Title Tuesday: The Language of Sex

Welcome to  Title Tuesday, my favorite day of the week. This day is dedicated to book suggestions, news, cartoons, and reviews. Let's jump in!

Oh my goodness… I don't even know where to start with this review. From rather tacky anatomical statements (that are supposed to be funny… maybe?) to sweeping generalizations about what women want, this book was rough to get through.

The Language of Sex: Experiencing the Beauty of Sexual Intimacy is written mostly by Ted Cunningham with additions and extras by Dr. Gary Smalley. Admittedly Smalley gets top billing, but I didn't feel like he contributed nearly as much as Ted Cunningham. 

Either way, this book has a lot of very familiar teachings on sex, many of which are not positive. I was impressed by Cunningham's insistence on reiterating that women can and do enjoy sex when their husbands slow down and get to know their wife's body.

However, that positive note alone was not enough to redeem the small portion in chapter 10 that had me fuming while listening on the treadmill. I was listening to this book on Christian Audio and I just about fell off the treadmill upon hearing the next section. 

This is the end of the chapter. Ted Cunningham is addressing common questions and he starts talking about porn use in a marriage.

While he admits that porn use is wrong as well as adulterous, it is his counsel to wives that is particularly egregious.

Ted uses 1 Peter chapter 3 as a means of a wife dealing with a husbands porn use. 

This isn’t okay or legitimate.

Here is why.

If Ted is talking to believing Christians (which is who this book is geared towards) then 1 Peter 3 doesn’t apply. 1 Peter 3 is specifically dealing with those that “do not believe the word”. That means nonbelievers. This scripture that he is referencing is about winning a lost husband to Christ not addressing Christian men who are stepping out of their marriage with porn!

As if misusing scripture to muzzle women isn't bad enough Cunningham also tells wives:

“don’t be on him about his addiction”
“to watch your own behavior”
“be honest about your own struggles with him”

None of this is okay. 

A wife cannot be vulnerable and open where there is deceit and deception, period. It is also not her behavior that caused or allows his porn use, it is his behavior and his responsibility, full stop.

Finally, secret porn use creates betrayal trauma in the deceived partner. Cunningham seems to skip over this portion as if it is hardly worth mentioning. 

This too, is not okay.

If you are a victim of secret porn use by your partner there are resources out there that can really help you rather than masking or ignoring the issues. Check out work by Betrayal Trauma Recovery (BTR), Sarah McDugal, The Patchwork Wife and Sheila Gregoire

For me personally, the teachings on dealing with pornography use are an insurmountable obstacle in being able to give this book anything more than 0 stars. The good teachings in this book can be found other places, do not pollute your heart or your mind with the outdated and misogynistic teachings about pornography use in marriage from a bygone era.  

Title Tuesday: Mama Bear Apologetics Guide to Sexuality

I am on the launch team for @mamabearapologetics’s new book Mama Bear Apologetics Guide to Sexuality.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer attacks the topic with logic, reasoning, and Biblical justification for each of her points.

I will say that this book is VERY methodical. At times that may be hard for people if they are used to the often light and fluffy books for Christian mothers.

If you are a Bible-believing parent looking to reinforce biblical sexuality in your family, this book is for you.

Mama Bear Apologetics Guide to Sexuality will be released October 5, 2021, but you can preorder it now on @amazon @christianbook and other major retailers.

⁣ (Fair warning, if you are not a Bible-believing Christian this book may be off-putting for you.)

Are you an author looking to have your book reviewed on @goodreads and @amazon?
Send me a DM!

Title Tuesday: The Great Sex Rescue... sort of

I am currently reading The Great Sex Rescue by @sheilagregoire.

I was on the launch team and read the PDF. I have read the paperback twice now and I am round the corner on number three and this book only came out this month.

I wanted to read, reread, mark, and lookup portions of this book because it is so controversial.

