How can I talk about this without betraying myself, my husband, and the redeeming grace that Jesus has worked in my life? I'm going to do my best for two reasons; my choices around sex have marked my life and still haunt me, and because our culture is hinging identity and meaning on sexuality in an unbalanced way. It is not lost on me that as a white heterosexual Christian woman, I am sheltered, with little to no struggles with my sexuality as it doesn't come up against the culture or my faith. Even my sexual sin falls under the norms of sexual behaviour, if I can even say that. Over the past decade I have grown a heart for those who are struggling for wholeness in their sexuality. Whether it be identity or behaviour, we all have to wrestle with sex and who we are, who we want to be, our desires versus what we ought to do, and how our choices will affect those around us and those we interact with. Our sexual identity is the most intimate part of our being. Sharing it with someone else will always be a soul giving or destroying experience and so we must not be cavalier with it. And yet we are, and yet I have been.
Beginnings
I can remember being interested in my sexuality as a nine and ten year old. I would listen to my parents having sex, even pressing my ear up against the wall inside my closet to hear better. I began experimenting with masturbation before I was eleven. I have never gotten into pornography. When I was young, there was no internet and I had no access to magazines of that type, nor did I seek it. Pornography didn't line up with what I thought about connecting sexually with someone, and it still doesn't. Sex was not a taboo subject in my home growing up. My mother is a nurse and taught me about my body, encouraging me to understand how it works and what and where all the parts were. I grew to understand that sex was sacred, deserved my careful consideration, and that it's rightful place was a venue for pleasure between a man and woman in marriage. I knew that God had ordained it to create life; but the aspect of it being for pleasure, to unite a man and a woman, and that God made it that way, was also impressed upon me. I have had many conversations with my dad as well; about sex, orgasm, and even menstruation (yeah, my dad was my coach... so we talked about everything). Even as I grew up and started to seek sexual pleasure with boys, I knew I was going outside what I thought was right. My desire for the physical pleasures of sexual activity was very strong, and often overrode my beliefs about its sacred nature and what God had commanded. I also discovered that sexual desire gave me a little bit of power. As I matured, it was clear to me that I could manipulate boys very easily by withholding or giving them what they wanted. It's strange that even though I was seeking connection and commitment, I used sex this way for a number of years.
In the middle
Because I started so early with physical touch with boys, my boundaries were very unclear to me and to boys. I had set it up that it was not a problem to touch me, even if you weren't my boyfriend. By the time I was in grade seven, everyone knew that there was one boy who I liked, Noel. He was mine and I was his. I remember girls even asking me if it was OK to date him - like we even knew what that was. Noel would often go steady with another girl, but she would ask my permission. I fooled around with other boys, but I never went out with anyone else. This went on for three years, until I moved away. I had been living in Alberta for a period of six years, (age nine to fifteen), in a small town. We moved to what I considered the big city, Vancouver, BC. Everything changed. I was a bit thrown off by the move as my notoriety and prowess in both athletics, friendships, and with boys was nothing in this new place, and I had to start over. For the final three years of high school, life was different and I behaved very differently around sexuality. I basically got scared. I realized the path I had been going down and decided that I better make some changes or I'd end up doing things that I didn't want to and get into the kind of trouble that I really didn't want for my life. I became very focused on school and basketball. My goals to play in University and on the Canadian National Team took over. I dedicated my life to Christ and got baptized in the first year after the move. I had managed to change my direction and stayed out of trouble, in all areas. Until my high school sweetheart in grade twelve...
With the protection of a committed relationship with a Christian boy, I was back in action. He was the complete opposite of me; a musician, short, a dancer, an actor, and extremely funny. He went to a different school in a completely different community, and I only saw him on weekends when I wasn't playing basketball. It was kind of perfect. I liked how it gave my relationship natural boundaries. However, very quickly, the physical became an overriding factor between us. I was playful and lured him in all the time, because I trusted him. We experimented a lot in that year. I still don't know how we never actually had sexual intercourse. I don't think I can say that it was because God didn't want us too, but I'm glad I didn't. It's important to note here, that any form of sexual experience, whether full intercourse or something other, is an intimate act. You cannot avoid the connection that sexual experiences with someone creates. God made it that way on purpose. When the relationship ended after graduation in a very abrupt way, what I experienced with him sent me back down the path I had thought I had shut off two years prior. I left for university on Vancouver Island, at the University of Victoria where I had a full scholarship to play basketball. Within the span of my first year living in the dorms on campus, I went back to seeking physical connections, but with no relationship attached to them. After I hurt the feelings of one boy in particular, he yelled at me stating that I was a slut and a tease; and what the hell was I saving my virginity for anyway. He was right... or at least I thought he was. I decided that all the sexual fooling around was silly, I was either going all the way or I was just a tease. I ended up in a very brief relationship with a boy in my dorm and decided this was it, time to end the withholding. It was very disappointing. I ended the relationship shortly afterwards as I realized I had made a mistake; not because I had finally had intercourse, but because he sucked at it. Even as I type this now, I see how all my steps along the way had already hardened and seared my heart. I had changed. Sex wasn't sacred to me anymore; and it wouldn't be for a long time.
