Sex and Superglue: Talking with Kids in a Hook-Up Culture

I was a virgin when I got married at the ripe old age (back then) of 28.  I’ve kissed fewer men than the fingers on one hand.  I didn’t have a “serious” boyfriend until graduate school.  And for all those sexless, boyfriend-less, not being the sought-after-object-of-mens’ desires years, I felt pitiable, like a loser.  Even though Jesus was my boyfriend and I staunchly wanted to be a woman whose self-esteem didn’t rest on how men regarded me, it was hard.

Now my personal history feels even more foolish in light of Hanna Rosin’s Atlanticarticle Boys on the Side about how the practice of hooking up, rather than something to be derided, actually empowers women.  As Rosin writes:

The most patient and thorough research about the hookup culture shows that over the long run, women benefit greatly from living in a world where they can have sexual adventure without commitment or all that much shame, and where they can enter into temporary relation­ships that don’t get in the way of future success.

I’m not going to argue with her assumptions (read Amy Julia Becker) or her use of studies (even though my inner sociologist cringes).  Instead, let’s talk about emotional and spiritual damage, not to mention risk of pregnancy, disease and abuse.

Rosin seems to believe, as does our larger culture, that sex is a purely biological act with no emotional or spiritual overtones, a biological and necessary need.  She justifies that hooking up doesn’t seem to get in the way of intimacy, citing

 one study of college seniors where 75% of students hooked up an average of 7.9 times, but 74% also reported having a relationship in college that lasted at least six months.

Can I say that measuring capacity for intimacy by how long a relationship lasts lacks nuance?

My pastor Dave Schmelzer gives the best analogy I’ve heard for the power of sex—one I use with my kids often—so often they can almost chant it each time the topic of sex comes up.

Imagine that you’re a sheet of cardboard.  Sex is like superglue that glues 2 pieces of cardboard together—very helpful if your hope and goal is to be bonded to one person in marriage for the rest of your life.

Now imagine what happens when you rip 2 super-glued sheets apart.  Chunks of my cardboard are stuck on the other sheet, leaving holes, wrinkles, and tears, while chunks of the other person’s cardboard are now permanently stuck on me.  Then imagine super-gluing your wrinkled sheet of cardboard repeatedly with various other pieces of cardboard.  After 7.9 of those sticks and rips, how’s your cardboard going to look?

I firmly believe that Jesus can and does heal the worst of emotional and spiritual damage–that even if your cardboard has been through 79 sticks and rips, God can heal and make whole what’s been broken.

But I’d rather my kids not have to go through the pain of being ripped apart.    I’d rather them go through as much of life as possible whole.  Even if it means they spend young adulthood feeling like losers.

This was first published on What She Said

Fitbit How I Love Thee!

“You’re going to love this!!” Scott crowed when he got home, “This is going to change your life!”

The flower grows based on how active you’ve been the past 3 hours

And he gave me. . . a pedometer.  A very expensive pedometer that we never in a million years would have bought for ourselves, but took when his workplace offered it for free.

But the Fitbit is not just a pedometer, it’s also an altimeter which logs how many flights of stairs I walk, a calorie counter that shows how many calories I’ve burned, and a cheerleader that flashes little messages when I pick it up after it’s been lying fallow.  Most interesting, at night, when you wear it on your non-dominant hand, it measures how well and how long you sleep.  Plus it syncs online.

Scott was right.  The Fitbit has changed my life AND my marriage.  The first day, when Scott learned that I had climbed 5 more flights of stairs than him, he promptly ran up and down our stairs 6 times.

According to Fitbit, I’m supposed to walk 10,000 steps a day, climb 10 flights of stairs, and burn 2,184 calories.  The steps and the calories have been quite the stretch.  In order to hit 10,000 steps each day, I generally have to take an extra 2 mile walk downtown and back.

The 2,184 calorie goal feels astronomically out of reach.  As a middle-aged, small-boned, Asian female, I need about 1400 calories/day to survive.  That’s dieting for most Americans.  An intensive hour-long spinning class burns 400 calories (300 according to Fitbit).  So I’d need to spin for 2 hours every day to hit that calorie goal.  Not happening.

But I have achieved some impressive milestones including:

• 33,387 steps walking Paris one day (which according to Fitbit was equivalent to 12+ miles and 2400 calories)
• Climbing 201 flights of stairs the day we hiked Mt. Monadnock
• Averaging 6.21 hours of sleep in September (talking too much in bed with my sister while in Paris)

Why do I love my Fitbit?  Is it some legalistic workaholic strain in me that wants to obsessively measure my achievement?  Probably.  But I also love it because it gives me a daily read on reality.

