BEAUTIFUL: Love, Sex & Jesus

By Sean Gregory McDonald

(Please search for the updated version.) A MAN's transformative guide for Husbands and MEN who are preparing themselves to become Husbands. Deeply diving into the profound and even lost sacred teachings of ONENESS, BEAUTIFUL reconnects a MAN to himself, his Wife, and God in ways that renew the essence of

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Vertical Room
• Release date: Nov 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9798869013620

Book preview

BEAUTIFUL

LOVE, SEX & JESUS

Sean Gregory McDonald

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing by the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in review. For information regarding permission, contact the author at [e-mail].

Copyright ©2023 by Sean Gregory McDonald

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America First Edition: November 2023

TheVerticalRoom.com

Summary: Beautiful: Love, Sex, and Jesus by Sean Gregory McDonald is a MAN’s transformative guide for Husbands and MEN who are preparing themselves to become Husbands. Deeply diving into the profound and even lost sacred teachings of ONENESS, BEAUTIFUL reconnects a MAN to himself, his Wife, and God in ways that renew the essence of his purpose and role as The Strong Leader. Drawing from his personal journey of devastating loss and legacy-worthy triumphs over his 31 years of marriage, McDonald shares hard-earned insights and life-changing behaviors, CALLING MEN to embrace the greatest power known to man, to transform themselves and their wives into an unimaginable and unbreakable bond. This book is in honor of his late wife, Christina Olivia McDonald, and resurrects the vision of walking with MEN out of the darkness that slowly destroys him and eventually his wife to a place of Strength, Confidence, Purpose, Leadership, Love, and Faith. Through candid storytelling and actionable truth, BEAUTIFUL offers a roadmap for men to build a legacy of love, respect, and divine intimacy with the woman they call WIFE.

Cover Design by: Jash Tracey (GNT Branding)

Cover and Interior Poems by: the sick poet, Christina Olivia McDonald

DEDICATION

This book is humbly dedicated in honor of my late wife, Christina Olivia McDonald. There seem to be no words that match my deepest heart’s love and gratitude for you and for how our Lord used you to save me and our whole family. You were my best friend, my greatest and deepest love, my wife, my Ezer Kenegdo, the mother of our children, my greatest advocate, my mirror, my Warrior Queen of Love, my lover, our unwavering follower of Christ who was immovable. You were gentle and merciful and made life so special in how you found so much joy in giving gifts to everyone. You were the safe place that accepted everyone without judgment. You were the Christmas Queen who put on the most over-the-top holidays for all of us so that we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus was God and that we were all loved by you more than we ever understood.

You, Christina, were my greatest gift. You lived with courage, dignity, and such honor. I will spend the remainder of this life continuing to learn from you and the God that we both love. I will never be the same. We had a vision together to serve others, and I will carry out that vision in deep respect and love for you and the One who placed these precious burdens on us.

Thank you for fighting as long as you did. Thank you for never giving up on me. Thank you for being a Prayer Warrior who covered all of us constantly. You had a deep desire to share your triumphs and pain as a wife and woman who walked with disease for almost 20 years. We spoke many times about your desire to share your poetry and your story, to which I was unable to accomplish before you moved on. Please forgive me and know that this book is a compilation and tribute to your story, some of your selected poetry, and our vision to serve husbands, wives, and families with truth that has been tested through the fire of our life together. YOUR PAIN IS NOT WITHOUT PURPOSE. Thank you, Christina Olivia McDonald, for making life so BEAUTIFUL.

Love,

Your Sean

This book is also dedicated to my sons and daughter, Ashton, Colton, Macailey, and Robert. Your mom and I love you and your families more than life itself. Our prayer for each of you is that this book gives you visibility into our world as a husband and wife that was far more reaching than could be realized as our children. You have all experienced this man’s most agonizing failures and have also watched our precious Lord put me back together again. You lived your life with a mom who was sick more than she was healthy. Each of you have your own story of pain, loss, and redemption. Please accept this book as a gift from both your mom and me. It would not be possible otherwise. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE BEING YOUR DAD! We will all be with her again soon. What a celebration that will be!