Over the two years that I went to that school, I completely walked away from my relationship with Jesus and chose to seek pleasure instead. I was frustrated that I couldn't be successful academically or athletically. All my teammates were fooling around and they still found success. But my ability and talent were not the problem. I was living in dissonance to my beliefs and God was not going to allow one of his children to go that easily. I never thought I was being mean back then, but I was using these guys for my own purposes and pleasure. Dinners out, concerts, movies, drinks at the bar, one night stands, a ride home; I could get just about anything. By the end of the first year, I found my new Noel, and was back in the strange set up of being attached but not committed. It became a sport for him and I to see how many guys at the bar I could get to buy me a drink. He once brought a friend over so I could have sex with his friend, since he and I never had full intercourse. It was a soul destroying relationship that I didn't recognize as such for almost a full three years of my life. My boundaries were eroding at a very fast pace. I remember moments looking at myself in the mirror and not recognizing my own reflection. Sometimes staring back at me would be what I can only describe as the Spirit, piercing right through my eyes... just pleading with me, softly. I would go to church and sit in the back, crying in shame because of what I was doing. I felt I couldn't go back, I was stuck; this was who I was now. Although I was inwardly struggling, I defended my behaviour, down played the damage I was doing to myself and others, and flaunted my sexual power.
The beginning of the change
My two years at UVIC finally ended and although I know I cannot blame my failure there entirely on walking away from my relationship with Jesus, it is the only reason that matters. I decided to make a big change; I went with Athletes in Action to Taiwan to coach basketball for the summer. It was an amazing experience and I have had coaching in my blood ever since. God showed me that summer that even a sexually dysfunctional sinner could be used again by him. And I could find healing, change my behaviour, and be made new. I was still struggling with old behaviours and went through some cycles of acting out and repenting, but in just over a year, I had walked away from it all. Around that time, a young adults pastor spoke into my life. He called me into leadership, reminding me that I had been given much and much was expected. At first that frustrated and angered me, but as the years have gone on, that call has never left me. With God's grace and mercy, I've been able to embrace it's responsibilities.
It was the beginning of change because within three years, while I was working, going to school, and leading in youth ministry at my church, I got pregnant. Sex was still causing me to stumble, I had just found another place to live it out. I didn't know it then, but I made a mistake in choosing my first husband because I had not placed my sexual desires in Jesus' hands. I was still fully in control. I was married when I was almost four months along and then proceeded to live like that sin defined me for the next six years. But once I was able to move past that and see God's grace for me, my relationship with Jesus deepened. In my twenties, as I had two more children, finished my degree, and worked as a youth worker, I dove into scripture. I fell in love with God's word and couldn't get enough. I led women's Bible study at two different churches for the next eighteen years, started a business with my ex, and went back to school to become a teacher. Jesus walked with me and kept his promises to me in the midst of what was a difficult marriage from the beginning. I was convinced that if we just grew up, followed hard after Jesus, and stuck with the church family that was supporting us and had forgiven and restored me, we would make it. There is so much to say and explain about that relationship, but for the sake of this post, I'll stick with what fits this topic. I remember I experienced a level of sexual healing after marriage as I finally felt that my sexual desires and expression of them were not wrong. I was married and could have sex as much as I wanted. That was very freeing for me. However, this was short lived. My first husband was a porn addict. He was before we got married, and I didn't know. He continued with that our entire marriage; through counseling, accountability groups, separation, and marital decline. I was not a sexual prude and even tried to include it in our sexual experiences, only to find myself feeling violated and degraded. Throughout those years, I would often struggle with guilt from my past and even began to feel that this awful marriage was God's punishment, my consequence for my frivolous, careless use of sexual intimacy. I often thought I deserved it. It was many years into the marriage before I was able to name what was happening in my relationship, it was abuse. My ex was an emotional abuser that was willing to use anything to get what he wanted; physical violence, verbal abuse, sexual abuse, psychological and spiritual abuse - it seemed nothing was off limits. When I discovered that he was having an affair, and later learned there had been two others, I finally felt God's blessing to walk away.
