get blessed?”

Seriously? Sister, I know your life, and I can tell you that first sentence is a flat out lie. I don’t know if it is one you bought into, one you manufactured in that little messed up mind, or if you really believe that you are without sin, but, sweetie, honey, you have not been doing what God told you to do, and you are definitely not doing everything right.

Now, let me just clarify that I do NOT believe that doing everything right is a prerequisite for receiving God’s blessing. That’s just bad theology. The truth is God gives us way more than anyone of us deserves.

Somebody is whining, “What about the starving children in Africa? Did they deserve that?” Come on, let’s get real for a second. Number one that is stupid cop out when I just watched you have a meltdown over the fact your cable is getting cut off. You don’t give a rip about the starving kids in Africa or you would send that $50+ a month to making sure that at least a few of them got fed. You start doing that and we will talk about the kids in Africa. Until then stop using them as some great gift from the cosmos to avoid my second point.

Which is – God is holy. Let me unpack that for you, it means that he is so much greater and more than you and I will comprehend. He set apart, wholly other, and apart from his decision to love us has no cause to become entangled in this mess of a world that we inhabit. He only does so because for some inexplicable reason he has decided he desires to know and be known by us. Any revelation of himself that may be deign to give us should bring us to our knees in awe, but we are such self-centered buffoons that we think we are doing him some sort of favor by reposting Bible verses on Facebook.

But back to my friend and her little problem, or should I say friends and their little problems?

The truth is a whole lot of you are buying into the same damn lie that you are a good person who deserves better than life doled out to you. That just because you haven’t murdered someone God should be scraping and bowing to you for such restraint, but the all the while you are doing what you please, when you please with the rest of your life.

Oh, sure you will send me a message lamenting the fact that your husband is a douche bag, but neglect to tell me you have been slipping around with a guy on the side. You will tell me how awful it is you don’t have money to feed your kids or your dog, but I can see that bag of weed in your car. You will tell me how everyone is so mean to you, but you can’t be bothered to show the slightest courtesy to anyone you don’t think has the means to help you. You will bemoan the fallen state of this world, but when is the last time you fed or found shoes for someone in dire need of both or either?

You see, I am running out of patience and mercy for each and every one of you claiming to be a Christian but only act as if it is some type of game token you get to trade in for stuffed bunny. I am fed up with all of you who want to act as if you are the victim of some grand and cosmic plot to ruin your life just because you didn’t get the lollipop or the gold star.

Life is hard, and a life of faith is harder. It demands things of you that will make you uncomfortable, that  will make you hurt, and will make you bleed. The life of faith is a life of sacrifice, and I am not talking about throwing an extra twenty in the offering plate. Big whoop! Do you thing that God needs your money? Do think he will be bribed or bought off? Exactly how small is your god anyways?

No, the God of the Bible demands more. He demands you, all of you. That includes your time, your energy, your money, and yes, even your sexuality. He wants it all, and he has laid out some very simple rules about how you give it to him. Rules that you don’t get to rewrite or ignore because they are inconvenient or uncomfortable. Rules that you don’t get to wave away or water down when they get in the way of your supposed happiness. Rules that were put in place to make sure that nothing gets between you and the God who should be the most important thing in your life.

Am I saying that following the rules gets you salvation? No, I am not. I am saying that when you truly get it through your thick head and hardened heart that God loves you, and I mean stupid passionately loves you, you want to return that love. You want to do the things that please him, and you will ruthlessly rip out everything in your life that stands between you and him. You fight anyone and anything that threatens to intrude upon that relationship, and you will not be content with giving him anything less than your everything because you realize that he is your everything.

So that internet flirtation? It has got to stop. The extra pens from the office that fall into your purse? Need to stop coming home with you. Cussing the slow driver in front of you? Not an option. The addiction that controls your life? Suck it up, and get the help you need to get over it. The guy or gal that you keep tripping over on your way out of a bed you should have never been in?  Who said our faith didn’t require human sacrifice? Time to give them up too.

