Intimacy + Desire Self Protection | Taste + See the Goodness PART 2!

Fear, hurts, hang ups, and old patterns block us from the depth of intimacy in marriage God's way. Self protection is learned behavior and it hinders desire and expression of physical oneness. 

Listen as Chelsey dives into how we navigate the challenges of self protection, what to do about it, and how God is using it to reveal areas He wants to heal and exposing areas He wants to prune in us. 

Transcript

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Welcome back to the High Level Wife Podcast. I'm Chelsea Holm, your hostess, and we do Marriage God's way here, and we are continuing through this series on Intimacy God's way, because as I said, I know you guys love to talk about intimacy. And I wanted to dive deeper into the patterns, the hindrances, the hurts, the hangups, the blockages that disrupt our ability to foster intimacy at the deepest possible level within marriage that helps us to taste and see the Lord's goodness because it's these hurts that prompt us into methods of self-protection, right? That we have learned and developed over time to be highly effective at keeping us safe. And I know for me personally, I have a couple different patterns of self-protection. Probably the biggest is to turn to self-reliance and my own understanding, um, to move into this very masculine dynamic of tell me what I need to know, tell me what to do and when to do it, and let's go and I will get it done, right? It is the powerhouse out there doing. Doing uh for me is safe, right? Because it's very rigid and it's very masculine and it's very like, you can't hurt me because I'm in charge, right? Like you can't hurt me because I'm gonna do it all myself. You can't let me down because I'm gonna do it all myself, right? But the problem with that is it leaves no room for softness, it leaves no room for um receiving, it leaves no room for being open, okay? So think about a man and a woman in physical intimacy, right? A husband is physically designed to be the giver, and a woman is physically designed to be the receiver, right? So this dynamic of walking in a masculine mindset is detrimental to marriage God's way and his design and the functions that we have individually and uniquely as husband and as wife, as man and as woman. And you know, so that doesn't really leave some room for enjoying intimacy God's way. Um, and so these patterns can totally block us, right? Because we have to recognize these are methods of self-protection. Self-protection is learned behavior based on experiences, right? They help us to minimize the possibility of us getting hurt or rejected or whatever, having the same experiences repeat again. However, when you are in a marriage walking it out according to God's blueprint, doing it his way, but you have yet to surrender this area of physical intimacy to the Lord, and you continue in these self-protective patterns, you actually block your ability to have the oneness that God designed you for. Because you're still walking in the independent mindset or in the doing mindset as a woman. I'm talking to two women here, right? And desire is something that God created. And when it's aligned with the Lord, it is a beautiful thing that you can't buy or replicate in your own understanding. It is of the Lord, and intimacy within marriage is a gift from the Lord to help us understand his desire for us. Okay, and so we have to be aware of these patterns. We have to be willing to say, what am I actually afraid of here? Right. And I've shared with you that you know, we have a history of um a lot of infidelity. And, you know, so what I did is is my self-protection over the years would be, well, I'll just show up and be who I think you want me to be, right? Which is a very box-checking, doing mentality. Um, but it comes completely at the expense of being able to name my emotions and not let them be the authority in my life, right? Or the way that I would do that is I would disassociate. Okay. So that's not helpful either because your husband does not just want an empty vessel to receive. He doesn't want a lifeless starfish. He wants you to desire him. Right. And so we need to understand that the pendulum's swinging, okay? Because we as humans, our pendulum will swing so far one way that when we go, when we move through corrections or being corrected, they will naturally swing completely to the opposite side. And so what that looked like for me was again trying to like whitewash the tomb and challenge my husband's holiness and fulfillment in the Lord, and denying that desire is a godly thing, right? That if you have desire, it's something that must be mastered. Well, those are our fleshly desires and worldly passions, but there is holy desire, right? There is holy desire to please the father as a heart response. But how can you, as a daughter of the king who wants to please her father, out of an overflow and abundance, a heart response of receiving grace so that none can boast, right? None can earn, none could buy, right? Simply receiving it. Our heart response is to strive to please our father, not because we now feel like we have to reciprocate, but we get to, we get to serve him with all our heart, right? This is where our life is transformed, and our lives are informed by what the Lord has done for us. And so, unlike false teachers, which their lives are not informed or changed or any