More on Uninhibited Joy

I find I have more to say on this subject.

Not surprisingly, my old buddy Chris Rice said it best:
Kids Again from the album What a Heart is Beating For
Okay
everyone get outside and play
give the sun a chance to kiss your face
Come on come on let's all be kids again

Do you see what I'm talking about?
I'm talking about a childlike feeling of playful absorption, letting yourself be playful and silly.
Wading barefoot in a creek and squealing and screaming at how cold it is.
Dancing goofy to loud rocknroll music including air guitar and tossing your hair and waving your fists in the air.
Taking pictures.
Watching old goofy Steve Martin movies.
Lounging around the living room telling stories to your friends and laughing at their stories and letting yourself laugh at your own stories.
Did I say dancing? Well I'll say it again. Dance. Sway your hips like a diva.
Print out some of those pictures you took and journal some memories to keep in a scrapbook. If you enjoy page design that is. If you don't enjoy it, don't do it. Just upload your photos to a service like apple's iphoto book, or snapfish.

Being playful and entering into uninhibited joy. With either Phileo or Eros, playful uninhibited joy is a real good thing.

How do you experience playful uninhibited joy?
Let me hear your voice, friends!
:)
giggle,
SW

Intentional Community, Uninhibited Joy

Before the New Year, I said,
"I realized there are so many people that love me...who I also love and I had little to no time to talk to them this year. I'm so grateful for my friends and I want to make more time for them in the new year.I am SO looking forward to widening my world a bit. Pondering how I can better stay in touch with some of these out of town friends AND adding some local FUN stuff, thank God. Cause work will eat my lunch if I let it."

This is going very well.

I bless the day my wise friend counseled me to start adding more recreation and intentional community into my life. It has been a Godsend. I don't know any other way to say it. The first month of the new year is almost over and I've been spending quite a lot of time with my friends. Deliberately setting aside time to for recreation and to listen to each other's hearts, to laugh, to dance and goof off, to skip rocks, to share our needs vulnerably and pray for each other, to watch funny old movies, to tell our poignant and funny stories and to listen to our friends poignant and funny stories.

I can't tell you what a difference this has made to the condition of my heart!
So nourishing to the soul!

And the condition of my heart has everything to do with lovemaking.
Confidently secure then wildly adventurous? Oh yeah, baby! ;)

I'm not just talking about great sex. I'm talking about a great life.

Do you know what I'm talkin' about?
I've learned another great way to improve my sex life wasn't a new position or even anything erotic per se. It was nonerotic affection and recreation and companionship with my friends and with my husband. Recreation as in re-creation that re-creates my heart and makes me a more beautiful whole person inside. Uninhited joy. That's what's I'm talkin' about.

What do I recommend?
Soak your heart in nonerotic uninhibited joy. And when it's time to be erotic, watch the sparks fly. You may giggle before you gasp. But it's all good!

Confidently Secure, Then Wildly Adventurous

Confidently Secure, Then Wildly Adventurous
This is one of the seven personal disciplines of passionate intimacy in Doug Rosenau's book A Celebration of Sex. Or as I like to call them, the Seven Habits of Highly Erotic Lovers. Sorry, Steven. Sorry, Doug. I get a little carried away sometimes. Okay. Back on track.

Doug's point is, it takes some healthy self-confidence and being comfortable in your own skin in order to be uninhibited and adventurous.

He writes:
Confidently Secure Then Wildly Adventurous
.....it takes two whole people to make a whole relationship. The scriptural injunction—"each one should test his own actions. Then he can take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else" (Gal. 6:4 NIV)—encourages thsi type of personal wholeness. Every mate who wants to be a passionate lover must practice the discipline of growing up and becoming a confident person.

Genuine self-esteem is based on accepting God's verdict that each human being is "fearfully and wonderfully made" (Ps. 139:14 NIV). It is not pride but godly self-awareness to know one's strengths and spiritual gifts. Romans 12:3 encourages, "Do not think of yourself more highly then you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgement [a realistic assessment], in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you." (NIV). In this confident awareness and wholeness, lovers express their needs and choose to risk deeper intimacy and new behaviors."

Love that!
I've seen this discipline, this attitude change bear much fruit in my life. And more to grow...

Loving Your Man

It touches my heart when I come across a story of a wife loving her man with all her heart and engaging him on every level. This story of intimate friendship and sweet companionship is a real keeper. My favorite quote: "Love expands. Every time I think I love him as much as I can, I learn that I'm wrong."

