“Sex is good!” were the first words out of the lady’s mouth at a Christian school. Boys hooted and applauded at the back. I was reeling! Did I hear right?? I began to question the judgement of the staff who called in this speaker and wondered whether they were cringing in their seats at the back of the hall, wishing they had never called this woman in and desperately planning damage control after this talk!
Hearing the words, “Sex is good,” jarred. I had been taught that sex was for marriage. So listening to someone say that to hall full of hormonal teenagers seemed inappropriate. Yet, as she kept talking, I felt my defenses drop and my disdain for her cease. Her seemingly crass and blunt start to the talk didn’t carry throughout. And I couldn’t help but listen. Because this woman told us that God made sex good. Good sex and God are not words that are often heard in the same sentence. Christians often go on such a rampage about how much it displeases God to have sex before marriage and neglect to say that God actually created good, clean sex! And, likewise, many non-Christians think that good sex is not something Christians would know anything about.
I was raised in a Christian home. Yes, I know many people say that. But I had a minister of a church for a dad and a founder of a Christian school for a mom. I went to church twice on a Sunday and never missed unless we were away on holiday in some place far from any church. (Not that any of this makes you a Christian!) I had conservative, Christian friends. When I learnt about sex as a child, I thought it was functional – to make a baby. It was the formula. Nothing more. I had only had one boyfriend who was a few months younger than me. Although we were friends, I think I was more of an accessory to him in his first year at a prestigious boys’ school than a love interest. Anything more than a peck on the lips was repulsive! Slowly, as I grew older, I realised that sex to some, was something that people actually wanted to do even when they didn’t want to make a baby! I honestly didn’t want to think much more about the topic. I was naïve and it was something everyone knew and everyone felt the need to see me slip up.
Enter a matric boy. He was well-seasoned in life, a good four years my senior and a good twenty-four years more experienced than I. He was known by his peers as “Ken” or “The Babe Magnet”. A giggle of girls my age crowded him at break time. I looked down on their flirtatious, shallow behaviour.
Until this popular guy turned his attention to me.
Of course being naïve and an outspoken Christian brings you a lot of flak! I was far from popular although I wanted to be.
And I was an absolute sucker for any guy’s attention.
You can imagine that when he picked me to over all the popular girls who kissed the ground he walked on, I was flattered! I was, however, preceded by many other girls.
About a year later when I really piqued his interest again and even though I had a boyfriend, it was thrilling to have “The Babe Magnet” pay me some attention!
When my relationship ended (a good two years after he first glanced in my direction!) and we started dating, a popular girl in my grade couldn’t believe that it was the “good girl” he had chosen. He wasn’t new to the dating game like I was. 9 girlfriends were among his credentials. He had made moves on another two.
And, he had a dark secret. A porn addiction. He was watching hard-core porn movies and looking at pictures of women baring all. He would have sexual fantasies. A lot of which I didn’t really conceive were things that men did. And, all these things I didn’t know when I started dating him. I make him sound like quite a sick person. And, truth be told, he was just a normal hormonal male. Guys are wired that way. Don’t believe me…check out my post on My Husband and Porn. So here I was, way in over my head and no clue what I’d just got myself into. But, at this point, I feel that I need to cut this poor guy some slack. He had changed. And I don’t mean a superficial change, but a real heart change. He had really been convicted about his porn addiction and was fighting it. It was hard and he had very little in terms of help but he had created a support system and put techniques in place to fight it.
So here began a mesh of two worlds. A young man with a secular, sex-fired past and an “untainted” girl with absolutely zero sexual desire or inclination…or so I thought.
While this guy was fighting porn, trying to escape the pit of sexual fantasies, unbeknown to me at the time, I began to realise that I could fuel his desire. Even I knew how to turn him on. And it felt good to make a guy lose mental control. I supressed my conscience and cleared the path for our sin. What I didn’t know was exactly what I was fuelling in him. Instead of making his porn fight easy, I made it harder.
