Shannon Ethridge's Blog

Reason #8 of the 10 reasons I didn’t meet up with Kyle-the-eye-candy-pilot in the lobby of that L.A. hotel that day is because I know the thoughts that race through my mind when I’m on stage speaking to any audience.  As I present my three main passions…

• Sexual & emotional integrity
• Sexual Intimacy in Marriage
• Spiritual Intimacy with Christ

… I am constantly sending every word that comes out of my mouth through a filter in my brain that says, “Are YOU doing this, Shannon?”  For example:

• Am I steering clear of inappropriate emotional entanglements?
• Putting my big girl panties on and keeping a check on any co-dependency issues?
• Am I staying out of chatrooms?  Not peeping at any porn?
• Avoiding racy romance novels & steamy soap operas?
• Am I connecting often with my husband — mind, body, heart & spirit?
• Am I loving the life I live and the skin I’m in?  Feeling good about my body?
• Am I not dragging any baggage around?  Walking in complete victory & freedom?
• Am I striving to be a sexually confident wife to Greg?
• Am I setting a solid example for my children and circle of friends?
• Am I living an “open book” life, keeping my heart soft toward my husband and my Heavenly Bridegroom?

The thing about having a soft conscience (as I discussed last time) is that I’ve GOT to PRACTICE what I preach, or else I’d feel like a big fat hypocrite standing on that stage, telling those women, in essence, “Do as I SAY, not as I DO, okay Ladies?!?!?!”

God forbid it.  The day that I have to step onto the stage and lie about who I am or what I’ve done, or hide behind a mask to deliver a message, then I’m hanging up my microphone.

I know that many of you who have heard me speak, or read this blog or one of my books, have lifted me, my family, and this ministry in prayer.  And I want to thank you sincerely for that.  Your prayers are felt, I promise.  When I can so easily say, “Nope!  Not gonna’ do it!  Wouldn’t be prudent!” to my flesh and let the Holy Spirit inside be my guide, then I know that’s God.  And I’m so grateful.

I pray you’ll let God be your guide when temptation comes knocking on your door as well.

Question for consideration: 

If you were to “go there” when temptation came knocking, what kind of thoughts and emotions would swell through your heart and mind when interacting with others?  Would you be able to face your family, friends, church members, co-workers, etc. without an enormous amount of guilt, shame, low self-esteem and insecurities distracting you?  Would the price required for living a “double life” be worth the toll it would take on your mental, emotional, spiritual, and relational health?

(I hope that this series is inspiring you to respond with a great big “Heck NO!” right now!) 

Yet another reason why I didn’t “go there” when Kyle invited me to lunch – and a reason I hope that you’ll refrain from sticking your head in such a lion’s mouth – is because I knew my guilty conscience would be barking before the sun goes down.

I think one of my saving graces has always been that I simply can’t keep a secret.  Seriously, I stink at it.  If you’re throwing a surprise party for someone, let it be a surprise to me too, or else I’ll run the risk of sticking my foot in my mouth in the presence of the guest of honor beforehand.  One of my closest friends even kept her pregnancy a secret for 13 weeks until she was ready to tell the world, probably because she knew that I might forget her desire to keep it under wraps and accidentally Tweet about it or something.  I don’t mean to be a blabber-mouth, I just so often fail to engage my brain before opening my mouth.

So I knew that if I went to lunch, I’d be on the phone confessing it to Greg before I boarded the plane to Christchurch.  If I didn’t, it would eat me alive the whole 14-hour flight, no doubt.

While this “weakness” of mine to fess up quickly might make me a lousy spy or defense attorney, I think it makes me a great wife.  My husband knows he can trust me.  He knows I confess the smallest of infractions so fast that I don’t give it time to fester into something bigger.  When he looks at me in the eye and says, “I totally trust you,” he means it.  And I’m grateful.

And I’m also grateful for guilt.  That may sound ridiculous that one could be appreciative of something that has such negative connotations, but let’s be real – the avoidance of guilt is a great motivator to keep us on the right track!!!  Isn’t that the reason you don’t rob a bank, even when you’re desperate for money, because you don’t want to live with a guilty conscience (especially not behind bars)?  Isn’t guilt the reason that you try to eat healthy as often as you can?  You just don’t want to feel the weight of a whole slew of irresponsible food choices (not to mention the weight of extra pounds)?

