Purity In the Eyes of a Young Woman

I was taken on an amazing purity weekend by my mom when I was 13. We lived in Arizona at the time, so she took me to this beautiful resort. 
It's an understatement when I say that sex was news to me.
I was one of those "lucky" girls that hadn't learned from peers at school what sex was. I thought babies came from kissing. Boy was I wrong!
When I heard what this thing called sex was, I cried and vowed to never have it-it sounded terrifying! 

I got a beautiful purity ring that looked at lot like this....
(I later lost it babysitting because it was too big.)

Well....the fear didn't last too long.
I was 17 when I had sex for the first time with my boyfriend.
I felt like I had passed through some "adult wall".
I was proud of myself.
For a while.

I spent almost a year convinced that I had done nothing wrong. I was just "following my heart". 
In all reality, I was mad at God and wanted to show it.

Before long what I did started to eat at me.
It consumed me. Even after I got back on track with God.
I couldn't wrap myself around the fact that I was loved. Not like I was before.
Not by my parents or God.

I wanted to take it all back and be new and pure.
I felt like I was covered in mud no matter how many showers I took.
I wanted to be worthy of love again. 
I wanted to be the good daughter again.

This lasted until I was 19.
At 19, I decided that I had had enough.
God had told me constantly that He loved me. That He put that sin as far as the east is from the west.
He didn't put it that far just from Himself, but from me too. 
To Him I was pure. 
I was clean.
I was loved.
I was forgiven.
I was His daughter.
I was the reason Jesus died on the cross.

"But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God." -John 1:12

I was new, refreshed, and restored.

After I was finally able to clean all of the mud off of myself, I began a new adventure: who am I as a woman of God?
What does that mean?
Is it just Proverbs 31? Or is it so much more?

Ladies, if you're like me at all, you've wondered how you're ever going to be a Proverbs 31 woman. 
But that's only the beginning. 
How are we supposed to be women of God if we don't fully know what that means?

"Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled."-Titus 2:3-5

"But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God."-1 Corinthians 11:3

This is only the tip of the iceberg. 
There is a lot about submitting to our husbands. 
But there's so much more!
Just because the sentence doesn't begin with "Women do this...." "Women act like this..." doesn't mean it's not intended for us.
We are fashioned after God's heart.

"For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man."-1 Corinthians 11:8-9

Ladies, we need to seriously stop taking this the wrong way.
God's intentions for women is evident, but we're so stupid about it.
We're not slaves.
We're not walked on.
We're not pets.
We're not possessions.
The Bible isn't asking us to be any of that.

God is asking us to be His daughters, but we're trying to be His sons!
Doesn't sound right, does it?

Purity is more than sexual abstinence. 
It's knowing who we are as women and respecting that.

Moms- if you take your daughters on purity weekends, spend some time taking about what being a Godly woman is. 
Becoming a woman is scary and if our daughters are only taught who they are physically and by the world's standards then they get lost. 
Being taught and reminded who a woman is spiritually and in God's original design makes all the difference. 

"Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me."-Psalm 51:10-11

I hate talking about that part of my life that I messed up.
I'm ashamed of it.
I'm embarrassed that it ever happened.
I've hidden it.
I've pretended like it never happened.
But God has tugged on my heart that it was time to share.
It's time to not hold that anymore.
It's time for healing.
It's time to fix what's been broken too long.

It's time to forgive myself.

One of the girls....
Taylyr Jane