Pure Love, Pure Life: Exploring God's Heart on Purity

INTRODUCTION

If I’d been born a pioneer woman—life in a buttoned-up dress, lacy bonnet, and sturdy boots—the only men who would have crossed my path would have been smelly, obsessed with gold, and completely disinterested in my dusty, tough-girl self. Without TV or a computer, I would never be exposed to what those smelly men may have looked like beneath their clothing. Keeping my heart focused on godly stuff would have been a breeze. What kind of girl thinks passionate thoughts or gets lost in racy images while trudging through six feet of snow to catch (and kill) a rabbit, field mouse, or muskrat for dinner?

Unfortunately, I was born into a world where guys smell good, searching for romance wins over muskrat hunting, and images assault me at every turn. The images were innocent enough at first. As a little girl, I loved watching all the happily-ever-after movies and TV shows. I would dream of my knight in shining armor—what he might look like, what kind of flowers he would bring as he rode in on his horse, that type of thing. So I began looking for him—everywhere. Louis was the first one to catch my eye. We were in the third grade. He was tall, I was tall. Obviously we were meant to be together forever. I used all my third-grade womanly wiles to get Louis’s attention: I punched him in the arm, chased him at recess, and beat him in a contest to see who could jump the farthest off the swings. When I felt like I’d captured his heart, I let him know, in my gentle, womanly way, that it was time for us to take it to the next level and hold hands.

Maybe I moved a wee bit fast because Louis seemed to drift away after that. And then to add insult to injury, he asked Lisa—the only other tall girl in the class—to the school fair at the end of the year. I was crushed.

My next major love interest was Mr. Mooney. He was my sixth-grade teacher and he had a beard. With all the subtlety of a freight train, I wrote out my feelings to Mr. Mooney in a note. I love your beard, I told him.

I think back now and can’t help but laugh. I can almost picture him going home to his wife, proclaiming, Look what Elsa wrote me today!

My crushes started like that—harmless, innocent. But when Dominic took me behind the school to kiss me and then tried to look down my shirt, it freaked me out a little. I wondered, just for a second, if I might be in over my head.

When it came to kissing, touching, and sex, I was told what I should do: My parents encouraged me to stand for purity. My church told me to keep my hands to myself. Commercials told me to be smart and be good. Well, all the reasoning I heard from those authority figures seemed to fly out the window when boys like Gary leaned in to kiss me and spoke words that melted my heart: You’re so beautiful … Mmmm, I thought. Kiss me again!

Besides, impurity seemed like a different kind of sin. I knew to stay away from drugs and alcohol and not to steal, kill, or lie. But then again I didn’t wake up when I was ten years old wondering what it would be like to smoke pot or drink a beer. I didn’t dream of stealing from the local department store. But I did wake up wondering what it would be like to kiss Louis. And the movies I watched didn’t involve a princess sneaking off to smoke behind the castle or plotting how she would break into the royal liquor cabinet—I watched Disney movies where the strong prince scooped up the beautiful princess, kissed her, and rode off into the sunset.

To do what? I would wonder.

It was all so magical. And breathtaking.

Romance was good. Kissing was good.

But wait—sex was bad.

Holding hands, good. Hugging, good. But, hold on—doing any of that while steaming up car windows—bad.

These mixed messages littered my childhood, drenched my adolescence, and sidelined my teenage years. I got that I should stay away from drugs and alcohol. But romance? Love? Intimacy? How did that even compare? What did purity even mean? No French-kissing? No touching the private zones? No thoughts? It seemed far too confusing to put it all together so I didn’t even try.

And then I fell in love. Darren fit the bill for the knight in shining armor I’d been looking for all those years. The love we shared was the most intense feeling I’d known. I couldn’t seem to remember why it was so important to keep my hands to myself or wait until marriage to have sex. And where was the line again? In the middle of trying to figure it all out, we didn’t do a lot to fight the temptations. Even though we were both Christians who had been taught differently, we ended up going further and further until ultimately, we had sex. We felt guilty at first, but that seemed to lessen as time went on. After all, we weren’t really having sex, we were making love, and in my brain that made all the difference. Besides, I really couldn’t see what the big deal was. Why was everybody so uptight about it? It’s not like we were little kids. We loved each other.

I remember when my parents found out what we were doing. You’ll regret it, my dad told me.

I’ll never regret it! I told him. Never!

And I’ll be honest, for a long time I didn’t. I loved Darren and nothing truly horrible happened the moment we slept together. Lightning didn’t strike, the world didn’t implode, I didn’t stop loving God or suddenly grow horns and think evil thoughts.

So what was the big deal?

Then Darren broke up with me. We’d been dating for one year, and suddenly he thought we weren’t going to make it.

I was devastated. I was crazy about him, and I didn’t understand why he would walk away from something so good.

That’s when things started becoming rough. I was miserable. I missed Darren so much and it literally took years to get over my broken heart.

At the time I thought it was because I was so in love with him. And yes, I loved him. But I understand now that something much bigger happened when we let ourselves go to different places physically. The more intimate we were, the greater the bond. And when we did have sex, we became one. Breaking that bond ended up breaking my heart.

And it was not pretty.

Then all the other consequences started filtering in. Feeling used. Disappointed with myself. The painful realization that I’d given away something I couldn’t get back. I thought I was giving myself to the man I would spend the rest of my life with … now, when I did meet that forever guy, I’d have to explain how I’d given myself to someone else. Great. And then came the temptation. Oh, wow. Since I’d gone there once, it was so tough not to just make the same decision over and over again. What did it matter now? I tried to rebuild what was lost, but I really had no clue what that even looked like.

