I believe that purity is a gift. I wear a small silver band on my left ring finger. It says “Jesus” on it. It represents my choice to say yes to Christ. To promise myself to my savior until he gives me away to another. I will wear it until I replace that ring with the ring that will be given to me by my future husband. That ring is a reminder of my commitment to purity. I recently told an x-boyfriend that I was not having sex until I was married, his response, “why?”
Here is a little background on my life. I first kissed a boy, French kissed that is, when I was 12. I have been infatuated with them ever since. I lost my virginity when I as 18 to my high school boyfriend, we broke up after he left for college and told me that he could find someone “prettier and more mature” on campus. Several failed relationships and a lot of heart ache later. I am now 33 years old. And for the very first time in my life, I get it. God really had it right all along. Not that He did not already know that, but clearly it took me a while to catch on.
I remember sitting in church during college when I read various scriptures in the Bible concerning sex and sexual immorality, God’s instructions about preserving sex for marriage. I thought, “wow, umm, opps, it really does say that.” I think prior to that I believed that not having sex before marriage was just something my mother and Sunday school teachers cooked up. I remember in my teens a friends told me, “hey, sex is just part of an adult relationship these days, it is not big deal.”
Looking back, that statement was an unfortunate truth. It had become “no big deal”. Like I said, it has taken me 33 years, but I finally get it. While during my college years I had a legalist sense of waiting till I got married to have sex so not to get in trouble with God. Problem was that then, I did not care if I was in trouble. Today, I see how I have used and misused physical intimacy, how I was willing to sell out on myself, to trade sex for what I thought was love.
During the last time that I was physically intimate with a man, it all made sense to me. Within moments of climax, from that state of euphoria, within a millisecond it all came crashing down on me. I realized that at the very moment I was the most vulnerable, physically, emotionally, I was suddenly scared. In that moment, I wanted to give him everything, forever. And then the harsh reality hit me. “Kelly, he is not your husband, he will not be here forever.” It had happened this way so many times before, from the peak of ecstasy, I fell to the pit of loneliness. I wanted to get away, to hide, the walls went up, the fortress around my heart got higher and higher.
But this time, God showed me the truth. And from that moment, I realized, saving myself, making a promise to purity, was not something I had to do to avoid getting in trouble. It was not even something I wanted to preserve as a gift to my husband. It was something I wanted to do, a gift I have given myself.
Today, I believe that purity is a gift. It is an amazing opportunity to learn to relate, to connect, to love, on a whole different level. God’s instructions to us are the same, they are His gifts to us, His wisdom, His love, His understanding, and His grace. This I believe…