Love,

Dad

Contents

Foreword By Coach Sam Falsafi

Introduction The Journey To BEAUTIFUL

Choose

Called

Suffering

Belief

Origin

Curses

Revealer

Paradox

Resistance

Secure

Build

Sex

Oneness

Vision

Foreword

B

y Coach Sam Falsafi

SERVANT AT WARRIOR WEEK

Marriage is the #1 thing that is being used by God to TRANSFORM a man. The thing that men have to understand is that this process of being a MAN of GOD and a HUSBAND is about God awakening a man through PAIN and even suffering. And yet, what most men don’t get is that this training ground for every married man also includes the heart of a wife.

Cherishing her has been designed by God for a man’s growth.

Your pain is her pain. She can’t escape it until you embrace it, learn from it, protect her from it, and build greatness as a result of it.

No one knows you like your wife knows you.

No one.

The lack of understanding of PAIN only brings disconnect in a man’s thinking. And so, the pain comes in many ways, but the most detrimental is how it shows up in a husband’s disconnect with his wife. This one broken relationship has the power to impact generations.

Unfortunately, the modern man denies that this pain even exists. It gets pushed away or covered up, so he doesn’t have to feel it or see it. As much as you don’t want to admit it, you will do anything to not have to EMBRACE pain.

You MASK IT, DENY IT, GET RID OF IT, BLAME IT, SEDATE IT, AFFAIR IT, RAGE IT, RUN FROM IT, SLEEP ON IT, SILENCE IT, DANCE AROUND IT, VICTIM IT, THERAPY IT, TANTRUM IT, HANG OUT IN IT, IDENTIFY AS IT, NOT ACKNOWLEDGE IT, DEBATE IT, NUMB IT, SEX IT, MASTURBATE IT, PROJECT IT, PASS IT, PLEAD WITH IT, PORN IT, and even PRAY IT AWAY.

You will do whatever you have to do outside of OWNING IT and finding the PURPOSE IN IT!

Within this resistance, every man misses that, his WIFE is impacted by all that is creating his pain for much longer than is seen or understood. She is connecting with Divine Purpose before you as a man and husband oftentimes even see it. PAIN is not valued and respected and held sacred in all things that come up between the man as HUSBAND and the woman as WIFE, which ends up creating WAVES OF DESTRUCTION through HER and through the whole family.

The lack of value and respect for what God is bringing you as a man through the fire of trials and tribulations shows up in your lack of respect and value for your wife.

Still don’t think that’s what has been causing your marriage to suffer and even fall apart?

Pain and even TRAUMA is what GOD USES to get a man’s attention.

Keep reading, and inside of this book, you will soon understand with clarity that it is a man’s PRIDE and EGO that calls the PAIN FORWARD. When you have put yourself in opposition to God, you have put yourself in opposition to your wife, regardless of whether you believe that is what you are doing or not. You have called out God and taunted Him by ignoring the pain, even daring Him to challenge you through behavior that destroys your wife’s heart.

This pride has burned family structures to the ground.

Such arrogance in the face of God and humanity places every man on a crash course with God Himself.

Great men are FORGED.

Forging takes FIRE and POUNDING hard steel into the brazen shape of a sword in order to be useful for battle. Without the fire and the pounding over and over again, there is only dull weight.

BEAUTIFUL is a call for all men to own their place as STRONG LEADERS and to embrace your wife as the most powerful gift you could ever have in the shaping process of becoming the MAN GOD CREATED YOU TO BE so you can call her forward to the WOMAN GOD CREATED HER TO BE.

To be clear, your purpose is not pain. Your purpose is connection with God, but you will miss the connection with Him and miss the connection with HER if you don’t embrace the MOST BEAUTIFUL HUMAN CONNECTION KNOWN TO MAN.

