Purpose in Life

Friday night, I chaperoned a youth group lock-in sponsored by "Baptists for Life", which as Jared mused, sounds like we are pledging to always be Baptist, but really it's an organization that aims to assist teen mothers and spread awareness of the harsh realities of abortion.

They didn't hand out laminated Baptist membership cards. They probably knew I didn't deserve one.

This event has come a long way since I was a teenager. I remember the first year our church attended this event. I think I was about fifteen. Purity was in no way a mystery to me. Back then, it seemed like "they" talked about it constantly, "they" being anyone who spoke or wrote to teens. We heard constantly how sex would destroy our lives. We heard things like "Sex is wonderful...when you're married." I remember Seth saying "If they don't want us to think about sex, why do they constantly bring it up?" Well, during that first lock-in, they brought it up...a lot. They brought it up during the message. They brought it up in discussions. They even separated the boys and girls (when we were hoping to be enjoying our time at Magic Mountain) and brought it up in more intimate detail.

They didn't talk about abortion. It was more of a scare campaign, making sure we knew every possible grisly outcome of having premarital sex. In the girl's group, we were even shown slides of STDs. It was disgusting.

And it didn't fix my purity problem.

Yes, I'm going to go ahead and admit it to the blogging world. I had a purity problem. I was madly in love with this guy. I met him when I was thirteen and was head over heels in less than a month. And I'll be honest. At thirteen, I had no idea what being a boyfriend and girlfriend meant to the male of the species. In my brain, it meant he'd put flowers in my locker and say I looked nice and let me wear his jacket when I was cold.

In his brain, it meant we should make out.

It's really embarrassing to me, not to admit that I made out with him, but the fact that I made him into an idol and would do anything to keep him interested. It sounds so cliche, and I hate being a cliche. In his defense, he was going through a lot that I had no idea of. Plus he was fourteen. And male. I think I was ill prepared to deal with how guys worked. I've mentioned before I had no brothers, and I hated having conversations about personal things. I had no idea what was on his mind 24/7. I had no idea what I did to put those thoughts there. I was just there for the flowers, remember?

We dated all through highschool, except for a few "breaks". And even though we heard countless lessons on dating, purity and fleeing youthful lusts, we still managed to break just about every rule in the book. We'd go through periods of remorse and commit to work on it and keep our hands off of each other. But those never lasted very long. Now, of course, we were good little Christian teenagers who feared pregnancy above all else. So we never did anything that could have gotten us pregnant. Because we never crossed that line, it was easy to rationalize our behavior to ourselves. It could be worse, right? But that guilt haunted us year after year. We worked hard to maintain that "good" veneer on the outside, going on missions trips and not using bad language or drinking or whatever. But we always felt filthy on the inside.

I used to wonder what punishment God had in store for my sin. My biggest desire was to marry this man, and I feared God would take that away. Or that we'd never be able to have children. Or that we'd marry but be miserable together. I remember struggling with depression and self-loathing. I couldn't talk to anybody about it, at least I felt that way. I feared the judgment, the letting people down with the truth, and the consequences if it ever got out. It was our dirty little secret.

But God surprised me. We did get married and we do have children. And we are deliriously happy with each other. And we worked through repentance and learning to let go of the sins that once haunted us. I'm not dismissing our behavior as harmless, but I now understand grace better. I used to see God as one who would hold a grudge, who would bring up my behavior all the time. I'm happy to say that God is not petty like that. Forgiven. Forgotten. Paid with the blood of Jesus.

So, back to the lock-in. This year's event was excellent. The speaker came with a past. He and his girlfriend got pregnant in their teens. His first thought was abortion. Hers was suicide. Through the help of selfless individuals at Pregnancy Decision Health Centers, neither happened. They married, had a beautiful little girl and gained a restored faith. They're now married and have dedicated their lives to reaching out to teen parents.

For some reason, abortion is now seen as a "religious issue", though for the life of me I can't figure out why Christians are the only ones with a problem with it. Seriously. I try to see it through different eyes. But when you look at the facts of abortion, how it's done, how that "tissue" reacts to being aborted, and the pain that haunts these women for the rest of their lives, I just don't get how some can discard it as no big deal or the right of a woman. We would never say that it was the right of Hitler to kill Jews. But our government sanctions this practice that has ceased more lives than the Holocaust. How do we justify eliminating life in our own wombs? Our own genetic material? I. just. don't. get. it.

This has always been a big deal to me, but it became even more so when I had a miscarriage three years ago. Today would have been that baby's third birthday. I think of the emotional turmoil I have survived in the wake of that event and my heart just breaks at the thought of women who deal with that loss and the knowledge that they caused that loss. Society tells them it's no big deal. Just a blob of tissue. But that doesn't make it all nice and tidy. One of the speakers told of his sister (an unbeliever) who had three abortions twenty years ago. She still has vivid nightmares where she hears the sound of the suctioning machine. I don't care what feminism tells you, women were not meant to kill their unborn. It's not something that you can just toss out with the trash. It will haunt. It will torment. And no one at Planned Parenthood will ever tell you that.

The speaker also said something that really stuck with me. He was speaking to a bunch of kids that will most likely never get pregnant outside of marriage or know anyone who has an abortion. But they will all face those purity decisions that I did. He told them of the tricks Satan tried to use against Christ. He tried to kill him as a baby, when Herod had all the male babies under two slaughtered. When that didn't work, he tried to get Jesus to abort his purpose during his temptation that we learn about in Matthew 4, basically an attempt to ruin Christ's ministry. The speaker encouraged them to never abort their purpose in this life. They don't know what God has in store for them, and they need to be vigilant just as Christ was in staying the course.

I don't know why it took fifteen years for it to hit me. The word purpose just stuck. If I had seen those temptations for what they were back then, an attempt of Satan's to keep me from being used for God, I'd like to think it would have jarred some sense into me. Back then, I didn't see myself as worth being used by God. I didn't understand the love of God either. I didn't know how He loved me without limits. Sure, I knew the words, but I didn't really understand them. I had this view that God would only be pleased with good behavior. Now I know that God was concerned with my heart and that He was longing to heal me. I kept hearing "doing this is bad" and never "if you've done this, there is healing". Sometimes I think the Christian community puts more emphasis on sins they find particularly "worldly", and they forget to tell those who have fallen that it's not the end of the world. There is forgiveness. There are new beginnings. God has a purpose for all His children, even if you've fallen and are broken. God wants to use you, not like you're His slave, but rather as an artist uses a brush or a musician uses notes. He wants to create something beautiful from your life that will touch other lives. It's not my job to make the masterpiece, but rather to be available, to be open, to be a clean canvas for Him to paint upon. And any stains there can be washed away with the blood of Christ. Whiter than snow.

So instead of telling teens "don't do this because it's bad", perhaps it would be better to say "don't do this because God is good." Yelling at them won't help. Scaring them won't help. But reaching out in love and saying "I've been there, and let me tell you there is a better way" just might be a little more effective.

And as an afterthought, here are some of the abortion related media that God has used to overwhelm my heart:

"The Atonement Child" by Francine Rivers

"I Was Wrong" a documentary about Jane Roe, of Roe v Wade

"Can I Live?" by Nick Canon

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