Last week writer Matthew Paul Turner dedicated a week on his blog, “Jesus Needs New PR” to talking about sex. He calls it “Sex Needs New PR.” Jennifer Schuchmann, my co-writer on Six Prayers God Always Answers, and Nine Ways God Always Speaks added a post on prayer and sex. In “Prayer Plain and Simple” we’re talking about praying for EVERYTHING in our lives… Sex counts too. Here’s Jennifer’s take.

I’ve been thinking about desire a lot after a recent conversation with my sister. Annie is married to a Navy man and lives in Italy in a little resort village near her husband’s port. When the men are out to sea, the Navy wives get together and hang out. Annie was surprised that they also wanted to get together when their men were home.

“I didn’t want to go out, I wanted to stay home with Tony,” she told me. “And when we did get together, I couldn’t believe what they were saying. They kept saying that they wanted their husbands to go back out to sea. They were tired of them being around. I don’t understand that,” said Annie. ” I just want to spend every waking moment with Tony. I would be happy just the two of us alone in our house forever.”

Did I mention Annie has been married for less than a year?

And her husband has been gone more than half of that year?

I think we all feel that way when we’re newly married. We can’t get enough of each other; we can’t keep our hands off each other. But somewhere down the road when we’ve been married a few years a phone conversation with a newlywed reminds us we don’t have that same passion and desire for our spouse we once did.

Is this normal?

I’m not sure if it’s normal, but it’s certainly common. Women talk. And I’ve heard women talk about how they don’t want their husband touching them because the kids have been hanging on them all day, or because they’re just too tired from their jobs and taking care of the house. They blame their husbands for not helping and when you’re mad at someone, it’s hard to get excited about having sex with him.

Sometimes desires wanes for a spouse because of physical changes. After you’ve been married for a few years, one (or both!) get a little flabbier, a little grayer, or occasionally have to take a little blue pill to get their blog up, and things just don’t seem as exciting as they once did.

My husband and I have been married for almost twenty years and we’ve experienced all of the above. (Well, except for the little blue pill but that could still be in our future.) Over time we’ve learned some ways to cope. For example, my husband knows the best aphrodisiac for me isn’t foreplay; it’s a clean house. But recently, I’ve discovered there may be another solution to an occasional lack of desire. And believe me it’s an unexpected one.

I co-authored a book with Mark Herringshaw called “Six Prayers God Always Answers.” After the book came out, I started hearing about women praying to always desire their husband. One woman prayed that she would “always thrill to her husband’s touch.” Another prayed that all her children “would be conceived in passion.”

I wrote the book on removing the awkwardness from prayer, but can I just say praying for great sex is A.W.K.W.A.R.D.?

But apparently, it works.

My friend Kelley had an authentic marriage, and by authentic I mean the kind where her husband wanted sex more than she did. But over the years, it came to the point where she never wanted it. She would lie on her back and count ceiling tiles and listen to Fox news for the thirty or so seconds it took to uh, satisfy her man. But Kelley wasn’t happy with this. She believed in her marriage and wanted to find a way to love her husband better so she started to pray. She prayed that God would help her desire her husband.

As Kelley tells it, “It worked. We’re like rabbits. I keep pouring gallons of milk down the drain just to I can send my eighteen-year-old to the store so we can have a few minutes of privacy. We’re doing it upstairs, downstairs, and on the stairs.”

The next time your spouse says, “Not now, I’ve got a headache,” consider it an invitation to pray together as a couple. In fact, I might have to talk to my publisher about revising the book before it comes out in paperback evidently, this is the seventh prayer God always answers.

-To learn more about Jennifer as well as her latest book First Things First, a collaboration with Kurt and Brenda Warner, visit JenniferSchuchmann.com.

QUESTION: How does prayer influence your sex life?