One morning last winter I was driving my teenager to school and she asked me the question I had been dreading and avoiding .
“Mom, did you wait?”
I debated whether I should lie and preserve her image of me as a good example or tell the truth. I told her the truth. Not only did I NOT wait till my wedding night to have sex for the first time but I lived a very promiscuous life which caused me much grief and sadness. I told her God’s desire for her was that she would have more in life.
Back then, we didn’t have Theology of the Body for teens or fabulous chastity speakers. Our understanding of sex was all about avoidance of hell and had nothing to do with understanding the reflection of God’s amazing love in uniting our flesh with another’s in a reflection of the trinity.
And yet, although I could my best to explain to my daughters that sex outside of God’s plan for marriage is just a counterfeit, what was truly missing from my life was simply a question of TRUST and RELATIONSHIP.
You see, I had completely forgotten that my life was created to be in relationship with HIM and that if I surrendered to Him, He would take care of the details- even down to preparing the man that would one day be my husband.
“Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.”
The biggest lie Satan tells teenage girls is that they are missing out. They are “missing out” when they don’t have a boyfriend and all their friends do. Satan tells girls that a boy’s “love” will fill a void in their heart and make them enviable and beautiful.
What nobody tells girls is that if she seeks Christ’s love FIRST she will be pursued by the lover of lovers beyond her wildest dreams and enter into the most exciting relationship of her life. Seriously. I don’t know if I would have believed that Christ would be as satisfying, as romantic, as handsome and as real-flesh as a boyfriend. Nobody ever told me. And so I imagined being “good” as the stoic pursuit of “not doing,” and all that was un-fun, and I failed.
If I had known it was as simple as falling in love with God and living my vocation as daughter, student and sister, the trusting that the rest would play itself out. I wish my mother had impressed upon me that God had my life mapped out for my good down to the smallest detail if I would just stay in His will and trust Him; that His plan for me would be better than the one I could formulate on my own and that if I kept myself pure I would know much joy and peace. I have seen some parents encouarge their children to live a pure life by putting into their minds their future spouses and they start praying for them at a young age.
So, yes, besides the bad consequences of sin, we need to convince our daughters to have a relationship with Christ that is constantly nourished by prayer, by EUCHARIST and adoration. As I write this I am painfully aware of how much I have been avoiding my own relationship with my greatest love, Jesus . So, let me reiterate, the best way to show our daughters is by doing it ourselves first, by example.
