Actually, this is a post about the best Christian book on sex that I’ve ever read. Christian marriage books often bother me. (I talked about one of them here.) Sometimes they give bad relationship advice in general, and sometimes they give bad sex advice in particular. Many times they offer a poor theology of marriage. On the other hand, secular books often give good relationship advice or offer scientifically valid sexual information, but their values don’t always align with mine.
This book is different. It’s called The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You’ve Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended, and it was written by Sheila Wray Gregoire, Rebecca Gregoire Lindenbach, and Joanna Sawatsky. It’s based on research and takes women’s sexual issues seriously. The authors also take the Bible seriously. So they’re able to explain, with data and with Scripture, all the things that tend to bother me about Christian marriage books. And they’re able to offer a better way.
So if you’ve ever been frustrated by the state of the Church’s teaching on sex (especially for women), this book will speak to you. If you’ve ever wondered if sex is supposed to be more than just a way to keep your husband from sinning, this book will speak to you. If you’ve ever searched for practical answers to your difficult sexual issues, this book will speak to you.
Sex is not supposed to be good only for husbands; it’s supposed to be good for wives too. I could say much more, but the book says everything far better than I ever could — and far better than I’ve ever seen anywhere else. Read the book if you want to know what I’m talking about, and then spread the good news about sex — share it with your friends and pastors.
***I’ve been working on telling the story of how we found our house, but it’s just not coming together yet. So until that story is ready to tell, I’ll be dropping other content into your inboxes.
I’m in love with a cat. This revelation is as shocking to me as it is to you, if you’ve known me any length of time. I’ve never been an animal person. Dogs scare me, cats are scratchy, and fish stink. Rodents stink even more. So when asked what my favorite animal is, my reply has always been, “human beings.” And yet here I am, taking pains to care for a small furry creature.
Let me explain how I got here.
The kids have wanted a pet for quite some time. For reasons beyond my dislike of non-human animals, having a pet in our Cambodian row house was out of the question. As soon as we moved back, however, the requests started. It was clear the kids still wanted a pet.
We had to push the question of pet ownership further into the future while we continued living in temporary housing. (We did this for a total of 9 months, which makes me wonder if there’s some sort of birth metaphor hiding inside that number.) During that time, we were stretched thin trying do our jobs while also finding a permanent place to live. The housing search proved to be surprisingly difficult and illustrated to me in real time Maslow’s hierarchy of needs — but more on that in an upcoming post.
Once we moved into our new home, the rumblings began again. Nothing had changed — the children wanted a pet. And the father wanted to get the children a pet. It had been a hard year of loss for the family, he reasoned. Now we had a yard to host the pet in. We weren’t ready for the rigors of a dog (the bathroom duties of dog ownership, the higher costs incurred, and the potential for loud barking being the main reasons).
But he was sure we could handle a cat.
When he pitched the idea to me, I wasn’t sure I had a choice. I knew he was right; after all these years and especially after Last Year, the kids did deserve a pet. All I asked was that the cat not be an inside cat. I didn’t want to do cleanup duty, live in a house that smelled of cat, or manage the incessant furniture scratching. No, he assured me, the cat would stay outside. After all, he said, some of us have cat allergies.
So the non-animal-haters made a plan to visit the Humane Society. I instructed my children to listen to their hearts and choose the pet who was just right for our family. They came back with a half-grown orange-and-white tabby who needed mounds of fattening up. He’d been a stray before the Humane Society found him and cleaned him up. We called him Gryff, after the House of Gryffindor.
I didn’t love him right away, but I thought he was pretty cute, and I was glad the kids were so happy with him. Then the Snowpocalypse came to Joplin, and I worried about him freezing to death in the garage. I could not let this little kitty die in the cold! My children loved him too much. And I loved seeing them so happy. I drove to the store in the rain, just before it turned to ice, and bought him a carrier. That way he could sleep in the house without getting his dander all over it.
