Inside of Me

I read a book the past couple days called Inside of Me: Lessons of Lust, Love and Redemption. It for sure wasn't the best book I've ever read, but it wasn't the worst either. It was a short book all about this one woman's sexual brokenness and her stories. I've been thinking a lot about sexual brokenness lately, due to the sermon series at our church especially, and thinking about it in my own life, in my friends' lives, and in the lives of my wonderful high school girls. Sexual brokenness is so common in our world, in our country that uses 80% of the world's resources, we're also using one another for our bodies. I know that sex trafficking and forced prostitution, and even unforced prostitution, are serious problems in our country and our world, but I have also seen the devastating effects that the misuse of sex has in the lives of girls who look like they have it all. We know as Christians that sex is supposed to be saved for marriage, but no one really talks about why. Its just another rule that is almost impossible to follow, especially with raging hormones and the commonness of sex and sexual images. I think that sexual brokenness is so much more than the few people we might know who have a lot of sex with a lot of people. Sexual brokenness is when we look at our bodies and think they aren't beautiful enough. Its when we dress provocatively in ways that shows the world intimate parts of our bodies. Its when we think that we can separate emotions from physical sexual acts, when the truth is that no matter how hard we try, how many times it happens, or how old you are, it is not possible.

In her book, Shellie says, "It was to prove that if you apply pre-marital sex to any equation- casual sex, friends with benefits, or dating (whether with or without intentions to marry)- there will always be potential problems and many times, very serious, life-changing, detrimental ones, not because sex is bad; as a matter of fact, it's so great and so powerful that you need God's blessing and a marital covering to keep it from destroying you. God's laws concerning sex and marriage are so you can be protected in your pleasure. If God created it, don't you think He would know how to use it better than any of us?"

It's so powerful that you need protection to keep it from destroying you? Wow. What if everyone knew this? What if every girl saw her body as a gift from God, as "bought with a price"? What if we didn't know about this when it was too late and the damage was done? What if people, especially Christians, actually talked about this and about how real the desires are and WHY we have the desires? What if we didn't dress in ways that made boys think about our bodies as objects? What if we didn't USE our bodies as objects?

There are girls as young as 5 and 6 years old in the U.S. that are forced to do sexual acts for economic gain by their pimp. There are lots of things I don't know. I do know that this is not how it was created to be. At all.