Marriage.

This is the ORDER that GOD uses to bring a man to EFFECTIVELY MIRROR the image of GOD. If you surrender to the process and the INSIGHTS of BEAUTIFUL, you will find some of the most DIVINE mysteries of GOD’S LOVE and PURPOSE for your life that have been hiding in plain sight within your very BEING every day of your life.

YOU were created for a REASON, and your GREATEST influence on ALL of HUMANITY actually sleeps next to you every night.

Are you willing to embrace the pain you are in and begin to SEE HER?

As you read this book, you will see the God of the Universe and how out of this world He wants your life to be!

GOD LOVES YOU… period.

Your life is not a mistake...it’s just misunderstood.

Your WIFE is not a mistake; SHE is just MISUNDERSTOOD.

EMBRACE THE CREATOR! EMBRACE YOUR WIFE! UNDERSTAND THEM BOTH INTIMATELY AS YOUR GREATEST JOY AND PURPOSE FOR THIS LIFETIME, AND WATCH WHAT HAPPENS TO THE REAL LEGACY YOU CREATE!

Introduction

The Journey To BEAUTIFUL

What does it really mean to be a man? More than that, what does it mean to be a husband? In my 31 years with one woman, I have had many fights regarding both of those questions. They were fights because what I thought I was and what I showed up as were two very different things.

To be a husband is to choose to be exposed, whether that is intentional or not. Exposure is either a gift or a curse, depending on your motivation to be a man or to remain a boy. My experience has been that all call themselves men, including myself, but fewer and fewer actually are. In the 31 years that I was with Christina as my wife and greatest gift, no one exposed the boy in me more than her. No one. So, for much of our marriage, she became who I fought more than anyone else.

I blamed her. I dismissed her. I rejected her. I resisted her. All for reasons that made sense at the time. They all proved to be bouts of egoic sabotage that grossly misunderstood her heart, her motivation, and her design. They also proved that I had my own identity issues, which were rooted in false narratives of myself as a man and husband.

There were many moments and seasons of beauty, but the hard ones were simply devastating, and there were far too many of them. Looking backward, with the perspective I have today, can be as painful as the trials themselves.

I am convinced with absolute certainty that very few men actually know what they have in their hands when it comes to the woman they are married to. We think we know, but we look through a lens that is distorted by ego and pride. I am also convinced that it doesn’t matter what a man’s income is, nationality, color, education level, or spiritual affiliation. All men suffer from these same distortions.

Over time, I came to see Christina as a queen. She was more than just a woman; she was a gentle force who would endure me and my process of going from a boy to a man and then back again. Yet I was oblivious for far too many years to the significant impact of my actions.

Through poor financial decisions, multiple affairs, two bankruptcies, excessive drinking, and the climbing of corporate ladders, I ignored her cries for help. It was, at times, my crass demeanor, dismissive attitudes, or expressions of my dissatisfaction with our relationship or, more specifically, with her. It was me not protecting her emotionally from friends or family or myself and, at times, even making her the brunt of my jokes that I always thought were so funny and couldn’t understand why she didn’t. The more money I made, the more this all seemed to come out, and the restlessness was a reflection of my deep distortion that I would oftentimes blame on her.

The good between us as best friends, raising a family, and even the countless memories of love and triumph were not enough to offset the pain I inflicted upon her. That all had to be remedied by something more powerful than good memories or the countless times I said, I’m sorry. It had to come from her willingness to forgive, but that did not remove the impact on her body, which was already very fragile.

