“My friends, it’s time for us to wake up and make the connections between the dating scene and the deterioration of the stable American family.” -Bryana Johnson
Underage Dating: The Elephant in the Social Conservative Living Room
My parents unfortunately divorced when I was going into kindergarten. I really didn’t get the implications at the time. I was 5. Things did start caving in on me about the time I entered 8th grade. All of my emotions, confusion, and hurt found an outlet. A new, devastating world was opened up to me – dating.
I guess it can’t even be called dating. Dating requires money and transportation to actually go on a date. What I did was plunge myself into adult situations and emotions that I had no idea how to navigate. Much of what I did was behind my parent’s back or in complete defiance to any rules they tried to create too late.
I lost my way.
I lost myself.
I lost.
“The culture of dating is a culture of hunger and unsatisfied eyes that are always looking around for affirmation via someone or something else.”
All of the affirmation I felt like I wasn’t getting from my parents I sought in someone else who could never fill the void in me. I didn’t go out looking to give myself away. In fact I didn’t want to at all. But the truth is, without intentional prevention and protection, it will happen.
Christian parents have a moral and biblical responsibility to place hedges around their children to protect them.
For this reason I will fence her in with thornbushes. I will block her path with a wall to make her lose her way. When she runs after her lovers, she won’t be able to catch them. She will search for them but not find them. Hosea 2:6-7
It is so dangerous to awakening these feelings in children before they know how to control them. Teenagers can’t be put into situations, like dating, that allow the lust in them to be ignited. Solomon said, “Promise me, O women of Jerusalem… not to awaken love until the time is right.” (Song 2:7). When is the right time?
When is the right time? When marriage is a viable option.
“Just what do we think such relationships are about between people too young to be interested in any of the other things (family, stability, home-making, etc. ) that come out of a romantic involvement with the opposite gender?”
I didn’t know that what I gave away belonged to my future husband. I didn’t know God created me for purity. I didn’t know the guilt would follow me. I didn’t know it would hurt my husband, who desperately loved me. I didn’t know anything for a long time.
Ten years into our marriage it was still the secret in the little black box we kept locked in the corner. My past wasn’t a secret, it was the secret.
We ignored it until it grew to monster too big to contain any more. We were roommates who discussed logistics and nothing more. The hostility was thick. The next fight was always bubbling under the surface.
Then it blew. All of it. The secrets, the pain, the disappointment, the lies, the sin, the refusal to give or receive grace… it all exploded.
We almost gave up on our covenant and each other because of the weighted baggage we were dragging around in our marriage. Almost.
Instead we decided to cling to each other, to love and to a Savior that heals every disease, forgives every sin and makes dead people and dead marriages alive again.
If you are a teenager who has already crossed that line, it’s not too late to be rescued. If you are parenting a dating teen and haven’t set up hedges, it’s not too late to fix your mistake. If you are in a marriage that is broken because of the scars of a sexual past, seek the Lord for total reconciliation.
He personally carried our sins in his body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By his wounds you are healed. 1 Pet.2:24