Look, the point is that it doesn’t matter what it is that you think it is your right to have or what you deserve. I can guarantee you aren’t getting either one right now. And the only reason you aren’t is that in God’s infinite mercy he has decided to give you a little more time and space to get with the program. For some of us, he’s turning up the heat. He’s letting us bear the consequences of our bad decisions, and he is letting us reap the harvest of the lies we sowed. He is not doing it because he is cruel or unfair. He is doing it because he loves us, and he wants us to see how our actions have not been honoring either to him or to ourselves. He is helping us understand that everything he requires of us is for our good, not his because he is already good. And oh yeah, changing course can hurt and if usually comes at a pretty high cost to our pride and comfort, but God was never a fan of pride and the peace he offers is makes comfort look like worn out blanket left on the side of the road.

And hey, if you want all this stuff you think you deserve, go on and get it. He will let you have it, but stop whining when he doesn’t miraculously show up to make things easy on you. For while God’s love is unconditional, expressions of that love are not. And demanding that he bless you while you wallow in your sin is like demanding your spouse be faithful while you act like the town bicycle. So you choose, but think about the decision you are making and have enough backbone to be honest about what you are choosing.

Love In An Imperfect World

In a perfect world, we would all love each other with a fullness and grace that would make sacrifice and compassion as natural as breathing. In perfect world, anger would be defused with understanding, bitterness erased with tenderness, and the scars we inflict upon each other would fade into nothingness so that we would never again be reminded of those moments when we failed to love or be loved completely.

But we do not live in a perfect world, and we ourselves are not perfect. Love costs us greatly, grace is never cheap or free when you are the one extending it, and forgiveness never comes with forgetfulness.

We live in a world where people fail us, where we fail others, and usually it the ones we hold most dear that hurt us the most and who we fail most often. In those times love demonstrates its strength by turning to embrace the hurt and the hurting so that relationship can be preserved and healing, as imperfect as we now know it to be in this realm, can commence.

But what of those moments when healing is denied, when forgiveness is not offered and mercy is withheld?  How then do we love?

Does compassion become weakness? Grace permission for abuse?

For so long we have been told that love is without bounds and limits. It is to be given freely and only its unwavering expression of approval and acceptance is it determined to be authentic. All else is but a fraud, a manipulation, and self-serving artifice designed to bind another to you through the shackles of control and demands of proof for their worthiness of such affection. So we give, and we give without thought to self or survival. We pour out so that another might know that they are worthy of our gift and sacrifice, and we pray that we will be found worthy in turn.

The stories told us that if we loved enough, if we held on tight enough, and worked hard enough we would indeed be found worthy and rewarded with the strength of love that we have bestowed upon another. But this is not truth. It never has been.

Love is the most easily rejected gift we have to offer another.

Perfect love was the first gift offered to humanity. Love not merely expressed in the feeble tools of words and deed, but love personified, walking with Adam and Eve there in the garden, guiding and teaching them with his tangible presence. Their experience of love was beyond any that you and I will know this side of the grave, and they still betrayed it for the hope of something better. Greed and pride deafened their ears, blinded their eyes, and hardened their hearts to the truth – love wants to give all, but only to those willing to reject everything else for the chance to experience this great gift.

Millennia would pass before love once again walked the earth, and this time the gift of his presence was rewarded with a gruesome death upon the cross for demands of fidelity are the one thing the human heart cannot abide. Sacrificing control of our lives and destiny is not something easily accomplished by the human heart, and yet, that was what he required of us so we demanded his blood for daring to be so bold. Unable to appreciate the great gift before us, we rebel. We fight and scream at the cruelty of perceived oppression, and declare that this cannot be love for the love we wish leaves us unchanged and unburdened by expectations.

We have never embraced love without struggle or objection.

This is true not just of God’s love for us, but even the love of another human being. We will lash out at any who feel they have the right by merit of their love for us to dictate the terms of our lives. We will deny that what they offer is love, and call it evil so that we can justify our rejection of this gift.

And what of those times when we are the ones who love? When our great gift of self is rejected? What are we to do then? As in all things, we should look to the example of our Lord and Savior, we continue to love, but we enact limits. We set boundaries, not upon our love but upon the expressions of love that we offer. We do not permit ourselves to be used up and abused by those who would use our emotion as a means to demand all and give nothing in return. We recognize that what we have offered is of great value to ourselves and our Creator, and it is not a gift to be scorned.

Therein lies the conflict. For if we as human beings cannot give love without expectations of honor nor can we receive without submission, how then are we to love?