At about year 10 in our marriage, she began to get very ill. As her body was struggling, I was also at the peak of my own stress. I was growing financially but declining emotionally and spiritually, and she was declining physically. We were both declining relationally but didn’t know just how badly at the time. The trauma for her started with an ER visit with a migraine that was beyond normal. The on-call MD was a young physician who I am convinced was very much practicing medicine on patients. He said he needed to do a spinal tap to check for meningitis. We ignorantly agreed to the procedure with no second opinion. She was never the same again. Her life became filled with pain, uncertainty, and "medical opinions’’ that led to massive amounts of medications and surgeries. It was almost twenty years of fights with pharmacies, doctors, insurance companies, family, and, worst of all, me. I was her greatest advocate and her worst enemy all rolled into one.

She was suffering from so many symptoms that one of her doctors finally said it didn’t make sense even to try to diagnose anymore. We went through every treatment we could find and afford, both natural and medical. She was experimented on literally for all of her sick life, starting with that one spinal tap. The illness became so bad that, eventually, Christina was confined to bed rest. This in itself was torture for her for so many reasons, including the years of doubt and unwillingness from her own family and friends to show up for her. So, she lost friends and lost family, and we almost divorced because of the stress I felt while trying to maintain my career and also not understanding how to help her. I felt powerless, angry, and overwhelmed.

We were finally able to get my wife into the Mayo Clinic. I initially thought we would be there for just one week, which meant I’d only need to take a week off work. However, once there, the doctors set numerous appointments that would take us a month to get through. At that point, my wife had been suffering for about 13 years, so leaving early, especially for her, wasn’t an option. But my employers couldn’t afford for me to be away for an extended period.

So, The God of The Universe gave me a choice to make: resign from my job or return to work and leave my wife at the Mayo Clinic to figure it out for the remaining three weeks alone. Perhaps the saddest thing about where I was at during that time of my life is that I actually struggled to make my decision! And why I know it was God working is because that decision ultimately shifted my life and ours in a direction that began a build-back process between us that I would later come to realize was more divinely inspired than I could have ever imagined.

After that, the fight for life became profoundly difficult for us in every area. As I stumbled through a renewed drive to not just save our marriage but also build back our oneness, I was also attempting to rebuild financially by starting all over again, working from home. We required immediate cash flow, but there was also the very pressing need for a full-time caregiver for my wife. That also became my new role, which had a learning curve in itself. At the same time, I also needed to do everything possible to simultaneously pursue a very deliberate journey to mend our family.

The impact of my past behavior had left scars on all my children. They all seemed to leave home as quickly as they could due to the stress of my volatility and the additional stress from Christina’s mental, emotional, and physical brokenness. And throughout this journey, it was evident that my actions had taken a toll on all of them. The brokenness I had created was significant, but my true heart’s desire was to have them all return home and be as close as possible.

Additionally, Christina, their mother, had gradually lost her ability to be the same mom she was when our kids were younger, and none of us really understood how to handle it. And because they had experienced their mom as a woman who fought disease for most of their lives, over time, there became an immune aspect to the life that she lived. So, it was a long season of heartbreak upon heartbreak for everyone.

That said, even though Christina’s health was declining, we were still building. One day at a time, I began to grow in clarity and connection with her. I was beginning to see her in ways that seemed new. I had a very intentional routine, where every single morning, I would get up between four and five a.m. and step into a commitment process to transform everything about who I was. I would start with my body and move directly into connection with God, filling journal after journal with new lessons and revelations. I made daily videos in an attempt to rebuild Christina’s heart and trust and also reach out to my kids to hopefully have an opportunity to bring healing, love, and life to them, too. I would also intentionally pray for all of them that, over time, the Lord would redeem my connection with them and that we, as a family, would be brought back together. After that, I would dig into growing in business and declare one new lesson every morning. I would do these things every morning, and still do to this day, before starting the rest of my day, before doing anything else. I rediscovered myself during this time and also fell more in love with Christina Olivia McDonald than ever. Though she was confined to bed, our connection was growing to new depths.

Even still, the pain of life and her health was very real, as she unfortunately kept declining. Her infections went from lasting weeks to years. Those in themselves were so painful and discouraging for her. Christina would randomly lose consciousness. Her system eventually became so sensitive that even a