To Be Here, or Not to Be Here

by Lenora Rand
From the Recovery Worship service on May 1, 2010


When evening came he was there alone, but the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it. During the fourth watch of the night, Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. Matthew 14: 23-25


I don’t really want to be here tonight. Truth is, I never want to be here, totally. A huge, insistent part of me just really wants to be alone.

Does that surprise you?

Addiction is a disease of isolation. We’ve probably all heard that somewhere along the line. That’s what they say. Addiction is a disease of isolation. Often when we hear that, at least I know, when I hear that, I think, oh yeah, when I’m using my substance of choice, whether that’s food or alcohol or smoking or shopping or being right or overworking or fixing up everyone around me, I’m isolating. I’m in this little impenetrable bubble of my addiction and nobody gets in there with me. And it’s very hard for me to get out, to actually stop using long enough to connect in any kind of real way with another human being.

And I know that’s true. But I don’t think that’s the whole truth.

It’s the old chicken and egg thing. Do we isolate because we’re addicted? Or are we addicted because we isolate? Do we actually get into our addictions because we want to be alone, because it feels better, safer to be alone? Because some huge part of us feels deeply “apart” and deeply scared of the alternative.

Am I a compulsive overeater because in my heart of hearts I prefer the comfort of food, the easy, dependable, unsurprising, uncomplicated, undemanding, inhuman, comfort of food, rather than the company of another human being?

In the passage we just read, Jesus has just finished feeding 5000 plus people with a couple pieces of bread and a few little fish. And he’s gone off to be alone afterwards. Now you may think Jesus went off alone to have some direct one on one time with his dear heavenly father and thank him for all the good things in his life. And you are welcome to think that. The Bible doesn’t really give us a lot of details. But if I let myself believe Jesus was in every way human as we are human, I find myself imagining he went off to be alone because he was sick of hanging out with all these needy messed up people. In John’s gospel you get more than a hint of this possibility. The way John tells the story soon after the feeding of the 5000 incident, a bunch of people track Jesus down and when they find him, he actually sounds a little ticked. In John 6: 26 Jesus said to them, "You've come looking for me not because you saw God in my actions but because I fed you, filled your stomachs—and for free.” So maybe Jesus went off to be alone because he needed some distance and he just wanted to zone out for a while. At best. Or maybe, in his heart of hearts, he really wanted to chuck the whole “Son of God, here to save the world from itself” enterprise, he wanted to run the other way, and never come back.

Because let’s face it, people are disappointing. Vastly disappointing.
They don’t meet our needs perfectly. They don’t laugh as much at our jokes as we’d like. They don’t care as deeply about the same things we do. They don’t function in our lives as we’d like them to function. They don’t always say the right thing. Or look at us the right way. They very often don’t even dress the right way.

Like once, when my daughter Zoe was about 3 –she had recently started having strong opinions about her clothing choices. And trying to be a good mother, as I was, I mostly supported her by letting her wear what she wanted as long as it wasn’t going to be harmful to her—like she wouldn’t be warm enough or she wanted to go naked to school or something. But one time, I don’t even remember what the occasion was, I had an outfit I specifically wanted Zoe to wear. And she didn’t want to wear it. I knew I had no leg to stand on. This outfit had nothing to do with warmth or safety needs. It was just that I thought it looked cuter on her. It looked better on her than what she’d picked out and we were going somewhere in public where how she looked mattered to me. It mattered because I was was feeling insecure or whatever and felt how she looked could say something positive about me—as in, “Look, aren’t I great…I am a mother with a cute adorable kid who dresses well.” So I didn’t want to force her—I wasn’t that kind of mother afterall, but I thought maybe I could convince her. I was older, smarter, more manipulative…she had only been on the planet 36 months and wasn’t that savvy…how hard could it be? But I tried...suggesting, strong cajoling, subtle and not so subtle bribery. She didn’t budge. Finally, I pulled out the piece de resistance, the line that would in an indirect but clear way let her know how much she was disappointing me and which would hit the button that would make her want to scurry off to her room to change. I used a line which I’m sure my mother had used on me when I was growing up. “Fine,” I yelled in frustration. “Do what you want. I don’t care.”

To which Zoe responded, “Oh great.” Totally missing all my heavy-laden subtext. And she went on her merry way.

