While studying with Cindy on Saturday, we had a tangential conversation about spicy food... and somehow we came up with this phrase.  We joked around about my using it as a title for my first book.  It's a bit cheesey, yes, but it has such a ring of truth to it.  Marriage is meant to be spicy!!

This stands in direct contrast to the usual portrayal of marriage by the world.  Case in point:  in the movie License to Wed, an engaged couple is prohibited from having sex til their wedding.  On hearing about this, the guy's friend says,  "No sex! I thought that was supposed to happen after the honeymoon."  This is supposed to be funny, right?  It plays on the age-old belief that after marriage, there's no more passion or romance -- or fun.  I hate this portrayal of marriage.  Sadly, this kind of pessimistic view about marriage is prevalent in Christian circles as well.  You can even hear it from the pulpit.  How many times have I cringed to hear male pastors talk badly about their wives?  about (their) marriage?  There's mockery and exaggeration and stereotypes galore. 

But marriage is meant to be spicy.  Think about it --marital sex is so beautiful that God dedicated a whole book about it in the Scriptures!  Marital sex is so good, King Solomon had to write about it in metaphors in order to adequately describe it.  Marriage should be synonymous to passion, romance, good, hot, satisfying sex---so good because it was so designed by God.  This is marriage!  I wish the world would portray marriage the way God envisioned it.

My reflections of this morning...

I'm a virgin
and I'm unwed.
No one else has shared my bed.

I've been spared
of the kind of pain
of a man who "loves" me in a way that's feigned.

No regrets
no guilt or shame.
My innocence is still the same.

I've saved myself
for a commitment "for life"
to the man who takes me as his wife.

I'll be a gift
with a wedding ring
to the one who has offered his everything.

What freedom then
and reason to rejoice
that I'm giving myself to God's own choice.

No baggage there,
just ecstasy,
as (for the first time) I give all of me.

I'm a virgin
and I'm not "late."
I'm simply choosing just to wait.

Mary Ann Nguyen

When you have sex, it is like mixing flour and water together to become dough.  The two different elements become one, and you can’t separate them, one from the other anymore.

When you have sex, it’s like gluing two pieces of paper together.  If you try to tear them apart, a part of Paper 1 is still stuck to Paper 2, and a part of Paper 2 is stuck to Paper 1.  Once you’ve become one, you’re not supposed to separate.  If you do, you’re ripping each other off all over the place.

When you have sex, you become one.  That’s the way it’s supposed to be.  That’s why God created it in the context of marriage, of commitment, “for life.”

Sex is like fire.  Marriage is like a fireplace.  When you have sex within the God-ordained context of marriage, you’ve got a really warm and wonderful thing going.  But when you have sex outside of marriage and fire outside a fireplace, you get massive destruction.  We’ve seen that for a fact all over San Diego, recently.

If you want to have the best sex possible (in marriage!), then here’s the secret, keep as pure as you possibly can while you’re single.  Then you won’t be disillusioned, disappointed, carrying hurts, wounds and baggage with you to your marriage bed.

It’s never too late to start being as pure as possible. 

A conversation I've had on several occasions:

 Friend:  Mary Ann, deep down, I guess I’m worried that someone godly won’t want me.  I'm sure they'd want someone who was pure.  A virgin.  And that’s not me.

Me:  Oh, <insert your name here>, don’t you see?  A “godly” person might not want you… but a truly godly person will.  A truly godly person is someone who will understand what grace and forgiveness and being a new creation in Christ really means.  And that’s the kind of person you want to marry.

Sex and purity.   Let's talk about it.  The more we dialogue about it, the more we’re able to remind ourselves of the right way of looking at sex – sex by God’s design -- rather than by the world’s distortion.  As we talk, perhaps we'll better see and live things God’s way and enjoy it according to His design.

"Lord, I give you my heart, I give you my soul...
Have your way in me."

We sang this on Sunday.  Honestly, the last words of this praise song has a heavy sexual connotation to me.  And I can't help but think about it every time we sing it.  Yes, true confessions:  I am thinking about sex during worship service!

In my non-Christian days, I used to talk to these guys with whom every other sentence - yes, even normal sentences - were sexualized.  Every statement was a double entrendre.  We threw around words of seduction to each other such as, "You can HAVE YOUR WAY WITH ME."  (Yes, the exact words in the aforementioned praise song.) 

And here's where "redemption" is amazing.  When I sing those words to God, I remember what those words used to mean to me... but NOW they have been transformed into something very different  -- even HOLY -- a desire for God to have that kind of free-for-all, free-for-anything, intense thorough control over me and in me.

It amazes me that God can redeem my past sexually immoral transgressions for something eternally beautiful.