The answer is a revelation of why we need the love of God before any other love. For without his guidance, the continual experience of his love for us forever renewing our minds and conforming us to his image, we will lack the wisdom and knowledge of where boundaries should be set and how they should be enacted – first in our lives and then in the lives of others. We learn to love by being loved. We learn how to love by experiencing how he loves us, and we are taught to accept love when we receive the gift of his love to us. Without his love illuminating our hearts and minds we stumble and fall into abuse and selfishness, we are lured into believing that our happiness relies on something beyond what has been given, and we flinch from the burden of expectation.

As we experience the love of God we learn to discern love from lust, true sacrifice from manipulation, respect from flattery, and conviction from unfounded guilt. We will never get it right, not completely, but that is why we need the one we love to love our Father as well. For in our humanness, we will need the grace and mercy that can only be inspired in the hearts of one who knows the source of true love intimately. And sometimes, as you fight through the learning together, you get a piece of it right and in those moments you learn the beauty of what it is to truly love another and to be loved in return with all the glory and beauty that is a gift from the God of love alone and can never be conjured from the mere depths of our humanity.

Why I Am Not Crying About the Supreme Court Decision on Gay Marriage

Today we learned that gay marriage is now legal in all fifty states. There was both much rejoicing and lamenting throughout the land. Supporters of the movement celebrate this new freedom and right within our nation, while Christians vacillate between abject mourning and threats of hellfire and damnation. I will admit that there is a strong temptation for me to join in with my brothers and sisters in Christ, but I am choosing a third option.

I am rejoicing and making a deliberate attempt not to show my butt.

So how is it that a Bible believing Christian can rejoice, you might ask.

Simple.

My faith was never in the government. I know that my identity as a Christian is not tied to my nationality in any way. God was never hamstringed by any governmental authority. If I start acting as if this affects him in the slightest form, I am basically saying the government is bigger than the God I serve. So excuse me if I fail to deify the Supreme Court justices, but I think that would fall under the heading of idolatry and I try to actually live what I believe. (Success is variable, but the attempt is constant.)

I am rejoicing because Bible believing Christianity will no longer be the default setting for Americans. Faith in the Bible as God’s holy and inspired Word will be an act of decision and living it will be a commitment that requires us to be actively engaged in knowing what and why we believe. Laziness and ignorance will no longer be compatible with calling yourself a Christian. Some of us might actually try reading it now that we know that we can’t count on society to reflect what only the Bible is supposed to teach us.

I am rejoicing because this is a reminder that we are to be counter cultural and, boys and girls, we haven’t been that in years if not decades. Instead, we have embraced the *smaller* sins of our times as excusable and justifiable because everybody else is doing it. Whether it was speeding down the highway at ten over, cheating on our taxes, gluttony, sloth, or turning a blind eye to heterosexual immorality, we failed to live up to the standards that our God has given to us and in doing so we paved the way for this decision. When we confused being our culture with our faith, we stopped putting God first and made belonging to this world an act of worship that denied his right to be Lord of our lives. Maybe this will get our attention, and we will stop half-assing this thing we call Christianity and experience the conviction we should have been sensitive to so many years ago.

I am rejoicing because some people only learn through consequences because now is the opportune moment for God to reveal that his law is perfect. Something that could never happen when the decrees for right and wrong were based in man given law, not divine revelation.

I am rejoicing because I believe that by allowing marriage to become a social contract and not honoring it as sacred covenant we have made Christianity a little more irrelevant to our society. And I think that is a very good thing, in that only those who want to experience God will continue to identify themselves as such. Am I ignoring or downplaying the consequences for thousands of people? No, but I am not discounting my God’s ability to act despite and within the consequences of our decisions.

I am rejoicing because now we have an opportunity to choose our response, and the response we chose will identify us as we really are – bigots who are only faithful when it allowed us to feel superior to everyone else, pretenders who never believed but went along when it was convenient, or authentic believers willing to be unpopular for the God we love. But even in authenticity, there is a choice. For if we are nothing but venom spewing martyrs for a God who has called to live in love and peace, then we are denying our faith in denying the world a witness to his love.

So I will not cry over this decision. God is still in control and his Word will remain true. No one can affect that, but we can affect how his Word is manifest in our lives. That choice is and always was ours, and now we must face it as we have never have before. So what will choose? Bitterness, anger, or despair? Or will you do as he has asked and continue to praise him as the God who was not surprised or defeated by some words on paper?

