Hot Tip #71 – Get Financial Peace! – Part 2

As mentioned in the last Hot Tip, the most difficult season of our marriage (which also wreeked havoc on our marriage bed) was in 2008. At the time, Greg was a stay at home dad because I had grown so busy with all of the writing and speaking I’d been doing that we wanted to make sure at least one of us was available to our two children whenever needed. We both volunteered for this “role reversal,” but this meant I was feeling the burden of responsibility of being the sole breadwinner, at least temporarily. And boy, did I develop a new appreciation for men who carry that burden their whole lives just so their wives can stay home with the children! If you’re one of those women, GO HUG YOUR MAN RIGHT NOW!!!

When the economy went sour in 2008, most authors’ book sales went sour with it. Books are like Starbuck’s lattes… they’re an optional purchase that get carved out of the budget when folks have to tighten their belts. (and yes, Starbuck’s stock plummeted that year as well.)

So my income dropped by 50% from one royalty check to the other, and then six months later when the next check came it dropped by another 50%. If I told you that I’m going to cut your salary in HALF within six months, and then in HALF AGAIN in the next six months, you’d probably look for another job, huh?

But this ministry is my baby, so that wasn’t an option.

So we had to learn to drastically tighten our financial belts as well… and as a result, our sexual belts received some much-needed slack. Once we got a black-and-white game plan going strong, we were able to relax, exhale, and not spend our evening hours bickering over finances or worrying how we were going to manage. We were able to focus on loving and pleasuring each other again, which is what those bedtime hours are supposed to be all about!

In addition to cutting up our credit cards and establishing a “cash only” system for all purchases as I mentioned in the last Hot Tip, we also took Dave Ramsey’s advice and followed the first three baby steps of his “Seven Tip Plan for Financial Peace.”

First, we established a dedicated Emergency Fund, which is baby step #1. No more panicking when a car broke down or a refrigerator died. Some household expenses simply can’t be avoided, and to have to put stuff like that on a credit card and wonder how/when you’ll be able to pay that off created far more stress on the budget (and us) than necessary. We began with the minimum $1,000, and let it grow from there until we accumulated the 3-6 months of living expenses that Dave recommends in baby step #3. Now we can absorb expensive household emergencies with nothing more than a shrug and an “Oh, well. That’s life!” Even if Greg lost his job, or one of us was too injured to work for a while, or my royalty stream dried up even more, or I didn’t have a lot of speaking events on the calendar, we wouldn’t have to panic financially. Feels good. Feels VERY good.

Baby step #2 was to pay off ALL debt except our house. This wasn’t too terribly difficult for us because we never let credit card balances build up anyway, and we don’t mind driving moderate vehicles that we pay cash for so as to avoid car payments altogether. Our most recent car purchase earlier this year was a very nice 2004 Honda Accord with 120,000 miles (just getting broken in for a Honda) that we found for $11,000. Do you know how fantastic it feels to be able to write a check for a car and drive it off the lot with NO car payment looming over you? My daughter had a similar experience this year when a woman hit her and totaled her Scion. As she shopped for a replacement car, she was very determined NOT to spend more than the insurance company check she had in her hand, and after some shrewd negotiations she drove a 2005 Jetta of the lot for $10,000 cash and NO additional payments. That kind of financial freedom is absolutely priceless!

I guess to really understand the value of paying cash vs. carrying a loan on something, you have to understand interest rates. If you were to buy a $15,000 car with cash, you’d pay $15,000. But to finance that car for 4 years at 10% interest, your payments would be $380.44. Multiply that monthly payment times 48 months, and now you paid $18,261.12 for that car! Another scenario is what we do to ourselves when we go on a credit card shopping spree. Let’s say you charge $1,000 of clothes or household items to your credit card, and make a payment of $36.15 each month. Not only will it take you 3 years to pay that off, you’ll have paid 30% more for the merchandise considering the standard 18% interest rate most credit card companies charge. In fact, most companies require you only to pay such a LOW monthly payment, that you wind up accumulating interest faster than you reduce your balance, so you just keep getting deeper and deeper in debt, without even buying anything else at all!

So do yourself and your marriage a BIG favor! Cut those credit cards up, begin paying off all of your balances, establish a budget and a “cash only” system, and begin to SAVE rather than SPEND! Create some wiggle room in your life so that you can spend far less energy worrying about money, and spend far more energy investing in each other!

Wishing you tremendous financial peace,

Shannon Ethridge, M.A.
Author and Advocate for Healthy Sexuality & Spirituality
www.shannonethridge.com
www.sexuallyconfidentwife.com

In an attempt to keep the Advent Season sacred, I’ll be taking the month of December off of blogging.

