Redeeming Valentines and Reclaimed Baggage

This post was particularly difficult to write. I don’t like being vulnerable, but this is something that has been on my mind for a while, and I think it is finally time to share in the hopes of helping someone else who may be struggling – or maybe it's just for me to be transparent.

I have grown up in a wonderful home. As many of you know my parents, in particular, have always been beautifully supportive and nurturing. They have poured truth into my heart and mind from a young age. One of the areas in which they provided important feedback on was the idea of “purity.” I’m not sure when I was first introduced to the concept of “purity.” However, I read several very good books on the subject, attended discussion groups that covered it, and had very definite ideas about what “purity” meant. Many of those concepts served as helpful guardrails as I navigated teenage mood swings.

There were life circumstances along the way that challenged my notions of “purity” that included sexual abuse at the hands of a trusted individual. I thought I had a balanced idea of what purity meant, and I had all the platitudes memorized. Anyone who read a book on purity from the 1990s or early 2000s probably remembers the talking points. Don’t be like the rose that gets passed from boy to boy until only a few trashy petals remain for your future mate. Don’t dress immodestly because it will defraud your brother in Christ and might cause them to sin. Save your virginity for your husband, it is a precious gift and your responsibility to guard. Interspersed with this were truly helpful concepts such as purity being a journey not a linear model of existence. Even if you make mistakes, you can repent and be restored to a right relationship with God, the source of true purity.

Still, somewhere along the way, in my mind – and I am not blaming anyone else for this – I’m just sharing my story and perspective, I internalized some of that advice and built a worldview that did two very dangerous things.

1. It centered my sexuality and purity in relation to men

2. It promoted, in my mind at least, a rewards type system – make wise choices and God will reward you with a wonderful mate.

As a thirty-three-year-old single woman, let me tell you these are lies from the enemy. Let me share what I mean. I absolutely believe that the Bible teaches us we should be modest and wise in how we dress and behave – period. I love a good pair of heels and jewelry as much as the next girl, but if our purpose in dress is to attract attention to ourselves, then I think we have strayed from the instructions found in 1 Peter 3:3-4. However, the bigger issue is that our bodies are the “Temple of the Holy Spirit…for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19-20). If we understand this teaching correctly, then men get to benefit from a wise woman’s understanding that her body exists in relation to God alone. A woman who is walking in surrender to the Holy Spirit doesn’t need to dress in a burlap sack, but she also won’t walk around half-dressed because the Holy Spirit wouldn’t do that either. (I do understand that Paul has additional guidance on this for married couples, but I’m not talking about that today. Still, you’re welcome to go read his instructions in 1 Cor. 7:3-4).

Ladies, I encourage you to dress modestly and pursue purity not as a means to help men avoid temptation (although that is a wonderful byproduct), but as a means to glorify God regardless of what men do. For the women who have followed this wisdom and still been the victims of sexual violence – my heart breaks with you. I want to be very clear on this issue. It doesn’t matter if you wear a dress that covers you from your neck to ankles or if you wear in nothing at all – no one deserves to have their bodies violated by unwanted advances. For those who have young boys that they are raising, I challenge you to teach them that women’s bodies are not objects to be consumed, used, or commodified. They are made in the image of God, even if they may not be dressing like the Temple on that particular day. Men are responsible for their own choices – period.

Please hear me, I think we should be as supportive as possible as we strive to encourage pure lives in everyone we encounter. Ladies, please don’t start walking around in miniskirts because it is your “right.” However, developing this skewed view of who purity is for led to the second issue I mentioned, and it led to an incongruent viewpoint when men didn’t live up to their side of the bargain. I dressed modestly, why was I abused by a supposed Christian man? This is a question that I watched people wrestle with as they encountered sexual violence. Heartbreakingly, this seems to be an issue we are dealing with more frequently – not less. Please do not tie your purity journey and choices to someone who can fail you. Root yourself in the truth that purity has no primary relation to men (or other women) at all. It is a choice that you make to honor God in your body as much as is within your control.

