Naked & Unashamed
Recently, while doing a Bible study with a younger lady on the topic of marriage and loving your husband, we studied the topic of being naked and unashamed with our spouse. She asked, “Is that even possible? Can you really be naked and unashamed?”
How do we enter into this unashamed nakedness with our spouse after we have been betrayed? I don’t mean the physical unashamed as we compare ourselves to the one he’s been with or the impossible images he has viewed online, but an emotional nakedness where we can open our hearts to trust again.
Any man who has been stuck in the shame of a sexual addiction at whatever level, whether it be lust, porn, or physically acting out, knows the deep shame and worthlessness that accompanies it. A woman married to this man knows the betrayal and the “not enoughness” that pierces to the depths of her soul.
Over the years, sexual misconduct at varying levels has threatened to destroy both my marriage and my husband’s life on more than one occasion. Yes, more than once. By all worldly wisdom, I should have left him years ago. It is only by God’s grace that I have learned to love, forgive and yes, even begin to understand this man and how his way of managing his own pain led him to betray me and wound the hearts of the children we both love.
I’m not going to say the journey to forgiveness, hope, and healing has been easy, as a matter of fact, it has threatened to spiral me into dark places as well. I can say, however, God can bring beauty from ashes and the broken places of your life.
Before Adam and Eve sinned in the garden they were in perfect unity with one another, “naked and unashamed.” After they chose to act upon the desires of their flesh, they began hiding…hiding and blaming each other for their sins and hiding from God. This is the state all of mankind has been in since, ashamed and hiding.
God sent Jesus into the world to give us a pathway to forgiveness. Not only that, by that pathway to forgiveness,
He wants to lead us out of shame and hiding into a place where our sin is exposed and satan can no longer accuse us with it.
A place where we can find the freedom to be loved and to love one another. When God came to Adam and Eve and saw their shame it was God who covered their shame. He is still providing a covering for our shame today, but we have to accept His covering for it.
How do we do that when our hearts are broken, when our dreams have been devastated, and we feel like we have lost hold of a hope for anything better? Maybe we should just throw in the towel? Start over with someone new?
Statistics indicate that somewhere between 60 and 70% of even churched men struggle with pornography to some degree or another.
If that is true, then starting over with someone new doesn’t offer much more assurance of safety. Maybe not all men are like this, but the men we have been encountering who are trapped in the cycle of sexual addiction are good men.
They are not men with evil intent. They are good husbands, good dads, good providers, and they love Jesus and desire to be free from their bondage.
I know this seems easy for me to say because I am on the other side of the intense pain in my heart, but my heart hurts for these men who don’t feel that they can come out of hiding and even share with their wives their struggle out of fear that she would think him to be a monster or even worse, leave him. My husband hid a secret from me for years, convinced if I knew this dark secret, I would leave him. Every wonderful time we had and the joys we were sharing in our marriage were overshadowed by this hidden secret and the lie, “If she only knew, this would all be gone.” I cannot even begin to know what that kind of fear would be like, to wake up every morning believing that I am one truth away from losing it all, from losing everything I hold dear to my heart.
Just like me, though, there are many women who have said they would never be able to forgive unfaithfulness. We have judged the husband whose wife caught him viewing pornography. We have praised our husband for not being “one of them.”
Little did we know how those little comments were locking our husbands into a place of dark shame.
We have not left the door open for our husband to confess his sins to us and so be freed from the trap of it. It is the truth that sets us free. A man cannot be set free and quit hiding if he is unable to confess his sin, and if he is unable to confess his sin, he is hiding from us and worse, God. He is hiding in the bushes naked and ashamed.
If you are in the throes of this revelation, just discovering that your man has been unfaithful to you on some level, his shame probably doesn’t matter to you yet. You might even be saying, “Good! You deserve it!”
But there is nothing more joyous than living with a man who has moved out of shame into freedom, is no longer hiding any dark secret, and has received the grace of God in his life.
He has become a man who is being loved by God and is sharing that love with the people he meets, whose passion is no longer to live for himself but to live for the one who died for him.
It is ok if you are not anywhere near this goal. I hope that as you journey with God through this difficult time in your life, that you will open your heart to the possibilities that are ahead that not only can you forgive, but that God can do a miraculous work in your husband’s life as well as yours, and you can enter a depth in your relationship that you never dreamed possible. As we surrender to Him, He can turn our mourning into dancing, “naked and unashamed.”