We lived this way for two weeks, because that’s how long it took before the snow melted and the temps inched above freezing at night. Now he’s back to the garage and the yard. I love watching him prowl around, play with crickets or catnip, or just lounge in the sun. I love watching my children cuddle him. Playing with the cat is a great stress reducer around here.
I guess we are cat people. I never thought I’d say that.
Gryff is still young, and sometimes he’s strange. Sometimes we call him our dog-cat. In the beginning he would follow Jonathan around like a dog. He even ran like a dog. He also had a tendency to run away and get lost. It’s normal for cats to disappear and come back later, and Gryff often left through an opening in the fence and came back. But once he didn’t come back before dark.
We went looking for him and found him in a neighbor’s yard. He’d jumped the fence into their yard but couldn’t figure out how to get back in to ours. Another time he disappeared for two days. After the first day, we got worried. I walked the neighborhood, talking to strangers and asking about our cat. No one had seen any sign of our cat. I walked the streets so long I got a sunburn.
I agonized over this situation. After everything our kids had been through this year, after all the loss they’d endured, getting this cat was supposed to be a way of healing their hearts. To think they might lose him too?? It was too much to bear. Some of us cried. Some of us prayed. For a cat.
I missed how alive the yard felt with Gryff in it. I couldn’t believe how empty it felt without him, after just a few short weeks in the family. Eventually another cat owner noticed him hanging around their house and found our information on his collar. Late one night, after we figured we would never see him again (after all he was still a kitten, perhaps not quite grown enough to figure out how to come home), a neighbor rang the doorbell and returned him. We were so happy. But we learned that no one really ever owns a cat. Not really.
Then one day just after breakfast he disappeared again. I didn’t worry quite as much this time, but I still wanted him to return. The next morning I was up early in my office when I heard the mewing. I ran to the back door, and there he was, crying for his breakfast. In that moment, I knew I could relax. Gryff could and would come back. He’d figured out where home was — or at least he’d figured out how to find the place where people feed him canned cat food every morning.
Yes, I know. I can’t believe it either. Somehow this cat sank his claws deep into my heart, and I buy him the tasty wet food. I know I don’t have to. The vet said we don’t have to, that people sometimes give their cats wet food on Sundays or special occasions. But after I watched this cat go bananas for a can of salmon, I decided he needed wet food more than once a week. Maybe every other day. Or maybe, every day? After all, he still needs some fattening up.
My husband laughed at me, the way this cat beguiled me. He never in a million years expected that. But you know what I think about my silly love affair with this cat? I think, at least it taught him how to come Home.
Remember the old days of blogging? I do, and fondly. I loved how blogging was like carving out my own online space to be creative, to express myself, to have conversations and connect with the people I loved.
But eventually blogging started to stall. People started migrating to Facebook and Instagram; these were the new methods of communicating your message. And they came with new rules. Provide shorter, pithier (and sometimes meaner?) content. Always include a photo. Maybe even build your post around the photo, instead of the words. Extra points if you can edit and improve the photo.
And so for a time, it became easier and simpler for me to just to pour my personal content onto the Facebook platform. After a while the photo requirements started to feel heavy. I’m not a visual artist or a talented photographer. I know nothing about photo editing. I tell stories through words, usually long stories. Even with all these changes, I still kept at it.
But years of this social media habit took its toll. Facebook began to stress me out. It wasn’t the light-hearted online gathering place it used to be. It was filled with angst and stress. But I couldn’t figure out a way to get off of Facebook and still be a communicator, because Facebook was where the people were. And if you want to have meaningful conversations, you need other people to be involved. And importantly, I loved the ability to keep in touch with friends who were far away.
But about a month ago, after reading a book and doing some personal reflection, I signed out of Facebook. I didn’t tell anyone I was doing it, not even my husband, because I didn’t know how long my decision would last. A few days later he asked me a question about something that had happened on Facebook, and I replied, “I haven’t been on Facebook for 3 days. I don’t know what’s happening there.”
He (and the rest of the family) seemed thrilled that I wasn’t on Facebook.