How big is your God? The response you choose will inform the world.

After this posted, a friend of mine observed that I did not address the gravity of the situation here. I giving her words some thought, I followed up with this:  http://misdirectedmusings.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-more-thoughtful-response-to-scotus.html

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Should I Have Been Nice? - An Emily Rant

I am supposed to act like this.

The other day I got a phone call from someone who wanted to comment on my one of my posts. His words were sweet and encouraging, full of praise and support for “dealing with life’s harder issues.” You would think that this sort of thing would make me happy, but the truth is the longer he prattled on the more irritated I became. He explained to me why he never commented, liked or shared any of my writings. He didn’t want to give people the wrong idea about him or that he might be dealing with any of the issues I address in my posts, but he sure did want to bless and encourage me, just not publicly.

I think it was about the eighth time he said, “thank you for being brave enough to take on these issues” that my unruly mouth slipped its leash, and I heard myself say, “I’m glad one of is.” Needless to say, the conversation was soon over.

When I feel like this!

I know. I know. I was more than just a bit rude, and I shouldn’t have been. There were far more tactful ways to deal with what his words were stirring up inside of me. My problem is I usually only remember that after I have spouted off something less than kind. Believe me, I am working on it, but give me a little grace because it is a work in progress. And if I want to be real honest, I will admit that it probably always will be.

I have been thinking about the conversation a lot, wondering why it made me mad and wondering how I could have handled it better. So far this is what I have come up with:

I started dealing with “life’s harder issues” at time when my marriage was imploding. My ex-husband’s addiction to pornography had reached epic levels, leaving him unable to hold down a job as it interfered with his viewing schedule. I had ceased to exist as woman in his eyes and was considered to be just another obstacle between him and what he really desired. The verbal and emotional abuse was escalating to physical and sexual, and death fantasies became my favorite escape – his or mine, I didn’t care.

The great thing about reaching this level is other people’s opinions no longer matter. Societal constraints become nothing more than spider webs to be slapped aside.

So I started asking questions, contradicting statements, and generally being rude. I would be lying if I said I didn’t find a certain amount of entertainment in people’s shock, but the truth is I wasn’t doing it for that. There were so many truths I need to know if I was ever to return to the land of the living as something other than a shell of a person, and even though I thought I was ready to check out of this world there has always been some part of me ready for a fight. And it soon became apparent that I was in the fight of my life.

The funny thing about questions is that if you want to know the answer there is a pretty good chance that half the people you know want to know the same thing, but just haven’t worked up the nerve to say the words out loud.  It didn’t take long before women started approaching me off to the side, with nervous glance to make sure that no one could overhear. They told me about how their husbands used porn, how there had been violence in their homes, how they had been given the same “stay married and pray” advice I had received, and how they felt like there was no one willing to talk about these things because it was all just too uncomfortable in the church setting.

However, it didn’t make everyone happy with me. I learned from a friend that when she started attending the church I was that she had been warned about me. I learned from another friend that it was thought I had drug problem, and I heard from a third that I caused my husband’s addiction to porn because I had emasculated him with my sharp mouth. Christians can be so sweet.

Every day now, I receive emails, text, and messages over social media from women and men who are facing the same issues I did. They have the same questions I asked and they are facing the same stony faced silence or that condescending “we will just pray for you, dear” attitude I got. I hear from people whose faith is being eroded by Christians who are misrepresenting God and how he responds to our problems. I talk to abuse victims who are terrified of the shame and stigma that comes with divorce. I talk to women who are experts at hiding bruises and men who are terrified of losing everything if the truth comes out so they never seek the help they need except through a stranger who happened to write a book.

Guys and gals, I do not have this covered! There is only one of me and so many of you! The conversations are icky and uncomfortable – you try talking to a 70+ year old man about his chronic masturbation problem, I know!  I have been there. You have try having a pastor contact you on how to deal with a woman in his church who has shown up multiple times with a black eye or swollen lip, or answer a 12 year old’s question about anal sex. I do it all the time, but not because I am an expert. The only thing I have going for me is the fact I lived through my hell and came out the other side scrapping for answers.

