I can tell you that the person that most of my peers knew back then, was not fully who I was. What people saw was still definitely me… I mean, I wasn’t pretending… but it wasn’t ALL of me. There was much of me that I didn’t allow people to see because I didn’t think it was right. Meaning, I was literally ashamed of it. When you are raised in the church the way I was, you are taught that certain thoughts are just sinful, so you keep them secret. I shared these thoughts with God, but never anyone else. I had a true heart for God and I was brainwashed to believe that to make God happy and be a good Christian, I had to put those thoughts out of mind. However, no matter how hard I tried… and believe me, I really tried… I just couldn’t. So what I did was battle with myself day after day in my thoughts. And as a means of making sure I didn’t ever act on these thoughts, I overcompensated and acted the complete opposite because I was so afraid of messing up. But the fact is, those thoughts were always filling my head. Those thoughts were me, no matter how much I hated it.
And now for what all you gossip mongers that know me personally have been waiting for... I will tell you what those secret thoughts were.
First and foremost, doubts about my religion. I think I doubted every aspect about my religion at least once as a kid, except for one thing… I never EVER doubted that God would always provide for me and bless my life. I don’t know why I never doubted that about God, but I just didn’t. Pretty much everything else I questioned because as much as I had been conditioned from birth to believe it, most of it just didn’t make a whole lot of logical sense to me. But you’re taught from the pulpit that it’s about faith, not facts, and if you doubt and question, then you have no faith in God (which I think is ironic because I had, and still have, more real faith in my pinkie finger than most of my pastors have had in their lifetime). But faith in God isn’t what I was lacking. It was faith in my religion, faith in my pastors, and faith in a book. There were even a few things that I was taught that just blatantly went against my conscience, not to mention the fact that the majority of the people I grew up going to church with, I also went to school with or knew outside of church, and learned they were total hypocrites. But in spite of all that, I didn’t start actually asking questions until I was an adult and had gained more knowledge. In the meantime, I was very passionate about Christianity. I was very forward with it too. Everyone knew what I believed because I talked about it constantly. I was always reading and studying my Bible at school, witnessing to people, and even taught some of the lessons and devotions in the Christian club at school. Like I said, I over compensated.
The next thing I thought about the most was sex. Yes I said it. S-E-X. Big shocker I’m sure, since pretty much everyone knew I was a prude in high school. But I did think about sex. A lot actually. Come on, it’s human nature. Even toddlers are curious about why it feels good to touch their junk. And for someone like me, who was raised to believe that lustful thoughts were sinful, well… let’s just say that making something taboo makes you think about it even more. And I was afraid of what might happen if I acted on those thoughts, so I just decided one day that I wasn’t going to be sexually active until I got married, period. I only actually dated two guys in my life, one being my husband Sean. The other was my year long boyfriend when I was a sophomore in high school. He went to a different school, but we went to church together, and we were smitten with each other. We were each others’ first kiss. We use to come to church early to make out in dark hallways and empty bathrooms. It was super exciting and that was enough for me. Even though I thought about it regularly, I was never tempted to actually have sex. We were left alone for hours at a time at his house, went out alone all the time in his truck, and even parked to make out several times, so believe me the opportunity was there, yet it never went beyond kissing. You have my word on that. You would think that that would be enough to make me feel proud of myself, but it wasn’t. Every time I had a lustful thought or fantasy, I would feel super dirty and guilty afterward. I thought I was sinning and would go to God in prayer, begging for forgiveness for the impure thoughts. When Sean and I started dating, I already was in love with him. We were best friends and we had already talked about marriage before I became his girlfriend, so once we graduated from high school, there was no turning back for me. He was the one, and I was going to see that through. Since we had already decided on that and there was no doubt in my mind I was going to spend the rest of my life with him, sex became a temptation. Not at first, but eventually. We both remained virgins until marriage, but don’t think that there weren’t times when we took making out a little too far. We did… because we were in love, really truly in love, and it’s an awful feeling to love someone so much and want to give all of yourself to them, and can’t, so we let it go a couple steps too far sometimes. Then one of us would pull the reigns, and we would both feel so terrible, and we would sit and cry and pray together to ask God for forgiveness. Looking back on it, it was really pathetic actually.
