For the men…

Let’s start with a simple truth: You were made for intimacy¹.

What does it mean to be intimate? A dictionary will give you several definitions: close personal relations, very private, warmly cozy, detailed, deep, inmost, characteristic of the inmost or essential nature, et cetera. In its most basic sense intimacy means to have union - oneness - with another being. Intimacy means to know and be known. Intimacy means to show and be shown. To touch and be touched. To love and be loved. To trust and be trusted.

Is intimacy sex? YES, but not only.

Is intimacy secrets? YES, but much more.

Is intimacy laughter? YES, but with joy and not phony.

Is intimacy love? YES, but it’s the action, not the feeling.

We have to look only as far as our senses to be sure of the purpose in our design. Of course, our senses serve such practical purposes for our survival that they could be said to have come about from a purely evolutionary process, that their selection was simply natural, but that doesn’t explain the emotion, the beauty, the power that’s in them. Touch is an excellent tool for awareness and manipulation of the world around us, but to touch another person - to be touched by a woman - there is real power in that kind of touch. Hearing is another amazingly practical sense to have in a biological/survival sense. Our ears give us an incredible 360° of cognizance. But when it comes to being human, it’s the beauty of sound that distinguishes us from other animals. The sound of voices, music, and laughter bring us together. A gentle whisper brings us close; makes us feel comfort, safety, and joy. Communication affirms my existence and confirms that I’m not alone.

Sight, well, sight deserves its own paragraph. The wondrous beauty of creation is sometimes more than my eyes can handle. I can surf NASA.com, clicking through pictures of the heavens for hours. Seeing conveys more information between people than all the other senses combined. The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” is very near an understatement. The feeling that accompanies the sight of beauty is almost indescribable. Awe; an unfathomable glow; a deep vibration of the heart strings; these are meager attempts to describe the emotions that accompany beauty. At times it feels like my heart is just going to swell right up and burst out of my chest!

The sight of a woman… if sight deserves its own paragraph, the sight of a woman deserves its own book! John Eldridge uses a little artistic license in quoting William Blake’s poem Proverbs of Hell and describes it thusly:

The naked woman’s body is a portion of eternity too great for the eye of man.

And right he is. It is no wonder that pornography holds such power over men. The beauty of the woman was created for man’s eye. She was made last of all creation and made with one specific purpose: to be the companion of man. Pornography gives men easy access to the glorious beauty of the female form with none of the associated cost. But the cost is what brings the intimacy! The price is in the devotion, the trust, the security of a commitment that goes beyond sentimentality; these things create the connection. These things create the intimacy that we were made for. There is a certain piece of logic that we, as consumers, know all too well: You can’t trust something that comes cheap. Yet we fail to see its connection to the world of relationships. I’d be a fool to buy a car for $100 and expect it to crank on a cold winter’s morning. Just the same, I’d be a fool to trust a woman who gives her most intimate physical essence away without a commitment. Aren’t you much more apt to protect and care for those things that cost you dearly? You wouldn’t leave your 50″ plasma TV out in the rain and your less likely to take your wife for granted if you had to fight for her love!

It’s that fight that makes us men. Men struggle, men sacrifice, men commit and only then comes intimacy. Boys give up, boys take, boys use women like toys then toss them aside when a newer version comes along. Boys desperately want intimacy but are unwilling to give it, to sacrifice for it, to surrender to it. That’s what love is, that’s what trust is, that is what intimacy is; surrender. To become intimate, to become that which we were made for we have to surrender our most precious secrets, our weakness, our dreams, our lives. We have to say “Here I am. No pretense. No masks. No make-believe worth. This is not where I work, this is not where I live, this is not my car, or my wallet, or my friends, this is what I am and I surrender it to you. I trust you with it.”

That is intimacy.

That is written on hearts like stereo instructions.

That is what we are all striving to achieve, no matter how round-about our methods.

That is what we were made for.

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¹Genesis 1:18-25, John 17:11