In the interim I’ll be sharing with you how Dave Ramsey saved our marriage and helped US find Financial Peace!

I’ll reconnect with you in January with some really EXCITING news!  (and no, I’m not pregnant!)

Hot Tip #70 – Get Financial Peace!

In previous Hot Tips I’ve talked about buying what makes you feel sexy (in reference to lingerie and most recently a pair of Target sandals that I affectionately call my “Heidi Klum shoes“). While it doesn’t hurt to spend a little money on yourself on occasion, and investing in your sexual relationship can reap tons of long-term interest in your marriage, today I want to take you in the opposite direction – toward saving instead of spending!

You might wonder, “What’s that got to do with sexual confidence?”

When I think back to the most sexually “dry” spell in our entire 21 years of marriage, I was surprised at what I realized. It wasn’t when we had little babies waking us up for feedings throughout the night… it wasn’t when I was going through six months of intense counseling to get to the root causes of so many of my issues… it was in 2008-2009 when the bottom dropped out of the economy and reeked havoc on many marriages, including mine.

I remember waiting until bedtime after the kids were out of earshot to begin asking questions of my C.P.A. husband, trying to develop survival strategies after he had no more fuel left in his mental gas tank. What did this do to our libido? It killed it completely. What did this do to our sleep? Threw a wrench into it. (Suggestion #1 – Talk about financial matters long before bedtime! The bedroom is for sex & sleep, not stress!)

What did all of this do to our marriage? Made it rocky for a while, until we took Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University course at our church, which allowed us to transition from “stress” to “strength.” I’ve said many times, “Dave Ramsey saved our marriage.”

Since the economic crisis continues to loom large, my guess is that a lack of financial peace is still negatively affecting many couples’ marriages, including their marriage bed. So in the next few Hot Tips I want to share with you some of the things we did – some small, some BIG – to turn our financial picture around and bring peace back into our lives, marriage, and bedroom.

The first big adjustment we made is that we drastically changed the way we made all purchases. We used to put everything on a credit card because (a) we liked getting frequent flyer miles for every dollar spent, and (b) it allowed Greg to easily track every place our money went. However, we learned that there’s a dangerous mentality to swiping that credit card at every checkout stand, a mentality that says, “I’m not having to pay for this now… I’ll be able to pay for it later.” Which usually means you spend more. LOTS more. So even if you’re paying the balance off every month to avoid interest charges, you’re still spending more than you really need to.

But when you’re handing over hard cold cash, there’s more of a feeling of “stinginess.” We don’t want to let go of cash so easily. So we limit our purchases to the absolute necessities, allowing us to hold on to more of our cash. And this is a GREAT mentality to have!

So we got rid of every credit card except one that we use for business expenses, and one that we use for emergencies only. I purchased a special wallet that had an “envelope system” (available at www.daveramsey.com, or just make your own!) which allows you to set certain amounts of cash aside for certain monthly purchases. We sat down and established a set budget for things like groceries, clothing, dining out, household expenses, kids’ allowances, gifts, etc. At the beginning of every month, we’d take out ONLY as much cash as needed to replenish those envelopes.

The most important rule was: Once that money is gone, we stop spending! If we ran out of “dining out” money before the end of the month, we didn’t eat out until the following month. If we ran out of “grocery” money before the end of the month, I either had to borrow it from one of the other envelopes (like the “clothing” envelope) or I’d have to rummage through the deep freeze to put meals together (which I needed to do more often anyway).

Even taking just this first baby step brought tons of relief to our relationship. And in the coming Hot Tips, I’ll tell you how we’ve gone from just “relief” to “REJOICING” by establishing even more financial peace in our lives! So stay tuned…

Wishing YOU financial peace as well,

Shannon Ethridge, M.A.
Author and Advocate for Healthy Sexuality & Spirituality
www.shannonethridge.com
www.sexuallyconfidentwife.com

As a life coach, I’m often contacted by wives in distress.  They’re seeking help for their dysfunctional marriage relationship, but they’re only bringing me half of the problem.  It takes TWO to tango… two to step on each other’s toes… and two to work things out.  Yet so often she explains, “My husband says he won’t see a counselor.”

WHY are men so unwilling to engage in any sort of outside therapeutic relationship when needed, even though they say they have every intention of staying married?

There could be lots of reasons for his hesitation, such as personal pride, the assumption that the problem is all her’s, fear of feeling “exposed,” the assumption that counselors are only for “sick” or “crazy” people, etc.

