Do you believe the lies the world has taught us to?
Do you turn a closed ear when truth turns to you?
Why do we fix our gaze,
mesmerized by glazed illusions
when death, hell, life, and love stare at our backs?
It’s a strange thing indeed when all is revealed
and there’s nowhere to turn
but to pain we’ve ignored.
Tragedies are sometimes our best friends
when we open the door
and happen to find our own souls.
Sin is meeting a legitimate need illegitimately. If I were thirsty, would I pretend I’m not thirsty? Should I feel bad about being thirsty or deny the thirst? Should I discipline myself not to thirst and punish myself in order to do so? Should I fast the thirst out of me? If you think about it, isn’t that an oxymoron?
Yet this is how I used to deal with my thirst for love. After trying adamantly to resist the thirst in the barren desert of my brokenness, I would see a mirage in the desert. That mirage for me was being with women sexually. I would eventually charge at it like an animal out of sheer desperation. But after the mirage of water disappeared, I saw what I was really doing… drinking sand. And then I was left with an even greater thirst than when I first began. That’s when I would beat myself up and say, “See all the trouble that is caused by your thirst? Just deny the desire and be more disciplined! It will go away!” No it won’t.
Like vodka, it might look like water and even feel and move like water, but when it gets into your system, it’s actually a diuretic that dehydrates you rather than satiate your thirst. I believe that’s what sin is like and why God hates it. God loves us so much He hates that when we’re already dehydrated, we’re fooled into drinking a liquid that will only drain us of whatever little hydration we had to begin with instead of what will truly satisfy us. God doesn’t hate that we need, hunger, thirst, and desire. He made us that way to draw us into relationship with Him and others. But when we meet those needs in ways that will harm and eventually kill us, anyone who cares for our well-being will hate those means and encourage us to stay away from them.
After trudging around in this desert for years and repeating the vicious cycle of chasing after mirages, drinking diuretics, and finally wanting to die, a Man named Jesus came along and said, “Its ok to thirst. In fact, you were made to thirst. Love is the water that you’re searching for and you’ve been looking for it in all the wrong places. If you’re willing to trust Me, I can bring you into an oasis where if you stay there, you will never thirst again.” That oasis is Himself.
Just as Jesus shared to the Samaritan woman settling for the mirage of fulfilling her thirst through a constant stream of men’s affections and never being satisfied, only through the Man who stood before her and now stands before us with the same invitation will we ever find what we’re all really searching for… love that will never run dry.
There were times I wanted to be with a woman so bad that I couldn’t sleep. I would sometimes get cold sweats and shake at night like an addict needing a fix. I felt like I was going insane. I didn’t realize it at the time but there was this deep abyss within me that was crying out for love. Because of the lack of affection that I experienced growing up, I had a huge love deficit.
But because I felt ashamed of how I wanted to address this deficit, I dealt with it by becoming “Super-Sarah.” I became very religious and I was a perfectionist. I thought if I were perfect, I’d finally be loved the way I wanted to be by everyone around me and that would fill the void.
I could not accept myself as broken so I went into denial of wanting to be with women because I thought that was the best way of dealing with it. I ignored that I had issues and my mantra was, “Fake it ‘til you make it.” When people at church would ask me how I was doing, I would say with a forced smile, “Great!” But the truth was light years from what I was depicting to others. I was dying inside and falling apart every night.
When pretending just wasn’t cutting it, I would declare war on myself by going on aggressive fasts, rapidly reciting Scriptures about sexual immorality, praying in tongues for hours to try to purge myself of sin. But I noticed something; the harder I was on myself, the more I wanted to sin.
It was like a pendulum; one day I’d be doing great and the next I would want to sin so badly I would have to lock myself in my apartment to keep myself from doing something awful. I got very frustrated and I would secretly say in my heart, “What about the abundant life You promised, God?” Of course I’d never say it aloud cuz I was such a “good Christian.”
But God hears the secret conversations of our heart whether we utter them or not and He spoke to me one day. He asked me, “What exactly is it that you want when you want to be with a woman?” At first I didn’t want to answer the question so I ignored Him. But I could feel the question weighing on my heart throughout the day. So I answered Him, “Sex.” God asked me, “Is that really what you want?” With my head hung low, I would respond, “Yes. It is because I am an evil person. I repent.” He was quiet; then finally said, “Is it really about the sex or you endure the sex in order to get what you really want?” I love how God cuts to the heart of the matter.
After I thought about it, I realized He was right. The whole reason I want to be with a woman is because I wanted to be held, comforted, loved, and nurtured. Basically, I was looking for a mother because I never formed that bond with my mom. I heard God say, “Is it wrong to want to be held, comforted, loved, and nurtured?” I didn’t know how to answer Him. God showed me that every time I wanted to be comforted I beat myself up. This is why I would swing from one extreme to another. When someone wants to be comforted and they get beat up instead, guess what they’ll want even more? Comfort. Thus, the pendulum swing.
God spoke to me, “Why don’t you try this; every time you want to be with a woman, don’t come to me with your long speech on how unworthy you are and how great I am and how you don’t deserve to be in My presence. Just come to Me and let Me hold you just as you are. No explanations, reasons, excuses, or penitence; just come in all your brokenness and messiness and let me hold you.”
The Big Love Cup
I didn’t try it for a while and went back to my old religious ways pretending I never had this conversation with God. But one day I was desperate because I knew my way wasn’t working. So I finally said, “Fine. Let’s do it Your way!” I broke down weeping in all my failure and shame. I felt so awful about myself when I felt Him embrace me and just hold me and rock me back and forth. I fell asleep in His arms.
When I woke up, I felt better. I didn’t feel the desire to be with a woman as much and there was nothing that I did other than be in His arms. I realized something at that moment. It was as if I had a big cup inside of me that needed to be filled with love. I believe all of us have it because we were made in God’s image and God is love. Therefore, we were made for love. I believe that love is just as essential of a human need as food, water, and shelter. Repeated studies have shown that babies that are fed the same, have diapers changed the same, and have slept in the same cribs yet if some are not held on a regular basis their growth will become stunted, as documented in the now classic studies by Renee Spitz and Harry Harlow. Love is necessary for our survival and overall well-being.
But the way that I learned to try to fill this big love cup inside of me was to fill it with sex. This is because when I was a child, an older man that I trusted to love me sexually abused me. Therefore, I interpreted sex as love. When I was with a woman, I did feel as though my cup was filled for the moment. But inevitably when I woke up the next day, I felt emptier than when I began. It was like the cup had little holes in the bottom of it and all the “love” leaked out as quickly as it poured in. Then, like an addict, I would go back to her for another fix. I sincerely feel sorry for the women I was with because I was using them like a drug until they had nothing left to give. That’s when I would move on to my next victim with an even greater ravenous desire.
But I soon realized as I started going to God to get my needs met, it wouldn’t be filled overnight like it was with those girls. But also, the love that did fill my cup didn’t leak out. It was still there the next day and the day after that. After awhile of having God hold me and love on me and without any effort of my own, I didn’t want to be with women as much. It wasn’t as if I was trying to stop thinking about them. The desire just began fading away. I believe it was because my legitimate need for love and comfort was finally being reconnected to the only source that can truly fill our “big love cup”, the God who is Love.