After we got hitched, I just let it all hang out; as if somehow lustful thoughts were no longer sinful once I got married. Hey that’s pretty much what I was taught, so I was overjoyed to finally be married. I even put together a full fledged strip tease for Sean right after we got married. Got the whole outfit, those blue can lights, rock music and everything. Modesty went right out the window. Over the first few years of our marriage, my super slutty side slowly emerged. I remember my mom telling me during my engagement, “Don’t forget, men want a lady in public, but a whore in bed” and I learned to apply that. It wasn’t difficult because I was a closet whore basically all through high school. I just had a ton of self control.
There were other thoughts I struggled with and kept secret, but they are all closely related to either doubting my religion or restraining my sexuality, and, in fact, the sex and religion are very much connected because the main reason why I restrained myself to the extent that I did was because I believed it to be sinful.
Since those high school days of mental battling, I have come into different beliefs. Merely living life has taught me a great deal about these things. I was very ignorant back then, but now I know that some of what I did and why I did it was good, and some of it was totally ridiculous. But everything has a reason.
I don’t believe now that God was ever unhappy with me and Sean for giving into our desires for one another when we were engaged simply because we didn’t have a piece of paper from the state saying we were legally married. We had committed ourselves to each other long before we were getting all hot and bothered. Isn’t that what true marriage is? Making a commitment to God and each other? After all, how many couples do get legally married, but are no more committed to each other than a man in the moon, and end up divorced later? Is God ok with THEM having sex? See my point? So I believe you cannot make a blanket statement about sex before legal marriage being sinful. I believe it isn’t for anyone to judge. Only God knows the hearts and intentions of the individuals in question.
I look at that picture of myself from high school and I see someone so different, yet at the same time I realize that I am really the same. The person I am now is the person I suppose I have ALWAYS been. I just believed some of it to be wrong back then and so I squelched it, and now I don’t believe it was wrong; I just believe it was me being human. I acted in fanatical ways because I was ignorant and brainwashed, and it made my life so much more difficult than it had to be. I was brutal on myself as a teen, and it wasn’t necessary because I already was a good person. I had a good heart, clean character, and pure intentions. That has never changed about me.
I still have the same heart, but improved, because I have realized that life is supposed to be balanced. You aren’t supposed to go too far either way. Both opposite extremes in any situation are dysfunctional. It’s good to be a leader and not a follower, but sometimes you have to be willing to follow someone’s lead because playing the boss and never listening to others ideas won’t get you anywhere but alone and hated. You don’t want to flaunt your sexuality so much that you become a whore that men use, but you don’t want to be so prude and closed off that you turn every man who might be interested away.
And especially if you’re married, some women need to learn that it’s ok to be freaky in the bedroom. Don’t deny your husband (and yourself) some fun because you think something is dirty. Keep practicing whatever it is, and trust me, you can work through that until you like it. Don’t be afraid to experiment and try something different. If it makes you feel like a prostitute, GOOD! You will be surprised how good it feels to be a bad girl! As long as both of you are game and comfortable doing it, go for it! It’s no one else’s business what you do in private.
The same principle applies to everything else in life too. Everything from parenting to eating and exercising to spending and saving money to working and leisure, and every topic in between has to be met with balance. Everything should be in moderation and this takes wisdom.
Take me for example. I am a mom, and I have a mom side of me. I can be the disciplinarian when I need to be, and sometimes my children fear me, as they should when they have done something to deserve a spanking. Other times I am fun mom who is their mommy but also their friend, getting down on the floor and playing games with them and make believe, and taking them out for ice cream and to do fun stuff together. Still other times I am mom the encourager, who sometimes has to use tough love to get their butts in gear (they will thank me one day) and get in their faces and tell them to stop whining and pull themselves up because they can do anything they set their minds to. Then there is mom the comforter and nurturer who does nothing other than hold them and rock them and let them cry when they just need a good cry because they are exhausted or frustrated, and doctors their booboo when they fall off their bikes taking a turn too fast. I am all those things to my children and each one of them has to come out at the appropriate time. I have not been faced with this yet, but one day I will have to learn the balance between being my children’s defender and letting them fight their own fights. I want them to know that mom always has their back if they really need me, but that doesn’t always mean mom is going to fix things. They still have to learn to stand on their own feet and take care of themselves and experience the consequences to certain things, even if it isn’t their fault. That’s just life. I already know this is going to be a hard one for me to find the balance and wisdom in knowing when to fight for them, and when to stand back.
I am not perfect and my kids know this. I am still learning when to be which mom, and I believe they are rather patient with me, but I get better every day because I am trying to find the balance between them all. Some parents are too much one or the other and that’s not good because for every one that you go too far one way, you lack something else that your child still needs from you.
