True Intimacy

As a child, I imagined a fairytale future. I believed I would meet my Prince Charming one day and that we would live happily for ever. I would have a complete life.

Life isn’t like a fairytale. That didn’t stop my quest for affirmation and significance. When I graduated high school, I believed I had found Mr. Right.

We shared a lot in common. We spent hours every day talking about everything you could imagine. We were in love. We felt eventually that marriage was our best option. I felt it was right, because I did not want to live alone for the rest my life.

We played around with each other a lot, and lust eventually became the focus of our relationship. We told ourselves we were having “fun” and would skip work to go on rendezvous.

We were pursuing our passions at the cost of one another, and we did so in order to experience the thrill of intimacy and sexual pleasure. I began to equate physical intimacy with love. Our relationship was dominated by greed and selfishness. It became a vicious cycle with an empty end.

A friend of mine invited to me to attend a “cool Christian” meeting, hosted by Student Life (the name of Cru in New Zealand). In my mind, Christians are weird. They will slam you with holy water and Bibles when you enter their “holy space”.

This was not the case. To my surprise, everyone was cool and normal. The message was what changed my entire life. It was all about a relationship with God. It was as if something clicked.

From a religious background it was all about what one had to do to earn something. It was a shock to hear that Jesus gave His life to get to know me. He did it because he wanted to relate to me even though I had done nothing to deserve it. I was shocked. My idea of a god who is distant and has no time for me, and does nothing but be good to others, was completely ruined.

It was a relief to know that God was motivated by his love and I no longer had to carry the weight of my past. It didn’t really matter what I had done or where I was. I only had to believe. It was then that I began my relationship with Jesus.

I had to learn how to trust Him as the only One who could truly satisfy my needs. It meant setting boundaries to prevent me from compromising myself by not having healthy relationships. In my life, I had to make tough decisions about who I spent time with and who I would marry.

Jesus taught me not to associate love with intimacy. He did not promise to take away my desire, but rather to teach me that He was trustworthy in the middle of it. It is to Him that I should run, and not to another man.

God blessed me today with a husband, not to satisfy my own needs, but for God Himself to express His selfless intimacy via my husband.