Have you ever watched a legal sentencing on television?  When the jury delivers the verdict, the defendant is always overwhelmed with grief over a “guilty” verdict.  There’s weeping, wailing, and even passing out on occasion.  But if the verdict is “innocent,” there is great relief and celebration!  We can actually have that sense of relief and celebration every day as we REMAIN innocent and keep our slates clean!

Perhaps guilt, or at least the healthy fear of it, is actually a gift from God.  As the Newsboys used to sing, “It’s just a Spirit Thing, it’s like a holy nudge, it’s like a circuit judge in the brain.”

How soft is your conscience?  When you act on an impulse in such a way that you know wouldn’t be pleasing to God or someone else, what is your response?  Do you hide your heart, keeping your behavior a secret, or do you fess up quickly and ask for accountability to keep you from doing something even more stupid?

I hope that latter is true for you, if not in the past, certainly in the future!  Keeping your accounts list short, your slate clean, and your heart soft is a great strategy for living a life of sexual and emotional integrity.

Thank you, God, for giving your followers a soft conscience.  Thank you that our spirits are broken by the very things that grieve your Holy Spirit when we’re walking closely with you.  Keep us from hardening our hearts toward sin, and teach us to let our consciences be our guide so that we can remain directly in the center of your perfect will.  Amen.

I’ve been reading a book lately called “The Broken Image” by Leann Payne, and she uses two words together that have jolted me awake with their truer combined meaning.

First word:  genital.  Second word:  intimacy.

Genital intimacy.  Obviously, it means the physical touching of an area of the human body that’s intended to be pleasured by (and provide pleasure to) another human being.  One human being.

Not your boyfriend, or your lover, or even your fiancée, but your ONE lawfully wedded spouse.

I envision a movie theater ticket stub that boldly states “ADMIT ONE.”

That’s what God intended.  Not “one-until-you’re-tired-of-him” or “one-after-another,” but simply “ONE.”

How I wish I understood that 30 years ago before many pre-marital regrets were conceived.

Why would God design our minds, hearts, and bodies in such a way that we thrive in relationship with ONE, but can utterly destroy ourselves in relationship with multiples of one?

Could it be that God, when He designed human beings in His image, created us to be “jealous” (wanting someone all to ourselves rather than sharing) simply because of the fact that He is a jealous God?  (Exodus 20:5)

Ironically, on the day I first began crafting this blog post, I completed the reading of another book called “One Thousand Gifts” by Ann Voskamp (Zondervan, 2010), which is about how she learned to count her blessings and lavishly give thanks to the Giver of all gifts.  I am startled, yet stirred by the passion in her pen as she writes (on pages 216-217) :

God – He has blessed – caressed.

I could bless God – caress with thanks.

It’s our making love.

God makes love with grace upon grace, every moment a making of His love for us.  And He invites the turning over of the hand, the opening and saying the Yes with thanks.  Then God lays down all of His fullness into all the emptiness.  I am in Him.  He is in me.  I embrace God in the moment, I give Him thanks and I bless God and we meet and couldn’t I make love to God, making every moment love for Him?  To know Him the way Adam knew Eve.  Spirit skin to spirit skin.

This is what His love means.  I want it: union. 

WOW… Almost makes you crave a cigarette, doesn’t it?  The very thought that we are designed by God as the fulfillment of His deepest longings – to be in relationship with, in communication with, in communion with, in love with… He in love with us, and us in love with Him.

And if we are created in His very image, this explains why we feel so compelled to fully experience loving, intimate relationships.  We crave it in the fibers of our being, like we crave air and water.

Only we sometimes get it wrong.  So very wrong.

Rather than looking for love in relationship with the God that created us and the husbands that God blesses us with, we assume that’s simply not enough.  Like Eve, we want more, failing to realize that more — something other than what we’ve been lovingly allotted — isn’t better.  In fact, it’s bad for us.

