Wanderlust… to soar in a grand way…

excerpts from Redeeming love by

Jane Johnson Struck

How do you define an emotional affair?

It’s that "forbidden fruit" relationship. Maybe he’s married and you’re not. Or maybe you are and he isn’t. Maybe he’s much older than you, or he’s your boss. You begin to go out of your way to get his attention, or look to him for affirmation. If you don’t feel good about yourself, when you find someone who makes you feel good, you latch onto him like a leech. That’s what I began doing.

Were there any warning signs?

Sure. I felt Greg wasn’t meeting my emotional needs.

It’s dangerous when you start thinking, My husband isn’t as spiritual as Pastor So-and-So. Or, he isn’t as cute or as romantic as my best friend’s husband. With each unfair comparison, you take his worth down a notch. Before long, you lose interest in maintaining an intimate connection with your husband.

I’m thankful the Internet wasn’t an issue for me. So many godly women tell me their emotional affair started out as an innocent conversation in a chat room, and then they found themselves trying to resist the temptation to fly across the country to meet the guy face to face!

Greg once told me I had a Grand Canyon of emotional needs. Even if every man in Dallas wound up outside my doorstep, he said, it wouldn’t have been enough to satisfy my longings for affection.

The next day, I had lunch plans with my male aerobics instructor. Talk about a lack of boundaries! I justified it, thinking I’d have a chance to witness to him. Instead, he told me I had a neon sign on my forehead saying I was hungry for attention. Then he said, "Do you want to know how to get that sign off? You have to die to yourself, Shannon Ethridge."

I started trembling, sensing God had sent me an angel in a tank top to get my attention. My instructor told me he was a recovering sex and love addict, and that he saw the same symptoms in me he used to have. He recommended a counselor and told me we could no longer meet. That night I told Greg every word of our conversation, and he confessed this had been something he’d struggled for years to find the right words to express to me. In desperation I cried out to God to show me why I was so needy. That’s what catapulted me into seeking a more intimate relationship with God and to begin intensive counseling.

What impact did these things have?
As I sought God as the lover of my soul, he began healing my wounds. I recognized the extent of my sin—how I’d failed to set proper boundaries and guard against extramarital temptations. I worked intensely on forgiving the guy who date-raped me as well as every guy who took advantage of me or who allowed me to take advantage of him. Most of all, I worked on forgiving my dad. I wrote him letters saying, "Dad, I’m 27 years old and I don’t know you well at all. I really want to get to know you."

My father invited me to go on a camping trip with him, and on that trip he grabbed me by the hand and we went for a walk. At first it felt so unnatural. Then I realized, This is what I’ve longed for my whole life —my father’s affection and attention. Dad told me his parents had divorced and he’d experienced abuse at the hands of his stepparents. By the time he was a teen, he didn’t know where his next meal was coming from. "Shannon," he confessed, "my idea of being a good father was to make sure you had a roof over your head and food to eat. It’s not that I didn’t love you—it’s just that I didn’t know how to fulfill your emotional needs."

I felt so convicted. I’d never considered the pain my dad carried around. So for the past decade, God’s been restoring my relationship with my father. That’s helped tremendously in keeping me emotionally faithful to my husband.

Did your sexual past ever cause a struggle in your marriage?

Yes. At one point early on I confronted Greg about what he didn’t do sexually that the men before him had. Greg told me in no uncertain terms, "Shannon, don’t ever compare me to a relationship you had no business being in." His words were a compassionate wake-up call: If I’d saved sex for marriage, I wouldn’t be having this issue. So I asked the Lord to deliver me from those sexual soul-ties and to keep me from ever again comparing Greg to other men, especially sexually.

My heart cry is, Lord, there are women all over this planet who need to know you, who need to be delivered from their sexual misdeeds and their emotional affairs. Without an intimate relationship with God, no earthly relationship will truly satisfy us. We need to get our emotional needs met first by God.

How can married and single women guard their hearts from temptation?
Be extremely vigilant. Set strong boundaries. For example, as a married woman, I now remove myself from a situation if I sense I’m getting too emotionally attached to someone other than my husband, or if he’s getting too attached to me. I have close female friends who hold me accountable. I keep short accounts with Greg. But I never make the mistake of thinking I’m exempt from temptation, because once something’s a weakness, it likely will always be a weakness.

Sexual temptation is the most common tool Satan uses against the body of Christ because sex is something we all naturally crave, whether we’re single or married. Statistics show the rates for sexual compromise in Christians are as high as they are for non-Christians. And the infidelity rate for women is as high as it is for men.

What’s the biggest struggle teens face today?

The concept that oral sex isn’t sex. Girls come to my Teen Mania class thinking they’re virgins because they haven’t had intercourse. The truth is, they’ve done everything else but. So I rain on their purity parade by talking about how oral sex and cyber sex are sex.