Until I read Gretchen Reynolds’ The First 20 Minutes:  Surprising Science Reveals how we can:  Exercise Better, Train Smarter, Live Longer, I thought of myself as quite fit because I exercise 5-6 times a week.  But Reynolds writes that sitting is the new sugar—poison to our bodies.  Blood pools in our legs, our metabolism slows down, electrical activity in our leg muscles shut down.  Even those who exercise vigorously 7 hours/week experience deleterious effects on their health if they sit for more than 3 hours straight on a regular basis.

Well that’s me.  Between sitting at my computer, sitting at coffee shops, and sitting through breakfasts, lunches and conference calls, my life is sitting.

The good news, according to Reynolds, is that if we get up and walk for a minute every 20 minutes or so, we can mitigate all the bad effects of sitting.  My Fitbit keeps me accountable and stretches my goals.  I’ve even walked a couple conference calls!

Unfortunately, I sprained my ankle in Paris and have been hobbling ever since, sending my Fitbit scores to the lowest depths of all.  The only good part about spraining my ankle?  Scott can’t boast every day how he’s beaten me by 4,000 steps and 5 flights of stairs.

You may also be interested in reading:

Abandoning My Kids For Paris

Why I Fail at Vacations

Wedded Bliss. . .And Misses.  19 years and counting

Chocolate=Lies, Sex=Truth

My Theology of Parenting or Why I Gave Up Being God

This was first published on What She Said

Abandoning My Kids for Paris

The Eiffel Tower on 9/9 as I stood under it!

Last week I did one of the most irresponsible things I’ve ever done as a parent.  I flew to Paris for a week—purely for fun—and left 3 children in their first full week of school without a parent at home.

My sister surprised me just a few weeks ago by inviting me to go to Paris—she had a business trip with free hotel, her husband had frequent flier miles, and she wanted to give me a 40^th birthday present (7 years late!).  The only wrinkle?  Scott had a full week of business travel already scheduled.

So I said no.  I didn’t see how it was possible.

But then I told my girls, and after saying, “Take us too!” they both said, “Mom, you have to go—we can take care of ourselves.”  Call me crazy, but I actually believed them.  I trust they won’t throw a wild party or break into the liquor cabinet or have sex with random boys while I’m gone.  The only things I didn’t trust were their abilities to refrain from eating junk food and fighting with their brother.

Every single fellow mom I talked to said the same thing my girls did.  “You have to go,” often with an offer to take my kids.

So I decided to take the plunge into complete selfishness and immerse myself in Paris for 7 glorious days without kids.

Because Ling’s swim team carpool picks her up at 4:45 a.m. every morning, it didn’t make sense to send her to someone else’s home.  Helen, who lives across the street, agreed to take my son–I don’t trust him to go to bed on his own—plus this helped eliminate the girls on boy fighting.

Then Tara offered to stay at my house for the first 2 nights—she homeschools, her kids are portable.   I made 2 meatloafs, 1 lasagne, and stocked up on frozen Chinese dumplings so she and Helen could feed all our families, and flew to Paris.

Flowers at the Market

It was WONDERFUL!  I walked over 30,000 steps each day exploring museums, sights, cafes and chocolate shops.  I took a bike tour.   I ate dinner at my normal bedtime—steak frites and sole and falafel.  I had a croissant or pastry every morning.  I talked until 2 a.m. with my sister as we lay in bed having a grown-up sleep-over.  I shopped the Parisian marketplace with my cousin who’s lived there over 20 years.

To the annoyance of my family, communicating was hard, so I didn’t talk to my kids for almost the entire week.  I emailed but only one child emailed back with a question about viola lessons and to both MIA parents:

Did either of you take my swimsuits off the drying rack and throw them in some dark corner?  Cuz I can only find one, and it’s the one that’s been sitting in my drawer since last year.

While I was gone, my friends had significant conversations and prayer with my kids—lessons better heard from them than me.  A blessing since apparently the most significant ways for teenage girls to grow in authentic faith is through being mentored by “aunties”—Mom’s friends who AREN’T Mom.

So all in all, it was worth it.  Although I last wrote about being a vacation failure, turns out I’m only a vacationing mom failure.

C’est la vie!