But the problem isn’t in the wanting.  Even God wants intimacy.  The problem is where we look for it, what we settle for.

We have misguided passions… misguided gratitude.

For example, would it make sense for us to be filled with a heart full of gratitude for a gift that God has given, and then turn and offer thanks to another God completely?  Say, Buddha or Mohammed?

You laugh at the notion.

Yet how many women are stirred by God to be sexually intimate with the ONE God has given, yet turn and share that passion with another “one” entirely?  Rather than channeling those sexual and emotional yearnings in the ordained direction we’ve been given (called marriage), some women open themselves to another.  And most usually grow to regret it within a very short time.

Like a woman I met recently who thought the grass was greener, the sky was bluer, on the other side of her marriage fence.  So she divorced and married the guy that wooed her over to his side of that fence.  And then she discovered that he’d given her much more she’d bargained for, including herpes and thousands of dollars’ worth of debt that she wasn’t aware of when she made her decisions in the heat of all those moments together.

Or a young woman who mistakenly assumed that she wanted sex (“genital intimacy”) with a friend of her husband, when all she really wanted was a listening ear and some encouragement to press on working through the abundance of emotional baggage she had dragged into her marriage.  Turns out, the “other one” wasn’t interested in her baggage, only her body.

But regardless of how many times we’ve gotten it wrong in the past, we can allow our sexuality to be fully sanctified by our spirituality.  We can develop such an overwhelming appetite for healthy fruit that forbidden fruit loses its appeal altogether.

All of this contemplation about the connection between spirituality and sexuality has led me to this conclusion about why I didn’t “go there” with that pilot who invited me to have lunch with him in L.A. last June:

Why would I want to share myself with another “one”

when I’ve already been given “The One” by God?

To climb down off of the high spiritual plane and put it into practical, earthly terms, Greg knows me.  Knows every stretch mark, every dimple.  Knows what turns me on, what turns me off, what I fantasize about, and where I draw the line.  He pushes my buttons, not my envelope.  My “ONE” knows me sexually, satisfies me sexually, and celebrates me sexually.  I simply don’t need to be known in such a way by another.

ONE is all I need, all I desire.  And my ONE shares my last name, my address, my children, my bank accounts, my bed, my dreams, my goals for our future together.  My ONE shares my passions…

…especially my passion for the God who longs for us to be ONE with Him.

In addition to realizing what amazingly unconditional love God has for me even if I were to choose lunch with Kyle over swimming with Jesus, I also thought of my husband at home.

And although I preach endlessly against making comparisons, I did “go there.”  Only because I knew that Greg would come out smelling like a freshly plucked rose.

Kyle struck up a simple conversation.  Greg struck me over 20 years ago as a man I simply couldn’t live without.

Kyle had extended his hand with interest.  Greg had asked for my hand in marriage.

Kyle was offering a single lunch.  Greg has offered me his entire life.

Kyle was willing to give me the time of day.  Greg is willing to give me all the days he has remaining.

Kyle may have wanted a little afternoon delight, no strings attached.  Greg wants to delight me every afternoon that he can, and doesn’t mind the strings at all.

Kyle wanted to lead me down a dangerous detour.  Greg wants to lead me down life’s path with honor, dignity, and integrity.

Kyle was in search of stirring up some relational intensity with me.  Greg is in search of stirring up genuine intimacy with me.

Sure, Greg has his flaws.  His introverted nature can drive this social butterfly a little stir crazy at times.  He leaves whisker shavings on the bathroom counter and dirty dishes in the kitchen sink on occasion.  He snores.  He forgets.  He doesn’t read my mind, doesn’t do things the same way I would.  But he’s there.  He’s there every day, longing for my love, there every night happy to do nothing more than sleep in the bed next to me if that’s all I have energy for.

He loves me.  This flawed man daily chooses to love this flawed woman.  And I feel like the luckiest girl on the planet.

Conclusion:  Why would I jeopardize the startling beauty of the life we’ve built together?  Why would I want chopped steak when I have Select Sirloin at home?

It just wouldn’t make sense.  In fact, it would be sheer stupidity.

