When I finally decided to complete the work that went into building this website and blog, I knew that the vision that I had been blessed with required my obedience and transparency. I can only speak from personal experience, and both obedience and transparency have been very difficult for me to honor in the past. Contrary to what some of you may believe when reading my posts, I usually have about a 10-15-minute mini-war within myself each month before pressing the submit button. That war usually stirs up from focusing on the anxiety about who’s reading these posts, and if I’ve offended someone. Even still, I have found that at the end of the day, this is not about me or my worries. It’s so much deeper than that. This is all about taking off the superficial mask and letting the transparency around my life’s journey bless someone who might be able to relate. This month we are beginning to tackle what many “inside” and “outside” of the church consider to be some pretty taboo topics; love, lust and celibacy.
I knew that at some point into this blogging journey, that we’d have to go there together… But, before we dive into this, I want each reader to be reminded that this blog was created to uplift and empower women and girls and not to do the opposite. I am a woman and my perspective will be that of a woman’s. I am also a believer, a Christian. Acknowledging this upfront, may assist you in understanding the perspectives from which I write. We also should acknowledge, that at the end of the day, every being has the free will to continue being the person who they’d like to be. Hopefully there’s something here for you this month to take you into these next thirty-one days, and if not check out the gardening video, and I’ll catch you in June lol!
Around November of 2016 I began a wellness journey here in North Carolina. It led me to the decision to garden in 2017. For some vegetables and fruits, I purchased already sprouted seedlings (less work). However, I do love a challenge! So the spontaneous adventurer in me decided to also try my hand at growing vegetables from seed. That’s right! Literally seeds! The very beginning of the gardening process. For instructions on how to start you own plants from seed check out this video.
Though I had gardened before as a little girl with my mother and grandma, I quickly had forgotten the amount of love and attention that goes into producing actual crop to harvest. I mean this is going to take weeks of effort and attention on my end! I’ve already had moments where I’ve wanted to give up and just stick to buying fruit and veggies at the store. Yet, I’ve chosen to keep pushing.
Who would have known that the labor of growing plants from seed, almost identically personifies the process of growth in our personal lives? We all know that for plants to grow, they need nutrients from the sun, water and soil. You see seeds are buried beneath the earth in darkness. The soil covers them fully. We don’t see the seed again, until both germination and growth have taken place.
Ladies, we are so much like seeds. Many of us have made choices along our journey that have caused certain seasons in our lives to look like that of a planted seed. Buried in complete darkness and covered in the dirt of our life’s current situation. Just like seeds, we all require a different amount of time and nurturing before we begin to germinate and grow. Regardless of the variations in time and nurturing, each seedling breaks through the once dark soil, and sprouts above the earth to continue in its beautiful growing process. Celibacy is not a sentence to loneliness. It’s time strategically set aside in a person’s life, to deeply prepare their soul for marriage and sex. I don’t know about you, but to me, that experience sounds like it takes time.
Before I was led to celibacy, I too spent time as a seed in darkness. My darkness was covered in the bondage of guilt. Now let’s acknowledge here that every woman’s experiences are different and what I consider darkness, may not the same definition that you believe to be true. So let's look to dictionary.com for some wisdom! The word darkness if defined as follows;
1.the state or quality of being dark : The room was in total darkness.
2. absence or deficiency of light: the darkness of night.
3. wickedness or evil: Satan, the prince of darkness.
4. obscurity; concealment: The darkness of the metaphor destroyed its effectiveness.
5. lack of knowledge or enlightenment: heathen darkness.
6. lack of sight; blindness.
We’ve all experienced some form of darkness in our lives. Have you begun working through yours? The darkness of my guilt, for me was caused by a very Christianese word “sexual immorality”. To put it plainly sex before marriage. I felt a gut-wrenching guilt like no other that I often kept to myself or confided in with my youth pastor at the time. The experience completely changed my life and my relationships with those around me. Now I’ve already lost some of you! “Why is this girl speaking on sex right now?! She’s not married and she’s out of line!” My response would be because no one else is! How can we expect other women and girls, different or alike to work through this thing if no one is willing to step up and share what steps they have taken that have changed their lives for the better? Better meaning, experiencing growth in this area. Better, never means perfect.
