Shame Has No Hold on Me Part 1

This is the second coloring page from my book that I am writing about. Shame from our past can create barriers in our relationships with our husbands and our children, and even create stress in labor and delivery!

This post is also bringing us back into the sex after baby chat with a detor into my testimony and struggles with sex and shame before marriage. It's a hard thing to talk about, because sexual sins are the most shameful and embarrassing. Nobody wants to talk about them. We are afraid we will be judged or condemned for our struggles, so we struggle alone.

I want to break that off and start bringing these things out into the open so they can be dealt with. I want to help you break those things off, too. 

My first real introduction to sex came at a slumber party in 4th grade. I remember the moment, sitting on the floor of my friend’s bedroom. Another girl with an older cousin was telling us about condoms and how the boys would be learning about them in health class soon. I had no frame of reference for what a condom was or why someone would need it. I still believed imy original theory that a man spit into a woman’s mouth and she swallowed the spit and then grew a baby. I hadn’t needed to update this theory in years, so the suggestion that a penis was necessary for sex, which was necessary for creating a baby, was mind boggling. Without trying to sound like a total noob and pretending I knew what was going on, I continued to ask the other girls at the slumber party questions. After finally flat out admitting I had no idea how babies were made or sex worked, my friends enlightened me. 

It wasn’t until 6th grade that our school system bothered to start talking to us about sex, and around the same timeframe I had a very awkward, breif chat with my mother about the same topic. Her concern was that I did not have sex before marriage and my virginity remained intact until my wedding night. 

As a young teenager I began going to overnight camps and youth groups where the topic was first introduced to me from a religious perspective. It was already a little late, but I sat politely and listened. 

Purity.

 I didn’t even know what it was, but it seemed to be the only topic they wanted to teach us on. It seemed like alll these older adults were obsessed with it. Every week, again and again, we had to talk about our purity. Every week different older women would teach our group of teenage girls about reasons and ways to keep ourselves pure. Their reasons were many, but none really seemed to make perfect sense to me. 

 Of course this was right in the middle of the purity movement. I’m sure I am not the only one that had a ring that was supposed to keep you a virgin or that attended a big event where they shame and guilted you into remaining pure until your wedding night. From what I gathered, as long as a penis had not entered my vagina before I got married then God wouldn’t be mad at me and I would still be pure. Ok. I could make that happen. 

They read us bible verses, they lectured us, they tried to scare us. Because of all the shame and guilt without any clear reasoning or focus on living a holy life in general, I found myself feeling distant from God. I felt like I would never be able to live without my sexual lifestyle, I needed it to feel close to boys, to make them like me. Without it what value did I have? Would anyone like me if I didn’t put out? It made me feel good. Physically and emotionally. It made me feel valued and important. I needed it.  

So I started living a double life. I would show up to youth group and church and say all the right things during every purity lecture, all while continuing to take it way too far with guys. I never went “all the way”, but it was far enough that I knew deep down it still wasn’t quite right. 

I remember several Sunday mornings going to take communion and knowing I was not right with the Lord. I didn’t want to refuse communion and have everyone look at me wondering why I didn't take it, but I also didn’t feel right participating when I knew I was just going to go back to messing around with my boyfriend later in the week. 

I became great at justifying things. As long as there was no vaginal/penile penetration it didn’t actually count. I was still technically still a virgin and that's what mattered, right? 

When I started dating my first husband at 16, I was “good” for the first three years. Like I said before if I just kept it to other things, as long as it wasn’t “sex sex” it was fine. By the age of 19 though I had started really pulling away from God and distancing myself further and further from Christianity. I couldn’t reconcile my shame and guilt anymore with my desires, so I began telling myself God wasn’t real. Christianity was made up. What God wouldn’t want me to enjoy sex, to love others freely? Would a truly loving God make up all these silly rules? Why was I following all these rules from some ancient book? How could I marry someone I never had sex with? What if we weren’t compatible? The lies kept coming and coming and coming. I kept digging myself deeper and deeper and deeper.  

You can justify anything if you really want to. 

It was just the start of my unhealthy relationship with myself and others. From here it was only going to get darker. I found myself turning to all the wrong places for comfort and direction, including pornography. I found myself in an abusive marriage with a man who couldn’t shake his own porn addiction. At my lowest points I would go to just about any source for the love and acceptance I sought. (I know we are all beautiful creations of God, but I still gag thinking about some of the gross people I said “ok” to)

If you read this and are thinking “but whats the big deal about sex before marriage? Why does purity matter? This all seems very old fashioned”...

 I know. Just hang tight. I promise I am going to address these things and talk about them in a post to come.