So before you let some sweet talking stranger or any other man woo you into stroking his ego (or any other body part), remember the huge sacrifices our husbands have made to make us the women that we are today — the weeks and months he pursued you with honest intentions… the years he’s worked hard to provide a good life for his family… the overwhelming (sometimes paralyzing) desire he carries in his heart to prove himself worthy of your love… the multiple ways he teaches your children what it means to be loved by a father, by The Father… How desperately the little boy trapped inside that grown man’s body longs to be affirmed, respected, and celebrated by the special woman that he has dreamed of, longed for, prayed over, and pledged his entire life to.

Yes, that would be you, girlfriend.

YOU hold the power to make or break that man’s life.

I hope you’ll choose to make it.

In those split seconds of swimming away from “Kyle,” I sensed I was not alone, and I’m not just referring to the outgoing handsome pilot standing there.  I could feel the Holy Spirit deep in the fibers of my being, washing me with wisdom as I free-styled my way back toward the shallow end.

I was quickly reminded of where I came from many years ago (a deep pit of desperation and compromise as a sex & love addicted teenager)… where I was now (walking in V-I-C-T-O-R-Y and helping thousands of others do the same)… and where I was heading (toward even greater levels of spiritual intimacy with my Heavenly Bridegroom, both in this life and in the next).

Of course, Satan was also trying to get a few words in edgewise.

Why not just go for it?!  Sample a little forbidden fruit!  It’s been a long time, and who knows if you’ll ever have this kind of opportunity again?!  No one is going to know!  Come on, live a little!  After all, God is NOT going to love you any less!  Remember?  His mercies are new every morning! 

(Yes, Satan knows Scripture, and will use it as a weapon against us if we’re not careful!)

Whether God would love me or not if I took such a BIG step backwards has never been a concern for me.  He loved me in the midst of my deepest, darkest, most secretive moments.  Is there any depth, any level of darkness, any secret that would cause Him to love me less?

Not a chance.  “…nothing can separate us from the love of God” (Romans 8:38).  That passage means exactly what it says – NOTHING could change God’s love for us.  N-O-T-H-I-N-G!  Zip!  Zilch!  Notta!  Not one thing.  Not even one million things!

Sure.  God would NOT love me any less.  And His mercies ARE new every morning.  But why would I want to go around this same stupid mountain again when I was already living in the Promised Land?  Why put shackles back around my soul when I’d already been set free?  It just didn’t make sense to me, and I’m thankful for that knowledge.  It wasn’t always there.

Even the best of Christians stumble into sin on occasion, but sincere followers of Christ don’t use God’s mercy as a driver’s license to do stupid things or live dangerously.  Sin IS easily forgiven, but the price that Christ paid for my sin was far too high for me to just sin without second thought.

Philip Yancey, author of the book What’s So Amazing About Grace?, says that grace IS cheap (to us), but it wasn’t cheap to Jesus.  The exorbitant price He paid for my personal holiness makes it a priceless gift.

Yes, God would indeed forgive me.  But as freely as God gives us mercy in our time of need, He also gives us grace in our time of need.

What’s the difference?

Mercy is God’s ability to forgive our sins after we’ve committed them.  Grace is God’s power to avoid that sin in the first place.

I couldn’t ignore the grace that I felt flowing directly out of my intimate relationship with Jesus in those speechless moments of shock and surprise.  Yes, mercy would be there if I needed it, but grace was there first.  Grace was there first.  And I welcomed her with open arms.

Jesus may as well have been wading in the shallow end… eavesdropping on the conversation… watching anxiously to see if I’d be slipping out of the pool and into the shower to get ready for my rendezvous with Kyle, or if I’d continue enjoying this special little preconference retreat time He’d carved out for me.

He knew what I’d choose.  He has taught me well.  Basking in His lavish love is SO much more intoxicating than the attentions of any other man.

Are you so completely satisfied through your intimate relationship with Jesus that all other men pale in comparison?

If it wasn’t true before reading this blog post, I pray that it would quickly become your reality.  There’s simply no better lover than Jesus… no greater love story than the great lengths He has gone to in order to woo and pursue us into a divine romance with Him!

And isn’t it just the coolest thing that we can all be so in love with the same man, and feel no jealousy at all? 

