Growth happens.
Growth is the natural order of life. We grow in age, knowledge, physique, experience…
What we do with that growth is a different matter.
Who we are, what our values are and what makes us tick is a vital part of our growth. The development of our character is so very important to the essence of our existence.
I’m going to touch on the importance of your virtue, sex and marriage – no, not because I’m a Christian, but because it does have a major effect on your life whether you want to admit it or not.
I will, of course, start from my own life experiences and go from there.
I’ve been an introvert of sorts since a very young age. As a child, I just wanted to spend time on my own, reading my books or keeping my own company. My best friend growing up was my cousin, Luisa. Same age as me and we were both very similar in character.
Then my family and I moved to the UK and things changed a little at a time. I no longer had that friend I heavily relied on and everything was different in this new life. I couldn’t be myself and a world of lies was woven into existence – from my nationality to putting on an indifferent face and adopting a new character, to hiding emotional and sexual abuse and pretending I was someone of worldly value.
So I stayed pretty naive and insular during my teenage years. In Colombia, I was carefree and open to be me. In England, there were all these new rules I had to follow that didn’t make sense and all I could do to keep afloat was to go through the motions, because rocking the boat was a bad thing. So, I went through the motions. I was well behaved and did what I was told — by everyone.
That doesn’t quite work out so well as you grow up and certainly not as a woman. You can’t just exist and expect the world not to leave some marks on you. I spent so much time just going through the motions that I didn’t begin to develop my ideas and character until I was well out of my parents home and influence. I’m not saying I was a complete shell but I can say that I was pretty bland.
We were created for life.
So, I said an I was introvert of sorts because I’m also very outgoing and when you get me in a social setting, I glow. I am still pretty immature when it comes to my feelings and half the time they do turn around and smack me in the face. I hate those times. I’m fairly all over the place half of the time, with a variety of moods to match every day of the month. It is exhausting!
I’m very much learning who I want to be but the steps required to get me there are fairly painful and very scary. Thus far, the most difficult lesson I’ve had to learn was how to say “no” and I didn’t learn to say that one word until very recently. That brought along a world of resentment and frustration. I’m still fairly slow on the uptake and I’m highly emotional and high-strung because of it. Consequences of my upbringing perhaps, but we all have to learn at some point.
Many factors contribute to who you are and ultimately it’s down to you how you lead your life but some situations and circumstances are seemingly so insignificant that you don’t even notice the snowball effect they create in your life until it’s this huge avalanche running you down the hill.
Or there are those events in life that are so big and so in your face that you attack and defend and conquer it to the best of your ability because you know it’s not for you and yet, it still leaves its mark despite your best efforts.
The beauty of it is choice – my past doesn’t mean that I’m stuck, that I can’t change or grow from the chaos that I find myself in. It just means that I have a lot of experience to look back on… on how not to behave.
One day I will figure out the ways I should behave. Hopefully.
So you may ask what any of this has got to with our virtue, virginity and character? Everything. Educating yourself and educating others is one of the greatest expressions of love you can show to yourself and those around you.
My first two to three years in the UK created a pattern in my disposition that left very little room for development. When I tell you that I existed for the majority of that decade, I am not exaggerating. Other people’s needs to protect themselves, protect me, protect their lies and their investments left me, as a child, in a state of limbo dictated by fear and disquiet and because there was nothing otherworldly about my behaviour nothing changed for a long time.
If I were to put into words my age, mentally, I would say I’m probably between 16 and 18 years of age – and not even the 16 to 18-year-olds of this era, that are super switched on from the age of 6-months. No, I’m just a plain kid learning how to do life outside of high school. Physically, I’m in my 30’s now but I stopped living at the age of 10 and started living again after the age of 23.
My mother told me at the age of 15 that if I wanted to have sex then to use a condom. My response was to stare blankly at her for a few minutes then go back to my room and my book. I told my high school friends about the incident and they thought I was very lucky for having such a supportive mother.
When I was 16 years old, my friends would tell me that I was flirty every time they saw me interact with a boy. How I acted or reacted, I still have no idea because that was not what was going through my mind at all. First of all, I was terrified of my mother as a teenager – if I wasn’t allowed out, I certainly wouldn’t be allowed boyfriends (despite her advice about condoms). Secondly, I just wasn’t interested in guys. I liked spending time with them because they were easier to get along with than girls but truly, relationships have never been my priority.
I lost my virginity at the age of 22 to a man that I met at work. He took me out to dinner at a hotel and then invited me up to the hotel room he’d book. I just went along with it because well, why not. It wasn’t until afterwards that I thought about what I’d done and what he’d done and how the whole scenario played out and my only response was… “oh…” then swiftly moved on.