I also didn’t account for was what he would fuel in me. For the first time, I wanted more. More than a just a kiss on the lips. (Wow, it’s a lot harder to confess my own indiscretions than reveal someone else’s!)
And, one day, quite by accident, it happened. French-kissing happened and it was good! But, something inside made me put the brakes on. I wasn’t sure I was ready. I didn’t anticipate that I would ever desire more than that with any man except my husband. We both started to push boundaries. We knew it was against God’s design to have sex outside of marriage. But we also knew that if we ventured further than a passion-infused kiss, we would be led there sooner or later.
One time, we went away to his grandparents, something I still can’t believe I was allowed to do because we weren’t ever allowed to spend the night at each other’s houses. (We didn’t even go away on family holidays together.) Our rooms backed each other’s and his grandparents were in bed down the hallway. I remember hearing him running his bath and thinking,
“If I went through to his room, no one would ever know…”
I want to be honest with you. There were times when we almost slipped up. Things almost went where we didn’t want them to go. But, here’s where our story is not written by us, but where God comes in. Each time one tested a boundary, the other pulled away. Us, definitely not! God, most definitely!
Let me tell you, God had his hand on us. And, I have to tell you that I ached with desire. There were some days I felt sick. Physically sick. There were days I cried because I wanted it so much. The temptation was overbearing! But somehow, by God’s grace, we never ever went beyond kissing.
I will never forget an evening that we were babysitting. We were snuggled up on the couch and, as one does late at night, we started kissing. We were seldom without other people. But, we were completely alone and the kids had been asleep for a while. We could have gone further. No one would have known. But, things took an unexpected turn that night. We stopped, by the grace of God, and made a radical decision. We decided, that from that night on, despite having five years behind us, we would never French-kiss again. Not until the day we married.
We never did. We had to wait two more years for that day.
When I was 19, I asked my dad if we could get engaged. We both knew we were going to get married. But he said no. At the time I was frustrated and upset, thinking that he was being cruel. But the words he said to me that night still ring clearly in my head,
“You think it’s hard now? You’ll see just how hard it is when you have a ring on that finger!”
Man, I’m glad I listened! When my boyfriend put a ring on my finger and I was upgraded to fiancée, things heated up. Marriage was now imminent. And, we couldn’t wait! But even kissing was fuel to a flame. We came to the decision a month later that we wouldn’t even kiss each other on the lips. Even that was too much. We only had to persevere for 3 months. And again, by the Lord’s grace alone, we managed.
Cue the wedding bells! 7 years after I said yes to him the first time, four months after I said yes the second time, I was about to say yes/I do for a third and final time. And honestly, I was more nervous about the public kiss in front of all our guests than what would follow later that night in the privacy of a honeymoon suite. Why? Because it had been so long. Years of waiting! And finally, he could kiss me properly again, as his wife! Years of battling through suffocating temptation; years of aching for a love we were created for; years of fighting for the purity of sex and I was about to become one with the man I had longed for and loved.
I walked down the aisle to a song called “Arise, my Love”. The words were so relevant to us,
“Arise, my Love, my lovely one, come,
The winter is passed and the rains are gone,
The flowers appear, it’s the season of song,
My beautiful one, arise, and come with me.”
Our season of rain and winter was over. It was the season to love, to make love and to be one. How sweet it was, to just kiss later on, alone. To know that there were no boundaries holding us back and no pressure to rush into something more because someone might come home or walk in on us before we got there. And, on honeymoon, things happened the way God had designed them to be. We felt no shame, no secrecy, no embarrassment just pure, deep, soul-bonding love. It was guiltless, love-saturated and beautiful. It moved and intertwined our souls. It was just how God had ordained passionate, guiltless love-making to be.
My husband stared right into my eyes and to the core of my being and whispered,
“God is pleased! He’s smiling on this! He thinks it’s good!”
Tears of deep emotion, revelation and indescribable joy welled up in both our eyes.
And, in that moment, we understood the beauty of good, clean sex!
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