It wouldn’t have taken much justification to press through the red warning flags I mentioned in the last blog post and “just do lunch” with Kyle.  I could have easily entertained thoughts such as:

• As long as we stay in a public place, it’ll be okay.  There’s no real danger in meeting him in the lobby restaurant.
• It will be ONE hour, two at most!  That’s not enough time to be unfaithful to my husband!
• No one at this hotel knows who I am, so it’s not like I’m going to “get caught!”
• This may be GOD opening a door for me to talk to Kyle about JESUS!

(yes, we Christian girls often use evangelism as an excuse to follow our flesh!)

Fortunately, this was NOT my thought pattern this time, although 15-20 years ago, I’m pretty sure it would have been.  Praise God for transformation!

The thoughts that were rolling through my head regarding the logic of such a lunch date were more like:

• Okay, let’s say I agree to one lunch.  What then?  A yearning for another lunch in another city someday!  And another!  And then lunch won’t be enough!
• Why stir up insatiable yearnings that ultimately lead to “Heartbreak Hotel” when I can just mind my own business here at the Marriott Hotel and keep my heart intact?
• You know one hour of conversation will not scratch his itch (or yours if you start this thing).  It will be like scratching poison ivy, making it itch even more, causing it to spread and do even more damage!
• If you give him an inch, he’s going to want a mile.  If you give him the impression that you’re friends now, he’s going to start contacting you whenever he wants an ego stroke.
• Do you really want to play “boy toy” to some pilot?
• There may be no getting rid of him afterward.  He’ll want to exchange cell phone numbers, or start emailing you, etc.
• He could easily become a leech, sucking more and more life out of you with each contact.

You get the idea.

Sometimes women can easily romanticize the notion of such an “innocent-yet-intimate” rendezvous with a handsome stranger in an exotic location… but Baby Doll, this ain’t Hollywood, nor is it a Harlequin romance novel.

This is real life, where people get hurt… hearts get ripped out and stomped on… marriages get damaged, sometimes beyond repair… children get caught in the crossfire and wonder, “What the hell happened to our family?”  Not going there.  I’m just not going there.  I hope you won’t go there, either.

One of my favorite sayings has become, “Don’t stick your head into the lion’s mouth before praying, ‘Lord, save me from the lions!’”

A much better strategy is to not go into the lion’s den at all. Then you don’t have to worry about getting devoured.

^“Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy

the devil prowls around like a roaring lion

looking for someone to devour.”

- 1 Peter 5:8

Okay, so my next thought after “Gee, I’d really rather keep swimming!” was “What’s this guy’s real motive here?”

I mean, sure, Kyle could have had the purest of motives — absolutely nothing on his mind but an innocent conversation over a leisurely lunch.

And Elvis may actually be resurrected from the dead and hiding out in various Dunkin’ Donut shops around the country… and my Maltese puppy may give birth to a litter of humpback whales while I’m in New Zealand… humpback whales who are able to swallow the Pacific ocean in one gulp.

Seriously, I guess there is a slight chance that “just lunch” was all he had in mind.  But why take that risk?  He could also have had a lot of OTHER things on his mind… things like getting a big fat ego stroke, a feather in his cap, a notch in his belt, etc.

In the words of a trusted confidant, “Oh, he totally was hitting on you!  Pilots are famous for their traveling trysts!   I know one and he is always talking about how pilots get so much a-a-a-a-ction!”  (trying to keep it G-rated here)

But I also realized that the situation could be far more dangerous, and have a lot more at stake than just falling into a hotel room romance (as if that isn’t bad enough).

I’m no dummy.  I realized that Kyle may have been a clean-cut handsome guy with personality PLUS, but so was Ted Bundy – you know, lawyer by day, serial killer by night.

For all I knew, Kyle was only POSING as a pilot.  He was wearing jogging shorts, not a uniform.  I didn’t ask to see his badge or I.D. — not that he couldn’t have crafted those things himself.  While he may have the personality of Regis Philbin, he could also have the mentality of Jack the Ripper.  Glad I didn’t hang around to find out.