But I think most often, it boils down to one main thing.  In a man’s mind, being married and being emotionally available are often two SEPARATE things.  In a woman’s mind, the two are inseparable.  Thus the saying, “Men are waffles and women are spaghetti.”  By nature, men compartmentalize things in their mind and don’t let things overlap (such as the square pockets in a waffle), and women allow everything to blend together (such as spaghetti noodles on a plate).

Case in point:  A husband who looks at pornography will sometimes feel like “this has nothing to do with our marriage!  This is a completely separate thing!” whereas the wife more often feels like “this has everything to do with our marriage!  How can you think I wouldn’t be devastated by this?”

As a wife, you might not want to wait until strife and tension surface to inquire about your husband’s emotional commitment to you and to working out whatever issues may arise in the future.  For example, consider this excerpt from AOL.com Living:

Sure you may have a marriage commitment from your man, but do you have an emotional commitment? Emotional commitments are promises you and your partner make to one another about how you each plan to grow as an individual and as a couple. They are things you should talk about over and over again before you even get engaged. Here’s a list of the five basic emotional commitments:

• He is committed to learning everything he can about you.
• He is committed to always trying to be a better mate by actively working on improving himself and getting rid of any unhealthy emotional habits.
• He is committed to working hard to express his love through words and through affection, and to fulfill your needs.
• He is committed to doing whatever it takes to make your relationship work. He will work on problems by discussing them, and using books, tapes, counseling, or any other tools available to help your marriage.
• He is committed to staying emotionally open in your relationship. He will communicate his feelings to you, let you know what’s going on inside of him, and reach out, rather than push you away.

This type of understanding between the two of you when things are going well can make getting the help you need much easier when things aren’t going so well.  I’m sure most counselors and coaches agree with what I experience in my practice – that healing and relational success come much more quickly (an inexpensively) when BOTH husband and wife are fully involved in the process.

I’m sure you’ve seen the magazines at the grocery store checkout counter and wondered the same thing I have — What is it with Kim Kardashian pulling the plug on marriage SO quickly?

While we can only speculate, this current event inspired one of my BLAST participants, Rebecca Larson, to pen the following blog post.  Thanks, Rebecca, for sharing your insightful words of encouragement for all of us gals, both married and single!

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Kim Kardashian posted a note to her fans today on her website and it struck a chord with me.

… First and foremost I married for love. I can’t believe I even have to defend this…Everyone knows I am a hopeless romantic! I love with all of my heart and soul. I want a family and babies and a real life so badly that maybe I rushed into something too soon. I believe in love and the dream of what I wanted so badly. I felt like I was on a fast roller coaster and couldn’t get off when now I know I probably should have. I got caught up in the hoopla and the filming of the TV show that when I probably should have ended my relationship, I didn’t know how to and I didn’t want to disappoint a lot of people… I’m being honest here and I hope you respect my courage because this isn’t ready to go through. But I do know that I have to follow my heart. I never had the intention of hurting anybody and I accept full responsibility for my actions and decisions, and for taking everyone on this journey with me. It just didn’t turn out to be the fairy tale I had so badly hoped for… I’m sorry if I hurt anyone, but my dad always told me to follow my heart and I believe now that I really am.

I do not have first hand experience with what she said, but my husband does, so I wanted to share a little bit about his story.

Back in 2002, my husband thought he had found the girl of his dreams. Physically, she was everything he had ever wanted. Emotionally, they clicked. Spiritually, she was a beautiful reflection of Christ and His love. So, a couple months after entering into a relationship with her, my husband asked his dream girl to marry him. She said yes and they spent a little over a year planning an extravagant and fairy tale like wedding.

Just three months after pledging to spend their lives together, my husband was devastated by his bride’s decision to leave the marriage. He begged and pleaded, offered to go to counseling and even got desperate and dramatic, but her mind was made up. She had to “follow her heart.” She gave a lot of different reasons to my husband and her friends and acquaintances, but in the end, I believe it was just as Kim said. You get caught up and then can’t find a way to end it.

Almost all little girls dream about our wedding day. We think about the dress we will wear and the flowers we will hold. We imagine the perfect man waiting for us at the altar, but, in our imaginations, we rarely go beyond that special moment. We don’t dream about blending our life with the life of another human being. We don’t fantasize about morning breath or toe nail clippings. We love the idea of being swept off of our feet but do we love the idea of truly doing life with another person day in and day out?

My husband told me a thousand times while we were engaged, “plan for the marriage, not just the wedding.” He had learned his lesson and was wiser for it. His heart ached for a long time. He felt duped by the girl of his dreams (who turned out to be anything but) and forsaken by the God that he served faithfully. However, when I met my husband in the summer of 2006 (two years after dream girl left), he was a strong man who had been refined by the fire and understood what it meant to pledge forever.

