sex…or lack there of.

June 20^th, 2015 was quite simply, one of the happiest days of my life.  My love, Stefan, got down on one knee and asked me to be his forever.  We celebrated that evening with our best friends in Ludington, MI.  The next morning, Stefan and I had some time to just be together and talk after the excitement from the previous day, and that is when he told me about a promise he had made to my parents when he asked for my hand in marriage.  He made a promise to them that when I learned of it, made me mad, devastated, and frustrated.

Stefan promised my parents that he and I wouldn’t have sex again until the wedding.

Okay, okay, okay….He is 38 and I am 31, I understand that this is a topic that isn’t normally discussed past the age of about 15 with your parents.  My parents are different, my parents promised to guide my siblings and me even after the age of adulthood and although they have never stopped us from doing what we wanted, they have always given their best advice.  Obviously, Stefan and I have had sex during our relationship, we have been together for 4 years, but it’s something that I know my parents never condoned.  I am aware that this topic seems elementary and no one really cares who is having sex, because everyone is, but, that doesn’t mean that we have to be everyone else.

In the beginning, the act of sex was something that was reserved for a husband and wife, but then Adam and Eve sinned and everything changed.  God is a very forgiving God and there isn’t a sin that He won’t forgive, if you repent and ask for forgiveness, but more importantly, if you do not continue to repeat the sin.  Having sex before marriage is a sin in God’s eyes, and therefore we cannot experience all that God intended for it outside the context of marriage.

When Stefan came to my parents to ask for my hand in marriage, this was something they asked Stefan to honor.  Stefan promised them that we would honor that request, before he talked to me.  When he told me the morning after he proposed, I will admit, I wasn’t okay with it.  I thought that it would be taking steps back in our relationship to remove it; I was scared that I would feel disconnected from him and quite honestly, I thought, “we’ve already had sex, who cares if we continue to.”  We sat down with my parents, at my request, so I could tell them how angry I was that they put Stefan in a position to promise something without talking to me.  But, I missed their most important lesson.

My parents weren’t going to stop Stefan and me from getting married if we didn’t honor the promise that was made.  They wanted open lines of communication, they wanted Stefan and me to connect on a deeper level, and they wanted us to be more intentional about our relationship.  They wanted us to put God at the center, and putting God at the center meant living a relationship like God intended.

I’ll admit, in the beginning, I abstained purely to prove to my parents that I could do it.  I abstained not because I knew it was the right thing to do, but because I am stubborn and when I am presented with a challenge, I don’t back down.

It’s been almost 6 months since Stefan proposed and we have until our June 25^th wedding to wait.  I can now sit here and say that it is no longer just to prove to my parents that we can wait, it has forced Stefan and I to be more intentional with our time, to connect in other ways and has given us the ability to start our marriage pure in the eyes of God.

Yes, it’s hard and there are moments of weakness on both our parts, but we know that what we are doing, or I guess not doing, is right.  We talk more, we are spending time getting our individual selves ready to spend forever together, and most importantly, we are following God’s will for our relationship and I wholeheartedly believe that He will bless our marriage exponentially for it.