As the days and weeks went by, I found I was less stressed out. I didn’t necessarily think I was acting any differently, but my family told me I seemed happier. And every time I considered signing back in, perhaps to try to connect with friends or find out what they’d been up to, I was filled with dread. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was afraid of getting sucked back into the endless scroll again or being activated by triggering content.
This experiment proved to me what I had only previously wondered about: Facebook is a place of stress for me. At this point the stress is so intense that it’s not worth the gains of being on it. Once upon a time, it hadn’t been stressful. It is now. Even though I dearly miss catching up with far-away friends on social media, I’ve realized that taking care of my mental health in this way is the right thing for me to do in this season.
But what to do about the writers and experts I followed on Facebook? After some investigation, I learned that serious writers back up all their content on their own websites, and they have email lists for people like me who want their content but don’t want social media. I signed up for all the email lists I needed, and now I happily receive their content without the stress of social media.
This made me consider the idea that perhaps the future of blogging lies in its past. That maybe people are returning to website-oriented writing once again. Or that maybe in the future, they will. This blog is our own: Jonathan and I pay for the privilege of hosting our own online space. The content doesn’t belong to a “free” social media company that bombards you with pointless or offensive ads, or that is constantly monitoring your online behavior (read the aforementioned book if you want more insight into the monitoring).
Regardless of whether or not the future of blogging lies in its past (my prediction could very well be wrong), I’m choosing to return to my blogging roots. I don’t plan to get back on Facebook any time soon. If you want to follow my journey (especially as I repatriate to the States), following the blog will be the fastest way to see new content. (Simply click on “Follow trotters41” on the side bar if you don’t already subscribe.)
I’ll also plan to use third party aps to post to Facebook, but I won’t be around to answer comments on Facebook itself. And I’ll eventually make that announcement on Facebook, too, so my online friends know what’s going on with me.
I want to start writing again, and this is the place where I’m going to do it. It may be in fits and starts. It may be small updates at first. I might include longer essays at some point. I may share mundane things that are going on with me; I may share books that are helping me along my journey. I may suddenly share something really private and profound. I don’t know how it will unfold. I’m just going to begin again.
I’m going to let trotters41 be in 2021 what it was for me when we first transitioned to Cambodia in 2012: a place to share my journey and a way to walk into the future, whatever that future looks like. In a way I’m coming home. This is the place I first found my voice, and I intend to find it again. I hope you’ll join me here.
The folks over at The Clarity Podcast just released a new interview I did on marriage that was recorded in Madagascar. My part starts around the 10-minute mark, and although my audio’s a bit wonky, I hope it’ll be helpful to someone. (I’ve since upgraded my mic in hopes that future podcasts sound a bit better. Still working on upgrading my voice, though.) Listen here, or wherever you podcast.
When I signed up for the Velvet Ashes’ “Bloopers” theme, I expected to write a light-hearted story poking fun at myself. After I wrote it, I realized the story was much heavier than I had initially thought. You’ll find the original anecdote in the first half of the article, with my further reflections in the second half of the article. ~Elizabeth
Trigger Warning: this post discusses violence and includes a story featuring a gun.
“Hit the floor.”
I learned that particular phrase in pre-field training. We had just gone through the first of two simulated hostage situations. As it concluded and we began debriefing the experience, one of our trainers instructed us to “hit the floor the moment you hear gunfire.” The two simulations impacted me deeply, and although I never had need of her words during my life abroad, I never forgot them.
Fast forward ten years to 2020, the year a tiny strip of RNA brought the world to its knees – and our lives to a screeching halt. Covid-19 may not be all-powerful, but it was still powerful enough to bring us “home” prematurely. My family is now living stateside for the foreseeable future.
A year of bicontinental transition meant living in four houses in the span of ten months. My pre-field training came flooding back to me just days after we moved into our third house of the year. We had just settled in for a family movie night, when all of a sudden a man walked around the back corner of the house.
The folks over at 
Jonathan & Elizabeth Trotter 