I wish I could say that things turned around then. Well, they did, for a little while. I stayed away from guys of every shape and size for a season. But then Mike came into the picture. And then John. I had recommitted myself to waiting for sex until marriage, but my picture of purity was all messed up. I had it in my head that it was just saying no to sex. Do whatever you want, think whatever you want, spend time with whoever you want—but just don’t have sex. It was a rule, and so I pushed its boundaries. Somewhere inside I wanted to be a good girl. I mean, it sounded like the right thing, but I still didn’t know exactly what that looked like or, realistically, if I would ever be able to live it out

While I was really struggling to figure all that out, I met a Navy guy with blond hair, blue eyes, and a contagious laugh. Again, I let down my guard. We fell in love and our relationship became physical. I justified it because I was older and "Hey, we’re definitely getting married." Unfortunately, because we had sex to turn to, we ignored a lot of the red flags in our relationship. We did get married, and had a beautiful baby girl. Only four years later, we went through a tragic divorce. My life seemed to unravel, and those childhood, romantic happily-ever-after dreams seemed forever lost.

I was sitting on a cement culvert in South Bend, Indiana, when it seemed like I finally woke up. I was a single mom of a toddler. I’d been through a divorce. I was sitting there smoking cigarette after cigarette. This wasn’t how things were supposed to turn out. This wasn’t where my life was supposed to end up. I was the one who was going to know the love of my knight in shining armor. We were supposed to live together forever—happy, goofy in love, fighting dragons, and making cute babies. What had happened?

Oh, I was such a mess, and I stayed that way for a while. My picture of God was that he was probably disappointed in me. Angry. Distant. Done. In fact, that was another painful reality of going my own way for so long: I had no idea how to find my way back to God.

When I did decide to try to reconnect with him, it felt like I took one step forward, two steps back. Deep inside I was scared of his disappointment, so I would reach out to him for a little while, but then look for a guy to make me feel better. Then back and forth again and again.

Yet I couldn’t stay away. I showed up at a small church one Sunday morning, reeking of cigarette smoke from being out the night before. I was nervous and I kept one eye on the door just in case things got weird and I needed to make a quick exit.

It was the pastor and his wife who headed me off before I could escape at the end of the service. They had nice smiles, and they shook my hand and looked me in the eye. They invited me over for lunch and asked me about my life. They didn’t cringe or grimace or make faces. And they were nice to my daughter.

I decided I might like to go back.

That’s how God worked with me. He was gentle. I was almost like a scared puppy, skittish and nervous. And he was like a dog whisperer. He didn’t make any sudden moves. He held out his hand and waited for me to approach. In my timing and in my way.

I think that’s when my faith went from memorizing Sunday school lessons to realizing there was a God who really loved me and cared about what happened to me. The more I got to know him, the more I realized how much he wanted to be my knight in shining armor, the love of my life. I realized he had always wanted me to live purely in order to protect me. He never wanted me to carry all that heavy stuff—guilt, pain, sadness, loneliness—that I was now lugging around. As I began to understand his heart, I figured out that, yes, he’d always wanted me to be pure, but not in an uptight, rigid, hate-guys kind of way. He wanted me to be pure by loving him and trusting him enough to let him map out my life, pick my guy, and protect me from getting my heart broken.

I was single for twelve years before I met the man God had for me. In that time I really started living purity more as an identity, a way of life, an understanding of God’s love. I was learning more and more that it went beyond saying no to sex: it’s what I think, do, see, and choose to experience. When I did start dating the man of my dreams, I was determined not to mess things up again. He was too. We dated, and the closer we grew, the tougher it was to hold on to our convictions.

I’d love to tell you, Don’t worry. Once you understand God’s heart and make the commitment, the whole thing is a piece of cake. It’s not even close. I was going to marry Brian, so obviously I thought he was sexy. And it’s not like we shook hands with two feet of air between us at all times. We kissed and I confess (only to you) that sometimes I had a tough time not reaching for his tushie in the midst of our embrace. I wanted more. I wanted him.

So, no, it wasn’t easy. And it won’t be easy for you. But it is worth it.

When I married Brian, I walked down the aisle in white. We had a wedding night that left us both breathless and delighted. It was beautiful. Just right. The whole process was really amazing. God had done these wonderful things in my heart as a single woman, helping me to love him in the coolest ways. Once I met Brian and we started falling in love, God gave us the supernatural strength to avoid ripping each other’s clothes off prior to the wedding. And what I didn’t expect was how purity isn’t just a singles’ thing or a dating thing, it’s actually a marriage thing too. Brian and I stay pure in our love for God (not letting anything get in the way) and pure in our love for each other (not letting anyone else get in the way), and our marriage is incredible as a result. That may sound goofy and just the kind of thing I should say, but it’s true. People roll their eyes when they listen to us talk or watch us interact. We’re still stupid in love and a big part of that is because we both love God and we’ve fought through some of the toughest temptations together.

I want that for you. I want you to know the good things that choosing purity can bring—no matter where you’ve been, no matter your past, whether you’ve gotten it all right or struggled in an area or two. Listen, I know what it’s like to pursue intimacy that feels good in the moment but ultimately turns south. I even know what it’s like when the choice is taken away and someone touches you or takes a part of you that they didn’t have any right to take.

I also know what it’s like to feel God’s love in a way that really changes things, and to live faith in the toughest moments of heartache or temptation. You can do this. You can learn to guard your heart, protect your body, and love God with all that you are.

But back to our pioneer woman. Maybe you, too, wish you lived in the days of buttoned-up beauty and smelly guys. But you don’t. Guys today are anything but smelly. They’re tough to resist. There are sexual images all over the place and temptation around every turn. So don’t walk this road alone. Let me walk it with you and remind you that you are deeply loved, and that even if this is a broken area in your life, even if you are dealing with the painful consequences of your own choices or the cruel choices of another, God can heal and restore and