On Purity

I just wanted to share some things that have been on my heart lately -- and hey, that's what I have a private blog for, right? ;)

I have some young friends that are in a definitely non-Christian family (Buddhist, in fact), and it pains me, grieves me, to hear what they understand of...ehmm...intimacy. (Y'all won't be offended if I just come out and say the S word sex, will you?) Not long ago, my young girlfriend was telling me about what her mama had explained to her. Now, this sounds like all is the way it should be, correct? I mean, the parents explaining about sex to the kids. So far so good, right? Well here's the thing. She didn't tell her to wait until she was married, to save her virginity for her husband. Oh no. What did she tell her? That it was OK in a 'long-term relationship'.

Does that bother you as much as it bothers me? I mean, I know most of y'all that I have invited to this blog feel pretty much the same way I do about these things. And that phrase, 'long-term relationship', really bothers me. First of all, how do you know what is a long-term relationship? What constitutes long-term? A year? Three years? What is a long-term relationship?? Second, a long-term relationship can be terminated at any point. You have no idea how much longer a long-term relationship is going to last. There's no commitment, no 'for better for worse, for rich or for poor, in sickness and in health, till death do us part' (although seems like a lot of folks these days aren't taking the 'till death do us part' part very seriously anymore, but that's a whole 'nother post). So the words long-term relationship really bug me.

Did her mama explain about the precious gift that purity, virginity, is to give to your husband? Did she talk about the emotional, spiritual side of giving yourself in that way to another person, that binds you to that person in a way nothing else does? Did she volunteer to raise the illegitimate child that could be produced by these actions?

As far as I know, no she did not. But she did explain that in a long-term relationship, you can have a baby. No word about the statistics concerning whether the baby will ever know his/her father. No advice about choosing carefully who you want to spend the rest of your life thinking about and wishing you hadn't done that with him.

It would be easy to say this is a bad mom. But somehow, I can't say that. Part of it is that I know she is a great mom in all other areas. But the rest of it, I think, is because I know that's what she sincerely thinks. I also know she needs Jesus...but she hasn't figured that out yet. She's searching, that I know, and she's willing to ask questions and think about the answers that we give (we have witnessed to this family more than once), but she hasn't figured out yet that Jesus and Jesus alone, not Buddha or anybody else, will give her the peace she's looking for...and show her how wrong she is about so many things.

These young friends also know, understand, and laugh at sexual innuendos of which I know nothing. Think about that -- I at 17 do not understand innuendos that they at 11 think are funny. Does anyone else think there is something WRONG with this picture??

I wonder where these kids will be five, ten years down the road. Maybe they'll figure out things on their own. Or maybe my young girlfriend will be raising three kids by three different dads.

They're also very worried about my future. For those of you who don't know me personally, my family and I are committed to the courtship-type relationship instead of dating. These poor kids, bless their hearts, are very concerned that I will never get married (much less have a baby in a long-term relationship) if I don't find a boyfriend and go out on dates. Honestly, even if I didn't think that courtship is more of what the Lord designed to be the way for Godly young men and women to get to know each other and head toward marriage, just seeing the pain that dating causes would be enough to turn me off.

I won't name names, but someone close to me is just about to break up with the current boyfriend. I think she finally realized he just didn't care as much as she thought he did. It hurts to hear of her hurt, to hear that he isn't THE ONE after all, like she thought he was...and like she thought the last three or four guys were. She has put so much emotionally into each of these relationships that when something happens and she finally realizes things are not the way she thinks they are, it hurts.

Somebody else very dear to me, whom several of you will recognize, recently had a situation in which the young man that she thought was THE ONE...turned out that he wasn't. He started thinking some other girl was THE ONE for him, while she was still thinking he was THE ONE for her. In this case, I don't believe she did anything wrong (they were within the parameters of their Godly parents' advice), except maybe to put too much emotionally into it with no guarantee of commitment.

I know I've started rambling, and I'm a little off my original subject, but all these things have been swirling in my head recently, making me realize again how important it is to guard our hearts. Especially us girls -- we put too much of our emotions into things and it blinds us from seeing the truth...or at the least, it makes it hurt so much more after it's over and the dust has cleared. Now I'm not saying it's not a hard commitment to make and keep -- I'm saying it's a commitment worth keeping. Girls, let us save ourselves, to have that precious gift of our purity to give to our husbands (not our long-term relationship boyfriends). We won't regret it.