Yeah, so people are disappointing. They don’t meet our needs perfectly and completely. They annoy us. Piss us off. Don’t give us what we want. And many of us grew up in a family in which we were dangerously disappointed in how our needs were met. So being alone just makes a lot of sense. If we don’t need anything from anyone, or expect anything from anyone, they can’t disappoint us.

Of course, I also prefer to be alone because I’m afraid of being a disappointment to others. Because frankly, the more you know me, the less you’ll like me.

No really, you won’t like me.

I’m not that nice. Or smart. Or interesting. Or funny.

I’m secretly very judgmental and angry and insecure and unkind and suspicious and have I mentioned, not that smart, funny or interesting. So I like to hide that as much as possible. It’s easier to hide when I’m alone, but I can also be alone when I’m with people. By being quiet. Controlling my output. Being careful what I say and how I say it. Editing myself. I like to write things out—have you noticed?

One of the first things we have on record of God saying is “It’s not good for people to be alone.” He says it to Adam in Genesis, right before he makes Eve. But oh, he didn’t say it would be easy.

I went to my OA meeting this morning, the way I always go… with judgment and shame and fear. Fear of being stuck with all these people who won’t meet my needs, have nothing to give me and my fear of being found out, seen, known, being just another messed up, broken, imperfect person, who more often than not doesn’t get it right. We were reading the 2nd step together and it said something about how in meetings of OA we have experienced comraderie and comfort. And during the sharing time I told everyone the truth, that I rarely feel as much comraderie and comfort there as I do eating at home in isolation and yet I was there, trying to believe that someday I would. And a few people mumbled what they always do, which is "Thanks for sharing." And "keep coming back." And yes, I will admit, though it wasn’t great to be there, it was good. And sometimes good is good enough.

I think about Jesus, and how hard it must have been for him to keep coming back. Keep coming back to us imperfect messy human beings. I think about him walking out to his disciples on the boat that night and I think what a miracle. The walking on the water part was cool, but in some ways, it was the lesser miracle. The bigger one was the faith that even though it doesn’t always seem like it, it isn’t good for human beings to be alone. We need each other. And when we, if only for a moment, can trust each other, reach out to each other, it’s a good thing. And if we keep showing up, sometimes, it’s an amazing thing.

I’ve never actually, like Peter, tried to walk on water. I do though sing in our church choir. I’m not a very good singer. I am ok, I can sort of carry a tune and I really enjoy singing and what I lack in being able to read music I make up for in…well maybe I don’t completely make up for it…but I sort of make up for in love of the music. And luckily sometimes we do gospel music. Gary, as our director, is always, no matter what kind of music we’re attempting to sing, trying to get us to stop looking so much at the pieces of paper with the notes written on them and listen and look at him. But when we do gospel music, well, I’ve actually seen him rip the sheet music out of people’s hands. On a Sunday morning, while we were singing in front of the congregation. What he tells us is that in order to do gospel music right we need to let go of the sheet music, look at the director, trust the director, watch him, listen to and trust each other. So in choir we have a new saying: “Let go and let Gary.” And I have to tell you, sometimes, when I have been able to do that, when I’ve been able to let go of control and totally let myself become a part of the choir, listening and singing together, not feeling like I have to get every note right, trusting that the person next to me will hold me up at times and at times I’ll have the note and hold them up, keeping my eyes on the director and riding the wave of music…I’ve got to tell you, it’s amazing, it’s exhilarating, it’s like walking on water.

One of the things I’ve been learning in recovery is that you need to do the thing that’s hard for you to do. Where the fear and pain are, that’s where the growth is. And when all else fails follow directions. The direction I seem to be getting today is It’s not good for human beings to be alone. So I am here. In all my messiness and neediness and judgment and resistance. I am here.

When Peter got out of the boat, and started walking on the water toward Jesus, he got scared and started to sink, and he cried out, "Lord, save me!"

At the end of my OA meetings we all stand up and say this prayer together. It’s called Roseanne’s Prayer – not sure why it’s called that, I guess someone named Roseanne came up with it at some point.

I put my hand in yours, and together we can do what we could never do alone. No longer is there a sense of hopelessness, no longer must we each depend upon our own unsteady willpower. We are all together now reaching out our hands for power and strength greater than ours, and as we join hands we find love and understanding, beyond our wildest dreams.

And every time we read it I internally roll my eyes. I want to scream. It’s so stupid and corny-sounding and Yuck…but probably I also react that way, because it’s true. Because it’s what I need to hear. It’s what I need to say. And maybe it’s just another way of saying the prayer that Peter taught us that night out on the water. Lord save me.

