Why I'm not saving myself for my husband

   I started thinking about this subject because I have not one, but TWO nieces that will be teenagers this year.

   Yes, I'm properly terrified. 

   As I started thinking about all the things I've learned in the twelve years since I was their age, one of the things I thought I should address was the "purity" question. Now, growing up in a Christian, homeschooling home, I heard enough purity speeches and read enough dating material that I could probably teach a class on it. However, I don't feel like any of the things that I was taught actually brought me any closer to "purity"....instead, I think it gave me a lot of wrong ideas about purity. Ideas like:

• Purity means that you are saving your virginity for your husband

   One of the definitions of pure as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary is "free from moral fault or guilt", and the Greek hagneia translates as "sinless of life". Don't think that just because you are NOT having sex, that you are pure.

• You should be patiently waiting for your spouse, and trying to prepare yourself for the perfect person God has set aside for you.

   How could this be a bad thing? Well, when that cute boy goes to kiss you, you don't usually ponder "what is my future husband going to think of this?" but I can't tell you how many times I have thought "what does God think about this?" To rely on my future relationship with my spouse to bring about right behavior is wrong, it is a far better thing to rely on my current relationship with a perfect God to bring about a healthy relationship with an imperfect person.

• If you save yourself for marriage, you will be blessed for your obedience by a Godly spouse

   A Godly husband is great, but if virginity is the litmus test, then does that mean that all others have to take whatever is left? Also, someone should have told that to Hosea, because lets be real, he pretty much married a hooker.

   Other ideas that tend to come across through all of this, are that the main reasons to stay pure sexually are because a) it will make your future spouse happy and b) you won't get stuck with an icky STD

So what do I believe is the right idea of purity?

• Don't stay pure FOR your future spouse. 

   If got blesses you with a Godly man, I hope and pray that you have a happy and healthy marriage. But don't follow God for him-do it because you genuinely desire God's presence in your life. Too many young girls get caught up in a "Christian Disney" fantasy, that has a sad habit of dangling romance in front of their faces in exchange for obedience.

• You don't "lose" your purity in as much as through Christ, you gain it. 

   We have this notion that our purity is something that we give away when we have sex, but we don't actually come into this world pure. We are filled with plenty of evil thoughts and desires, and true purity only comes from God. As you surrender your will to Him, He will purify your heart.

   So what can I say? What should they be thinking about when they make decisions on dating and romance as they mature?
   Here is what I have found: regardless of what man I meet in the future, my commitment to purity isn't for him. Let's face it, the happiness of a man that I don't know and that may or may not meet in the future is not exactly a strong deterrent when it comes to living a Godly lifestyle. However, there is someone that I have met, and the more I get to know Him, the more I desire a pure and holy life. Why? Because the closer I get to the Holy, the more the profane slips away.
  
    I have made a lot of mistakes, and have learned enough lessons the hard way. What I hope to share with my nieces through all of it is this: God is your true lover. Save yourself for HIM. Not just for the future when you are united with Him forever, but in every thought, in every breath you have today. Give Him your heart, your soul and your body, and I promise that He will bring you a love and a completeness that you will never find in the words or affection of a man. Whatever temptations or trials may come, the Greatest Love Story has still been written for you, and there is no man who can ever compare.
   So no, I am not saving myself for my husband, instead I am giving myself to the One that saved me.

Every new beginning

 

I do not come from this world.

     I come from a world of white and clean, not sterile but soft, with round edges and sweet smells. I knew a world existed outside of the womb like state I existed in, heard the bells ring and the dogs bark; heard doors slam and voices rise, but never did it cross the threshold into where I lived. I was a disinterested observer, gazing past the treetops to the sky, never feeling the rough bark under my skin.
      The day I was born from that world into this one came about the time I turned twenty-one. I stepped out from gentleness into bright, vivid splashes of color everywhere I looked. It was as blinding as it was beautiful, this thing called love.

     Falling in love for the first time, at least if you do it the way I did, is like jumping out a plane into a rainbow without a parachute. You know that you will probably break everything at the end, but the fall is so spectacular that you hardly think of anything else.  
     The tightness in your chest, the inability to breathe…the faster you fall the more intense every sensation gets. It is all bright red and orange and purple, a swirl of color and imaginings, like a Picasso lit on fire. After the flame burns down, the film that shields your eyes from seeing the world as it is burns away.
     In its place I found a new clarity, as well as a profound appreciation for the gentle web I was wrapped in, the sweet abode that taught me to value honesty and give to beggars, to seek the truth in every lie.  
     The world that I came from is not the one I live in now, and while I might yearn to go and crawl back to my philosophical safety blanket, I can’t. Instead I stand spattered with the red ink of heartache and the deep blue of regret, yet always looking for soft edges in a world of sharp corners, eyes wide open to the beauty of both worlds.