I’m not sure when this post will show up or if it even will. Part of me thinks that it would be improved if it were a video post and I could simply talk it out. But, that’s not a choice on the menu at present. So fasten up your eyeglasses, folks, this might take a minute.

Strange as it may seem, I’ve been thinking a lot about sexual assault of late. There’s a couple of blogs that I read where it’s been addressed a few times and one particular post discussed the possibility of healing, whether it actually was possible. And I think it is.  Let me be clear: I think it is. But I suppose it all comes down to what one considers healing. I have to agree with Cara at the Curvature if her definition of healing is going back to the way you were beforehand. But, getting to the point where you understand the consequences of what’s happened to you? Allowing God to move you out from a place of pain? If that’s healing, then I think I’m doing it.

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Instead of going for the expected, which I may do tomorrow or something when it’s UNexpected (hah-HA!), I thought I would address something that my sister and I were discussing Friday night at Panera before going to see Star Trek with some futuristic space nerds.

I’ve been trying like nobody’s business to find the link to the actual radio program she heard so that I can post it here and you can hear for yourselves, but apparently the idea of making your broadcasts available online for people who didn’t happen to catch it is unheard of on the internet today. Regardless. Apparently last week on WKRQ, there was a program on which a couple of staff at two local Cincinnati domestic violence shelters appeared. They discussed the problem of violence and of course offered themselves as avenues to escape an abusive relationship. But then they said something that I felt a little uncomfortable with. Namely, there is nothing that increases your risk of domestic violence besides gender.

Of course, there are many stastics that point to the fact that domestic violence is primarily directed against heterosexual women by predominantly heterosexual men, and in that regard, I agree that being female would make it more likely that you might experience violence at the hands of an intimate than if you were male. But the only thing?

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As some of you may or may not know, care, or agree, I have a porn obsession. No, no, not the kind that makes me salivate for the streaming video of, say, The Tipsy Sheep, XHamster, or The Wetplace (the names of which I got from a google of the word “porn”), but the kind that keeps me up all night devouring the research and reflections of people like Gail Dines,  Robert Jenson, and others with the same goal. It’s finally time to come clean and tell the truth: I can’t count how many times I’ve awakened well after noon because I was up all night getting my rocks off to anti-porn sites.

No, no. It’s true. It’s better that you know now.

And it’s why this article that I stumbled across was so disturbing to me. Disturbing in the way that it is pornography apologist while claiming to be scientific. Here are some  juicy excerpts.

Sex drives men from puberty through old age. It is their “raison d’etre”, their purpose in life; to reproduce. Everything else is, well, fluff. It diminishes with age but never disappears. Sex is a primitive – primordial – urge. (more…)

I have a confession of my own: I heart St. Augustine.

We’re like soulmates seperated by hundreds of years, and by class, gender, education, and age. We’ve both been foolish, we’ve both been degenerate. And yet God in his infinite wisdom and grace was kind enough to show us fully what kind of jerks we really were and grow us into something better, more in keeping with who he is. And it is encouragement to me now to read the words of someone who has sought, as I myself need to continually seek, the absolute truth.

<—–see the resemblence?—–>

” Entrust to truth whatever truth has given you, and you will lose nothing. What is withered in you will flower again, and your illness will be made well, and all that was flowing and wasting from you will regain shape and substance and will form part of you again, and they will not lay you down in the place where they themselves descend, but will stand fast with you and abide with you forever before God who stands and abides forever.”

May I say it? HOT.

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Alright, alright. I admit it. I shouldn’t have been such a jerk to that-erp!-man I was lamblasting yesterday morning. Not sorry enough to take to down though, I guess. No alterations. No going back and changing the past, even when I could and not have to worry about that whole paradoxical killed-my-grandfather-on-accident type of thing. I should be honest. And the honest truth is apparently that I’m kind of cruel and have an anger problem.

No, really, I’m as shocked as you are.

And, in the spirit of being upfront about things that I don’t want to admit, I should say that I’ve also been missing Simon. I broke down and asked him to call me. Argh. Why do I have to be me?

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So the truth of the matter is that I should be in bed. Because I’m supposed to be at work tomorrow at nine a.m. and lately I’ve been staying up till seven in the morning and sleeping in all day. I’m on like . . . China time or something. But instead of doing that (and I WILL do it, okay? . . . yeah, in a dang minute so keep your pants on!), I logged on to LinkedIn, a networking site I have to admit I don’t really get yet. And there, believe it or not, as I’m browsing through Possible Connections in the Classmates section at Kent State University, I come across the profile of my first boyfriend.

JOLT.

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I confess.

Confessions are so intimidating. As was said in a Charade (a totally class movie with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn), “People usually lie because they want something, and they’re afraid the truth won’t get it for them.” How apt. And, quite frankly, how surprising that Hollywood at one time came up with something true. And it really does seem to be the case. In confession, we are (or should I say “I am”?) afraid that we will be seen differently than we want to be, that no one will give us the benefit of the doubt, that no one else will understand the things that we were dealing with that caused us to make such a blunder. And usually, they don’t. But I’ve got a secret weapon.

When it comes right down to it, it doesn’t matter what other people’s perceptions are of me. As a Christian, I am not so much even myself, but rather a conglomeration of the work that God is doing in me. And so I confess, not to show how great I am in overcoming the person that I once was, but to give a record of all that Christ’s blood has bought and saturated and made his. I confess to bring to light all that God can redeem and has redeemed and continues to.

And here are my confessions:

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