I don’t really want to be here tonight. I would rather be alone.

Lord save me.

Falling in Lust

By Larry Reed
March 2010 Recovery Worship

Tiger in the Rough

I’ve always wanted to be in a Nike commercial, but never thought it would be possible until recently. I can see my role in that commercial now. The camera would zoom in tight on my face and I would say, “I am Tiger Woods.” Except I don’t think they’re going to be making any more commercials like that for a long time.

Too bad, because I can identify with Tiger more now than I ever could before. No, I don’t have his fame, or his money, or his golf swing, and I may not share all his transgressions. But I could relate to something he said in the talk he gave a few days ago before he headed back into rehab. He said that he had learned growing up that “a craving for things outside ourselves leads to an unhappy and pointless search for security.” A lesson that he had forgotten as he grew rich and famous.

I can relate. Even without his money and acclaim I have let cravings for things outside myself lead to an unhappy and pointless search for security. There’s another word for that craving, and it’s one of the seven deadly sins – lust.


Let’s Talk About Lust

So, let’s talk about lust. What is lust, really, and is it always about sex? As the Catholic Church currently teaches the seven deadly sins, lust is excessive thoughts or desires of a sexual nature. But this wasn’t always the case. The list of the seven sins has shifted over the centuries in the church. The original word for this sin was luxuria and it dealt with a lust for more things than sex. We use the word both ways in English today – lust often has sexual connotations, be we also talk about a lust for power or wealth or food.

In my own life I recognize that my lust can have many objects. I can get just as lost in my desire for acclaim or exciting adventures or even electronic gadgets as I can in sexual fantasy.

And at its heart, that’s what lust is – getting lost, leaving the moment, escaping reality.

There is a twelve step group that identifies lust as the primary addiction for some people. While this group deals mostly with sex addictions, its description of lust describes many of the misplaced desires that I can struggle with: “When we try to use objects to reduce isolation, loneliness, insecurity, fear, tension, or to cover our emotions, make us feel alive, help us escape, or satisfy our God hunger, we create an unnatural appetite that misuses and abuses the natural instinct.”

Henry Fairlie was a journalist so well-acquainted with the seven deadly sins that he wrote a book about them. He describes lust this way: “Lust is not interested in its partners, but only in the gratification of its own craving, not in the satisfaction of our whole natures, but only in the appeasement of an appetite that we are unable to subdue. It is therefore a form of self-subjection, in fact, of self-emptying. The sign it wears is: ‘This property is vacant. Anyone or anything may take possession of it for a while.’”

This is what Jesus taught about the futility of finding satisfaction in earthly desires, whether it be sex, wealth, power or food. And this pretty well describes the people that Isaiah is addressing in chapter 57.

“Upon a high and lofty mountain you have set your bed, and there you went up to offer sacrifice. Behind the door and the doorpost you have set up your symbol; for, in deserting me, you have uncovered your bed, you have gone up to it, you have made it wide; and you have made a bargain for yourself with them, you have loved their bed, you have gazed on their nakedness.

“You grew weary from your many wanderings, but you did not say, ‘It is useless.’ You found your desire rekindled, and so you did not weaken.

“When you cry out, let your collection of idols deliver you! The wind will carry them off, a breath will take them away.”

These people sought after objects they could see and touch and control, and placed their trust in them instead of God. And they lie in ruin, unprotected and unsatisfied.

When we look at the end point of lust, it is hard to imagine how anyone can even start down that road. Why begin lusting in the first place, if the result is isolation and desolation?


Entering the Whirlwind

For me, the first step down that road starts like this. I am feeling uncomfortable, stressed. I may be afraid that something bad could happen to me or those I love. I may feel sad or angry, resenting how I’ve been treated by someone else. And like the Southwest Airlines ads, I want to get away. I look for some object outside of myself that will that will occupy my mind so fully that forget about myself. I may start researching what I would like in a new computer, or I may start fantasizing about a speech I want to give, or perusing catalogs of camping gear to find the right equipment for the camping trips I take once every decade. Or I may start looking at provocative pictures. My lust can take many forms, but they all have the same goal – escaping the discomfort I am feeling.

