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[Announcement] A beginning.

….how my desk looked once.

Now’s as good a time as any to announce publicly that my days at the desk to your left – second row, second from left in the Port Richey newsroom of the Tampa Bay Times – are numbered.

After working for five years and three months as a staff writer for the Tampa Bay Times, formerly known as the St. Petersburg Times, I am resigning.

And I definitely bawled when I broke the news to my editor.

But this is not an end, as much as it’s a beginning.

The beginning of a new phase of my relationship with the Times, for which I wrote freelance for three and a half years before I joined the staff in 2007, and for which I’ll write freelance again.

It’s also the beginning of professionally doing the other half of what I do. I’ll work my regular schedule at the Times through Fri., Nov. 9 and beginning Nov. 13, I’ll work full time as a counselor.

I’ll also write still.

And study for comps (the exam I’ll have to pass in order to graduate).

….how my desk usually looks.

Write some more.

Finish a book proposal.

Write more still.

And cherish the memories I made while working at three different Times desks (one in Tampa, one in Wesley Chapel and one in Port Richey) in five years.

Memories I’ll share in another post sometime next week. Stay tuned. 🙂

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[Q&A – Dating]: Why would a guy flirt but never ask me out?

The Q:  From a woman, regarding men: “What is up with guys who flirt, but never make a move? He’ll flirt. I’ll flirt back. That’s it. What’s his hold-up?” -Emily*

The A: Few quirks in a guy frustrate a woman like his habit of flirting with her for no apparent reason (if you’re me, anyway, so I feel Emily’s pain). Frankly, flirting is fun, but it gets old when it’s with a guy who doesn’t attempt to pursue a relationship.

This is because flirting communicates something. When I flirt, I use body language and/or other words to say “I kinda have a thing for you.” It’s only natural, then, that when a guy flirts with me, I assume he’s saying “I kinda have a thing for you,” too.

But what if he isn’t? Maybe the hold up for some of the guys who flirt but don’t “make a move” is that they flirt because it’s fun, and not at all because it’s step one in their pursuit of a relationship. If a flirt flirts solely for fun, however, he (or she!) essentially says, “Here,” to the person with whom he or she flirts, “Have this expectation (the expectation, that is, that we’re probably on the verge of eating chicken piccata at a fancy restaurant while we pretend we haven’t Googled** each other).”

Then he or she never delivers.

But my guess is just a guess. Emily’s question would be answered better by people whose insight here is better than mine:

MEN.

So here are a couple quick answers from a couple male friends and fellow bloggers:

Chris Schumerth: “Well, there isn’t ‘one answer’ to this, of course, but at least two possibilities come to mind, both of which too many men would undoubtedly deny. First of all, men are capable of being confused. It could be that he’s sort of interested but can’t decide if he’s really interested. The second thing that comes to mind, and this one’s probably the bigger of the two, is that mutual flirting doesn’t make facing rejection any easier! It’s hard to go out on a limb and ask a girl out!”

J.Q. Tomanek: Men are from Venus but we understand in Martian. When I flirt with my wife and she flirts back, I get the “flirt” but for some reason misfire on the follow-up. Guys can diagnose what kind of bird is flying during dove season, invented Morse code, and can translate a third base coach’s signal, but when it comes to reading women we need it LOUD, clear, and direct. At least for me, I take more risks with my wife when I have greater certainty that I know what she wants or expects.

A third guy whose feedback I sought shares more thoughts in an upcoming guest post. (Check back tomorrow!)

Edit 10/19/12: Click here to read the guest post in response to Emily’s question.

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Q&A is an occasional feature. If you have a Q, I can come up with an A (and if I don’t have an A, I’ll find somebody who does). To submit a question, email me at arleenwrites@gmail.com or leave it in the comments. No topic is taboo (although I can’t promise I will answer every question).

*Real person, fake name.

**For the record, I do Google guys but I never pretend I don’t. 🙂

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An adoption story.