If we truly believe that God is who he says he is, why aren’t we willing to be honest about our past? If you truly believe in your salvation, why aren’t you willing to be transparent about what brought you to Christ in the first place? I believe that if more Christ followers were willing to be open about our broken pasts, we’d see a shift in the church and among the body. We believe in discipleship, but aren’t willing to be disciples. News flash people, majority of the disciples were heathens first! Christ came and used those who were considered disgraceful, abandoned and broken to show God’s unending love through them. So never think this would be impossible for you to do! God meets us right where we are today, not after we've "worked some things out on our own".
What’s the big deal about sex before marriage within the Christian faith anyway? I think that Matt Chandler explains this perfectly in his remarkable book, The Mingling of the Souls. Chandler writes,
“Sex is a gift from God. It is meant to nurture intimacy in a marriage and forge a bonding of souls. Unfortunately, sex in our culture has become almost exclusively a physical thing. We’ve made the word love a junk drawer thing. It’s the word that means everything.”
He goes on to explain,
“God’s plan is for a man and a woman in the bond of the marriage covenant to have their souls – not just their bodies—become one.”
My question for you today is, is it worth a piece of your soul? How many pieces? You don’t have to be a Christian to believe in the soul, or in a person’s spirit. Your spirit. For me, it just simply isn’t. My hope is that through my openness, I have found that I am not the only “single millennial Christian woman” that feels this way. You can choose to keep your soul to yourself, the same way free will permits you the choice to share it. Just like the weeks, love and daily attention it takes for a plant to push through the soil and sprout, the same applies through the journey of celibacy.
When Matt speaks about “nurturing intimacy” I begin to see the imagery of watering a plant. How are you watering your life? Are you nurturing intimacy in dead places? Take a moment to analyze the times you’ve attempted to “nurture intimacy”. Can you imagine constantly being in the wrong place, pushing to nurture intimacy into a relationship with a person that wasn’t even created for you? My immediate thought about that is, what a waste of time? Choosing celibacy for me, meant I was no longer willing to risk the potential of positioning myself to experience those events.
The moment that I began taking the time to ask myself these tough questions, I found that I had been nurturing intimacy in dead places instead of within myself. What would this season of your life look like, if you applied the same passion and desire inward instead of outward into another being? Are you taking advantage of the same 24 hours in a day as Beyoncé to grow and become the best version of yourself? Are you living your best life, right now, in this moment today? Unfortunately, we often attach ourselves and mingle our souls with people that we were only meant to encounter in passing. We are continuously forcing temporary to be permanent for the sake of our comfort. But we must remember that seeds don’t sprout in comfort.
When I made a choice to see my body as a holy temple, I began my celibacy journey. I don’t really believe in smacking anyone in the face with the word, but I do believe in coupling it with this blog. There’s a passage in bible in the book 1 Corinthians 6:9 that reads,
Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own.
An awareness in my spirit that I wasn’t prepared for the depths of what sex outside of marriage is, and the many things that it can create came over me. If you are someone who may feel the same awareness or have a desire to choose celibacy, I’m telling you, that you aren’t alone, and it doesn't make you crazy, lame or undesirable. When I began to share my choice to commit to living in celibacy until marriage, other girls began talking with me and sharing their same desire!
So the first step is making the choice. Next, I encourage you to seek awareness and discernment about what areas in your life you can put some attention towards. After that step, I'd encourage you to eliminate triggers. Everyone's triggers are different but, examples of these things can include pornography and masturbation, over drinking at the bar, spending "closed door bedroom time" with your crush, or even simply keeping certain numbers for people in your phone. Learn your triggers and daily start making different choices. My final step in entering the covenant of celibacy with God, was to put on a purity ring. This was a personal decision and obviously isn’t required at all. But for my personal experience, the ring came to me in a really sweet way and it felt meant to be. This past Resurrection Sunday seemed like the best time to finally put it on. The ring itself is meaningless if the heart has not yet committed. The ring simply acts as a physical reminder that my body is a temple and my worth cannot be bought without a marriage covenant.
This all still may sound outlandish to you, but I ask you to simply consider this,
You’re worth more than rubies. Far precious than gold. You’re fearfully and wonderfully made. You have a distinct purpose, and God absolutely adores you. You cannot be bought by words, luxury or physical attachment. You are no longer a slave to fear. You are discipline and you have the capability to change your current situation with a little bit of faith in yourself. You. Are. Worth. The. Wait. A man who is called to be with you, will honor your decision to wait.
Be inspired to accomplish the “impossible”
She is clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future.
Proverbs 31:25
She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her.
Proverbs 3:15