Sheila and her team tackle the issue of problematic teaching in the modern-day church and how they negatively impact marriages, demean women, and infantilize men within the church.

While I am not ready to write a full review yet, I can say if you are a Christian and you have ever bought (or been given) a marriage book, you need Sheila’s book to hold it up against. Want to take a look? You can find it here. 

Title Tuesday: Shattered Vows

Welcome to  Title Tuesday, my favorite day of the week! This day is dedicated to book suggestions, news, cartoons, and reviews. I write this portion of my blog because I am a big believer in the motivational speaker Charlie Jones' quote which says, "You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.” I try to meet as many new people as possible and to read everything I can. This is my way of sharing that information with you. You can see a visual summary of the books I have reviewed for both adults and children over on my Facebook page. If you are interested in understanding my rating system for books you can read my Book Review Explanation here and What I Believe here. If you want to check out what I am currently reading or what I want to read next, friend me on Goodreads!

Good morning! Every once in a while I share book reviews geared towards women trying to recovery from a husband's (physical/emotional/cyber) infidelity. These books will not interest most people, so if you are one of my regular #Title Tuesday readers and you aren't interested in this topic, I promise I will be back to my regular reviews/cartoons next week.

Alright, those of you that are still reading, I want to share with you about Debra Laaser's book, Shattered Vows. For anyone that has had their marriage ravaged by infidelity, you know that it is a devastating blow. It can take months to years to heal from a single affair, longer if their are repeat offenses or continued lying.

In the case of Debra Laaser, her marriage was rocked by the discovery of her husband's multiple sexual betrayals. Her husband lost his job and they entered a very difficult season of recovery and trust rebuilding. Now, they travel together all over the globe and tell other couples their story. They are an incredible example of the redemptive nature of Jesus Christ in a marriage.

I won't lie to you, some of this book is difficult to read. The concept of dealing with your own issues and pain can be frustrating when your heart has been broken by your spouse. However, there was one particular paragraph from Laaser's book that made me keep reading and pushing forward, On page 67 Debra writes,

The feelings won't just go away over time. Not thinking about your husband's sinful decisions won't make them magically disappear. Quickly forgiving your husband and "moving on" will only bury your feelings of anger and sadness- only to have them seep out at unexpected times down the road. The better choice is to go to any lengths to get the support you deserve so you can heal and thrive, not just survive.

This, to me, summarizes the entire book. Recovery from (physical/emotional/cyber) infidelity is incredibly hard and Debra Laaser walks the reader through the first steps with incredible grace.

In Shattered Vows, Debra tackles tough topics like:
-does marital sex prevent pornography use?
--sexually transmitted diseases
-the drip disclosure method
-healthy grieving
-slips and relapses
-and a whole lot more

Debra is honest, concise, and doesn't pander to the "the wife needs to stay in her lane" junk that is often passed around in moral/sexual purity discussion. She does delve a bit into the idea of "codependency", which I don't believe is a prevalent as many psychologists and counselors seem to think. However, that withstanding, this book is excellent and I strongly recommend it to anyone deal with marital (physical/emotional/cyber) infidelity. Overall I give Debra Laaser's book Shattered Vows a solid A+, and it is the first book I recommend to women dealing with marital infidelity.

Wife to Wife Wednesday: Getting Out of the Rut

Good morning! 

Welcome to Wife to Wife Wednesday, the day that we discuss any and all issues relating to marriage. As I said in my series introduction a few weeks ago, sex is a super important part of marriage. It is an incredible gift that can be amazing... but it can also be devastating when it doesn't go well. We have talked about when Body Image impacts your sex-life and where Christians can purchase lingerie without feeling skeevy. (Yes, I said skeevy, deal with it.)

Today I want to talk about something that may make a few readers uncomfortable and it is, an intimacy app for married couples. It is designed to help get married couple out of a rut in the bedroom. This app is called Ultimate Intimacy and it is AMAZING. But, this isn't your usual sex app. As it says on the website,

Ultimate Intimacy is the product of two Christian couples on a mission to strengthen marriages by making lovemaking fun and deepening couples’ connection and intimacy.

