we sat in her backyard, this young life girl and i, and she was pregnant and asking me if she should get an abortion.
and it was the second time i’d been asked that in my lifetime. the first time, a high-school friend had asked me, and i’d told her no, but i’d said it almost angrily. i’d said it out of fear.
i was a young preacher’s daughter who was afraid of sin, or of anything that might lead to it. i was afraid of alcohol and drugs and sex and abortion because they were hot topics that christians not only shouldn’t do, but shouldn’t talk about.
but this time, when the young life girl asked me, i said “no, i don’t think you should abort, but i will still love and support you if you do,” because i was no longer afraid. i knew that Jesus had triumphed over sin and that his love covered a multitude. and that his love covered her, and more than needing not to get an abortion, this girl needed to know she was loved no matter what she decided.
i knew she had been with boys since her mother had put her in group homes and that the only person who had loved her, her father, had died when she was young. and when your father dies and your mother kicks you out, a bit of your self-esteem dies too and you wonder whose you are, and who you are, and why you are.
and she didn’t know if she had enough belief in herself to care for a child.
and sometimes the only worth you can feel is in the arms of another man.
i get that.
but i also get that when that man lets go, the sense of worth does too. you want a man who will never let you go.
i had enough religious fear in me as a kid (and shame of my own skin) to keep me from getting naked with a boy.
but whether you’re not having sex outside of marriage because you’re ashamed of yourself, or whether you’re having sex because you’re looking for love, it’s not what God intended.
and i say this in the kindest, gentlest way. because i know us. i know us women. and the way we long for a heavenly kind of embrace, the only kind an Abba Father can give us, and the way we can’t find it no matter how hard we try, here on earth.
we should hold our purity in the highest of regards, not because we’re afraid of our own skin, but because we love ourselves enough to wait for a man who will give up his life to earn the right. a man who will want us for more than our skin–for better or for worse–because we are just that kind of amazing.
we are worth waiting for. and this is why we should wait.
in the end though, if you’ve looked for love in all of the wrong places and only then, found it in God’s arms, you are at the same destination as those who found it in the first place. because God makes all things new.
he remakes us. he remakes our hearts, and our body. becoming re-born is a very literal experience. it’s not just this mystical, magical idea. God wove us together in our mothers wombs. he made grown-up Eve out of grown-up Adam. he speaks, and matter forms. it’s that simple. and it’s something we can count on.
so, to the non-virgins standing, you are loved. you are so desperately loved. and you are worth waiting for. starting now.
(this post inspired by my piece, last week, at Prodigal, and by my friend Sarah Bessey’s incredible, honest, and vulnerable story over HERE at A Deeper Story today… won’t you visit her there?)