We’ll also be joined by our friends at Covenant Eyes who will be offering some Christian based solutions for internet safety, accountability, and filtering.

If you’re wondering what Convergence is, here is some info from the website:

When the deepest and most relevant issues of life become the elephant in the “church room,” people suffer in silence, feel alone, and entertain sin. Yet this was never Jesus’ plan for his people. Rather, Jesus has called Christians to journey with one another as we center our lives on Him.

Whether directly or indirectly, sexual sin has impacted your life or the life of someone you know. Drawing from their own personal testimonies, Nicole Wick and Crystal Renaud will share their stories of Christ’s victory in their lives, as well as how an environment of honesty, compassion, and love creates an atmosphere for support and healing.

Obviously this event is designed for women who have a history of sexual sin or abuse, or for wives who have a husband who has struggled with sexual sin. If that isn’t you, I bet you’re wondering if this conference is for you. Here is a brief list of other people that I think should attend this event:

• Women who are married
• Women who hope to someday be married
• Women who parent small children
• Women who parent teen children
• Women who parent adult children
• Women who have internet access in their homes
• Women who have (or whose husbands have) internet access at their jobs
• Women who own a television (especially cable television)
• Women who have any of the following delivered to them or their husband: Playboy, Penthouse, Victoria’s Secret catalog, Maxim, the Target Sunday circular, the JCPenny catalog, Sports Illustrated…
• Women who have a smart phone or iPhone
• Women who have a husband or child that owns a smart phone or iPhone
• Women who are involved in a church, small group, or women’s ministry, and as a result may encounter other women who need support in this area
• Women who are involved in youth or children’s ministry and may encounter teens or pre-teens struggling in this area
• Women who have friend, family member, or co worker who may be struggling with a secret sexual sin personally or in their marriage

If you fit one or more of these, you should seriously consider attending Convergence. I hope to see you there!

I’m honored to be facilitating a workshop at this years Idea Camp in Las Vegas. This year’s conference topic is sex. Here is the general topic info from the conference website:

In a culture formed and broken by tainted views of human sexuality, what should followers of Christ embody?

Join us for a fresh, honest and transformative conversation with leading thinkers on topics including sexual identity, orientation, abuse, gender perceptions, porn, marriage, family, prostitution, and slavery.

The issues related to human sexuality are too often misunderstood, ignored, or avoided in far too many churches. The Idea Camp will facilitate a safe and transparent environment of learning, sharing of insights from the respective fields of focus, and practical insights and examples of holistic care.

Let’s see sexuality for what it was meant to be.

I love that. I love that we are planning a gathering where we can come together as the body of Christ and have conversations about sex and sexuality within a Christ-centered framework. I love that we are going to talk about things that affect the body of Christ in deep, meaningful ways, yet are often ignored (or at the very least misunderstood) in many church circles.

I’ll be leading a workshop that pulls wisdom and hope from the scriptures as well as my personal experience sorting through sexual struggles (the good, the bad, and the churchy) within the church community. My hope is that this workshop will provide an opportunity for church leaders and idea makers to discuss ways that the church can support members who struggle with sexual sin, or the temptation of sexual sin, without shame and condemnation. My hope is that our discussion will help us better understand how to build a church community grounded in the principles of confession, community, repentance, and hope.

If you would like to particiate in this year’s Idea Camp you can register HERE. Use the cupon code ICFRIEND for 10% off your conference registration.

Here’s where I need your help. I’m putting the finishing touches on my workshop and would love your input and ideas. (After all, it’s Idea Camp, right!?)

What is one aspect of healing communities and/or redemption from sexual sin that this workshop MUST address?

If you have ever struggled with sexual sin (or know someone who has), what is the one thing that your church did well or that you wish your church had done?

I just found out that my friend Crystal’s interview is now available (mine will be up later this year). I’m honored to serve on the board of directors for her non-profit, Dirty Girls Ministries. More than that I’m honored to be her friend. We talk a lot on this blog about being real and sharing our stories. I think this clip of Crystal sharing about her struggle with porn addiction is the epitome of what being real means. Yeah, I love this girl.

If you are interested in getting real and hearing more of my and Crystal’s stories, she and I will be speaking together in the Detroit area on September 25 (more details to come) and in Las Vegas at the Idea Camp on September 27 and 28. We would love to see you at either event!