So before you decide to let some sweet-talking eye-candy lure you into some sort of compromising situation, think of women like Natalie Holloway.  I’m sure at some point she certainly wished she’d never left that Aruban night club with those three men.  And so do her grieving parents.  And so do we.  What happens to women at the hands of sick and twisted men is more than a crime.  It’s absolutely heinous.

And the only way to make sure that something similar doesn’t happen to US is to be WISE!

Here are a few rules to follow to safeguard yourself:

• NEVER let a man lure you into a dark place or a private room.  Always stay in eyesight & earshot of others.
• NEVER get into a strange guy’s car, and get out immediately if one gets into yours.  Better to cause a public scene at location #1 than to be privately attacked at location #2.
• Do whatever you have to in order to call attention to the situation and involve someone else – i.e., walking over to talk to a 3^rd party, screaming, honking the horn, etc.
• Never give out your cell phone number or physical address to anyone you don’t know well and trust implicitly.
• If you’re feeling uncomfortable or unsafe, go ahead and dial 9-1-1 on your cell phone.  When they ask the nature of your emergency, it’s okay to say that you just want your whereabouts to be known because you feel you might be in danger.
• When out on the town, avoid alcohol and other substances that would dull your senses and cause you to let your guard down.

What other tips can you think of for a woman to keep herself SAFE from sexual predators?

Do YOU think that a stranger who suggests getting together with a woman he’s never met before might have more than “just lunch” on his mind?

Has anything remotely like this ever happened to you?  If so, how did you handle it to keep yourself out of harm’s way?

As much as I’d love to tell you that my #1 mental response to “Kyle’s” lunch invitation was totally God-centered and major-super-spiritual, I confess that it was not.

My very FIRST thought?  Honestly?  (promise not to laugh or think less of me!)

My knee-jerk reaction was, “I just got in this pool!”

Seriously, if I had to choose between a leisurely lunch with an overly-attentive handsome pilot, or to continue swimming for 90 more minutes in the California sunshine, I’ll keep swimming, thank you very much!

You may not love swimming like I do, but my point is that when you fill your life FULL of things that you absolutely LOVE doing, it’s much easier to stay on the right track when temptation comes knocking.

Think about it.  One of the main reasons men & women get so sidetracked by inappropriate emotional entanglements is that their lives are way out of balance.

On one extreme, we can fill our days with all kinds of stresses and pressures, but that kind of pressure-cooker environment makes human beings very susceptible to “releasing” those pressures in some pretty inappropriate ways.

On the opposite extreme, we can also let our days become so boring & mundane that we are tempted to “spice things up” with something WAY out of the ordinary, i.e. an extramarital fling.

But what if we create a life that positively fuels us — emotionally, mentally, spiritually, physically, sexually… will we feel the need for that affair when the opportunity comes knocking?

I didn’t.  I didn’t feel the need at all.  THANK YOU GOD that I didn’t feel ANY need for anything more than what I’d already been given in that moment!

God has given me such a feeling of purpose and meaning — in my ministry, in marriage, in motherhood, in special “me-time” moments like swimming, or sipping Chai tea, or nibbling dark chocolate, or lighting a candle and staring at the flame as I count my blessings —  that an afternoon lunch affair couldn’t possibly pull me away from one of my many passions.

Is your life filled with so many healthy passions that you don’t have the time, energy, or inclination for any unhealthy passions to develop?

If so, tell us your secret!  What kind of things do you do regularly that help to create an “affair-proof” life?

I’ve been warned multiple times by multiple people.  “Leading a ministry such as yours paints a big red BULLS-EYE on your forehead!”

I’ve always known it to be true, yet I was still taken by surprise over the events that transpired on June 15^th.  As it was all unfolding, I suspected that I would NEED to blog about this eventually – both as therapy to process it all myself, and hopefully as PREVENTATIVE therapy for my readers.

As I arrived at Dallas/Ft. Worth Airport on June 14^th, I was warned that if I flew

into Los Angeles, I might get stranded there for several days.  A volcano in Chili had erupted, sending an ash cloud over New Zealand’s airspace, which would prevent planes from heading in that direction any time soon.  Due to speak in Christchurch within 72 hours, I begged them to let me on that plane in spite of their warnings.  I knew my chances of getting to New Zealand were much greater if I was already in L.A. than if I were still in Dallas.