We have to slow things down. We have to be prayerful about all things; especially huge, life altering decisions like marriage. We can’t give up easily. We have to know what kind of commitment we are making and stick to it. Trust me, you will be blessed.

We live in a society that stresses fierce independence and dogged self absorption, but that won’t get us anywhere. Love cannot be displayed, given or received in a world full of people who only care about themselves. “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) Sometimes following our hearts, as much as we think it will make us feel better, is absolutely the wrong thing to do; especially when we have hardened our hearts to God’s loving regulations for our lives.

Divorce, in this situation (in the absence of marital unfaithfulness or any sort of abuse), is sin. There are consequences for sin. Ask dream girl. I don’t know her personally, but we have mutual friends and I know that it was a long road toward restoration and wholeness for her. God loves his children and just as a human parent disciplines their own child, so does God. Revelation 3:19a says “Those whom I love, I rebuke and discipline.” Not everything that is good for us, whether it is being disciplined or sticking it out and working very hard to make a relationship work, is pain free, pleasant and enjoyable. In fact, I would go as far to say that the things in my life that have been the most painful, unpleasant and unenjoyable are the same things that have made me into all of the good things that I am today. (Check out Hebrews 12)

My heart is broken over this news about Kim Kardashian. Anytime a heart is broken and a marriage is ended, it is sad. It is hard to imagine that kind of pain. But you know what? My God is a God of love, forgiveness and restoration. God loves Kim K. and His heart is aching right along with hers.

He loves you as well! In all of your struggles and sin and bad decisions and heartache, He longs for restoration for you. He wants a relationship with you. He wants to love you like you’ve never been loved before.

If you are struggling right now; if you feel like you have made a mistake and simply got caught up in the loveliness of an idea, know that if you follow Him, He can make it work. If you are currently on that roller coaster and feel like it is too late to get off (engaged and not yet married), know that it is not too late. Slow down and plan for your life together. Think about the devastation you will leave behind if you wait any longer than you really should.

In the end, it all boils down to making the choice to simply love – unconditionally. We are loved deeply by the Originator and Creator of love. There is nothing we have done or can do that will ever change that. It is a matter of accepting His love first, and then turning around and sharing that love with your marriage partner.

Since we’ve been talking about teens and the sexual pressures they face due to the technological world we live in, we obviously can’t overlook how television has shaped the sexual views of so many young people (and adults as well).  So I wanted to share this article written by Janice Shaw Crouse, which appeared in the Washington Times on November 8, 2011.

I encourage you to read all the way to the last line, which is a priceless manta for us to instill in our teens!

Fox’s ‘Glee’ wrong to promote teen sex

If you put stock in the media hype, the hit TV show, “Glee,” is breaking new ground this week.

The game-changer in the controversial episode consists of two parallel sexual initiations – one a heterosexual teen couple and the other a homosexual teen couple. This may be new in the sense of it being even more corrupting than previous episodes or containing even more indecent material shoved in our faces, but it’s certainly not a positive new development. Such media promotion of early sexual activity – not to mention the promotion of gay behavior – flies in the face of what is best for teenagers and bucks the current, more positive trends that show teen sexual activity, teen abortions and teen births declining.

Anyone familiar with social-science research knows that abstinence is healthiest for teenagers. Teenage sexual activity routinely leads to emotional turmoil and psychological distress. Rather than increasing a teen’s self-confidence, engaging in sexual activity leads to empty relationships, feelings of self-contempt and a sense of worthlessness – typical precursors to depression. In fact, sexually active teens are more likely than those who are abstinent to attempt suicide (15 percent to 5 percent for girls, 6 percent to 1 percent for boys). Only 1/3 of girls who had early sexual activity describe themselves as “happy” as compared with more than half of those who waited. But the most telling fact is that the majority of teenagers who have engaged in sexual activity express regret over experimenting sexually and wish they had waited longer to have sex – 72 percent of girls and 55 percent of boys. The bottom line is that more than two-thirds of teens who become sexually active admit they wish they could go back to sexual innocence again and wish they had waited.

Concerned Women for America released a major study on sexually transmitted diseases in July that describes some 49 types of STDs, some curable, others not. Twenty percent of all AIDS cases are among college-aged young people. Having three or more sexual partners in a lifetime multiplies by 15 a woman’s odds of contracting cervical cancer. The shocking facts about the extent of STDs among young people are documented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – 19 million new cases a year, with half of those cases among 15- to 24-year-olds. These STDs are hidden by the glossy advertisements in the media that make them appear to be an insignificant health threat and suggest that all are cured or controlled without difficulty or complications (as anyone who has seen the TV ads for herpes medications can attest). Sadly, most of the young people with STDs will be dealing with the symptoms and consequences for the rest of their lives. In the United States, new cases of STDs are triple what they were just six years ago. Many of the STDs are incurable and others have persistent, significant symptoms requiring bothersome, expensive, lifelong treatment.