Crystal Renaud from Scratching the Surface on Vimeo.

Do you think that the church is getting real about porn? What other issues does the church need to get real about?

I was reminded about this post when I was talking with a friend the other day. It originally appeared a month or so ago on my XXXChurch blog. I thought it would be nice to post it here as a reminder that sexy is a state of mind.

I was five months pregnant when I discovered that my husband was viewing pornography. Many women assume that their husband’s relationship with porn has something to do with the way that they look. This was especially true for me. It was impossible for me to compete with the models featured in adult videos and magazines. Especially during pregnancy. I convinced myself that he wanted to look at these women because he wasn’t satisfied with me or my appearance.

I was devastated.

Before I learned about his addiction I had been very comfortable with my body and who I was. Knowing that my husband had looked at images of hundreds of other women changed that for me. I became almost obsessively self conscious with my appearance. This continued even after our son was born. I did some incredibly unhealthy things in an effort to return to my pre-pregnancy weight but no matter how many pounds I shed I still felt awful about myself. I have never felt so unattractive in all of my life. Ever.

For me sex appeal became strictly physical.

In reality sex appeal is just as much (if not more) a state of mind as it is a product of physical appearance. Even if I had been able to instantly lose all of the baby weight, and added about four inches to my legs, I never would have felt good about myself at that time. I certainly can’t image that I would have felt sexy.

Feeling sexy is a state of mind.

Song of Songs is such a passionate book in the Bible. It’s all about a young couple pursuing each other in their courtship. This couple is incredibly attracted to each other. And even though the woman isn’t satisfied with her physical appearance (Song of Songs 1:1:5,6) she feels attractive. Her relationship with her Lover is one where she is pursued, esteemed, and nourished. Within the safety of that relationship she feels sexy despite her physical imperfections.

When my husband and I began seriously pursuing recovery and restoring our marriage the image that I had of myself was restored as well. As my husband began to heal and he became more affirming of me that level of comfort with myself began to increase even more. I started to feel ok with who I was. And even though I never got back to into the jeans I wore before I had our children, I started to believe that I could feel attractive again.

Sexy is my current state of mind.

How much of sex appeal is physical and how much is mental? Is it different for women and men?

I did my second Caffeinatedfaith.com podcast last week. I love these guys. Not only is it good conversation but it is always very, very silly. Case in point: I kept getting hung up on! And the edits are a bit sketchy (seriously, Brad?).

Anyway, we talk about church, sex, porn, women’s ministry, Celebrity Apprentice… all kinds of stuff. Plus, they let me have Jay-Z’s song “Run This Town” as my intro music. You can find the 2 part podcast on their website or on iTunes.

I love podcasts… especially ones that feature people way smarter than me.

What podcasts do you listen to?

J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is one of the greatest American novels of all time. Holden, the teenage character at the heart of this story, is struggling with life, and change, and people, and growing up. In the book he describes this dream to his little sister, Phoebe.

I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around — nobody big, I mean — except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going. I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all.

If you have ever loved an addict you know what it feels like to be a catcher in the rye. You know what it feels like to have a bunch of people running around you; spouse, kids, extended family members, coworkers, friends – what feels like thousands of people playing near a big, crazy cliff. You know what it feels like to think your job is to catch anyone or anything that may fall over the edge.

You know what it’s like to believe that you are responsible for other people’s behavior.

And if you’ve ever loved an addict you also know that recovery is a very delicate, fragile thing. It’s a process with ups and downs and good days and bad days. We’ve had some bad days over the past few weeks. The kind of days that make you reexamine priorities and decisions. The kind of days that can make you second guess yourself (and maybe even lose faith if you aren’t careful). I have watched my husband move to the edge of the cliff. And I have watched him make his way back.

For me, these are the days when I find myself standing in the rye once again.

I talk a lot about my recovery from codependency and the freedom that comes when you no longer feel the burden to catch someone going over a cliff. Standing in the rye puts that to the test. It is really, really hard to watch someone you love dance near the edge and have to resist the urge to do things that you think will guard him from it. It’s hard for me to watch my husband struggle with limits and boundaries, to see him lose his balance. It’s especially hard to watch someone you love fall. But, it’s been incredibly refreshing for me to know that I’m not responsible for what someone else does. I am only responsible for me.