Cindy Boyer was browsing through online profiles of children with no families when she stumbled upon a little girl from Russia. 

An adoption advocacy organization, Reece’s Rainbow, had named the girl Adalyn. She is a year and a half old, has short hair, dark eyes, and a bilateral cleft lip, gum and palate. 

Cindy stopped scrolling. She stared at the picture. 

Adalyn’s situation was all too familiar to her. 

“Immediately, I knew,” she said. “This is our baby.”

Click here to read the rest of the story, my latest feature for the paper. It’s online now and in print in tomorrow’s Hernando edition of the Tampa Bay Times.

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Updates, 9/13/12.

It is with gratitude and excitement that I report the following:

Big changes to the blog! [Insert celebratory air guitar solo.]

For the record, I made most of the changes awhile ago (so some of you may have noticed). But it’s time, officially, to announce them:

1. My URL is now arleenspenceley.com (but my old url – arleenspenceley.blogspot.com – still works!).

2. R.W. Harrison, a friend and colleague, graciously created a fabulous new site header for me. (If you’re reading this via Google Reader, click here to see the site’s new look!)

3. Friends of mine, mentors and siblings in Christ – Renee Johnson, Bob Rice, Abby Brundage, Brandon Vogt and Jesse Rice – each have endorsed my work, for which I am wholeheartedly grateful. Click here to read their blurbs about me (by which I’m sincerely moved).

Check out the changes and keep checking back.

And if I haven’t said it before, please know:

I am honored you read what I write, and so thankful for your support.

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I am not saving myself for marriage. (I’m saving sex.)

I’m not saving myself for marriage.

First, I know no follower of Christ who thinks any of us can save ourselves. Secondly, to say “I’m saving myself” when you mean “I’m saving sex” equates who you are – and therefore your worth – with sex. But your worth is wrapped up in nothing except your existence. It is intrinsic.

So I’m not saving myself.

But I am saving sex.

I should add that the “save” in “saving sex” is not the same as the “save” in “saving the meatloaf for later.” Although I am waiting to have sex, when I say I’m saving sex, I don’t mean I’m “putting it off.” I mean I’m part of an insurrection (albeit it a tiny one) that’s redeeming sex. Refusing, in other words, to treat it like it isn’t sacred.

This isn’t to say sex is not the gift of self. One spouse does give the gift of him or herself to the other, and vice versa, in sex. But I think among the ones of us who have decided to wait until we’re married to have sex, the gift that we give in marriage is misunderstood when we think the gift we are giving is sex.

The gift is the partnership. The constant state of being there. The permanence. The merger of two lives and families into one. I could go on.

Sex is definitely part of it, but it isn’t it.

While saving sex may protect people, physically, emotionally, spiritually, in our hyper-focus on what saving sex does for me, an important truth has been neglected:

Saving sex protects sex.

Sex in our culture, generally speaking, is more about getting than giving. The world says part of it is important (pleasure), and while that part of it is important, I think all parts of it are important. But the world also says parts of it aren’t always necessary (i.e. unity beyond the biological, or fertility). And the world tends to tell us that we who wait are wrong because “everybody’s doing it.”

Because in our culture, “consensus determines rightness or wrongness.”*

But it’s like marriage. “Marriage is a sheet of paper” is parallel to “sex is not sacred.”

Marriage isn’t “just a sheet of paper” because a lot of people suck at it. Marriage is just a sheet of paper when you treat it like it’s just a sheet of paper.

Sex isn’t “not sacred” because 98% of women and 97% of men** don’t reserve it for the context of marriage. Sex is not sacred when you treat it like it’s not sacred.

This is why you could say the people who wait until they are married to have sex, and the people who would get married but never do, and the people who would like to have sex but are celibate because of what they believe about sex, and even the priests and nuns who keep their chastity vows have this in common:

They are all saving sex – redeeming it – by treating it like it’s sacred.

And it is.

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*From page 26 in Peter Kreeft’s book Back to Virtue.

**According to a National Center for Health Statistics study published in 2011.