The problem is, I have to come back to reality. And when I do, I not only have to face the negative feeling I was trying to flee, I also now have to face the guilt about wasting all this time disconnected and isolated in my own world. I find reality and real people irritating, and I am left with more resentments and more uncomfortable feelings to escape. And so the addictive cycle begins. This is why Dante, in the Inferno, depicts those who suffered from lust as people caught in a whirlwind, never able to get free from the endless cycle of discomfort and desire.

So how do we get out of this whirlwind? How do we reconnect with God and others when we find ourselves isolated in a lust trap?


God-Given Desires

The last few paragraphs of Isaiah 57 show the way to come back to God and illustrate many of the principles found in the twelve steps of recovery. We have to come humbly and contrite, recognizing our powerlessness over the whirlwind. “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with those who are contrite and humble in spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite.” We need to recognize the true God as the Higher Power that is stronger than lust, and we need to ask God to save us each time we feel ourselves wanting to go away, to disconnect, to escape reality, “I have seen their ways, but I will heal them; I will lead them and repay them with comfort.”

For me, lust at its core is a combination of cowardice and mistrust. I am afraid to take on painful feelings, and I don’t trust that God will give me what I need in the moment to deal with the pain I am I want to flee. To get out of that cycle I need to connect with the depth and height and breadth of God’s love for me.

One way to do that is to begin with what John Eldredge calls the “desire beneath the desires.” The desires that lust objectifies are usually not bad things. They have their intended purposes. They go haywire when I make them my gods, believing that they can care for me in a way that God cannot. But those desires are also a sign pointing to something deeper, the desires at the core of my being, the desires that God placed in me, desires to be fully known and fully loved, to be deeply and intimately connected with other people, to feel significant. These are God given desires that God wants to fulfill in me through my relationships with God and the people God has placed in my life.

I recently had someone help me in a process of recognizing and supporting these true desires. The thinking behind it is this: when we can recognize our deepest desires and take steps to feed them in healthy ways, then we begin to see how God wants to gives us the desires of our heart. Our trust in God and in our own feelings grows, and we learn to connect with God and others in those times of discomfort when we want to get away.


Desires of the Heart Exercise

Take a little time to get relaxed. Put yourself in a position to listen to your heart. I will ask you a question and I want you to let your heart give you the answer. Your head might want to respond first, so you should let that pass and listen to your heart. Okay, ready? Here is the question, listen till you get the answer. “What is your heart’s desire?”

. . .

Once you have your answer to that question, I have a second question for you. It might sound familiar. Ready? “What is the desire of your heart?”

. . .

Now that you have answered those questions, look back at what you have written. For each desire you have listed, think of one action you can take on a regular basis, daily or weekly, to feed that desire. I’ll give you a couple of examples. The friend who took me through this exercise said that one of his heart’s desires was to learn how to love unconditionally. The action that he developed to feed that desire was to give money to people who were begging and would now show appreciation for it. By doing this he would learn to show love without receiving anything in return. Another person who did this was an unemployed man. His heart’s desire is to nurture his family. The practical action that came to him was to fix dinner for his family once a week. So take some time to write down practical actions that you can take on a regular basis, every day or every week, to feed the desires that you have listed. Again, your head might want to answer first, but listen to your heart.

. . .

When my friend did this exercise with me he had me list five desires of my heart, so you might want to take the time to list more desires and actions to feed them. When you do, go back over the list and look at the actions that you have listed. Make sure that they are reasonable things that you can accomplish on a regular basis. And then make a covenant with your heart and with God that you will do them.

Steven Covey says that trust begins by making and keeping promises to yourself. As you take time to keep your promises and feed the desires of your heart, you will come closer to the God who gave them to you. And in doing so you will learn to trust what is inside you, the feelings and desires that God gave you. And then when you feel the compulsion to get away, to lose yourself in things outside yourself, you will know that you can go deeper, go inside to the desire beneath the desire and know that God will meet you with all you need.

For all of us who have been trapped in lust, this is what the high and lofty One says who inhabits eternity, “I have given you the real desires of your heart. I dwell with those who are contrite and humble in spirit. I will not continually accuse. I have seen your ways, and I will heal you.”

-30-


Desires of the Heart

What is the desire of my heart?

1.


2.


3.


4.


5.



Practical action I can do to feed that desire

1.


2.


3.


4.


5.