We have begun making headway with teen births. The latest birth data for 2009 show that the teenage birth rate fell 6 percent to 39.1 per 1000 women. In addition, the number and rate of births to unmarried women declined, but the percentage of nonmarital births increased to 41 percent. These numbers indicate a glimmer of hope that some truths about sexual realities are breaking through in contemporary culture. The bottom line is this: The radical rhetoric of the past 40 years is not quite as in vogue as it used to be, but its ethic of sexual experimentation is widespread and firmly rooted in the popular culture – as evidenced by “Glee.”

The media have saturated our culture with the myth of sexual freedom and public schools, along with Planned Parenthood and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, have implicitly condoned, if not actually promoted, sexual permissiveness via “comprehensive” sex education which sells the idea that casual, recreational sex is acceptable for singles as long as the persons involved are “responsible,” defined as using a condom.

But that isn’t true, particularly for teens. Early sexual activity means more sexual partners. If a girl begins sexual activity in her early teens, she is, on average, likely to have more than a dozen partners over her lifetime, and the “turnover” rate of partners is more than four times as high among those who begin sexual activity in their early 20s. Such girls are also more than twice as likely to become infected with STDs. And about 40 percent of teens who are sexually active eventually become pregnant out-of-wedlock.

The vast majority of young people – 92 percent – think marriage would make them happy and want to be married some day; most also want to have kids. The assault on teens – telling them casual sex is “no big deal” and has “no consequences” – will not be neutralized until those who know better find their voices and convince today’s “Glee” generation that only discipline and restraint will open the gateway to achieving dreams and ambitions. Our culture must change to cultivate the attitude that says, “I won’t mess up my tomorrows by fooling around today.”

Janice Shaw Crouse, author of “Children at Risk” (Transaction, 2010), is director of Concerned Women for America’s Beverly LaHaye Institute.

© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC.

The following information was sent to me by Harness the River Event Founder Wayne Wald of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada…

A new high-level Internet domain has been launched—intended to give producers of “adult content” a domain all their own: “.xxx.” And while pornographers argued that this will allow Internet users to more easily avoid (or find) their content, this does not require them to stop using their old “.com” addresses.

This now means that parents will need to work even harder to make sure their children aren’t exposed to this content as the new pornographic “.xxx” sites come online to join the already existing sites. There are now over 182 million websites worldwide and well over 12% are porn sites consisting of 420 million pages of pornographic material. Here are some other shocking statistics:

• Every second $184,550 is being spent on porn
• Every second 28,258 Internet users are viewing porn
• Every minute 22,320 Internet users are typing adult search terms into search engines

 

And it’s not just our sons peeping at porn on the internet.  Our daughters are getting sucked in as well…

• Searches for Sex is 50% male and 50% female
• Searches for Adult DVD’s is 58% male and 42% female
• Searches for Sex Toys is 58% male and 42% female
• Searches for Teen Sex is 44% male and 56% female
• Searches for Adult sex is 36%male and 64% female
• Searches for Group Sex is 50% male and 50% female
• Searches for Cyber Sex is 41% male and 59% female
• Searches for “XXX” rated videos is 64% male and 36% female
• Searches for Sex Chat is 40% male and 60% female
• 72 million people worldwide visit porn sites monthly!

Let’s make sure our children aren’t one of those 71 million people exposing their minds to “commitment-less, intimacy-less, marriage-less, God-less” sex that’s so glamourized through internet porn! 

Again, I urge parents, if you don’t have Covenant Eyes filtering software on your computer, remedy that today! 

Check out this article about the latest scary trend on Facebook…

New Facebook sex game “Smash or Pass” gaining popularity

http://www.ksla.com/story/15229037/new-facebook-game-smash-or-pass-gaining-popularity

Posted: Aug 08, 2011 12:34 PM CDT Updated: Sep 20, 2011 7:11 AM CDT

CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV) – It’s a dangerous new game on Facebook: ”Smash or Pass,” and it’s gaining popularity among young teens.

Here is how it works: Teens upload pictures of themselves so other users can say if they would either “smash” which means to hook up sexually with someone or “pass” as in no thanks.

But it’s hardly a game, according to Theresa Payton, a cyber security expert.

“This is not a game,” said Payton. ”This is not funny. This is not right. I mean it’s sexploitation.”