Healing
In the four years since I walked out - or actually kicked my ex out - I have found myself on the path to true healing. What is surprising is that it hasn't been without it's pitfalls. I was not interested in another relationship for the first two years of being single again. I learned to once again find that Jesus is enough. There were nights when I would repeat that to myself while a lay alone in bed. Jesus comforted me and I truly believed and knew that I could carry on alone if that was his call on my life. God used that time to close some sexual wounds that I had left unattended. As time passed, I began to miss male companionship and if I'm honest, I missed sex. After everything I'd been through, I still wanted that connection in my life. I was somewhat shocked when I first entered the dating world and how easily I fell into twenty five year old patterns. I once again sinned, taking my sexual desires in my own hands and trying to include them in a cavalier, non committed way. Seriously, you'd think I'd learned nothing. I repented and turned much quicker in my old age. Jesus is so patient and gracious and forgiving! Just over a year ago, I got serious and prayed for a husband. I laid it all out there, exactly what I wanted. I cried, I begged, and then I said... I'll do it your way. And God was gracious even in my prayer as he has shown me incredible mercy even as I've stumbled along since that prayer. Today, I have a wonderful husband whom I can only describe as the man God chose for me. I still, sometimes, find myself lamenting that I didn't wait properly. I sometimes wish I'd met him sooner, before I made so many blunders. I am sometimes haunted by my past in dreams and flashes of memories. But Jesus is gracious to me. I don't talk about this much, because it's hard. The wounds are sometimes right at the surface and I want to hide them. I hope to be more open as time goes on. The healing that I am experiencing is sexual in so many ways, and yet it seems like that doesn't even put it in the right category. It is an emotional, spiritual, sexual healing that God has chosen to guide me through in relationship with this wonderful man. God is so good.
So what?
So why did I tell you that whole story? Why does it matter? Would you look at this story differently if I had relayed the same story as a lesbian, or my struggle with my gender? Would my sin suddenly be different? Would you be able to see my struggle with sexuality as the same as yours? Would my cycles of sin and repentance no longer garnish your grace? Our sexual experiences change us; they mark who we are whether we want them to or not. If we are abused sexually it can scar us for a very long time if not forever. Every experience we have shapes our desires and future choices, they develop patterns that we can either become enslaved to or master. We can become needy, afraid of intimacy, or tyrants because of the eroding of the sacredness that is embedded in sexual intimacy. The power that sexuality holds can be misused and abused by both men and women. Although I believe that our culture is hinging identity and meaning on sexuality in an unbalanced way, I completely understand why. God made us sexual beings. The under pinning's of our desires, likes, and dislikes begin so early in our lives, before we even see them as affecting our sexual identities. It's so important to give people room, to show them love as they walk through their particular story. The Bible is clear about where God stands when it comes to sex. It's dishonest to try and say or prove otherwise. Yet, we have all sinned and fall short, even if it's not the same as you. I'm not good at obeying before I understand. I'm not good at obeying when it means I don't get something I want. I need to remember that most everyone else feels the same way. The Kingdom is not made up of a homogeneous group of people and if we are going to reflect love and light, we have to stop demonizing the marginal, we have to stop placing ourselves above those who've sexually sinned differently than us. The rub is, how do we call people to obedience to God's way, when we've been so duplicitous about what sexual sin is all this time? I'll admit, I want to do it my way and my sexual expression has been one of the hardest things in my life to give over to Jesus. I have failed to do it God's way, over and over. Because I know this, I hope I can be gracious to everyone who also wants to hang onto their autonomy on this one; especially if God's way is coming up against their very identity. I hope that when given the opportunity, I can walk with someone and restore them as they cycle through sin and repentance; praying that they will find that God is gracious to them.
"... do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
And such were some of you.
But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
1 Corinthians 6:9-11
And such was I...
