Intimacy.
'Being intimate' is often used as a rather demure code phrase for making love. But deepest intimacy involves so much more than bodies intertwined in the most all-encompassing passionate abandonment.
For truest intimacy invites, even subtly demands, a connection that's far deeper, wider, and stronger than the sexual could ever be.
Intimacy begs a soul level intersection, a course of continual interactions, a gently compelling dance, a powerful flow that leaves its mark at the deepest parts of who we are. It comes to call in the depth of relationship where all bets are off, where we are most free to be fully authentically alive, without thought to filters or shoulds, inhibitions or propriety.
To be truly intimate with another soul invites a freedom that many desire, but few encounter, this the bonding of two hearts that soar united, strengthened, enabled to be the best they could ever hope to be this side of heaven.
This level of intimacy, this sacred dance, impacts a marriage at its core.
Henri Nouwen described it best ...
Intimacy between people requires closeness as well as distance. It is like dancing. Sometimes we are very close, touching each other or holding each other; sometimes we move away from each other and let the space between us become an area where we can freely move.
To keep the right balance between closeness and distance requires hard work, especially since the needs of the partners may be quite different at a given moment. One might desire closeness while the other wants distance. One might want to be held while the other looks for independence. A perfect balance seldom occurs, but the honest and open search for that balance can give birth to a beautiful dance, worthy to behold.
Along the way, marriage's exquisite gift of sexual expression can morph and change for a whole host of reasons. Medication's side effects, aging, disability, crisis, illness, childhood abuse, menopause, or physical absence can alter how spouses respond to one another in physical intimacy, a fact of life that most couples will have to grapple with {and yes, oh-so-gently, sensitively navigate} sooner or later.
But that doesn't mean the party's over.
For we are able to choose to cultivate an even truer intimacy, a sacred companionship that has the ability to bond spouses together at an unforeseen level, impacting every aspect of their life together.
This deeply spiritual exchange of soul love can offer the greatest of delights and the deepest of satisfactions to marriage. It can strengthen the core of a couple's identity and provide a sense of safety, security, and belonging.
Yet, the most lasting of intimacies ultimately begins in one's own individual heart.
This occurs as we choose to cultivate our own personal relationship with God, coming to the Lover of our souls just as we are, no holds barred. Slowly, we learn to be totally ourselves and completely abandoned in His presence, knowing that His love for us is endless and nurturing, powerful and life changing.
We learn to feel safe as He warmly cradles us in His arms of grace. As we drink in more and more of who He is, we revel and rejoice in that sacred loving care that satiates our endless neediness and heals our gaping woundedness.
As we continue on this satisfying pathway of awesome connection to our Heavenly Savior, the way we live our lives changes.
Radically.
Our spiritual wells overflow with living water that's compelling to all who find themselves within its reach and we become life-giving streams, swept along by His constant nurturance, His steady grace.
And it's from that extraordinary place that we are able to offer the gift of deepest intimacy to our spouses.
For we don't come desperately needy or overwhelmingly incomplete anymore because we've experienced what it's like to be loved thoroughly, like we always longed for, at a miraculously subterranean level that no human being could ever touch. Sweetly, continually, fully, satisfyingly loved.
The more head-over-heels in love we are with a Holy God, the more peacefully comfortable we become in our own skin. And that serene beauty can't help but be noticed by the one we pledged our earthly 'for better, for worse' to. And living out our own joyful miracle can only invite them, too, into a haven of greater intimacy with God.
And, yes, with us.
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