It’s freeing to know that no matter how close to the edge my husband gets, I will be ok.

So, all that to say that this is my first post in nearly a month. If you’ve been wondering where in the heck I’ve been, well… we’ve been in the rye. And now we’re both back.

P.S. Thanks for all of the prayers from those who knew what was up.

P.P.S. Is it totally narcissistic of me to think that anyone noticed I wasn’t blogging? Yeah… I though so.

I posted this on the XXXChurch wives blog this week but thought it would be nice to include it here also. Even though I share my thoughts on John 15:13 from the perspective of addiction and recovery I think that the application is just as true regardless of your specific situation.

Sometimes I worry that the church is not as accepting of difficult situations as we should be. I’ve met countless people who have felt like they could never share their personal struggles, addiction or otherwise, with their church family out of shame. They have the impression that they need to appear “put together” when they are at church. It becomes almost like having a double like. That was me. If that’s you too, I hope you read this and change your perspective a little bit.

It has become so common for me to read many responses to a blog post of mine from women who feel that they are unable to share the struggle of their husband’s addiction with another trusted friend. I experienced the same feeling when my husband’s addiction was first made known to me. I had many reasons for wanting to keep this a secret. I didn’t think others would understand; I didn’t want to “out” him to our friends and church community; I thought we could handle it on our own. The list goes on and on. I’m not sure why some of the women who have left comments want to keep this a secret, but I would bet that some of their reasons are similar to mine.

If you are one of those women, I want you to know that keeping this secret was one of the most damaging things I could do to myself, my husband, and my relationship with God. Releasing that secret, bringing what was in the dark into the light, was one of the best things we have ever done.

When all of the details of his addiction became known I went through an intense grief process. I experienced denial and isolation, anger, a bargaining stage (both with God and my husband), depression, and eventually acceptance of the truth. All of the stages of grief were there as if someone had died. In fact, something had died. We lost the ideal marriage that we had both wanted. We lost trust and intimacy. And we lost the image that we had created of each other: the perfect husband and the perfect wife. Handling this intense grief by myself was one of the most difficult things in the world for me. I was so lost in my shame, in my husband’s shame, that my goal was to never tell anyone. If the “ideal” was shattered for us, I wanted to at least preserve it for others. I didn’t want anyone to know that we weren’t the perfect little family everyone thought we were, so we agreed to keep all of these painful confessions a secret. We wouldn’t tell anyone, and we would work on it together with me as the accountability partner and him as the dutiful little patient. We had our roles and the script was simple: look good at all costs to all people. We didn’t include others, and we didn’t include God. We had it all figured out…until it happened again.

At the point that I found out he was once again hiding an active addiction from me, I was devastated. The second time the grief was so severe that I had to tell someone. I started attending a few 12 Step group meetings, if for no other reason than their anonymity. As I attended these groups and met others who were in similar situations, I became more comfortable telling my story. It took several months of hearing myself share my story out loud before I could share it with someone I knew. When I found the courage to share with a few close friends, it felt like an instant release. They were loving and caring as they walked through my grief with me. I was no longer alone.

John 15:13 reads: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”.

Prior to this experience I had always taken this verse to mean that true love and friendship meant literally dying for a friend. When I began to open up about our situation, the true meaning of this verse became a great comfort to me. For me, true love and friendship was having women in my life who would put themselves through this death process with me. As I grieved the loss of everything I thought our marriage was, I needed these strong women to draw alongside and experience that grief with me. They loved me though all the difficult times not by saying “Wow, you’ve fallen in a pit,” but by crawling into the pit with me. And it wasn’t until after I was out of the pit, when I started to move toward acceptance and empowerment, that I realized what a gift from God this ‘greater love’ was. I don’t think I would have gotten to those later stages alone. It’s so easy to get stuck in the pit. Keeping my secret almost caused me to miss it. I’m glad I finally shared my secret and received this rich blessing. If you are reading this, I hope you do too. I’d hate for you to miss it.