You may also be interested in reading:

Why I Fail at Vacations

Wedded Bliss. . .And Misses.  19 years and counting

Chocolate=Lies, Sex=Truth

My Theology of Parenting or Why I Gave Up Being God

Mother’s Day Gifts, or Why I Never Get What I Want

 This was first published on What She Said

Why I Fail at Vacations

For the last five years or so, I’ve completely failed at vacationing.  I get grumpy and annoyed. I have stress dreams.  I feel guilty about being grumpy and annoyed and having stress dreams when I’m supposed to be enjoying myself and my family.

It’s a problem.  My husband notes that he spends most of the year stressed and then worries about NOTHING during vacation.  I spend most of the year relatively unstressed, and then act like a fiend the whole time we’re supposed to be resting.

Some reasons I think I’m a bad vacationer include:

1. There’s no such thing as rest for parents: Same problem with Sabbaths—what does it mean to rest a day a week when there are still children who need to be fed, entertained, and watched after?  Vacations are worse because they’re like many “Sabbaths” in a row.
2. Everyone wants a part of me:  True confession, I kind of just want to be left alone.  On vacation, my husband and kids actually want me to relate to (or serve) them.  I end up getting less rest than when everyone’s working.
3. I just want to read a book preferably cover to cover in one sitting.  One high school spring break I read 17 novels.  By Friday when I finally emerged bleary-eyed into daylight, I realized it probably would have been good to move my body a little during that week.  On our honeymoon, Scott and I sat by a pool with our books.  30 minutes later, he said, “OK, let’s go do something.”  I said, “But I have 350 more pages until I finish. . .”  There’s a lot of negotiation between 30 minutes and however long it takes to finish my latest novel.
4. My perfectionist tendencies: As a “P” on the Myers-Briggs, I can gather data forever, spend hours on Yelp searching for the best bike shop, the best activities, the best ice cream, the best lobster roll.  It’s exhausting.
5. My “Pake” aversion to spending lots of money.  Vacations take money—I feel guilty spending money.  (Pake is a derogatory word that means both Chinese and cheap in Hawaii, click here for a blog explaining the concept and a great recipe for mango lassis)

A friend, hearing about my vacation problems, once said, “It’s not vacation, it’s a trip.”  That helped.  “Vacation” connotes rest.  Trips connote a lot of packing, planning, problems and inconvenient bathroom breaks.

This year, our vacation plans in Maine fell through last minute, so we ended up having a week long “stay-cation” and finding a little bungalow on Cape Cod for our 2^nd week.  I found that when I embraced the “trip” analogy, my grumpiness went down.  So even though the whining and complaining were astounding when we hiked 3166 feet up Mt. Monadnock, biked 24 miles on the Cape Code Railways Trail and 21 miles on the Shining Sea Trail—hey, that’s what a family adventure’s all about.

I did manage to read 5 novels (never cover to cover), found the very best clam shack, and 2 very good homemade ice cream shops.  There was only one night when my grumpiness sent everyone out to mini-golf while I stayed home to finish a novel.  I’d give myself a B-/C+ for this year’s vacation.

But can I say how excited I am that summer vacation ends and school begins next week?

You may also be interested in reading:

Chocolate=Lies, Sex=Truth

Why Photo Albums Almost Killed me This Week

My Theology of Parenting or Why I Gave Up Being God

Mother’s Day Gifts, or Why I Never Get What I Want

This first appeared on What She Said

Wedded Bliss. . . And Misses. 19 Years and Counting

19 years ago today, Scott and I promised one another to love, honor, and cherish until death do us part.

10 years ago today, Scott took me to dinner and proposed that we renew our vows on our 10^thanniversary.  In the meantime, we’d go back into marriage counseling (for the 5^th time) and do everything we could to work on our marriage so that we’d actually want to renew our vows.

To put it mildly, our first ten years of marriage were challenging.   We were known as “the conflictual couple,” the couple voted least likely to succeed, the couple who had a friend scornfully tell us “I’ll never have a marriage like yours.”

We loved each other and we loved God.  We bore 3 children, and wanted things to improve for their sakes as well as ours.  So we kept trying, and working, and trying and working.  And 10 years ago today, we rolled up our sleeves to work harder.

Frankly, marriage counseling for the 5^th time, although helpful, was no cure.

The big turnaround came 2 weeks before our 10^th anniversary, when we spent a week at a marriage ministry called Cana.  Somehow, through prayer, sharing, listening, and more prayer (after a deep dive the first half of the week that made us wonder if we had made things worse), God stepped in and finally gave us the ability to forgive and release old hurts and grudges.

Since then, although we by no means have the perfect marriage, we have a marriage that’s about 85-90% reconciled.  Can I say how much easier it is to live in a reconciled marriage?

