I was talking to a cousin this past Thanksgiving....she is twenty years old and already realizing that life is not what she thought it was going to be....boy is that ever true!! Life has been pretty much one starting over point after another for me....and I feel kind of robbed.
I am not sure whether it is just life to feel unprepared or if you actually can be prepared. I don't feel I was prepared at all for life, and I am not sure why. I cannot perceive anyone else's thoughts, only my own here. I don't know what makes one person more prepared than another. But I do know that I want my children to be more prepared than I was. But how do I do that if I am still learning and still in transition?
Maybe God brings us through a period of transition naturally every so often and we are forced to rethink everything we believe. It can be a painful process. Transition can bring truths out that you have not seen before. Maybe your family is not who you thought they were, maybe having children is not as fulfilling as you thought it would be, maybe marriage is not the relationship you had hoped for...or marriage in general is not what you thought it was at all. In fact, in some of these scenarios, it was quite the opposite of what you expected entirely. Then begins the learning process, right? What you do after you come to realize that life isn't what you thought it was going to be is very, very important.
Some people get depressed and start drifting away. They drift away from life, from beliefs, from family and from friends and from everything they once knew and away from what they enjoyed in life. Life becomes rather pointless and too complicated to solve. How can the next step be taken when there is nothing in front of or behind you? That was me. Life can do that to you. I look back at all the things i have been through that I did not expect, and I honestly cannot believe I made it this far.
In college, I did not make the friends I thought I would make and I didn't get accepted into the club I wanted to be in, and it just seemed that every door I tried to open, just shut in my face. I was filled with disappointment after disappointment. Then I got into a relationship and fell in love with someone that did not believe the same things that i believed. I held on to who I was for a little while, but who I was was becoming more and more vague. I had always followed God and did my best to keep his teachings, but I was not deeply rooted in a relationship with him. I was unaware of His deep love for me.
My faith had always relied on my performance. When I performed well, I felt good about who I was and I felt good about God and me. When I performed poorly, I felt bad about who I was and I felt distant from God. And then i committed the 'unforgivable sin' (in my book at that time). I had premarital sex.
I always knew in my heart that I would never do that until I was married, but I never considered what it would be like to fall in love with someone and be alone with them a lot. And I did not consider that the person I would fall in love with would not have the same views as I did...nobody told me that if I tried to fight that battle in a relationship unequally yoked that I would fail. I never knew that I could not fight that battle alone...and that it was NEVER meant to be fought alone.
Many people have developed their own theories about the above situation. And you have heard them all and I have heard them all. 'Don't be alone with your boyfriend or girlfriend, don't make out, don't go too far.' And I have actually seen a complete diagram of each stage of physical touch! And how far is too far??? I still do not know. Is the Bible silent on this? Is that the reason for the confusion? I always thought it was crazy that I could never be alone with the man I would consider marrying...maybe it is crazy but maybe it isn't. Let's face it, desire and passion is a part of life and a very beautiful part of life. But culture has perverted every innocent desire and passion. But God still created it. His creation has not changed just because culture has. The battle for purity was never meant to be fought alone.....THE BATTLE FOR PURITY WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE FOUGHT ALONE.
I will tell my children that they are absolutely capable of saving themselves for marriage as long as they are with someone who is striving for the same goal. If my children fall in love with someone who is not rooted in a relationship with God, they will fail. I will teach them that if they do commit this sin, that God still loves them but that God desires a learning process to occur. I just want them to know that they are not meant to fight that battle alone. There are many battles that must be fought alone, but not that one. I wish I had known that. I wish I had known how vulnerable I was and how fragile.
I realize that not everyone has the same struggles...this is just an example, a very thorough one of going through a transition. I used this particular example because it took nine years to have some peace about it and by peace, I mean I really feel like I have something to offer in the form of an answer. I feel like I learned what I was supposed to learn. And I can pass that on. But this is certainly not the only transition I have learned from. But college is a good example for me because I believe during that time I became keenly aware that life was not going the way I thought it would, I was not handling things the way I thought I ought, and I wasn't turning into the person I thought I would be.
Since I had defined my worth by my performance, what was left? Looking back, I do not think God has ever been trying to teach me how to not sin, but He was teaching me that once everyting was stripped away, that He still loved me. I do not know if you can relate to this. I hope this hasn't been a lesson on premarital sex for you, but of the importance of finding peace about the point in your life where things shifted and you felt like life was dragging you and you had no say in what happened next.
Has there been a point where life just crumbled? I figure if it happened to me, it probably has happened to someone else. And I truly hope what I have learned can be of some use to someone else. After the transition of college, I started struggling with depression. And I still struggle with it. Turning points that involve pain in our lives such as the turning point in my life are what God uses to shatter some misconception we have of him and his love and the way he works in our lives. Turning points are unavoidable and necessary, but to make it through one and it not leave completely debilitated, you must be deeply rooted in God's love.
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