The trouble, she said, is it’s not just other teens who could be viewing your child’s picture.

“Predators go where the kids are,” Payton pointed out. ”So they’re out there playing “the game” using false identities.”

So who knows where their picture might end up. It’s why Payton says parents must know what their child is doing online at all times.

“Type in the search box, smash or pass,” she said. “I guarantee you’ll be appalled. Check it out yourself.”

It’s the same message from Tshaka Armstrong, co-founder of California-based Digital Shepherds, an organization dedicated to keeping parents informed in this digital age.

He told WBTV by phone today that parents need to “understand the culture. Understand what is going on online and understand that you’re children are connecting with other children in the way that you’re not used to.”

A father himself, Armstrong has made it his mission to make sure parents know about online dangers, especially a game like Smash or Pass.

“The most important piece of software that we can develop is the one between our children’s ears,” he implored. “It begins at home. It’s begins offline with the relationship between a parent and a child.”

Payton also told WBTV Facebook can’t keep up with every X-rated game on its site and since ”Smash or Pass” groups pop up faster than they can shut them down, chances are your child could come across one.

“When it comes to the laptops, when it comes to the computer, it’s in the family room,” Payton suggested. “The pictures of them are either in their bedroom, in the bathroom doing a self-portrait — you can see them in the mirror– and no parents are around.”

Copyright 2011 WBTV. All rights reserved.

Recently I spoke in Dallas for a nationwide organization called PureHope (www.purehope.net).  Their mission is to make people more aware of the dangers lurking behind some of today’s modern technology (the internet, social media, cell phones, etc.) and to equip parents to play a more pro-active role in helping their teens navigate these murky waters.
So for the next few blog posts, I want to share a few things I’ve come across on this topic in an effort to come alongside PureHope and parents who want to be “in the know.”

This first article was written by Nicole Brodeur, McClatchy Newspapers, 9/17/2009…

Poll Finds Disturbing Trends on What Teens Share Online

A new study shows one in 10 teens admitted posting a nude or seminude shot of themselves or others online.

“That shocks me,” said Stephanie Gockin, 25. “When I was a teenager, I never took photos of myself.”

Cracked her friend, Kate Barnes, also 25: “I didn’t even want to be seen in a bathing suit.”

Common Sense Media is taking a shot at educating teens this fall by starting a pilot program to bring media literacy into public-school classrooms.

It will cover everything from cell phone etiquette to the dangers of posting personal information — and images — online.

“The online network can be fun,” said Erick Fredendall. “You just have to know when to stop.”

A study, commissioned by San Francisco-based Common Sense Media, polled 1,000 teens to gauge how much time young people are spending on social-networking sites, and what they do when they’re on them.

The findings are not only worrisome, they’re a puzzle.

Aren’t teenagers the most insecure and self-conscious creatures on the planet? Isn’t a zit enough to keep them inside for days?

Not anymore.

“I know a lot of girls who send naked pictures on phones,” said one 15-year-old girl who works at Seattle Center. “They do it to get guys to like them.”

Said her friend, also 15: “I would never. It’s disgusting.”

The study also revealed a New Immortality: Kids don’t realize that what they post today could follow them to college, to work, to a run for political office.

“With teenagers, nothing ever happens to them,” shrugged Sam Fredendall, 56, visiting from Michigan. “I don’t think kids have a sense of the consequences.”

Fredendall, who’s raised her own kids and foster children, keeps four computers in her house, “and I see them all.”

“I know passwords. I check e-mails. It’s a condition,” she said. “Either agree, or lose it.”

It saved one of her kids from peril: “I had a 17-year-old daughter ready to do the dirty with a 21-year-old until I found the e-mails.”

If these trends concern you, here’s a few tactics I’d recommend:

• Pick up your child’s cell phone on occasion, see what kind of picture messages have been sent and received, and read a few random text messages.  The simple knowledge that you’ll be doing this should be enough to give your child incentive to keep everything on the up and up.  If they try to insist that you have no right to do such a thing, simply ask, “Who pays for this cell phone?”  They get complete privacy when they grow up and pay for their own cell phones.
• Know their login & password information on all social media sites they’re involved in.  Post something occasionally on their Facebook wall, as this sends a very friendly message of “I’m watching you!” to all their followers.
• Keep the computer in a main room of the house so that web activities are public, and if your child has a laptop, search the browsing history on occasion.
• Even better, invest in filtering software such as Covenant Eyes, which will send you an email message any time your child accesses a questionable website.

Let’s not stick our heads in the sand and assume that our kids know how to handle these overwhelming responsibilities.  Let’s show them that we care enough to be involved in their lives, especially their “cyberlives.”

