The Pleasure of Surrender

My friend Eleutheros wrote something the other day that just made my jaw drop for the sheer force of the truth he shared. At first, all I could say was "Oh my God. Yes! Yes!"

I've touched on this topic as an aside in other discussions, but I've never seen it put so succinctly before.

Writing to another awakened wife (my friend Gemma) Eleutheros wrote:

[quote]As your awakening progressed, begining with your decision to not refuse sex to your husband, it likely struck something positive in your core to find that you enjoyed submitting yourself to your husband's sexuality. It tickled you inside, didn't it, to find yourself not just enjoying sex wantonly with him but craving it!
And in delivering yourself over to this wantoness, to this craving.....you found the power in your sexuality to pleasure yourself with your husband's love. And I'm sure, when you saw the delight in your husbands positive responses to your wantoness, your beautiful feminine soul felt a deep fullfillment that you never expected to find you were capable of experiencing.[/quote]

This is the beauty of how a husband's and wife's eroticism feed off each other, egging each other on until their passion takes on this beautiful spiral a sexual chambered nautilus of eroticism.

This dynamic of letting go inside and surrendering myself to the passion, letting myself let my hair down and just revel in it, this is high-octane powerful stuff! This can happen alone, in fact the first awakenings of this feeling happened in the sacred interior of my woman heart as I embraced and made friends with my sexuality. Reading books on sexuality, learning how to pleasure myself were important parts of this process. But the heat kicked up to a whole nother level when I started revealing my newly-minted wantonness to my husband. Whoa, baby!

I offered myself and he took me greedily and with fervor. And when he did, I remember the moment I completely let go and let myself get off on his craving, his loving, his wanting, his taking. It was a huge personal risk inside to let myself want him that badly. To let myself want his wanting that badly. Because wanting that badly runs a risk of dissapointment. I had matured enough as a person that I was convinced my sexuality was good and I was okay (David Schnarch calls this holding on tightly to yourself) so as I said it remember the moment I first gave into the craving.
Not tolerance (well okay if you want to
not desire (hey I'd really like it if we..)
not passion (yes! I want to)
but craving (OMG yes! yes! if you stop thrusting within me I will simply die).
It was in that encounter that I had one of my first vaginal orgasms.
Christopher McCluskey calls this Apex Surrender Control to Each Other.
David Schnarch calls this Wall Socket Sex.
I call it fucking.

Body and soul, I literally take pleasure in abandoning myself to my husband's loving.

Like a chambered nautilus, the surrender goes in stages and spirals building a beautiful momentum. In order to surrender to my husband's love, I had to surrender to my self to my own eroticism, and in order to surrender to my self my own eroticism I had to surrender to God. And the joy of fully inhabiting the sexual nature of our covenant makes my husband and I want to worship God which brings us full circle in a beautiful spiral of love.

I have come to believe that some risks are worth taking. I have literally come to this belief through one soul-shaking orgasm after another, my body and heart have learned it is good to want my husband wantonly. Risky? Lordy yes! Letting yourself truly want anything that much is a risk becuase if you are dissapointed you will feel the dissapointment keenly. But there is such a thing as a good risk. And surrendering to the sexuality God placed within me and craving that sexuality, reveling in it with my husband is a real good risk. He is a good man and surrender to his his love for me is a very good risk.

It would show lack of integrity on my part if I didn't reveal that like every other human, I sometimes experience dissapointment. As wonderful as my Delighted Husband is, we are opposite enough to attract and opposite enough to sometimes disagree or misunderstand each other. Lordy, how he can piss me off! Lordy how I can piss him off! When we get our signals crossed and out of synch with each other, it's awful. And we've learned to communicate through those roadblocks, pray, seek wise counsel and get back on track. Every couple goes through temporary disconnects.

But there is another risk that is also costly and that is the risk of never taking a risk. If I die tomorrow, I am deeply grateful that I fully lived. I have fully inhabited the feminine sexual body and feminine sexual heart God gave me and I gratefully consider it a risk worth taking.

Sex and Worship: the doctor(s) are in

I'll be talking about this subject a lot from time to time. Just remembered a great article I read not too long ago with some great insight. The author interviewed 4 sex therapists who are in private practice together in Atlanta. One of the therapists is the oft-quoted Dr. Rosenau whose book happily resides on my recommended list. Here's what they had to say:
[quote]

Q: You talk about worshiping God through sex. How can couples embrace that idea?
A: Christopher: Connect it to the scriptural principle of feasts. In the Old Testament God ordained feasts to celebrate his glory. What's a feast? It's eating sumptuous foods, drinking fine wines. If you do that without the right spirit, you get gluttony and drunkenness, and God is certainly not going to be worshiped. But if you worship in a feast while still having discipline, still having boundaries, God says he's greatly glorified.
Marital union is meant to be a feast—look at the Song of Songs. There's so much metaphor that is about feasting and fine wines and good rich foods. See it as another type of bodily feast as the two "consume" each other. It's the consummation of their oneness. They offer themselves for consummation, and God is glorified.

A: Doug: And that requires making sure couples give themselves permission to learn those disciplines—the discipline of feasting, of playfulness, of sensuality—and give themselves permission to be erotic, to be truly naked and unashamed.

A: Michael: A couple can really drink in and enjoy each other. But that means they have to slow down. They have to tune in to the sensuality of it, which is part of the beauty of it all.

Q: So just to bring this all back around. Playful sex can be worshipful sex?
A: Debra: Oh, yeah.

A: Michael: Very highly.

Q: Comfort sex can be worshipful sex.
A: Debra: Oh, yes.

Q: Quickie sex can be worshipful sex?
A: Debra: Yes, yes.

A: Christopher: Because we're talking about making love, not simply having sex, and it's flowing out of the rest of the spirit of the marriage. If they've been playful throughout the day, with little kitchen hugs, and notes in the lunch, or phone calls, or e-mails, or anything that is playful and loving—not necessarily sexual—then it naturally connects.

A: Doug: Structured optimal time for sex, such as every Friday night, can be worshipful like going to church from 10:30 to 12:00 on Sunday morning. But if all we have is structured time with God and never just hang out and "waste" time with him, we're probably never going to have the worship we'd like. Sometimes you have to do more than that 15 minutes or 45 minutes and have that wasting time together. It's all worshipful, but sometimes to get the connecting, intimate worship, you've got to do the extended time, too."

Dontcha just love that? Those guys and gal have got it goin' on! Heads and hearts in the right place and some counseling and marriage experience to boot!

The emphasis on Christopher's comment was mine, when he said "and it's flowing out of the rest of the spirit of the marriage." I think that's important. For many reasons. First of all, it's important that we are loving and enjoying and honoring and caring for our spouse all the time, not just while making love, and that we do so with an attitude of thankfulness and joy towards God. Second of all, I'm a wife and I write about hot married sex from that perspective. When I've experienced unfettered joy and worship during sex it was sex with my husband. Funny the details I forgot to mention when I was all starry-eyed and typing a mile-a-minute! -SW