3 weeks ago, Scott and I were asked to preach on marriage at our church.  Here, in brief, are our top tips:

1. Quickly seek help whenever you need it:  We’ve been in marriage counseling 5 times.  We’ve done Living Waters (a relational and sexual inner healing program).  We receive regular spiritual direction, and over the years, we’ve splatted our stuff to our friends who’ve been kind enough to mediate.  It takes a village to raise a child.  It also takes a village to enable healthy marriages.
2. Pray Together, Daily if you can:  About 7 years into our marriage, after a particularly heinous fight, Scott proposed that we pray every morning when the first person awoke for a minute each, asking God to give our spouse a great day, and then close with the Lord’s prayer.  2 minutes of prayer.  Pathetic, right?  But what felt pathetic to us wasn’t pathetic to God.  We trace an upward trajectory starting with our 2 minute prayer practice.
3. Just do it! (Make love regularly):  Marital sex is a spiritual discipline, so keep it the same way you’d keep the Sabbath.  Because when we go too long without physical connection, our spouse’s body becomes a stranger, and it becomes embarrassing or difficult to be truly naked with them.
4. Give the gift of good communication: Give your words as a gift, and receive your spouse’s words as a gift as well.  Set apart times to talk and relate to one another—regular date nights, weekends away with no kids, writing letters.  Make it a priority to spend time communicating with your spouse.
5. Forgive and reconcile:  Forgiveness is the essence of any successful marriage or relationship because the one thing we know about every marriage is that you have 2 imperfect people who will hurt one another, even when they don’t want to. For those who follow Jesus, we’re commanded to forgive.  But forgiveness is not reconciliation. With reconciliation it takes two to tango.  Reconciliation involves healing and restoring a broken relationship, often to a better and healthier place than it was before. Reconciliation takes the 5 “R”s—recognizing wrongdoing, risking relationship, repenting, relearning the attitudes of Christ, and restitution.

The title of our sermon was “God can Transform Marriages, He Transformed Ours!”

19 years into this journey, I’m excited for the next 19.

(To hear a podcast of our sermon, click here.  Warning, we talk about sex and I use the word “peri-menopause” both of which made our kids visibly squirm in their seats.)

You may also be interested in reading:

Chocolate=Lies, Sex=Truth

Why Photo Albums Almost Killed me This Week

My Theology of Parenting or Why I Gave Up Being God

Mother’s Day Gifts, or Why I Never Get What I Want

This was first posted on What She Said

Why Photo Albums Almost Killed Me This Week

Today I’m incredibly sleep deprived because I’ve spent about 70 hours over the past 5 days making photo albums.  Why?  Because 2 years ago I bought 5Photobook America Groupons that expired yesterday.

Yes, I bought those Groupons TWO years ago.

Sigh.

Two years ago yesterday, 5 days before I left for China, Groupon published a deal with Photobook America. For $25, I could get $115 worth of Photobooks.  Great deal, right?

I knew I’d want an album of our historic trip to China.  So I bought 5 Photobooks.  Hey, I was being optimistic!  After all, I had 2 years to do it.

I figured I’d make a China book, a wedding book (our photographer absconded with 1/3 of our photo album, so I’ve always wanted a new one), and some random albums because I haven’t filed photos since going digital in 2004—I’ve printed photos but they’re all sitting in a stack next to our pre-2004 photo albums.

The Groupons have weighed on my mind these past 2 years.  I knew I needed to make those albums.   I knew I’d have to learn the Photobook software that I downloaded after returning from China.

But I soon realized:  THERE’S NEVER A GOOD TIME TO MAKE PHOTO ALBUMS.  As the late and great Steven Covey might say, no matter how important photo albums may be, making them never falls into the urgent category.

Unless you’ve got 5 Groupons expiring.

So at great expense to my sleep, sanity, family relationships and even friendships, I’ve run a marathon of photo album production.

Scott and I were asked to preach at our church this past Sunday—1^st time in 12 years of attending the church.  But instead of endlessly refining the sermon, I wrote it, and then went back to photobooks.

As friends have come to swim and socialize, I’ve sat next to them, computer in my lap and worked on photobooks.

I’ve neglected my children.  I’ve neglected my job.  I’ve neglected cooking.  Yesterday I started at 9 a.m. and finished the 5th photobook at 12:45 a.m.  Thank God Photobook still accepted the Groupon despite being cashed in 45 minutes late.