David Letterman style, I saved the BEST for LAST with my “Top 10 List” of why I didn’t do lunch with Kyle that day.

And then I promise I’ll move on to blogging about an entirely different topic!  Thanks for your patience as I unpacked all of these thoughts one by one.  I pray they’ve fulfilled the purpose that I intended – to give you LOTS of “second thought” fodder before you waltz blindly into a situation that you could quickly come to regret!

First, let me tell you about my dear friend, Terrica.  She’s been a part of this ministry for the past 12 years, sitting through my Women at the Well class as “preventative medicine” when she was only 17 years old.  Several years later, God brought her back into my life when she offered to serve this ministry in whatever way was needed.  At the time, I needed a research assistant for The Sexually Confident Wife book.  After that project was complete, she became my Events Manager, accompanying me to most speaking events, overseeing the book table, and speaking alongside me when the opportunity arose.  It was my desire to help her launch her own speaking and writing ministry that originally inspired the B.L.A.S.T. Mentorship Program.  And through the years, she’s been not only one of this ministry’s biggest supporters, not just my traveling companion and trusted confidant, but she and her husband, Josh, are considered some of our closest family friends.

So now that you know how much I love, trust, and appreciate Terrica, you’ll better understand how our conversation on June 14^th rocked my world.

I’d asked her to drive me to DFW Airport the day I was departing for New Zealand.  We had an early dinner together at our favorite restaurant first, and driving down Hwy 114 just miles away from the airport, she made a shocking confession.  “I had a dream about you several months ago, and I believe it to be a prophetic dream… but I’m scared to death to tell you about it.”

I wondered why in the world she’d be scared?!  I assured her that I wasn’t going to “shoot the messenger,” and that if she had experienced a prophetic dream about me, she’d better not keep it from me!

She said, “In this dream, I received a phone call from one of your ministry interns.  She was hysterical and didn’t know what to do.  She was with you in a foreign country… and explained that you were supposed to be taking the stage to speak… but you’d had some sort of melt-down and were refusing to show up… and there was a man involved.”

At first, I chuckled.  “That’s it?  That’s what you were so afraid to tell me?” I said out loud.  “Well, you know that would NEVER happen, right?”

Terrica replied, “I know.  That’s why I’ve hesitated to tell you for months.  But I’ve felt the Lord laying it so heavy on me lately that I know I’m supposed to share it with you now.”

I thanked her, assuring her that all was well and that I was not upset.  I knew this dream was in no way any sort of judgment on her part.  If anyone knows my level of integrity, especially as I travel and speak, it’s Terrica.  Honestly, I just wrote it off as a crazy-weird dream that she had after eating some unusual food or something.

Then I boarded the plane from DFW to L.A., only to discover myself grounded at that L.A. Airport for an indefinite period of time (they were saying possibly 3 days before flights could land in New Zealand due to the ash cloud situation).  They put all of us passengers up in a beautiful Marriott Hotel.  I was swimming in the California sunshine less than 24 hours after this conversation with Terrica.

So OF COURSE, that was the FIRST place my mind went when Kyle came back around to meet me at the other end of the pool, formally introduced himself, extended his reach for a handshake, and rolled out a red-carpet invitation to a lunch that could have too easily turned into so much more if I didn’t have my guard WAY up.  I immediately realized, “So YOU are the ‘other man’ that inspired Terrica’s dream months ago!!!”

As soon as I swam back to where my cell phone was sitting, I frantically called Terrica and screamed in as low a voice as I could, “YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE WHAT THE HECK JUST HAPPENED!!!”

As I explained, Terrica’s laughter roared in my ear.  We were overjoyed by the recognition that God has just orchestrated a preventative miracle!  I believe with all my heart that God gave Terrica that dream, and even kept her lip zipped until the time was ripe to share it with me, just to protect me from Satan’s cockamamie scheme.

I felt like I was on a special edition of “God’s Candid Camera”… or that somewhere in the background that eerie “do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do” music was playing as Rod Serling announced, “Shannon Ethridge, you have just entered the Twilight Zone.”

No doubt, God sovereignly orchestrates every detail of our lives, putting hedges of protection around us whenever necessary, and using His people to speak words of both wisdom and warning to each other.

I thank God for the hedge he put around me that day, and for Terrica’s prophetic words of warning.  I shudder to think of what my life would be like today had that warning not been issued, and had that hedge not been firmly in place.  And I shudder with JOY that indeed, it was.