The Red Boot Diaries

By Lenora Rand,
February 2010 Recovery Worship

"The religion scholars and Pharisees led in a woman who had been caught in an act of adultery. They stood her in plain sight of everyone and said, "Teacher, this woman was caught red-handed in the act of adultery. Moses, in the Law, gives orders to stone such persons. What do you say?"" From John 8:1-11, The Message translation


For my birthday recently a friend from work gave me as a joke—at least I think it was a joke—a copy of the National Enquirer. Not a magazine I buy for myself, I must say. Sure, I occasionally glance through it in the grocery store line, but that doesn’t count, you know, like how the bites you eat while cooking don’t really count in your total caloric intake for the day.

The cover story was “John Edwards caught cheating again!” Also on the cover in smaller type was a follow up on Tiger Woods latest indiscretions and also, in a totally unrelated story, a before and after photo of Cher promoting an article on how she got to look so much better in the after photo. I’ll just say right now, the Cher article wasn’t that helpful or enlightening. But I read it. Of course first I read the John Edwards article and the thing about Tiger Woods and I, along with a huge portion of the American public, wondered again how these guys could be so stupid. Could be such jerks. Couldn’t restrain themselves.

And all in all, it was a very entertaining read. I got the dirt and I got to enjoy my perch on the moral high ground.

I don’t know about you, but I grew up going to a church where sexual sin got top billing. Like if you’d asked me or anyone in my youth group to name the seven deadly sins, we could have easily named lust. And we would have named it first. The other six…I don’t think any of us were quite so clear on those. Greed? Maybe, murder? Was sloth on that list, whatever the heck sloth is? Oh yeah and gluttony made the list, right? Of course, gluttony was never preached against in my church—hard to preach on that with the kind of pot lucks we threw. The desserts at those things…gotta say. Sinfully good.

It’s funny because Jesus speaks about sexual sin only 4 times. And he talked about money more than anything else except the Kingdom of God. I read somewhere that 11 of his 39 parables talk about money. 1 of every 7 verses in the Gospel of Luke talk about money. We didn’t get a lot of Sunday morning sermons or youth group bonfire chats about our relationship with money either. Go figure.

I was one of the regulars in that little Southern Baptist church youth group, growing up. A good kid. Didn’t complain about having to go to church every time the doors were open. Didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, except for the occasional cheap cigars my best friend Sharon and I would smoke to be “wild and crazy teens,” driving around town in her car, dateless on a Friday night. I sang in the choir. Tutored underprivileged kids in a bad neighborhood after school. I didn’t have sex with boys. Or go too far with boys, even. The dateless part helped a lot with that.

I didn’t lie, cheat, steal or even gossip. Not that much, at least. I did have one big gossiping moment however, which didn’t go well for me. Sharon and I were walking out of our high school at the end of the day, in a crush of people all flooding toward the exit. I had heard a juicy bit of smack that day, and even though I really wasn’t someone who gossiped that often, I was excited about this, for some reason and wanted to pass it on. So I started telling Sharon about it. Started telling her about this popular girl in school we knew—smart, beautiful, rich, a regular in the Presbyterian youth group, and could you believe it? I’d heard she was pregnant! In the midst of telling this I saw Sharon’s face change from interest into something else, something more akin to panic. She started making faces at me, cringey kind of faces and shooting her eyes around like a monkey on LSD…until finally I got it. I glanced back. Right behind us in the swirl of people, I mean right behind us, well within hearing, was the girl. The nice, smart, well off Presbyterian pregnant girl. When I turned I saw her. I saw her eyes. I was 16 years old and I don’t think I’d ever felt so bad in my life.

I felt like I’d just committed a sin.

Which of the seven deadly sins was I committing in that little moment? All I know for sure is that pregnant girl was popular and cool and beautiful and rich and clearly was a person who guys were interested in and I wasn’t and I was glad that she was having troubles because in my mean little heart I was jealous of her, jealous of how easily everything seemed to come her way.

The John Edwards article and this lovely memory brought to mind the encounter in John’s gospel, between Jesus and the woman caught in adultery. The guys in this story, these big time scholars, brought this woman to Jesus, hoping to have their own National Enquirer kind of moment. Look at the scandal we’ve uncovered. Let’s all take a moment to preen ourselves on the moral high ground. And see if we can expose Jesus for a fraud or an idiot in the process.

