My True Love Waits Ring...

"Throughout your life, there’s gonna be a lot of opportunities that come up and they’re gonna seem great, and they’re gonna seem wonderful, and they’re gonna seem like they make your life a heck of a lot easier, but you have to walk away. And, you know, at times it’s gonna be really difficult to do, but you have to. Because you deserve better." -Boy Meets World


"See, I have refined you, though not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction." -Isaiah 48:10


If you watch any TV at all, or have an internet connection for that matter, you have no doubt seen the commercials for TLC's show "Virgin Diaries." There's a now-famous (and tremendously funny I might add) clip of a couple standing on the altar sharing their first kiss each with one another. Needless to say, it is perhaps the most awkward lip-lock I've ever seen, and I've seen some really funny ones. It also made me think about my own life, specifically the ring I wear on my left ring finger.


I'm sure you've seen them before, like on the Jonas Brothers for instance. It's a simple "True Love Waits" ring. I started wearing it the summer before my freshman year of college. But it wasn't a "No-Sex-Before-Marriage" ring for me. It meant something a little different, a little more personal and a little more complicated. I made a promise that I wasn't going to kiss another girl until I got to the altar of my own wedding. Nobody told me to. Nobody coerced me or even talked me into it. It was just something between God and me.


I was not the man I wanted to be, particularly in relationships. To be honest, the physical side of things was far and away my driving motivation. As an 18-year-old guy, lust was a daily battle, and in my life it won more often than not. It's nothing I'm proud or necessarily enjoy sharing, but I think God speaks through my failings more often than not. My attraction to girls was primarily skin deep and I didn't love well. And at Camp Barnabas the summer before I started at Furman, God opened my eyes to it and humbled me tremendously.


So I put on a ring and made a promise that I wasn't going to kiss another girl until I got married. Did I think kissing was "too far?" Absolutely not! It's a great thing in fact. But God had some serious refining to do in my life, and God couldn't do it without that chapter in my story. Jesus once said, "If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away." Well, I wasn't quite ready to give up one of my eyes, so I figured using my lips would have to do.


When I started that journey in June 2007, I wasn't sure where it was going to lead. I didn't tell many people about it, especially at Furman. All I knew was that I was not the man God had made me to be in relationships. I didn't love well and my relationships weren't marked by honesty, respect, or purity. So it was about time I let God mold me and refine me as a potter with clay (without kissing.) Four and a half years later, I truly believe God has done more through that decision than just about any in my life.


As I look back on the past four years, I can see a tremendous transformation in the ways I approach relationships. By no means am I a perfect guy! I'm entirely far from it in fact. And lust is still a daily battle. But I became a better leader. My motivations became more sincere and purity in both thought and action began to lead my way. When there was interest in someone, it became about their heart, not their face or their body or how good they might be at kissing.


Last May I kissed somebody. She and I had been dating for about a year, and in that year we had built a relationship built on everything that a healthy relationship should use for foundations. But she needed kissing to distinguish from just friendship. So I prayed and I asked good friends their opinions and I prayed some more. And then I kissed her. And I've never regretted it since. In those four and a half years, God refined me in ways I could never have expected or anticipated. God had taught me what it looks like to love well and with the right motivations.


I still wear my ring. Maybe it's my "No-sex-til-marriage" ring now I suppose. But not really. Today it reminds me of all that God has taught me, of all that God has made me to be, of the man God intended me to be when God breathed life into me. It reminds me that I want to be the man a woman deserves every day. It reminds me that for four and a half years I gouged out my eye (well, almost) so God could do God's business. God is still working and refining me in my life, and I am still just another imperfect guy. My motivations and choices aren't perfect. You can talk to anyone I've dated since and they will tell you I still have a lot to learn about love and vulnerability and openness and honesty and holiness. They'll tell you God's work is not done yet, that the clay still needs lots of work.

But wearing that ring reminds me that God has taken hold of places I held too tightly before. It reminds me that sometimes we need to let go so that God can make something better. It reminds me that God sometimes we need to become better soil for the sower of all good things to plant new life.  And that has made all the difference.


forever unfinished...