The second issue has been a more lasting problem that has taken me a long time to unravel in my own mind. When no Prince Charming showed up who perfectly shared my values, I wasn’t quite sure who that made me as a woman. I know that may sound farfetched, but the older I got the more I struggled with this question. If I had done everything correctly, then why hadn’t God held up his end of the bargain and provided me with my “prize?” Where was the man who was going to support me, encourage me, lead me, and hold me when I cried? I knew there wasn’t someone out there who could complete me. I knew the truth of Col. 2:10 – I knew that I was “complete” in Christ. However, I still felt that I received the raw end of the deal. I felt a little bit like unclaimed baggage. I remember walking through health crisis after crisis in my 20s and struggling with the question of why I was having to do this “alone.” Now, again, I had a wonderfully supportive family. However, I didn’t have “my” person. Emotionally, I wanted a man who would reassure me that he would love me regardless of what happened. Selfishly, I wanted someone who would help contribute financially as I paid off mountains of medical bills. Yet they didn’t arrive. There was no white horse. There were occasional maybes, but they left me far more jaded in the end than optimistic that God had a prize for my good efforts.

So, I looked for other things to fulfil me. I found some good (even some excellent alternatives). I have been free to pursue ministry opportunities. I have been able to pursue education in a way that I might not have done if I had married and had a family earlier. However, I will also admit that I struggled with “purity” far more in my late twenties than I ever did in high school or college. If Prince Charming wasn’t coming, then it wasn’t nearly as important what kind of proverbial “rose” I was. If there was no perfect spouse, then my body was mine, right? I knew all about the instructions to think about things that were, “Pure…lovely…commendable…[and] excellent…” (Phil. 4:8). Still, surely God wouldn’t care that I was reading things that weren’t entirely “pure.” There was no husband, so no foul? I know in retrospect that was a lie from the enemy. Thankfully, God convicted me of that sin, and I walked away. Still, I read things during this period that I wish I hadn’t. I googled questions that I should have discussed with a trusted spirit-controlled woman. The internet and lies that justify can be powerful tools in the hands of the enemy. The Shulammite cautions women not to “Stir up or awaken love until it pleases” (Song of Solomon 8:4). The value of her advice cannot be overstated.

Again, please understand, I’m not advocating for some sort of little house on the prairie existence that buries our head in the sand. I enjoy a good romance novel as well as anyone. I think we should talk more in church circles about healthy sexuality and how it relates to purity. Don’t encourage an environment where sex is only discussed as a thing to be avoided until marriage. Answer age-appropriate questions about anatomy and intimacy so that Google doesn’t become a safer default. If we are not willing to have these honest conversations, there are plenty of sources that will fill in the gaps – almost always with a dose of secularism and extra commentary that is not pure.

So, what’s the point, why decide to share this now? I’ve been giving my journey in purity a lot of thought in the past year. Funnily enough, it started by giving thought to why I have such a strong aversion to Valentine’s Day. I finally asked myself the question, “Why do I really hate this holiday?” My simple answer had always been because I’m single. Why would I want to celebrate a holiday that commercializes love, but fails to make (what I perceived to be) lasting impacts on healthy relationships? However, as I began to think through my dislike, I had to think about purity and my personal experiences in more detail. I had run away from temptation (which is good) but I hadn’t really processed the impact of those choices and old wounds. I told my mom that I had struggled, but I hadn’t really considered why I struggled. I knew I had a history of experiences with men that had left me jaded, but I hadn’t worked through the baggage associated with some of those circumstances.

Most of my friends are married. They don’t necessarily need recommendations from a single woman on purity. However, I know that vulnerability in the body of Christ is important. I also know that there is a growing group of single women who may be having some of the same questions I have struggled through. I’m not professing to have all the answers, but maybe we can commiserate and learn together? I also know that pornography is a growing problem among women. Research tells us that stories that push the boundaries of purity are often the gateway to much more serious struggles and sins for women. Women often crave the emotional connection presented in a story. We can admire a beautiful love story – however, we have to remember that we’re not in that story. If those stories become our ideal, it can jade our views of real relationships and can make us seek deeper fantasy when reality doesn’t measure up. Don’t fall into the trap of unrealistic expectations, looking for the man who will always change for you or be able to intuitively understand what you’re feeling.

