About This Blog and About Me

I am a sinner. I am a sinner who has been forgiven by Christ and who seeks to serve him.


This blog contains my daily thoughts and reflections on my journey to carry my cross and follow him.


I am a lay, married Catholic woman who works a day job, who continues to sin, and who continually must seek grace, mercy, and the strength to pick the cross back up when I fall and then continue on the journey.


I am not a theologian. These words are only my (hopefully) humble attempt to learn from my day and to share what I feel may be valuable to readers. If anything I write contradicts the teachings of the Church, it is not by design but by lack of knowledge or understanding on my part.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Learning From Sin: Lies About Sexuality. It's not about the Present.

I firmly believe that one of the many blessings we have as followers of Christ is that when we sin, God gives us the ability to learn from our sins/failings/omissions.  It is the ability to reflect upon what we've done wrong, why those actions were wrong, and that we can do so much better with God's help that we can pick up or cross and follow him.  Even St. Peter who denied Christ three times was given the opportunity to affirm his love for Jesus three times.  Then, later in his life, St. Peter was killed for his faith in Christ.  I have no doubt that St. Peter had a lot of time to reflect in between those events.

With this idea in mind, I am going to do a few blog posts on the same topic: What I have learned about the lies of sexuality through my own sins of writing erotica.

Lie: Spending an lot of time fantasizing about sinful things enhances the sexual experience with one's spouse.

I do believe that God gave us the ability to fantasize, and that the mind is where all the sparks fly.  But, where does the mind really go when thinking about unholy things?  What I mean is, if I am thinking about a wonderful, intimate sharing with my spouse in the past, this is a good thing.  If I am thinking about something I intend to share with my spouse in the future, this is a good thing.  If I am thinking about something creative that my spouse might do to share with me, this is a good thing.

If the mind wanders to impossible situations, to adding more people than just the spouse, to sexual situations rather than the sharing of sexuality with one's spouse as a person, then this is sinful.  I used to think that if I dreamed up all these elaborate scenarios that I knew would never happen that there was no harm to it.  I even went so far as to think that it would enhance the time with my spouse.

It was only after I stopped writing erotica that I realized how twisted this line of thinking is.  It is such an easy lie to believe that almost the entire romance genre of books and movies is built upon it, even those that aren't entirely erotic by nature.

It is in the present that we live most fully.  It is in the present that God dwells within us.  It is within the present that we can give to each other as man and wife.  It is within the present that we can share the sexual experience.

By no means do I want to convey that there is not supposed to be build-up.  There most certainly is build-up and there should be build-up.  But, it is a shared build-up that happens in the present with each other.

I don't pretend to have the answers for how to retrain the mind to stay in the present and to stay focused on the other and the gift that sexuality is.  I am very much in the learning phase of this.  I'm sure I'll be learning for a long time.  But, I feel strongly called to put my hands on my keyboard and write.

Focus on the present.

This is my own personal lesson for the day.

Amen