I spend a lot of time in my off-line life, and even here on this blog, complaining – or lamenting?- about the Church not being a Church selflessly devoted to loving and giving to others. While many really are out doing the hard work of the Gospel by serving others, many more are what my pastor referred to recently as consumers of the church. People who come to be fed without giving the sacrifice of service. Why is it so hard for us to give? As I sat with this shame question all weekend I began to wonder if we aren’t giving because we haven’t yet learned to receive.

Everything in Jesus’ message of grace is about taking something that is being freely given to us. Receiving that gift goes beyond accepting that Jesus died for our sins. It also means taking that gift of grace and using it. Accepting forgiveness for our sinful condition is a process, not an event. We experience sin every day and need to experience grace every day too, not just on the day we accept Christ. When we truly take what we have been given, we allow that grace to transform us. We submit to the process of accepting God’s grace to transform our hurt, our hate, our selfishness, our shame – all of the things that separate us from Him. This week’s blog comments reminded me how difficult it is to receive the gift of grace to cover and transform our shame.

When we’re living with dead fruit like shame, guilt, pride, and envy it’s really difficult to produce the spiritual fruit that equips us to be the givers that we would all like to see the Church become. So, this week’s lesson for me is that maybe I need to lighten up a bit and give the Church a break. Maybe the question isn’t “Why isn’t the Church giving?” Maybe the question is “Why aren’t we taking?”

What gift have you had difficulty accepting? Do you think that not taking our gifts makes it difficult to give?

I can’t thank Andy, Adam, and Brad enough for hosting me and for letting me share some of who I am, what I do, and why I do it. I hope you take the time to listen.

“I’m not much, but I’m all I think about.” I heard someone say this at a meeting once, and it’s stuck with me ever since. Like Seinfeld, it’s funny because it’s true. I was reminded of this little joke when I read John 16 earlier today.

John 16 contains the great promise of prayer: “If you ask the Father for anything in My name, He will give it to you” (v. 23), and “Ask and you will receive, that your joy may be made full” (v. 24).

I have a problem with prayer, namely, that my prayer tends to be mostly about me. If not all about me. That’s not to say I’m praying to win the lotto or for quick and painless fixes to all of life’s little problems. Even I’m not that immature. But reading these verses made me think about what kinds of things I ought to be praying about, and convicted me to be praying for others more. The opportunities are certainly endless. Yet how many times have I told someone I’d pray for them and then, well maybe I did for a minute, but it’s not a sustained effort. The irony is that, regardless of whom we pray for, prayer ends up being for our own benefit anyway. Check out verse 24; the purpose of asking in His name as “that [our] joy may be made full.”

There was a time in my life when my prayers were more focused. When I was heavily involved in one of the 12-step fellowships, I was using strictly the prayers found in AA’s “Big Book.” The Big Book’s approach to prayer is a little more restricted than what I see in John 16. Just check out step 11: “…asking only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry it out.” For a time that was literally all I prayed. I also mixed in the third step prayer and occasionally the fourth step prayer (bonus points for AA’s who can identify the latter), word for word out of the book. This became a daily routine that eventually took on legalistic tones. I missed really pouring my heart out to God, and eventually had to abandon that approach. I do appreciate, however, old Bill W.’s persistent encouragement to be constantly praying for God’s will in every decision or difficult situation. The attitude of submission that implies is essential, I think, and there’s more to it than just tacking a “thy will be done” on the end of some long and very specific list of things I want God to do, pronto. I heard people at meetings go so far as to say that they prayed strictly for God’s will and nothing else even when interceding for others, the idea being that if I pray for my sick friend to get better, I’m assuming that it’s God’s will that he get better, and that’s pretty presumptuous of me. I don’t know that I can get on board with that 100 percent; I think it’s quite possible to “make our requests known to God” and still maintain an attitude of submission to His will.

Lately I’ve been praying for help with loving God and others, and I feel those prayers are beginning to be answered, the fact that the Spirit seems to be bugging me to pray more for others being one indication of an answer. What are you praying for? I’m curious to know. Feel free to post anonymous prayer requests as well. I’ve got lots of time on my hands, and I’d be happy to pray for anyone, more than once!

I want to thank my husband for filling in with such a wonderful post! Please leave a comment on John 16:23-27 or a prayer request. We will both be praying for them!