I get frustrated and angry that we have become so ashamed of this gift of sexuality that God has given us. My blood pressure boils when I hear some pat and cliché answer proffered to someone who is real need, and I get so tired of being shushed by those who are embarrassed to speak truth into other’s lives. God never did that to anyone! He was bold and truthful. Jesus didn’t look at the lepers or the man at the pool, pat their heads and say, “I’ll pray for you.” He acted and he acted in truth and love – and love without truth is no better than a dollar sympathy card.

Pawning off our responsibility to follow in Jesus’ example is crock and a coward’s way out of what we have been called to be. Expecting someone else to deal with the harder issues of life so we can avoid them is laziness, and the next time you feel tempted to avoid a few words that make you uncomfortable, I hope you remember the cross and humiliation washes over you until you choke.

Could I be a little nicer? Should I have been a little nicer to the man on the phone? Maybe, but maybe too many of us are worshipping “nice” when we should have been worshipping God.

Fishnet and Dress Codes

Once upon a time – you know it is going to be a great story when you read those words – I was part of an organization that had a dress code. The dress code was put in place by people who wanted to insure that all of us involved were decent and modest in our apparel. An admirable goal, but difficult to define.

I have always tried to play by the rules. Not because I always agree with the rules but because I believe that God places people in authority for a reason and we should respect God’s decisions – that and I really don’t like getting in trouble. So one day I thought I was operating in accordance to the rules and wore a long dress and sandals to our gathering. As I sat sipping my coffee, I was corrected.

Of all the scandalous things I could do, I was showing about three inches of bare leg. Horrors!!!

I was politely but firmly, informed that this was immodest and I need to wear hosiery to avoid such impropriety. So of course the next day, I complied. Sorta.

I wore a slightly shorter skirt (it barely covered my knees), tall boots (they almost came to my knees), and the two inch gap (slightly under and over my knees) I covered with the prescribed hosiery. Imagine my shock when once again, I was corrected and admonished not to be so lewd, but a decision had been reached, I had pushed them over the edge and they did not want to turn it into an issue, bare legs were fine.

I don’t know, but it might have been the fishnet that did it.

So why am I telling you this story?

Well, once again, I am having to deal with some issues of modesty and appropriate covering for women. And I find myself asking, what constitutes modest dress for a woman of our time? I know Christian women who feel like the only truly modest attire is one that subverts all hints of our sexuality. Shapeless shirts that cover that provocative collar bone, skirts that conceal that alluring ankle, and good sturdy shoes built for comfort, lest we indulge in the vanity of heels.

I know some Christian women who are so unaware of their bodies that their dress is completely immodest, not out of a desire to arouse but simply because they fail to recognize they are being immodest. Many of us were taught that any attempt at dressing ourselves in an attractive manner is immoral and un-Biblical. Some of us were even threatened with the idea that to dress in a way that betrayed our sex was inviting rape. A few of us were told it was our moral duty to hide our femininity to preserve the morals of the men in our lives, that we are responsible for their purity. I even know a few Christian women who do not believe for one second that they have any obligation to be modest, and dress however they please.

As usual, I can’t just fall neatly into one camp. I have to agree with them all, in part, and then I have to figure out how to live (and dress) in accordance to what I believe is right. And as you may have gathered from my story, that means I have to curb a teensy little rebellious streak that runs through me.

As women we have been a great and wonderful gift, our bodies. Think about it for a minute. Too often we tend to focus on the hormone swings, periods, and the agony of childbirth, but really, how awesome to know that our bodies were designed to give and sustain life. And how great is that all our plumbing is indoors? (Okay, except when you’re camping.)

There is something amazingly freeing when we recognize the value of that gift. What’s more we should conduct ourselves in such a way that others recognize its value, and I don’t think that we do that when we dress like we are ashamed of our bodies. We aren’t asexual. We are women. Designed with care and intent, God didn’t make a mistake and its time we stop acting like it.
Does this mean that we go around displaying our wares? Of course not! That also shows a lack of value for this gift, and there is a huge difference between dressing in an attractive manner and dressing like a . . .well, you know. (And if you don’t ask a good friend, or your kids, they will tell you.)

Look, we don’t put Tiffany crystal in a Wal-Mart bag and we don't set our treasures out on the street corner. It’s all in the balance, somewhere between vanity and denial. It is time that Christian women be beautiful women and we stop believing that our bodies are the source of all evil. It was woman who ate the fruit, but it was a woman who first proclaimed the coming the Messiah and woman who gave birth to our Lord. Those are some pretty great things to be proud of for our sex.

