Last Sunday, the Catholic Daughter's handed out white ribbons at our parish to remind us to pray for an end to pornography. I recently moved to a small city in West Virginia. The Mountaineer State has defined "always free" to mean that no zoning laws should exist in town. That means an Adult Book Store sits happily on Main Street. How I hate that bookstore!
When the White Ribbon campaign was announced, I had a clear image of my activism. I was going to sit outside the bookstore, with my five kids, and have some kind of vivid sign saying "Pornography Hurts Women, Pray For It To Leave Main Street." I was going to pass out white ribbons and pray the rosary. I even pictured myself going in there--St. John Vianney style and telling the bookstore owners, "So what are your true job goals, because I'm praying for you to get out-of-here fast!" (Didn't St. J. V. help the tavern owners land on their feet after he shut them down in his town?)
So when I ran into a fellow Catholic Daughter passing out White Ribbons at my tiny mission church on Sunday, I first felt guilt. All of those big plans came to naught. It was already White Ribbon day and I hadn't even signed up to pass out ribbons to my own church!
Yet God is really good! He's constantly reminding me that rather than becoming a grand social agent outside my home, His wants me to become an even more effective agent of change inside my home.
So here is my challenge to all you precious married women readers of my blog. Our husbands love us, and they love our bodies. Men have a gift to truly see the "embodied soul" in their wives. A loving husband's gaze on his wife is truly the antidote to sinful, lustful, pornography in our culture. It's a gaze that heals.
I didn't know until I started sobbing because I now have two c-section scars instead of one--that child birth really changes my perception of my body. I think that after 5 kids, I'd get "over it." But it's still there. Miscarriage makes you hate/fear your body. Infertility does too.
We need our husbands to love us. We need to be vulnerable and let God heal that "body issue" wound in us.
So that is my challenge. Husbands, Be the gaze that heals. Wives, Let yourselves be seen and loved.
There 's a Song of Songs relationship waiting for each of us, on earth and in heaven.