Jesus wasn’t that interested. He seemed to be more interested in doodling in the dirt. I suspect if he’d had a cell phone at the time he’d have been texting or checking his friends’ Facebook status updates. Or possibly doing something with his sheep in Farmville. But when these guys pushed him and he finally engaged with them, he didn’t really play into their whole high drama around this woman’s sexual sin. He basically invited them all to do what in 12-Step Recovery circles would be equivalent to a 4th step, to start a “searching and fearless moral inventory” right on the spot. Anyone without sin, any kind of sin, he tells them, cast the first stone.

Any kind of sin. It’s all the same. Sin is sin, Jesus essentially says. And we’re all missing the mark.

All of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, it tells us in Romans 3:23. Our lives are meant to be lived to the glory of God, but we’re not doing that, we’re doing the opposite of that, which is sin. I like how Rob Bell, in his book Velvet Elvis, puts it: Our job is the relentless pursuit of who God made us to be. Everything else is sin.

So when Jesus asks us to do our fourth step, what he’s asking is: are we relentlessly pursuing who God made us to be…in every area of our lives? Am I relentless pursuing who God made me to be in my work life? In my family life? In my creative life? In my (gulp) sexual life?

Of course if I start asking myself questions like that, I end up asking another question: what did God really intend me to be as a sexual person?

When I try to answer that, I find a lot of mixed messages out there. Chick movies and Glamour magazine portrays sex as the answer to everything, the way you feel worthwhile and of value, where sexual encounters are all in soft focus and your outfit can take the moment from ho-hum to a humdinger. From the nightly news to internet porn sites, to video games, sex is seen as an act of power, manipulation, and violence. If our advertising community is to be believed, sex is a commodity, a status symbol, something good to get, equivalent to a Big Mac and fries, or a new BMW. Of course, growing up in family and a church known for its strong and abiding belief in piling on the sexual guilt and in piling on seconds at big pot lucks, I’m not sure I got a very good answer to that question there either.

All I know for sure is that a lot of people are broken in this area, maybe all of us are. Some of us, more obviously than others. John Edwards, Tiger Woods—their brokenness shows up on the cover of the National Enquirer. Mine, not so much. Not so far. But it doesn’t change the fact that if I’m searching and fearless in my moral inventory I have to say I have fallen short of what God made me to be sexually. I have sinned and fallen short of the glory of sex as God created it to be

As a person who’s dealt with a huge nasty eating disorder all my life, who’s been fat more than thin, who’s envied the anorexics, it took me a long time to get the truth—that anorexia and bulimia are the same disease. When you’re the fattest person in the room or when you’re John Edwards, it’s clear you’ve got a problem. It’s clear that you’re not being who God made you to be, you’re not being everything God had in mind when you were imagined, It’s easy to get fingers pointed at you. It’s easy to point fingers at yourself.

But here’s the truth. Whether you’re the woman caught in adultery, or the woman caught sneaking fistfuls of cake in the middle of the night, or if you’re a person who runs screaming from Bavarian cream donuts or one who primly and quietly, and possibly with a headache, avoids exuberant physical intimacy--bulimic or anorexic, it’s all the same disease. In the church too often it seems we’ve been so busy figuring out who’s been overindulging sexually and throwing the rocks, that we’ve failed to look at what it might mean to take Jesus seriously when he said that he came that we might have life more abundant, a life which, last time I checked, includes our sexual lives.

Some churches, to be fair, have started talking a lot more about sexuality and trying to discover what it might mean to have a sexual life that is all that God meant it to be. Not long ago a church in Tampa challenged the married couples in their church to have sex every day for a month. And the singles to abstain from sex for 30 days, even if the singles were in committed relationships. Their stated goal was to help couples reconnect with each other not only physically, but emotionally and spiritually. And maybe underneath all that was also the desire to make some noise, to not let people outside the church own all the conversation around sexuality. You gotta love the billboard they planned for it, which by the way, didn’t pass the billboard company censors. Posting the 30-Day Sex Challenge Web site was fine. The message, "Are you up for it?" wasn't.

