**This is part 2 of a very vulnerable blog, for the most clarity, you might wanna read part 1 first**
I’m writing this on Valentines Day 2012 – more than a year from the last time I was kissed.
God is redeeming the images of past experiences in my mind, but until I fully surrender to Him every part of those memories, He can’t purify them completely.
*Photo by AJ LeVan
I thought that being able to see Jesus next to me every time a negative memory came into my mind was complete healing…
until God asked me not even to let anyone kiss me again until that person has asked me to marry him.
I’m sorry, what?
Jesus, you must have something wrong –
or you must just have no idea how fun making out is –
but you just asked me to do WHAT?
I don‘t hear very clear things from the Lord often. I maybe get images or feelings, a verse or vague word, a whisper of an inclination to do something I wouldn‘t normally do…but this was so clear.
I KNEW that God was telling me,
“don’t let anyone else even kiss you until I make it absolutely evident that he’s the man who has sought My permission to have your heart, and I’ve given it to him, and he‘s asked you to spend the rest of your life with him.”
Isaiah talks about the chosen fast, and it has nothing to do with kissing, but in my Bible I have written in at the top of the page in bright blue letters:
“The chosen fast:”
While I was trying to pretend God hadn’t asked me to keep my lips to myself, I grabbed my Bible trying to hear ANYTHING else from Him, and I opened right to that page where, in the first thing on the page, in bright blue letters, in my handwriting; God echoed Himself in my head and said, “this is the fast I have chosen for you.”
I’m on the world race, Jesus!
It’s not like I’m kissing anyone for at least another 5 months anyway, and it’s already been a year…so what’s the deal with this idea of not kissing anyone until I’m engaged??
Scripture says that God wants to redeem us to the point that the shame of our youth passes away.
What about the grace that covers my sin and takes away my shame already?
That’s been working just fine, I don’t feel ashamed at all…
And that’s okay for now…
while I’m 100% single…
and living in Africa with 5 other women.
But what about when it is time for me to give my heart to one man?
What about my wedding night?
How do I honor my husband with my mind if I’ve got the memory of someone else’s touch fresh on my skin?
Hmm…
I never wanted to be that girl.
I never desired to be the girl who had never been kissed, and I certainly never imagined wanting to be half of a relationship that somehow got from date #1 to engagement without ever having kissed the other half!
But…everything I had desired for myself, I got, and it was empty.
Now God’s asking to redeem me so fully that I will not remember what it feels like to be touched by any man other than my husband by the time God reveals that man to me.
I love things that are fresh,
I love spontaneity,
I love feeling curious,
and I love things that are new:
the crisp touch of a new book,
the smell of the first drops of rain,
the excitement of a new season,
the purity of fresh snow,
the unknown of a new place…
I love that gleeful suspense so much that you could give me a birthday present in August and I wouldn’t open it until my birthday on March 9th, honest.
So, with one request, God is purifying me to a level that I never even imagined I could ask of Him –
a level that releases me of my past entirely by allowing even my sensory memory to forget the life I lived before I knew His romance –
so that my next first kiss
feels like my only first kiss
and is my last first kiss.
As a woman walking out of the shell of a girl who had a lot of first kisses, I can’t imagine anything more romantic.
*Photo by Stephanie May