Still, beyond those things, I think the main issue is that I want to share why I don’t hate Valentine’s Day anymore. I still think that how we, as a culture, celebrate the holiday is overly commercialized. However, as I have processed and thought through my journey over the last few years, I have realized the following:

1. I’m not unclaimed baggage. I am fully accepted in the Beloved, a daughter of the king, seated in heavenly places, and not waiting on someone else to come and get me

2. My body (including my mind which must be renewed on a moment-by-moment basis) is not defined in relationship to a man – but it is also not defined in relationship to me. Each individual person in the body of Christ has been bought with a price. Our objective is to glorify the one who created us and redeemed us.

3. Don’t allow your experiences with relationships (good or bad) to jade you into believing that love is a trap or a commodified process where people only win or lose. Love, true love, finds its source in God. I love Lewis’ quote that says, “There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to him and bad when it turns from him” (The Great Divorce). The Beloved Disciple reminds us that, “Love is from God…because God is love” (1 John 4:7-8). Don’t let bad experiences or evil people twist the truth of what love is. It is a gift from God to us. We are blessed that we also get to experience earthly/temporal love from a variety of sources. However, unconditional love will only ever be found in the one who is the unlimited source of love. He has eternally and perfectly loved you. Derive your picture of what love should look like from him alone. Find your source of love, that can overflow into the lives of others, in him. Then, we can enjoy the love we experience from others without making anything else (no matter how wonderful) the standard or authority for what loves means or how it should be experienced.

4. Have more honest conversations about intimacy. In this case, I don’t just mean sex (although I think we should discuss that more openly in appropriate contexts too). Rather, I mean intimacy as a holistic part of your Christian life. What would closeness with our Heavenly Father look like? How would it impact our prayer life, our worship, our ministry, our love for others? What would true fellowship with other believers mean for the church? What if we felt that we could be honest and transparent about our struggles instead of worrying that we would be marginalized or that people would look at us as if we were wearing a proverbial scarlet letter? How might relationships between spouses be different if intimacy (with God and one another) were the goal instead of treating the relationship as roommates who are often raising a family together, but not necessarily investing time in growing closer to one another? Intimacy is a gift from God. He walked with Adam in the garden. The word pictures of marriage saturate Scripture. He has invited us to call him Abba. He is near to us. Yet the pursuit of his heart is sometimes treated as an abstract goal that we can’t reach when it should actually be our consuming passion. The streams of “Living water” that Jesus promised find their source in him (Jn. 7:38). Our lives and the love that we give others should come from the overflow of our intimacy and relationship with the one who is love. Too often, I try to source my love for others or my efforts in ministry from my own well of love. That is limited and not very good at loving through hard times. Intimacy with the Father – taking our very life sustaining needs from him – is the only way to experience the overflow that he intended for us.

There is so much more to be said on this topic, but this has gotten far too long for a blog post. Still, as we move forward from Valentine’s Day, regardless of your relationship status, I encourage you to contemplate the truths that we are perfectly loved by the one who created us and knows us best. If we have accepted Christ as our Savior, we have been placed into relationship with him and fellow believers. Our greatest calling is to intimacy with the Father (you can read about spiritual maturity in 1 Jn 2:12-14). Through this process of knowing our eternal self-existent God who chose to love us, we will glorify him in our lives – including our bodies.

Don’t awaken love too early. Don’t consign yourself to an object that exists in relationship to someone who may or may not show up. Don’t hate Valentine’s Day 😊 but more than all this, I pray that you would know your heavenly father. Drink from the one who is the source of love and life – and then give of it freely, just as we have received from him.