It is time that each time we dress, we dress in a celebration of who we are, who we are created to be. If we dress with remembrance that God decided that we were to be beautiful and our beauty is to serve a purpose we have a pretty good guide as to what to wear.

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A Love Story

Warning Emily Rant:

I want to tell you little story.

Once upon a time there was sweet little gal who fell in love. Her whole heart was given over to a man who promised to love her forever. She adored him and was willing to do whatever it took to be with him. Then one day the man smacked the crap out of her for hanging his clothes up incorrectly.

Now most of you would say this is a good place for their story to end, but it didn't. You see, she loved him and you can't chose who you love.

She knew this to be true because that is what she had been told her whole life. Everyone agreed that she was at the mercy of her heart and that to betray love was a grievous sin. So she stayed, and he doled out punishments for each and every infraction of his ever changing code. If she rinsed the dishes wrong, failed to stay in the proper part of the house, or grabbed the wrong wrench when helping him fix the car, he made certain that she paid - right up until the night she dared to repeat something she had read about the 1970's oil crises that he deemed to be worthy of strangulation.

That was the night that she realized that she loved something else more - her two kids, and she called the cops.

Now why would I share this little snippet about my life? Because it is an excellent illustration about how damaging our society's favorite lie is in the lives of people who chose to believe and how we apply with great hypocrisy when it suits our needs.

And what are our needs?

Our need to justify our actions and selfishness in the name of love.

There has been a lot written about the irresistible power of love, how we can't chose who we love, and why we must never question or challenge the right of one person to love another. We have been indoctrinated with idea since we were children, had it reinforced as teens, and try to live our lives according to it as adults. And over and over again, this lie has destroyed lives and damaged far too many of us to count.

Yet, we keep telling ourselves it is true. We cling to it as if it were the only hope of happiness in this world, all the while suffering from ill begotten relationships that may quite literally be killing us.

We want it to be true, but we only want it to be true for ourselves. We want a justification for why we chase after the married man, the woman that cheats, the person who is so incredibly wrong for us that only something as nonsensical as love can explain.

However, on the flip side, we do not want it to be true for others. We don't want our spouse to suddenly declare that they cannot chose who they love and it happens to be their secretary or personal trainer. We don't want it to be true for our children when they decide to get involved with the drug addict. We don't want it to be true for our friend in the abusive relationship, because for them we can see how harmful submission to this lie can be.

No, we only want it to be true for ourselves. We like the idea that we can cast off any moral or ethical obligations and society will understand, approve even, of our choice. After all, we have bought into the collective lie and we celebrate it - be it in Romeo and Juliet's tragedy or the latest TV show written to condition us further as the lead character accepts that his spouse can no longer make him as happy as his co-worker.

Why do we do this? Selfishness is one great reason, but I think that is only part of the story. I think a bigger piece is the fact that in our minds we have confused attraction with love and made all things sexually appealing synonymous with love. And if this were true and accurate, there would then be some truth and accuracy in the statement that we cannot chose who we love.

Attraction is an unruly beast that often takes us by storm, leaving us to wonder at its intensity and reason. It can be baffling and delightful, the first steps towards love, but few of us stop to consider that attraction is merely that - a biological impulse to draw closer to another whose biology appeals to ours. Looks, pheromones, mannerisms the pluck at some distant memory of someone else we held in high esteem, witty conversation, shared interests, or even just someone who challenges us with their unavailability - all of this can lure us in, give us a high, and according to the standards of our culture mimic this thing called love.

We want this to be love. We want a reason to pursue this sensation and to defend our right to take what we want. So the lie gives us permission. Permission to do and take what we want with thought to the consequences. Permission to avoid responsibility to ourselves and even to the very one we claim to love. Permission to let our bodies and desires to rule our entire existence. All because we cannot bear to tell our bodies no, or stand the pain of bringing our minds into submission to something greater than ourselves.

And today, we see the fall out of our choices all around us. Yet, we never stop to think that it is all because we chose to believe in a lie that we have called beautiful. And we will forever be at its mercy until we discover the power of true love and chose it instead - even when it hurts.