There isn’t anything that is gross or unseemly.

You can edit your preferences in the settings. This includes things like foreplay, oral actions, and duration of each action.

The Ultimate Intimacy app allows for the users to enter their names so the instructions say “Morgan does this…” rather than being generic. You can also set a password for the app if you have older children that often use your phone. :)

There are a TON of different sexual positions and recommendation to try and the best part is that these are done with figures, not real life people. There won’t be any concern over seeing something inappropriate or that could trigger moral purity issues for a spouse.

There are a list of topics to discuss so that the intimacy isn’t just sexual, but really getting to know your spouse. There are links to articles, resources, and gifts to help build up your marriage.

Overall, I HIGHLY recommend the Ultimate Intimacy app. It is a fun way to keep the spark burning in your marriage in a God honoring way. You can download the app here for Android and here for Apple.

I should also mention that I am not an affiliate of this website.
I don't get anything from recommending it.

We tried it and enjoyed it.
I thought there might be other spouses out there that would enjoy this neat resource.

Wife to Wife Wednesday: Lingerie for Christians

Good morning! 

Welcome to Wife to Wife Wednesday, the day that we discuss any and all issues relating to marriage. 

This month my husband and I celebrate 5 years of marriage! In honor of that facet, I have been focusing my Wife to Wife Wednesday posts on physical intimacy in marriage. You can read the intro here and last week we talked about Body Image in the Marriage Bed. 

This week I want to tackle where to buy lingerie when you are a Christian woman.  

I have three small children so going into a store to buy just about anything is difficult, but it is especially difficult when I have to try things on! So when it comes to buying anything that I wear, I almost always buy it online. 

I don't know about you but trying to buy lingerie can be a super frustrating and embarrassing experience if you aren't super careful. 

I really do not want to see what is essentially pornography when I am trying to find an outfit to share with my husband. If you type in lingerie you will get a whole host of images that you just really don't want to see. So, where can a Christian woman go to buy lingerie without feeling gross or skeezy and at the same time not just trusting amazon? 

Let me tell you about my two favorite places!

I came across Virtuous Weddings that has a list of places where you can buy lingerie. This blog breaks each website down based on modesty of the images presented, sizes available, how... enticing the lingerie is. I think it is brilliant and could be a great tool for any wife looking to surprise her husband with something fun while also not exposing herself to imagery she really doesn't need to see.

I am in love with the website Honoring Intimates. I think that their lingerie is fun, affordable, and presented modestly. I love the fact that they don't assume Christian women are just looking for floor length nightgowns. Most of us want pretty, flirty, fun outfits to wear too, and HI delivers! They also go from size 2 to size 20, which means almost everyone can find what they are looking for. They also have a subscription option where each month you will get a brand new outfit (is that the right term??) delivered to your door! 


Don't be afraid to wear fun clothing in the marriage bed. Nothing in the Bible says that lingerie is wrong between a husband and a wife. Try out various things, ask your husband what he likes (with the modest images you can be comfortable showing him what you are thinking about!) and just have fun with it! 

Title Tuesday: Rethinking Sexuality

Welcome to  Title Tuesday, my favorite day of the week! This day is dedicated to book suggestions, news, cartoons, and reviews. I write this portion of my blog because I am a big believer in the motivational speaker Charlie Jones' quote which says, "You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.” I try to meet as many new people as possible and to read everything I can. This is my way of sharing that information with you. You can see a visual summary of the books I have reviewed for both adults and children over on my Facebook page. If you are interested in understanding my rating system for books you can read my Book Review Explanation here and What I Believe here. If you want to check out what I am currently reading or what I want to read next, friend me on Goodreads!

Today, I want to talk about sex.