Most importantly, I am mommy, wife to daddy. I say this is most important because the kind of example I set as a wife, is what they will grow up believing is the way a wife is supposed to be. They don’t know everything about mine and Sean’s relationship because they are too young right now and don’t even know about the birds and the bees, but they do see me and Sean love on each other pretty often. Not graphic or anything but they know mommy and daddy are passionate for each other because they see that. They recognize that there is something distinctly different between my relationship with daddy and my relationship with other men, and they should. If they never saw us kiss and caress and hold each other, how would they know there is anything different and special that sets daddy apart from all the other male friends we have? We allow them to see us argue and fight sometimes because we want them to know that is part of a marriage, and they can’t ever see the example of making up and reconciling if they don’t ever see us fight in the first place. Some parents say kids feel insecure when they see their parents fight. I say it shows them reality. Why would you want your kids to grow up thinking husbands and wives never fight or argue? That belief will be detrimental to any relationship they try to have when they are older. But that is just my opinion. All kids are different and different things work best for different kids.
I am learning the balance between being mommy and wife. It’s a very difficult scale to balance, indeed. I want to give my kids my time and affection as often as I can, but I cannot forget that Sean needs that as well. Just because he isn’t a child who is dependent on me, doesn’t mean he doesn’t still need and deserve the best of me. He absolutely does, and sometimes I have to tell the kids “no” when they want to come sit between me and Sean on the couch or cut in when we are slow dancing to a song in the kitchen while the food is cooking. They get bent out of shape sometimes when we tell them to leave our room and shut the door and give mommy and daddy some privacy for just a few minutes. I used to feel bad and cater to that and leave Sean sitting there alone, when all he wanted was just a few minutes to kiss me passionately and touch me and be affectionate because he missed me all day. I realized it was wrong for me to do that, and so I’m learning to not care when the kids get booboo lipped about it. Sean deserves my attention too, and even though right now they get jealous and upset, one day they will be appreciative of the example that was set. One day they will look back on that and know without a doubt how much mommy loved daddy, and THAT will make them feel secure. I realized a long time ago, when I was watching MY parents’ example of marriage, that I could not neglect my relationship with Sean to be a mommy. My parents constantly worked on their relationship and renewed the love and passion between them, and sometimes that meant we had a baby sitter so they could go out on dates. Sometimes that meant locking us out of their room and telling us to leave them alone for awhile. I remember my mom telling me, “One day your kids will grow up and leave your home and they won’t need you anymore. The last thing you want when that happens is to look across the dinner table at a man that is practically a stranger because you were so consumed with your children that you neglected the most important relationship in the home. Your kids are passing through, but your spouse is till death do you part.” I never forgot that.
I have several more sides still; modes, if you will. I am a wife, completely separate from motherhood. I am my husband’s lover and companion. When the kids go to bed for the night, and no more sounds are heard from their room, mommy mode completely shuts off. I cater strictly to the needs and desires of my husband. I can stop censoring myself and be frank after that. I can have an adult conversation, sometimes about graphic things. My personality is completely altered. Sometimes, many times, I go into whore mode (yay!) and let my hair down and let loose. We walk around naked and no one can say anything because it’s just us. I look forward to those hours every evening.
And then there is the funnest and funniest me… default mode. That’s the part of me that is separate from any title, duty or responsibility. Just ME. Pure raw ME. The part of me that I’m allowed to be in the company of friends and family when no kids are around. Sometimes I’m serious, sometimes I’m goofy, but I don’t have to censor myself or be responsible for anyone. I can have a drink or two, get a nice buzz, tell some crude jokes, have some laughs and just not worry about anything.
I feel like I have several different personalities for several different situations, and they are all me. I just access the one I need at the appropriate time. Sometimes it’s like I’m living a double life. The me that you would see when I am with my kids is a totally different me than the one you would see out at a club with some friends or out on a date with Sean. I love my children, and I will be what they need me to be, but they do not define me. I am still just Lana, apart from being a mom and wife. I am just me with my own passions, convictions, beliefs, thoughts, hopes and dreams. They each have their place and time. And one day when my kids are grown and pursuing the lives they want, I hope they look back at my example and know that it IS possible to change yourself enough to grow and become balanced while still remaining true to self. Those seem like opposing ideas, but once again, the truth is in the middle. Balance.
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