God bless you, Gluten-Free Girl and Chef. Keep on living and loving sensuously! -SW

Accepted in the Beloved

I was just reading a new blog today. Don't you just love it when you read something and it is just what you need to hear? Or it reminds you of something that is just what you need to hear?
That happened to me today.
Feeling accepted and good is at the core of a sensuous woman. It's the foundation. The solid place everything else grows out of. and that foundation needs maintenance. It's important. Really.
So I was reading Sara's experience of feeling accepted and good and at peace with her place in the world. And it was beautiful to read. Sara's lovely story reminded me of this phrase from the Bible that I haven't read in ages but the phrase stayed with me. It is "accepted in the beloved".

Now that's a real good phrase. I mean, who wouldn't want to be accepted and beloved, right?
Golly, I sure do.
So I looked it up. There's this great portal for people like me who remember little snippets and tidbits of the Bible but have absofreakinlutely no idea where the verses are. It's called crosswalk.com. So I looked the phrase up. Boy O boy what a treasure trove I found!
It's like a love letter.
This little bit from the Bible actually IS a letter and that letter says the following about me (and you too:
Dear lady who is faithful to love Jesus,
God and Jesus will give you grace.
God and Jesus will give you peace.
Woo-hoo for God because he is Da Man who-by giving us Jesus-has given us every single thing our hearts will ever need.
It was God's intent to love us from the start and he desired all along that we would be his kids. He wants us to be faultless and without blame in his eyes, so in his love he made a way for that to happen. Cause if it were up to us, we would be totally screwed. So he set up this great idea for an exchange where we could trade in our crummy oodles of mistakes for Jesus' perfect record. This made him very happy and gave him no end of delight because he wanted us to love him all along. How can we not brag on him? Becuase even though we screwed up time and time again, he cut us the slack that was only his to give. His grace bailed us out for sure! And that grace not only bailed our sinful asses out of trouble, it gave us a whole new sense of belonging! and love! Cause we have this incredible amazing bond with other people who have also been bailed out by grace. Sort of a spiritual ex-con alumni club. All over the world there are people who have also been scooped up by this grace we've experienced. And what a bond! To know that there are others who couldn't make it on their own either, even though they tried just as hard as we did, they eventually saw that God could and would do for them what they could not do for themselves. So they cashed in on that deal right away. And now there is a whole family of formerly screwed up kids who are now accepted and loved by this generous loving God. How cool to know there are others who have received this kind of do-over from God and know how it feels, how good and humbling and what an incredible relief it is. And who else can accept you in this second chance on life that you've been given except someone else who's also been given this second chance? There's a whole family of second chance folks who are letting God bail them out and make them strong and good on the inside. There's a sense of belonging that no one can fully describe. But once you experience it you know how freakin' fantastic it truly feels! We belong to the good and loved family. We may not have started out this way, but we will finish out this way and finishing well is what counts.
That's my paraphrase of Ephesians 1:1-6. If you want to read the King James way, it's here.

Welcome Silent Visitors

It occurred to me as I was browsing my stats how the overwhelming majority of those who visit my blog read but do not comment. I just want to deliberately say "Welcome". Chime in if you want. I'd love to hear your voice. Whether you "talk back" or not, I want you to know you're welcome and I prayed for you today.

Let the words escape

I found myself singing this song tonight and I wanted to post it. How delightful to find this video a man made for his wife. Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks Chris Rice knows just what to say.

At Peace with the Ebb and Flow

Perhaps the most beautiful benefit of knowing my body and knowing my sexual self is this marvelous sense of acceptance and joy about every phase of my fertility cycle and sexual response cycle. So much satisfaction and peace from knowing that every color in the pallete has beauty and is worth painting on the sheets and on my lover.
For example.
During the armful of days leading up to ovulation, my sexual response cycle has a ravenous, saucy edge. Multiples are the norm and waiting with jagged breath for Delighted Husband to get home from work (he has a longer commute than me) is punctuated by hot text messages. Some with pictures. Love takes on a lusty hue. I don't objectify him. And all this heat happens in the context of lovingrespect. But I have to agree with my friend Dena when she calls the days leading up to and including ovulation as Wanton Woman Week.
The morning after ovulation, I can feel the drop in hormonal hornyness. A deep peaceful sigh and an internal awareness that Hurricane Horny has blown over. But I know she will re-appear next month.

Thus begins the next phase. What I call the Sure Darlin' Sweet and Meaningful phase. I love Delighted Husband just as much as always, and this phase allows me to savor him instead of gulping. I love being the sweet sacred place his heart and body go on vacation. I love receiving him. And here's where the sweet acceptance has made all the difference. I now know the joy of not trying for multiples when it's not hurricane season. I no longer lose my connection to him as I frantically try to make it happen. I just enjoy the dance. The invitation is always open. Delighted Husband knows he possesses my only Season Pass. So when he initiates lovemaking during this phase, I give him my biggest loving smile of Welcome Home. And I enjoy his loving invasion. Every. Single. Thrust. I have finally "gotten" the loving inner revelation of enjoying the journey without thinking about the destination. Now if you tell me that during Hurricane Horny, I'll tell you you're effing crazy! (laugh) Cause in the midst of that storm, I'm whispering, "Destination! Destination! Come home early, Destination!".