I applaud the efforts of those who are starting to talk about sex more openly in church. “We’re only as sick as our secrets” is something that I have found to be true, time and again in recovery. Too often in the church we’ve had a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy when it comes to our sexuality. It was refreshing to me that this church said, “We need to have a conversation about this.” “We need to examine this together as a community.” And their challenge acknowledged two things. One, that married couples have frequently put sex way too far down the list of priorities in their lives, somewhere south of working a kazillion hours a week, getting the laundry done, watching TV, serving on the Elder Board at church and flossing. The second thing this challenge acknowledged was that singles in the church have sexual lives. Some are in committed relationships and sleeping with their partners. Some are in committed relationships and trying to remain celibate. Some are navigating the river rapids of dating today, and either having loads of great sex, loads of crappy sex or no sex. Depending on the week. Or who you talk to. And through whatever they’re doing, wondering if there is a place of sexual grace for them, if there is something other than anorexia or bulimia available to unmarried Christians, is there something other than being (as one of my single friends put it) either eternally celibate or abjectly promiscuous.

The good thing about this 30-day challenge, it seems to me, is that it was designed to make everyone uncomfortable, destined to expose the cracks, to reveal the hidden bruises, to pull our wounds and easy answers and silent sorrows out into the open. So who knows, a 30-day challenge might be good for all of us.

Of course,as someone who has been on plenty of diets throughout my life, the 30-day challenge approach, does feel like it could just become another version of Atkins, South Beach or the Zone. All of which you can lose weight on. If I’ve learned anything through the years, I have learned that you can change the weight of your body without actually learning to love your body. The poet Galway Kinnell once wrote, “Sometimes it’s necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness.” Ah… yes it is. And sometimes, for some of us, there’s not even “reteaching” involved. It’s all about teaching the loveliness for the first time. It’s all about learning that our bodies and food can be about pleasure and nourishment and exuberance and delight and health. And that sex can be too.

On the night of my recent birthday, my husband booked us a suite at a nice hotel downtown. King sized bed, Jacuzzi tub, a nice place for a night of exuberance and delight, if you know what I mean. For the beginning of the evening, however, we invited some close, long-time friends, another couple, to join us for dinner at the chi-chi hotel restaurant. Before we went to dinner we were showing off our equally chi-chi hotel suite to these friends and sharing a glass of champagne. I had dressed up a little for the evening. A nice shirt, my nicer jeans—and over those jeans, a pair of tall, high-heeled, pointy-toed, very red boots. As the four of us sat together in the suite, looking out over the lights of the city, sipping champagne, the man of the couple sighed at one point and said, loudly and with feeling, “Lenora, I just have to say. You, in those red boots—Wow. Sexy.”

Now I know that my husband thinks I look good in those red boots. But when my friend said that, I was flooded with a mad vortex of emotions. Happiness. Shame. Joy. Guilt. Adrenaline. Fear. I felt sexy, I felt alive, I felt valued, I felt…you know…HOT. And I also felt like I shouldn’t be feeling any of those things. I was being inappropriate, I was flaunting it, I was being a temptress, I was calling way too much attention to myself. I was being BAD. My good Christian mother certainly never owned a pair of sexy red boots, much less wore them in public. What was I thinking? What was I doing? And I found myself asking myself, what would Jesus do? Would Jesus wear the red boots?

In Overeaters Anonymous, you learn that abstinence with food is not something that someone else can define for you. One of the other lessons I’m learning in healing from my eating disorder, slowly, with halting moments of progress and nothing near perfection, is that denying myself food, starving myself, is not the way to keep from overeating. Dieting and starving or stuffing everything in sight into my mouth are both ways of going numb. Of not feeling. Not being present in my body. And alive to God.

If you go into the candy department at Macy’s you’ll find row after row of amazing looking and expensive little bits of sweetness and joy. However, give me a bag of Hershey’s chocolate kisses and I’ll be happy. In fact, sometimes, just one Hershey’s chocolate kiss, can make me happy. If I pay attention to it. If I am actually present when I eat it, if I savor it, instead of gulping it down. If I tell myself it’s OK to enjoy it rather than beat myself up for wanting it. One Hershey’s kiss, or even two, if you really take your time, if you really let yourself revel in it, can taste like heaven.

Jesus calls us to a searching and fearless moral inventory, not, I believe, because he wants us to feel bad, But because he wants us to actually start to learn how to feel good. He wants us to let go of our bulimia and our anorexia, let go of our sexual overeating and our sexual starvation, to let go of our limited, shut down lives and our “take whatever you can get” lives and begin to relentlessly pursue another way, relentlessly pursue who God made us to be, so that we can discover, every day, an abundant life and all kinds of tastes of heaven, not only the deep and sustaining bread and wine of communion, but also those sweet, sweet kisses, chocolate and otherwise.