Are you checking the right boxes?
By Kathy and Tim Bush, its founders War Room Ministries M
After almost three decades of checking the wrong boxes – lies, assumptions, secrets – and after over a decade of checking the right ones – prayer, faith, trust – marriage, sex and all, it’s really fun. Here’s how we got there.
HARD PRINCIPLES, WRONG ATTITUDES
Kathy: I came to the wedding broken and broken. Being molested as a child led me to have many friends and unhealthy sexual relationships. I knew it was wrong, but I saw it as a way to be loved. I was very shy and this lifestyle, as bad as it was, required a kind of courage that I didn’t have. I turned to alcohol, which gave me the courage to come out of my shell. Even at 16, two pregnancy scares didn’t stop me from using alcohol to numb my senses to find love. It seemed the only way to cope.
Price: Like Kath, I came to the wedding broken. Adopted by my grandparents, I got most of my advice from my grandpa – my pop. He shared that success and hard work was the way to have “relationships” with women. Even in our morning dinner table conversations, he encouraged me to “sow my wild oats.” He said that being involved with multiple women would help me because when I got married I would be “stuck” with just one. This man, whom I trusted like no other, was my model of manhood. Of course, he gave me the best advice he knew, and I followed it, but he was wrong. It took me over three decades to overcome the damage and I couldn’t do it alone.
HIGH HOPE, WRONG BOX
Kathy: We were both looking for husbands to fix ourselves up. When I went looking for a husband to take care of my needs, Tim checked all the boxes. He was the first man I ever officially dated – a “real man”;
This relationship started like everyone else did — first the alcohol, then the first date sex — but it was different. I fell in love hard. With Tim, premarital sex became easy, even without alcohol, and this time, the fear of pregnancy became a reality, just five months and five days after our first date. We both wanted to do the ‘right thing’ so we got married and had our first child just seven months later.
Price: I had my own boxes to check for the woman I was going to “hook up with”:
-
🗹 Kath was a “churchy” girl from a “churchy” family.
-
🗹 She was extremely presentable.
-
🗹 He could take care of all my sexual and personal needs.
When Kath said she was pregnant, I had my heart set on giving this child a last name. Four years ago, in a different relationship, I had made a choice that would come back to haunt me decades later, and I wouldn’t do it again.
DEEP REGRETS, OLD HABITS
Kathy: On our wedding night, I felt physically uncomfortable, knowing that Tim had high sexual expectations. I believed that “good sex” was something I owed Tim for marrying me and it didn’t stop that night. He continued many years in marriage. Especially when it came to sex, I had no voice, no self-esteem to talk about it, and I certainly didn’t have the faith to believe that Tim would listen even if I did. In my mind, sex was only about him. Looking to fill a void, I walked out of marriage many times to find love and be heard, yet all of these relationships left me feeling empty. What was I missing?
Price: On our wedding night, I knew I had made a mistake. Convinced that everything I thought Kath could be was just in my head, I found that sex in particular was a major disappointment. Any thoughts I had of giving up my “seed of wild oats” after marriage just disappeared and my old habits returned right away. I loved Kath, but I thought she just wasn’t equipped to give me the love I so desperately needed, so I started looking for her. The journey that started in my broken childhood lasted until I was 47. When the scale fell from my sight at the end of it, I found the answer that had been right in front of me all along.
NEW KNOWLEDGE, RIGHT BOXES
Kathy & Tim: A series of events, years in the making, led us both to the end of ourselves… and straight to Jesus. When we have given Him every aspect of our lives, and we mean it each side, the result was a radically transformed life together. The marriage took place us marriage and sex became different. We went on a FamilyLife weekend to remember and really talked about sex for the first time. Here’s what we didn’t know before:
-
We didn’t know that Jesus designed sex as a gift for married couples.
-
Little did we know that it gave HIM pleasure to honor Him in the bedroom with sex.
-
Little did we know that we are gifts to each other and from HIM.
We’ve been selfish for so many years, especially in the bedroom. Now we know that because Jesus designed sex and gave it to us, selfishness can have no part in it. After four decades of marriage, we are still growing in all areas, including sexually. We treat each other as a gift, so from time to time we ask each other if we are checking the right boxes, according to Ephesians 5:33:
🗹 Price: “Kath, how am I doing in the ‘Loving you’ department?”
Give me one thing I can do to make you feel more loved.
🗹 Kathy: “Tim, how am I doing in the ‘respect you’ department?”
Give me one thing I can do to make you feel more respected.
Try these intimate questions as a couple. They lead to communication that builds deeper trust, which, while we can’t guarantee it, usually leads to more…and better…sex. For more than a decade, our marriage, with Jesus at the center, sex and all, was real fun, and has shown us how amazing and charismatic he is. our book, Sex on the first date, details our journey of forgiveness and healing. It also has tools to help you wherever you are in your marriage.
Our prayer for you is that you will learn to check the right boxes.