A few other sexual encounters under my belt and it made no emotional impact in my life because I lived in a cloud of motion. No connections whatsoever.
Ignorance is bliss and before coming to Christ I didn’t think of how having sex outside of marriage (an outward commitment to a heart and mind decision) affected my mental, emotional and physical health.
I was brought up a Catholic. The Easter and Christmas mass kind of religious Catholic that have no actual understanding of the Word of God. I also went to a Catholic school, led by Nuns but that didn’t mean anything to me.
I knew God. I knew the presence of God. I have always known, without a shadow of a doubt, that God is real, however, what it meant to live a Christian life? Completely clueless. I knew it was bad to lie and steal and kill. I recited the 10 commandments at school in monotone. I read scripture in assembly in from of my peers. Did any of it make any sense or click for me? No.
Opening my eyes and taking stock of how far I have come was a startling realisation of how little I have lived and how little importance I have put into my well-being and my actual life.
Now, almost a year on from the one relationship I did want to make work and I am finally coming to realise how unprepared I was for any of it. How all the steps I’ve taken so far, although some more helpful than others, have left me with a woeful lack of knowledge on how to deal with life and make it fit together.
I realised that I lived through my romantic relationship fully in love and yet fully in fear. I fell in love doing life with him but I was fearful of myself, fearful of our future, fearful of those around us, fearful of our work, fearful of the decision we made and didn’t make together as a couple or as individuals. That fear was one of the things that drove us apart because fear does one of two things to women when we’re not in a good, healthy place – it makes us control freaks or it makes us into these soulless drones.
Unto the woman he said, “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in sorrow you shall bring forth children; and your desire shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you.” Genesis 3:16 KJV
I both knew and didn’t know better when I decided to have sex with my ex. I fought it verbally, but I succumbed to the need when it struck us both and the aftermaths always hurt. The uncertainty and the mental, emotional and physical turmoil you face on this decision has you on a knife-edge. Your heart is shouting one thing and your body another.
Which one wins?
and your desire shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you.” Genesis 3:16 KJV
If you read other versions of the same passage, you will see “desire” replaced by “control”, “contrary” and “trust”. Desire is the most prominently used verb in this verse and the way I understand it, it is also the most fitting. Speaking from my own experience and the love and desire that I still feel for my ex, I know there’s a fundamental need in our beings as women that submit to our male counterparts because they make us feel whole. Complete.
You see, as women, when we give ourselves away – heart, body and soul – without getting those vows of commitment, we become dependant and insecure. We become paranoid and resentful. We gave everything away and there’s nothing that guarantees that our sacrifice will be honoured and we have nothing else to give. Nothing of real value or significance compared to what we have already given away.
Men, simply put, have nothing to work for and worse, in their eyes, our value has dropped because if we gave ourselves away so easily to them, who else have we done it for?
This physical, emotional and spiritual activity is something we can’t retract. Sex wasn’t meant to be recreational outside of marriage. It wasn’t made to be a tool to control the opposite sex. It isn’t designed to get you from A to B whilst you wait for the next best thing.
Sex is a physical representation of a heart and mind commitment that you make to each other after you have declared to God, church and people that you will do life together regardless of the ups and downs because you want to be together for the rest of your natural lives.
Marriage was created for the protection of your heart and your life. In simple terms, our history dictates that the institution of marriage was a commitment made to protect the linage and the reproduction of the human race. Now it seems to be an answer to fickle feelings. One moment I love you and can’t live without you, the next you piss me off and I can’t wait to get away from you.
In saying that, marriage itself hasn’t changed. That popular culture and fashion trends that make a joke out of marriage, doesn’t make it any less important or effective in your life. When you see a married couple that works with each other and builds each other up, you can see how they blossom. If marriage was another box to tick, you see it fall.
The best thing you can ever do for yourself (because it’s the most basic need you have) is to remain pure until you meet that someone who will make the joint decision with you to become one and you give each other no escape clause.
That does not in any shape or form say that you can’t start again in heart and mind. You are nor a broken vessel that can’t be renewed, recycled, revalued. Trust in God to give you a fresh start.
With God, all things are possible.
For those of us that carry the pieces of a broken heart, broken mind and broken body, the only way out is if we give it all to God and trust Him to purify us. If we don’t, it will eat at us and it will keep us from natural growth.
The fear of rejection, unworthiness and abandonment is too great to bear. We can pretend it’s not true and that God has no say in the value of our life and soul, but we would be kidding ourselves.
Ultimately, we need to realise that we have been bought at a price and that price was the blood of Jesus Christ and there is no life outside of Him. Live that life to the fullest. Regardless of your past, you can start again with a clean slate and clean spirit.
Only you can do you and only Jesus can get you there.
You are priceless.
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