But I listen.
I listen to chapel speakers at school. I take note of podcasts online. I hear sermons. I watch tears roll down friend's faces as they share their experiences and stories.
and I form my own thoughts. I sit in the wee hours of the morning with my Bible and journal. I read. I write. I listen to Jesus.
Then yesterday happened. I sat at the table and heard yet another story. Another story that made my heart cringe. I held my breath for a second, trying so hard to not let rage take over at the evil work of the enemy in our world. doesn't she see how loved she is?
and I knew it was time. time to write out a rebuttal.
I texted yesterday's coffee date this morning and said, "how would you feel about me blogging about our time yesterday? I won't put your name or anything, and you can obviously read and edit it before I post it. No pressure at all!"
This was her reply: "Please. Please blog it. Anything that I said if fair game. I trust you."
Seriously?
Her selflessness astounds me.
Anyway. Here we go. Let's step into the trenches together.
This is one of the first sentences I remember from yesterday. It made me cry. She looked at me and said, "I was nineteen years old and crazy in love with Jesus when a pastor stood in an auditorium and told me I was damaged goods because of my sexual past."
I sat there and just started to cry. While I'm sure that pastor was making every effort to encourage this crowd of young adults to stay pure for marriage, he was also shattering the hope of new life and identity for any girl who has a history.
I've seen them. I've heard them. I'm sure we all have. They are passionate. They are well-intentioned. They are good speakers. They are incredibly convincing.
She continued: "he stood up on that stage and just shamed me. over and over and over again. He didn't call me up to the front or name my name, but he stood there and talked about me with such disgust, like I didn't belong worshipping in that church. I felt like there was a spot light on me, singling me out amongst the holy. I'm sure my face was so red it announced by guilt to everyone."
Then she went on to explain that he passed a cup of water around, asked them all to spit in it. Some boys horked and honked their worst into that cup, sending everyone into a fit of laughter. He held the cup of cloudy saliva up and asked, "now, who would like to drink this?!". Gagging noises and shouts of "NO WAY", and "that's disgusting" and "never" followed the inquiry.
The pastor's response: "This is what you are like if you have sex before marriage," he said seriously, "you are asking your future husband or wife to drink this cup."
Honestly, I was having trouble catching my breath. I just wanted to hug her. Tell her she was loved. That she had purpose and promise and worth.
Over the years that I've heard messages on purity and sex, the words have melded together into a common refrain:
1. You're virginity is a gift. Don't be foolish and give it away.
2. If you have sex before marriage, you are throwing away your virtue for a moment of pleasure.
3. You have twisted God's ideal of sex and love and marriage.
4. You will never be free from former partners, and the boys will haunt your marriage like soul-ties.
5. Your virginity belongs to your husband. You stole from him.
6. If you get married, you will now bring tremendous baggage into your marriage.
I've heard it over and over. and over and over, I've watched girls take that message and bury it deep in their souls.
"No one honorable or godly will ever want to marry me."
"I am just damaged goods."
"Since true love is supposed to wait, I have been disqualified from true love."
and I'm so so tired of hearing this. I'm just tired of it. Not because I don't LOVE hearing stories. Not because I get bored. Not because I've heard the same thing over and over.
I am tired of it because it's absolutely absurd that this is the love (or lack of it) that we have cultivated.
In the face of our sexually-dysfunctional culture, the church as a whole longs to stand out as an outpost of God's ways of love and marriage, purity and wholeness.
as it should. God DID design sex for marriage.
But somehow, we twist that until we treat incredible, beautiful women as if their value and worth is tied up in their virginity.
I'm a seriously empathetic person, and I have sat across from woman after woman... and I've felt this with them. I've felt like the dirty little secret, the not-as-good, the easily judged example. I've painfully watched and felt my heart endure the shame that comes from their soul battling against the lie that sexual choices are the barometer of righteousness and worth.
"I couldn't let anyone know. So I just kept it quiet. I didn't want anyone to discover that I wasn't a virgin. I didn't want to be the object of disgust or pity or judgement. So in the silence, my shame- and the lies of the enemy- grew."
Tears ran down both of our faces.
I was frantically searching my brain for the right words to say. I felt Jesus gently nudge me and say, "put yourself there."
So I did. As I already had, but even deeper this time. I sat in that packed auditorium with her. My heart began to race, my wrists started to ache, my eyes stung. I felt it. Really felt it. Every bit of beauty I might have felt was quieted, and I was silenced by the imposition of humiliation masquerading as ashes of remorsefulness.
and then I knew exactly what to say to her. exactly what needed to be said here. exactly what I would wish someone to say to me if I was in her shoes.
You are loved.
Really, it could stop there. But I'll keep going.
Yes, you had sex before you were married.
Nothing about that changes the fact that you are perfectly loved. for all eternity.
There is NO shame in Christ's love. You are so much more than your virginity. so much more than your sexual past.
Your marriage is not doomed because you said yes to sex outside of marriage. Your husband will not hold it against you. Because he's not that weak and ego-driven. Choose a man marked by grace.
It's likely that you would've made different choices if you could go back. if you knew then what you know now. But beautiful daughter of the Most High, don't let anyone silence you or the redeeming work of Christ in your life that brought you out of shame and into beauty.
You have been made NEW. In Christ, you are clear, like fresh spring water, rushing and alive, quenching and bracing, in your wholeness.
For I am convinced, right along with Paul, that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any other power, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. Not even “neither virginity nor promiscuity” and all points between can separate you from this love. You are loved- without condition- beyond your wildest dreams.
I don't know what your "auditorium day" looks like. or maybe there's been lots and lots of them. But no matter what that pastor said that day, no matter how many purity balls are thrown with sparkling upper-middle-class extravagance, no matter the purity rings and the purity pledges, no matter the judgemental Gospel-negating rhetoric used with the best of intentions, no matter the “how close is too close?” serious conversations of boundary-marking young Christians, no matter the circumstances of your story, you are not disqualified from life or from joy or from marriage or from your calling.
So dear young one burning with shame and hiding in the silence, listen now: Don’t believe that lie.
You never were, you never will be, damaged goods.
You are loved,
Lyss
