This book has come at quite the perfect timing for me. This is actually the first book by Lauren Winner that I bought, but I began reading Mud house Sabbath first because it was so small, so that I could get a feel for what Winner was like before I tackled Real Sex.
Before reading this book I had spent quite a great deal of time wrestling through much of my own beliefs about chastity. One of my very best friends from home just got married in May and I had the pleasure of being her Maid of Honor. This meant that I got to throw her a fun little lingerie shower for all the girls to come and help her prepare for her marriage in a very special and intimate way. As I was hunting down the perfect thing to get for her, I began to ask myself why exactly I hold to the beliefs that I have about chastity, dating and marriage.
All my life, I have tried to hold to the same truths (though the reasoning behind things have changed over the years…). I never agreed with casual dating, because that seemed to somehow cheapen marriage in my mind. Thus, I have never wanted to date until I was ready to be married, so dating in high school was out of the question and even in college I have been too busy trying to figure out what my relationship with the Lord should look like to add some guy into the mix make things even more complicated. Also, sexual purity has been very important to me, even though I must admit that I do not come without a few rough spots here and there.
To some degree, I have always know that marriage is a sacred union. In high school, I began to see marriage as a representation of my relationship with the Lord and being married being the closest physical/ emotional/ spiritual relationship that I could ever have with another human being.
The only problem was that I could not explain to you why these things were important, except for what I had read in Christian dating books (which for some reason, I already knew the things that they had to say, with out even open the books…). From a young age, the Lord has just placed into my heart a deep desire to not give away pieces of my heart to just anyone and for the most part I have been able to do so with a huge Huge HUGE amount of grace.
It has been strange, I must admit, when most everyone I have ever know has not felt the say way as I have about these things. I grew up in a town, where sexual activity was a recreation, because what else did young people have to do in the middle of no where other than drink tons of alcohol and do drugs (both of which were also heavily used as recreation).
And such has been the case everywhere I have been since then…even when I was working in ministry, the people that I worked with (not all, but many) did not share this idea that our “romantic/dating” lives look different from that of the rest of the world.
I’m not sure why the Lord embedded this so deeply into the core of me. Why he would choose me to stir these thoughts into my head, but I am thankful that he has and to finally read a book that finally makes sense to me about the things that I have thought about for so long but had a hard time putting into words.
Winner does a beautiful job of explaining that chastity is part of the Christian story. She weaves this lovely and graceful story through her personal adventures, those of people that she knows and cares about as well as the Christian community as a whole. Winner explains that is not enough for the church to just give a few scriptures to curious singles, but rather to teach and retell the biblical story over and over so that we are constantly reminded of how these things fit into the overall narrative and how our lives and our communities are part of the story.
I highly recommend this book to everyone. Because it is not just up to the singles to stay chaste, it is also important that the body of the church is able to encourage and remind them of the story that we are all a part of.