Thank you, God, that you always have our backs!  Thank you for hedges of divine protection!  Thank you for sending messengers into our lives to speak words of warning and encouragement to us when necessary!  Thank you for giving us ears to hear, and hearts to follow!  And thank you that we NEVER have to “go there” when temptation comes calling because greater are YOU that is IN US that he that is in the world!  In Jesus’ holy and precious name, Amen!

The ninth reason that I kept swimming instead of hitting the showers for a spontaneous lunch date with Kyle is perhaps a little vain, but we all have a little vanity lurking inside us, I guess.

One of the thoughts ricocheting through my brain was the image of bookstore clerks all across the world gathering up every “Shannon Ethridge” book off of store shelves, packing them in cardboard boxes, and shipping them back to the publishing house where they came from.

I couldn’t imagine how painful it would be for that to actually happen, all because of a moment of weakness and a swan dive back into the pit of sexual and emotional compromise… all because my ego was so starved that I sold my birthright (as a woman of integrity) for a bowl of stew with a pilot in a California hotel restaurant.  Oh, and add a slice of not-so-humble pie for dessert.

Seriously, the thought literally makes me hyperventilate, because I’ve worked really HARD over the past 20+ years!!!  The first several years were spent grieving over my own sin and lack of self-control, trudging through months of both individual and group counseling to get to the root causes of my sex & love issues, and trying to re-build my own self-esteem as well as my husband’s trust and confidence.

The past 15 years I’ve spoken to thousands of teenagers, college students, singles, and married couples about sexual integrity, sexual intimacy in marriage, and spiritual intimacy with Christ, traveling thousands of miles to dozens of foreign countries and U.S. cities to inspire others to overcome their issues as well.

The past 10 years I’ve written a total of 18 books that have been translated into 18 different languages, which by the grace of God have sold over a million copies worldwide.  I’ve also written hundreds of magazine articles, and countless blog posts, Shannon Ethridge Ministries E-newsletters, and “Hot Tips for Sexually Confident Wives.”

I’ve appeared on hundreds of national radio shows and international television shows, giving interviews that hopefully have ministered to millions of people from all walks of life.

I’ve coached hundreds of clients through painful seasons of putting their lives back together, restoring marriages that were often on the brink of divorce.

I sincerely don’t mean to sound like I’m tooting my own horn here!  Everything I’ve done, every breath I’ve drawn to do it, have all been done by GOD’s strength alone, and I give HIM all the glory!!!

So with ALL of the time, energy, money, blood, sweat, tears, sleepless nights, and prayer that have gone into this ministry, WHY in the WORLD would I do something to risk bringing it all crashing back down to ground level?

I have NO desire whatsoever to start over at square one… showing up in my Celebrate Recovery group declaring, “I’m Shannon… I’m a recovering sex and love addict… and I need a DAY ONE token.”  (tokens symbolize how many days you’ve been “sober” from your addiction)

The bible warns us that a fool returns to its folly like a dog returns to its vomit.  (Proverbs 26:11)  I don’t care to play the fool ever again.  I’m steering clear of the emotional vomit of the past.

Those books WILL remain on bookstore shelves as long as I have anything to say about it.   I’ll keep boarding airplanes and speaking my heart out for any church that invites me.  I’ll continue my life coaching practice to keep encouraging others in their pursuit of integrity.  I will press on with the BLAST Mentorship program, equipping aspiring writers and speakers with the tools to give birth to their own ministry dreams.

So since I wasn’t able to formulate a clear, coherent response to that invitation at the moment I was caught off guard, here’s my formal R.S.V.P…

Dear Kyle,

I’m sorry, but I don’t have time for lunch, or an ego stroke, or any sort of extramarital fling that you might have in mind.  I’m too busy with caring for my wonderful husband and children, writing, speaking, coaching, mentoring, sowing spiritual seeds.  Being someone’s “no-tell lover” or boredom reliever isn’t on my list of aspirations.  I hope lunch wasn’t too lonely of an experience for you.  My guess is that you found another target before the afternoon was over.  If so, I wish I could pass on my business card to her.  I get the feeling she might be needing some attention once yours is diverted elsewhere.

Sincerely,

Shannon Ethridge, M.A.

Author & Advocate for Healthy Sexuality & Spirituality

What About You?

You may not need to worry about books being removed from bookstore shelves and what-not, but my guess is that you’ve worked really HARD throughout your life to build certain things too!  How many years do you have invested in your marriage?  In motherhood?  In your own ministry or education or career?  How hard have you worked to earn the respect of church members, colleagues, and co-workers, family, and friends?

If you were to entertain the advances of an attentive admirer, or stick your head in a similar lion’s mouth, how might all those important relationships and accomplishments be impacted?

Worth the risk???  I think NOT!!!