I lost my virginity when I was 21.
I actually hate the phrase, "lost your virginity," because it makes it sound like virginity is a thing you can lose track of the way your mom loses your socks in the dryer. The phrase itself invites someone to think of the now non-virgin in question as a sort of kamikaze martyr, alleviating them of responsibility for what was most likely a very intentional decision: "And then she lost it, poor thing, never to find it again."
I want to be brutally honest: this is not the way it happened for me. At 21, the V-card was burning a hole in my pocket and I was nursing seriously a broken heart. Right around the time my parents decided to get divorced, I met a guy. And given that both my previous relationships, although PG at best, had ended in some sort of sexual shaming, I decided that this was a perfect opportunity to get rid of my status as a college-age virgin. Tired of relationships being defined by the sense of shame surrounding physical affection, my innocence was a hurdle I wanted demolished.
He had been with over thirty other women, and I didn't love him. I didn't care. The night that it happened, I drove home with my foot out the window, stopping at the drive-thru to order French fries and not thinking about it again until the next morning. Proud.
I had heard a lot of Christian rhetoric about girl's hearts being like a plate of spaghetti and a guy's being like a waffle: female emotions all run together, forming a big, tangled plate of carbs, each touching and informing each other. Men's emotions are waffle boxes: you can open and close them at will, one at a time.
I wanted a waffle brain. I wanted the light switch, the on/off button, the type of heart that could decide when and who to care for, not being influenced or shaped by emotion.
And for a while, I got it. I dealt with the pain of the divorce by keeping the relationship secret for almost 8 months, convinced that all sex would ever be for me was a way to assert a sense of power over someone. I felt nothing, and I liked it that way.
And then I met Joe. Tall (as a girl standing 5'11, this was a huge selling point), funny and endlessly creative, I fell hard and fast. Breaking off the transactional relationship I had, Joe and I started dating that same week. Something was different about this relationship than the one before: I actually really loved this guy. (At least, I thought I did - more on that in a minute.) So when I finally initiated the conversation about if our relationship was going to be a physical one or not, I found myself in a situation I'd never been before: I loved him so much that I wanted to wait, and do it right.
By this point, however, it was too late.
"I don't understand, and I don't agree," he said, sitting uncomfortably in the passenger seat of my little Toyota Prius. "I love you, and I think I should be able to show you. Anyway, you gave yourself to that other guy, and you didn't even love him. Don't you love me?"
No amount of parental cautioning or common sense could've saved me in that moment. And as manipulative as the rationale was, to me it made sense. Quietly beckoning to the sense of shame I kept hidden in the basement of my heart, I told myself that he was right. It wasn't fair. And so, afraid of losing him, I gave in.
I want to stop right here and tell you the same thing that I told a group of 150 high schoolers this morning from a dusty podium stand: any guy or girl who tries to tell you that they can best love you by requiring a physical act is a liar.
Love - the real stuff, the perfect love of God - is unconditional. It disarms desire by carrying no requirement. Whatever cheap version of that the world is offering, I want nothing to do with. I spent way too long with guys trying to push their hands up my shirt after a kiss, offended and angry when I said that sex wasn't something I wanted. And I'm sorry to say that on several occasions, I allowed a guy to look me straight in the face, say,"I just don't think I can commit myself to you if we can't have sex,"and I gave it up.
My team leader Felicia is one of my dearest friends, and I so admire her ability to listen to me express exactly where I'm at in any given moment. Several times this month, I've asked her to pray that God gives me a spirit of deep conviction for my sexuality; because, I'll be super real: being a missionary does not mean that you automatically attain saint status and are supernaturally freed from all your vices.
Sex had become something I really liked, and was something I was, quite frankly, indifferent about. I just don't think things are inherently sacred; I'm a believer that sentiment and value come from the value that we choose to assign.
The problem is, this worldview doesn't line up with what God has to say about sex.
"I need a serious sense of conviction, because I just don't care," I said, waiting for her to drop some Old Testament Bible verse on my head like a brick. Instead, she just smiled and grabbed my hand.
A few days pass, and I'm curled up in a matted velour chair at our hosts house, trying to put pen to paper for the message I'll share at a local high school the next morning. "Please be bold," the pastor says. "Many of these kids are poor and selling themselves into prostitution. They need to hear truth."
What I found myself writing was by no means original or groundbreaking. I started writing about love. And in doing so, I realized that it had been a long time since I felt like I had a hold on what love actually was.
"Love is patient and kind. Love does not get jealous or brag; it isn't arrogant or rude. It isn't irritable or resentful; it doesn't celebrate evil, but celebrates the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Love never fails."
Slowly, something amazing started happening. It was not a lightening-strike moment, or even a steady, hourly moment-by-moment development But I woke up the morning I was supposed to deliver the message, and had an unshakeable sense of being loved.
I had been praying for conviction, a sense of "bad behaviour" to scare me into sexual morality, but what God gave me instead was a confidence that could have rivaled Beyoncé herself. All I can say is the girl who allowed guys to impose conditions on their affection and so-called "love" feels very far away now.
Friday morning, I climbed on stage and looked into 150 gorgeous, sweaty faces, and found myself growing more bold with every single word. Love will never make you feel afraid. There is someone willing to wait for you. Dream bigger than before.
One of my favourite quotes in the history of ever is from the Tarantino film, Django Unchained. Django is on a journey to rescue his kidnapped wife, and has this conversation with a man he picks up along the way:
As much as my sweet tooth aches to say it, this kind of ridiculous, outlandish love is the stuff that I'm worth. Even if a guy would climb the mountain and walk through hellfire to find that I've slain the dragon myself, I'm worth the journey.
Anybody who would give up a chance at a relationship with me because they couldn't have my body is someone I want nothing to do with.
Because, you guys, I know what I bring to the table. And it's awesome.
I will bring random outbursts of outdated 90's punk rock into awkward silences. I will bring macaroni and cheese and cinnamon red bean chili to your parents holiday gatherings, and stay long enough to help them do the dishes afterwards.
I will bring trails of freshly washed clothing all the way from your laundry room to your closet because I just might stop and ask you to dance along the way. I will bring you delirious laughter, I will bring hope to desperate circumstances, and I will bring stability to chaos.
I will bring love.
And right now, I'm saying this to you as much as I am to myself: don't settle. Be brave. Know what you're worth.
In this way, you can look at the guy or girl who you know isn't right for you, and say,"Goodbye. I am leaving because I am loved."