different, ours should be, right? And so we need to be aware of the pendulum and where it's swinging and and how these patterns block us from having the depth of intimacy that we truly want. Now, it's really easy for us to look at our husband and to say, well, if you do these things, then I will do this thing. But what we need to understand is that is a low level, that is a worldly just go on more dates, that's um, you know, just talk more. That's that low level mentality of marriage and how to make it better. That's not God's design for marriage, okay? God's design for marriage is dying to yourself, okay, and following Jesus and everything. And everything, including your marriage, is an overflow of that. And so marriage and physical intimacy is an overflow. Again, to taste and see the goodness of the Lord, to understand that your husband just wants to be desired. He does not want to be rejected. And he's gonna have his own patterns of self-protection. My husband did, right? In order to not be rejected, he stopped initiating. And then he would ask me to initiate, but I felt like I couldn't initiate because that didn't come naturally to me. Or that was forced. So then I would the pendulum would swing super far the other way, and I would just begin forcing it. Whereas here, in the middle, in the peace, in the understanding of intimacy God's way, God has now brought me to this point where, okay, I understand that physical intimacy is a ministry to each other. And it's from a heart posture that is submission to Christ out of reverence for him. So therefore, we can submit to one another that I get to minister to my husband through initiating, through desiring him. And I don't know about you, but when you do ministry, like when I'm doing these podcasts, when I'm leading high-level wife calls, I love it. Like it fills me up. It doesn't matter how sick or how exhausted I am, like the Holy Spirit allows me, enables me, fills me to walk in the power of God when I am weakest. Right. And so it's not about forcing yourself or checking a box. It's not about like trying to be something you're not. It's about overflow and it's about that heart posture and and tasting and seeing that goodness. And so this episode, I'm gonna keep it pretty short here, but it is about that willingness to look in the mirror and say, what is it that I'm actually afraid of here? Right. When I think about initiating with my husband, what am I actually afraid of? Right. When I think about um being physically intimate with my husband, what are the hangups that I've got going on that are revealing something that needs to be healed or is being exposed so that God can prune it? Right? Where is God developing me and growing me in this area? And then I get to walk it out. I have this perfect environment to walk it out in obedience to the Lord and ministry to my husband because your husband is impacted by the intimacy that you have or don't have in your marriage, and so are you. But it's it's not the same. Okay. And now I am making generalizations based on roles and responsibilities and how God created us, but I know that there are women that um are wired a little bit differently than I am, and they're the initiators, they're the ones that are, you know, I want to be desired by you, and I don't feel desired by you, right? Like, and I totally get that. And so just flip it. Just just listen to this and and flip it, right? If that's you. Um, but the key here is to get out of the weeds of if you do this for me, then I will feel loved and then I will do this for you. Because God's already done it all for us that allows us to then minister from our weakness, that allows us to minister from our exhaustion and our lack of understanding. Um, and there's so much grace, right? Like we love to overcomplicate things, but the longer I walk with the Lord, I realize how simple everything really is. It really is. Um, and we overcomplicate things because when we overcomplicate things or we allow people to overcomplicate things for us, then we stay stuck in this confusion. And when we're confused, we don't take action. We're not obedient, we don't move because we have the lack of clarity. But that's not the way that the Lord works. The God, God is a God of order. Okay. And um, so I want to leave you with this episode to sit with these patterns, sit with these blockages, and really get to that underlying fear and have those conversations. Be the one to go first, be the one to create the emotional vulnerability in your marriage. This is what I'm really afraid of when it comes to intimacy. This is what I desire. I desire to be in alignment with God's desire for intimacy between us, of how we walk that out and how we experience and taste and see his goodness together in two becoming one flesh physically, right? For moments out of our day, right? Getting that unique opportunity that to become one flesh physically before our very eyes, and sitting with the discomfort of what is the Lord teaching you and praying those hard prayers of Lord, wreck my heart for your design. Teach me understanding and intimacy, teach me intimacy your way. Right? Teach me these things. If you want to go deeper and have the discipleship and the community and the fellowship with other Christian women who are doing the same thing, come join High Level Life. We do this every single week. Every single week, and we do it together. I'll see you on the next episode.