In the process I’ve realized several things:

1. It’s healthier to work on photobooks than to eat, shop or imbibe for fun.
2. Reflecting on photos taken over the years inspires thankfulness.  People are usually smiling, you see the key family events like black belt tests, vacations and holidays.  It warms my heart.  A lot more than 70 hours of TV.
3. It’s good to force a deadline for commitments you’ll never keep on your own.  I bought the deals knowing that I’d make 5 photobooks because I’m cheap and don’t want to lose my money (same reason paying for a gym makes me exercise—won’t pay for something I won’t use)

So all in all, despite the sleeplessness and grouchiness of my kids who’re realizing there’s no food in the house (“There’s not a single leftover!” one just shouted as I write), I’m glad I did it.

In fact, I’m ready to purchase my next Groupon deal if they offer it again—maybe even for five!

You might also enjoy:

Our First College Tour

Mother’s Day Gifts, or Why I Never Get What I Want

Chocolate=Lies, Sex=Truth

3 Reasons I Work for Money

Some Reflections on Raising Hapa-Haole Kids

This was first posted on What She Said

The “Awe-ful” Weight of Responsibility

I have a new recurring nightmare. I’m supposed to teach some large gathering and I’ve neglected to prepare. . . anything.  No talks, no snacks, no colleagues who can pinch-hit for me.  So I wing it—through sheer force of personality, I offer scintillating thoughts—and know I’m completely failing.  Maybe I’m finally growing up–until a couple weeks ago, my recurring nightmare was always academic—that I forgot to attend either a history or math class until the week before finals.

Both recurring nightmares share the same theme–irresponsibility.  I’ve failed to prepare and I’m going to pay the consequence—as will those forced to listen to me.

I was the irresponsible child in the family.  I started things and didn’t finish them; I repeatedly lost (and thankfully re-found) my gym sneakers; I hated and resisted chores.  Even worse, as the oldest child, I didn’t sacrifice for my younger siblings as a properly filial older child should—the epitome of Chinese irresponsibility.

Imagine my surprise when my youth pastor told me I was the most responsible kid he knew, and then years later taking Strengthsfinderand responsibility being one of my five highest strengths.

Clearly I’m overcompensating.

I feel a lot of ambivalence around responsibility–it’s so weighty and can seem antithetical to Jesus’s gospel of grace.  Yet I’ve been wondering lately whether women aren’t taking up our God-given responsibilities–especially for our own calls, gifts and abilities.

On one hand, women are the most responsible folks around—we take care of everyone!  We take care of our parents, our neighbors, our friends, our churches, our volunteer organizations and our colleagues.

And our kids?  Forget it.  Our overweening obsession with whether these music lessons, or that soccer team, or this academic opportunity will help my children flourish and become all they’re meant to be is proof of just how much responsibility we assume for those we love.

Yet all that caregiving can mean we don’t take responsibility for our own unique contribution to the world—outside of care-giving.  We need care-givers, but we also need women to do much more.

Sometimes I wonder whether women who cling to more hierarchical views of leadership and marriage do so because they don’t have to feel responsible for their own potential.  It’s their husband’s job.  If God says we can’t lead or teach or work, we don’t have to feel responsible for burying our talents.

My ministry’s dealing with the same dilemmas around women rising to senior levels that Anne Marie Slaughter raises in Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.  Despite our value that women should be at every level of the organization and virtually equal numbers of men and women, the proportion of women decreases the higher you go.  Many of the reasons Slaughter writes about apply:  increased work hours/travel, husbands whose jobs aren’t flexible, not wanting to sacrifice that much time with children, organizational obstacles and culture.

But too often women also don’t take responsibility for our own careers, our own gifts, our own potential.  We have 5 year plans (or at least dreams) for our kids but not ourselves.

And I’m guilty here—I don’t have a 5 year plan other than knowing I’ll be one year from empty nest.

It’s both awesome and awe-ful that the God of the universe gives us talents and expects us to aid in the work of redeeming this planet.  If butterfly wings can start hurricanes, our small little contributions can change the world.

So women, let’s take responsibility for how God asks us to flap our little wings!

Now please excuse me as I go write a talk and responsibly attempt to not live out my nightmare. . .

This was the third of a series of reflections I’m writing based on Ann Marie Slaughter’s Atlantic Monthly story Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.  Read The Problem with Having It All and Why We Need Women (And Others) in Leadership.

You might also enjoy some of my other thoughts on gender and/or work:

Annie, Shoot your Gun Already!

Toilet Paper Distribution, or how Equality and Justice aren’t the Same Thing

Boy Parts vs. Girl Parts–More on Gender and Justice

3 Reasons I Work for Money

My Theology of Parenting or Why I Gave Up Being God

This was first posted on What She Said