I tell youth groups, "Your sexuality isn’t what you do, it’s who you are. God’s as interested in your mental, emotional, and spiritual purity as in your physical purity."

Do your children know about your past?
Yes, they pretty much know everything, because I didn’t want them learning it through the grapevine. They know their dad saved sex for marriage and was so glad he did. They also know I made many mistakes as a teen I’ll always regret, but that God has redeemed those and forgiven me. We’ve been honest about our experiences.

Our kids need to know we’re willing to talk about sexual temptation. When I was 14, no one told me it was normal to start having sexual feelings. I thought something was physically wrong with me! Many teens who e-mail me say they think they’re all alone in this struggle. We’ve got to help our children understand every person battles this at some point in life.

That’s why I wrote Preparing Your Daughter for Every Woman’s Battle. My book contains the type of conversations I wished my mom had had with me. So does she. Parents have got to make conversations about sexual integrity a priority. That’s what we’ve done with Erin and Matthew.

Do you regret all you’ve gone through to learn these lessons?
I realize that in so many ways it was my ignorance that caused me to lose my innocence. I look at my daughter and I’m overwhelmed with joy and excitement about her future, because she’s never been abused and she has a wonderful relationship with Greg.

I’m thankful for what I’ve been through, because Romans 5:3-5 says "suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character, and character, hope." It’s created such an intense hunger for the Lord in me. And if I have to go through more to see Christ continue to work in and through my life, I’m willing.

For more information about Shannon Ethridge Ministries, go to www.ShannonEthridge.com.

Copyright © 2005 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today’s Christian Woman magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Today’s Christian Woman.
July/August 2005, Vol. 27, No. 4, Page 28

It had been a crazy June for me. Hopefully, July would not be as crazy but i’m not holding my breath.  The house needs cleaning, my room begs for organizing and the bathroom…well, the bathroom is out of order for everybodyelse except for me.  Such is the life of a single woman who has a two-bedroom apartment, a big enough kitchen and a lot of space for staring into.

I’m enjoying the last remnants of my "aloneness" for come August i’ll be sharing my flat with a friend.  It was a pleasant surprise to have bumped into her again through another sorority sister. My would-be flatmate was my recruit in the sorority back in the days when we were slugging it out in the "bootcamp" called law school.  We had a chance to be roomies too in a posh condotel that was quite a haven for us considering we were all just "parent-parasites" then.

Now, the independence is quite exhilirating bordering on "panic attacks" when the bills arrive like clockwork every month.  It would be good then to have a friend share the rent, and everythingelse that comes with apartment-living- lights, water, cable (and hopefully a phone line when i get around to having it connected).

Last night, i realized how "single" i was when i arrived from a tete-a-tete (tama ba?) with another friend and  felt some pangs of hunger as i was getting into my teddies.  I ransacked my kitchen and made do with what’s left of lastweek’s groceries- some white bread and a spread, some canned tuna and luscious tomatoes.  I had a delicious home-made sandwhich in a flash and enjoyed it with my favorite drink- coffee at 11 PM. It is no wonder then that i have become immune to the caffeine and can fall asleep at will (if i really have to).

But tonight i enjoyed my sandwhich with leisure. I had a small smile on my face as i contemplated on small blessings like these- food on the table, good cable tv and the pleasure of having my legs up on the chair as i licked my finger free of the drippings from my "wet" sandwhich.

Being alone is not always easy but it has its upside when one focuses on the good rather than on the bad.  I have learned the "art" of "silence" and to not be afraid of it.  I am getting to know myself more through the times i spent alone like this.

The past ten months though have also been spent with a very special man who came at a time when i was going through some dramatic changes in my life. Before he came along, i was recovering from the loss of my mother, and i was in between jobs and had been in between relationships for far too long.  I suppose i was a "fertile ground" for a new relationship considering that i was at a point where i truly wanted to "connect" with someone.  At 30, i supposed too, that i was no longer given to the follies of youth of rushing into "things" and acting on matters based on ardent stirrings.  He took a spot in my life with the gentleness of calm wind but with just enough fire from the summer time’s sun.  He gave me so much that it was so easy too to give of myself.

I suppose the past months of spending time together was meant by the Lord for us to know what His will is in our lives.  This man has become a good friend, even a confidante.  But perhaps the Lord has His way of letting me know of His plans with the same gentleness He has comforted me with during my mother’s passing.

Lately, we have discovered things about ourselves and about our relationship that made us realize we might be going towards differents paths.  We are at a cross-road and some choices has to be taken. We have not made any decisions yet as to which way to go, if we will stay on the path together or apart.  There are crucial decisions to be made and nobody wants to be hasty.  Meanwhile, at 31 and he at 35, we are both sure that we would be level-headed enough to make the right choices.  I am looking at my God for the answers, and slowly He is making His will known.

And so come August, perhaps things will be clearer.  And i look forward to having another living soul next door.  My "aloneness" is soon coming to an end… until the next roommate…