THAT'S being at peace with the ebb and flow.
God, I love being a woman.
-Sensuous Wife

Gift-Giving

I learn so much—such spiritual insight is revealed in the process of gift-giving.
When I bought the gift, I imagined the person's needs and desires and picked something that would meet a need or want or bless them unexpectedly in some way. All I wanted was for them to enjoy it and feel my love for them in their enjoyment.
I found people's different reactions to my gifts very poignant. Very telling.

One gift recipient gave me a look of annoyance and said, "I thought we talked about this and agreed we weren't going to do this." I gave them something beautiful and they chided me. It hurt. Not as much as you might think, but it hurt. I was mostly sad and more than a bit mystified by the worldview that sees a gift given generously with a heart of love as a chideable offense. What kind of person sees love and grows indignant?

Then there's this reaction.
I gave my favorite old school technophobe her first mp3 player loaded with every album of her favorite artist. She smiled shyly, and said, "You'll have to teach me how to use it" as she began to push buttons with random curiosity. But as soon as the earphones were in her ears and she heard the music, she blissed out right there in the midst of the noisy gameroom. A freight train could have driven by the sofa and she would have paid no attention. Her sister smiled and commented to me, "I think you can consider this a hit."

My favorite response was the child who couldn't get the pom-poms I gave her out of the box fast enough. She ran the box over to her Daddy for him to manhandle the box. Once she had the pom-poms out of the box, she put on a little show for us right there in the living room. Not that she was trying to impress us. No. She was just so unashamed and uninhibited in her joy that she didn't mind if we saw her and if we wanted to laugh with delight or applaud, well that was fine too.

Typing this post today, it is more pregnant with meaning than it was when I scribbled the gist of the post the day after Christmas. Especially in the light of the questions I just raised in my last post. Because I see the heart of God so clearly in these words, "All I wanted was for them to enjoy it and feel my love for them in their enjoyment." God has given me two marvelous gifts. The gift to perceive and experience erotic love with my husband. And the gift to communicate my feelings thoughts and experiences using words. Maybe all God wants from me as the recipient of his gifts is to enjoy them and to feel His love for me in my enjoyment.

He gives generously, after anticipating our needs and desires. And what pleases Him most is when we receive his gift, delight in it, and don't get hung up on paying him back, just enjoy. And a thank you thrown in with our whoops of delight brings gladness to His heart.

And I learned so much from my little girl with the pom-poms. Not that she was trying to impress us. No. She was just so unashamed and uninhibited in her joy that she didn't mind if we saw her and if we wanted to laugh with delight or applaud, well that was fine too. Sounds like a good attitude for me to adopt when I decide to post a report from the field of erotic joy.

To quote my friend Eleutheros, "God, I love being Human!"

Shout it from the rooftops

Sometimes the sex Delighted Husband and I share is so good that I want to shout it from the rooftops. I want to shout out, "GOD IS GOOD AND SEX IS GOOD AND THIS SEX IS REALLY GOOD AHHHHHHH"
Which I mostly do scream out in gasping little shouts in our Delightful Bedroom. And I do write little erotic memoirs in our love journal that is kept under lock and key.
But sometimes I want to "shout it out" here. In a blog post. I'm not too sure how I feel about that. Well I know how I feel and think about it. It's just that some of my thoughts and feelings conflict with each other. In no particular order, my thoughts and feelings are....
I don't want Delighted Husband to feel like he's playing to an audience when he's doing me.
I don't want my self to feel like I'm playing to an audience when I'm doing my husband.
I don't want to feel like I'm volunteering to be some Unabomber's masturbatory material.
I do want to give voice to that lump in my throat that says feeling and expressing joy is central to the human experience.
I do want to speak how truly deeply I believe that absolutely MARVELOUS sex happens in the glorious messy glue of marital commitment.
I do want to speak just a TEENY BIT of all I feel inside when a movie or television implies that indescriminate singles are having all the hot sex and married couples are just barely getting by.
I am literally so filled with satisfaction and joy that I cannot shut up about it. Except I feel that I should. Because what if someone I really care about in the regular readers of my blog feels like I'm being inappropriate?
I don't want to miss out on feeling or expressing a big joy because I'm following old screenplays from my loving, whacked, wellmeaning way legalistic upbringing.
I don't want to make any decision based a random outcropping of The Disease to Please.
If my God and my husband have given me a peaceful AOK to post it, then why do I give two hoots what anyone else thinks?
Should I get another blog for hot posts like that?
But then what kind of whacked divided life is that?
Wouldn't I be exiling my erotic self to the lowlands?
And if I did that, then what was all this recovery FOR?
-Sensuous Wife