Wait! It is Title Tuesday. Why are we talking about sex?!?

The answer is, sex permeates our culture and with good reason. God gave us sex to be an awesome experience between a man and woman in the bounds of holy matrimony.  Sex and sensual imagery is all over our society, but not in the way that God designed it. It is assaulting our minds on billboards, oozing into our homes via television, and commandeering the screens on our computers. 

Because of the prevalence of rape, infidelity, homosexuality, transgenderism, pornography, and just plain lust, sex is a topic that the Christian church should be addressing regularly, and yet in most churches it is almost never addressed. 

That is why I want to tell you about Dr. Juli Slattery's newest book, Rethinking Sexuality. Dr. Slattery takes a hard stance on sexual brokenness and the effect that it has on a believer's life. This book is specifically geared towards Bible-believing Christians. On page 8 of Rethinking Sexuality Slattery states, 

The focus has been on compelling teenagers to stay virgins and exposing the many ways that sexuality translates into sin. Because we tend to address sexuality with this problem-solving approach, we divide people into categories of virgins and sinners, sexually whole and sexually broken. If you found yourself in the wrong category, church was the last place that you wanted to seek help. 

This resonates SO MUCH with me and this is just from the first chapter! 

Slattery spends the rest of the book explaining that sexual discipleship should be prevalent in every church congregation. Se also does a fabulous job of explaining exactly how our sexuality interfaces with our theology and our beliefs about God. This book is not written for one gender or another. Instead this book is designed to help bring light into the shadowy places that we as Christians think that God should not be. (As if He doesn't already know about it????) Slattery forces the readers to change their way of thinking about sexuality to help Christian better model sacred sexuality rather than a shame filled secret to be hidden away.

Overall, I give Rethinking Sexuality a solid A+. I think this book is something that literally every Christian should read. It doesn't matter if you are single, newly married, or celebrating your golden anniversary. This book has tools and resources to help you to model your sexuality after the inventor of sexuality and to stand firm in the face of society's pressure to conform to worldly sexuality. 

This book becomes available next week, July 24th. but you can pre-order it on Amazon here, and I totally recommend doing that! 

Title Tuesday: Pure Eyes, Clean Heart

Welcome to  Title Tuesday, my favorite day of the week! This day is dedicated to book suggestions, news, cartoons, and reviews. I write this portion of my blog because I am a big believer in the motivational speaker Charlie Jones' quote which says, "You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.” I try to meet as many new people as possible and to read everything I can. This is my way of sharing that information with you. You can see a visual summary of the books I have reviewed for both adults and children over on my Facebook page. If you are interested in understanding my rating system for books you can read my Book Review Explanation here and What I Believe here. If you want to check out what I am currently reading or what I want to read next, friend me on Goodreads!

Today I want to share a book with y'all that may make you squirm a little bit because it is about pornography and the devastating effect that it has on marriages. This book is called Pure Eyes, Clean Heart by Jen and Craig Ferguson. 

This couple understands exactly how devastating a pornography addiction can be to a married couple, because they lived through one. They are very clear and forthcoming in what happened in their lives and how God used it to sanctify them both. 

The Fergusons use their real-life story to help readers to understand what the first steps are in beginning a recovery from pornography addiction without shame or guilt. They do an excellent job of explaining the difference between conviction and condemnation.  

I LOVE that this book supports a wife being an accountability partner for her husband. While it can be an incredibly difficult role to fill, I do think it is one of the best ways to have accountability for moral purity because NO ONE is going to know you or your edging behaviors like a spouse. 

Overall I give Pure Eyes, Clean Heart a solid B+ rating. It is a great resource to have if you or someone you love has a pornography addiction. This book is specifically geared towards pornography issues in a marriage, not other sexual sins like physical and emotional affairs. I gave this book a B instead of an A because it does lean pretty heavily towards the side of only men having issues with pornography. It hardly addresses the issues of women looking at pornography or reading erotica.