Although “acts of God” usually mean that you’re responsible for your own

lodging, Quantas was kind enough to put all of us stranded travelers in a very nice Marriott Hotel near LAX Airport.  I got settled into my room around 3 a.m., slept until 10 a.m., enjoyed a leisurely Starbuck’s breakfast, then headed to the swimming pool for some exercise since I had almost 12 hours before the next possible flight left the U.S.  I felt like I’d been given a free 24-hour California vacation, and I was soaking up every minute of it.

I’m minding my own business in the shallow end of the pool when a handsome

40-ish guy in jogging shorts, tank top, and iPod ear buds strolled by. He’d obviously just completed a jog, and was contemplating the hot tub.  He asked how the water was, and I gave him the thumbs up.

Casual conversation evolved so naturally I can’t even remember what the first

words spoken were.  I eventually asked if he was also stuck in L.A. due to the ash cloud.  Negative.  He was a pilot on sabbatical until his next flight later that evening.  He returned the ball to my side of the court, asking why I was heading to New Zealand.  I explained that I would be doing a 3-week speaking tour.  Predictably, he asked, “What do you speak on?”

I gave my standard as-brief-as-possible answer so as not to bore him to

death.  “Healthy Sexuality and Spirituality.”

Bored?  Obviously not.  Intrigued?  Maybe.  He replied, “So… if I read your books, I’ll learn how to have better sex?”

Again, keeping it as brief as possible, I responded, “Well, if you read my latest book, The Sexually Confident Wife, I guess you might could learn a few things.”

Sensing it was time to wrap the conversation up and move on, I wished him a good day and started swimming toward the opposite end of the enormous pool.

Mr. Pilot-Guy had been long forgotten in the 2.5 minutes it took me to reach the deep end.  My mind was already in Christchurch, praying that the volcanic ash cloud would clear, and that the earthquake aftershocks wouldn’t prevent my plane from landing once I actually arrived.

Suddenly I hear a deep voice chuckle, “You’re going to have to swim a lot faster than that to get any exercise!”

I look up to discover Mr. Pilot-Guy’s toned & tanned frame casting a shadow over me in the California sunshine.  He squats down, extends his arm for a formal handshake, and says, “I’m Kyle… and I was thinking it would be great to have lunch with you.  You seem like a very interesting person, and I’d love to get to know you more.  So… what do you think?”

I can’t recall ever being at a loss-for-words in my entire life, but color me speechless in that moment.  “Well… uh… I… uh… I don’t know if I’d really have time…”

He interrupted my stammering to rescue us both from the awkwardness.  “Look, I have to eat anyway, and I’d love to eat with you.  I’ll be in the hotel lobby at 12:30.  If you’re there, great.  I think we’d have a really good time together.  If you’re not there, well, I understand.”

My crushing reply?  “Uh, okay.”

And then I swam away in the other direction with a million thoughts ricocheting through my brain.  Well, maybe just 10 thoughts.  Ten thoughts that I’m going to be sharing with YOU in the coming blog posts, so stay tuned as I explain the main reasons why I DIDN’T GO THERE!!!

And why I hope YOU NEVER GO THERE, either!

Thanks to Jessica, a beloved BLAST participant, for responding to these recent joke blogs with her own knee-slapper:

A 54 year old woman had a heart attack and was taken to the hospital.

While on the operating table she had a near death experience.. Seeing God she asked “Is my time up?”

God said, “No, you have another 43 years, 2 months and 8 days to live.”

Upon recovery, the woman decided to stay in the hospital and have a face-lift, liposuction, breast implants and a tummy tuck.

She even had someone come in and change her hair colour and brighten her teeth! Since she had so much more time to live, she figured she might as well make the most of it.

After her last operation, she was released from the hospital. While crossing the street on her way home, she was killed by an ambulance. Arriving in front of God, she demanded, “I thought you said I had another 43 years? Why didn’t you pull me from out of the path of the ambulance?”

God replied: “I didn’t recognize you.”