That summer I was fourteen. I was feeling better about myself. I had grown out of those awkward sixth and seventh grade years, where I cut my hair so short I looked like a boy. And mom and dad had shelled out the money for braces to correct my severely bucked teeth.
"Ashly, when I was pregnant with you, I heard sucking sounds coming out of my belly. You sucked your thumb even in the womb! It's no wonder your teeth are so crooked!" Mom had tried endlessly to get me to stop sucking my thumb and to no avail. Nights before I went to bed, she painted a terrible thin coat of something repulsive tasting on my thumb in hopes it would keep me from sucking it. I peeled the film off within minutes of turning the lights out. Some kids had a blanky; I had my thumb. Until I was about twelve years old when I just magically quit one day. I guess I grew out of it, but I still had the buck teeth to show for it.
But the braces were working. My teeth were going straight, my hair had grown out and I'd grown about four inches in the last year. My legs went on for miles. That was the year I discovered the struggle of trying to find tall length pants. But I wasn't complaining, because when I went back to school that year, I noticed the boys looking at me differently than they had just the year before.
Our girls Bible study group at church started a study on Passion and Purity by Elizabeth Elliot. We were learning to be women of virtue. Women of quiet strength and purity. After each chapter in the book, I chronicled my thoughts in a journal. I would write prayers to God for my future husband. To make him strong a vocal leader and man of integrity who would be the head of my household. I would submit myself fully to him. I prayed for him even though I didn't know him. God was molding him for me. And in His divine plan, according to His will, one day He would bring us together.
As one might infer from the title, the book was about feeling passionately about a man but still remaining sexually pure until we were finally joined by the sacred bonds of marriage. I penned in my journal:
Girls who had sex before they were married were used goods to be picked over. They were worth less, not whole, bargains. I vowed to keep myself pure until God gave me the husband He had prepared for me.
That summer my friends and I all signed True Love Waits pledge cards that we gave to our dads to keep and give back to us on our wedding days. Which we all assumed would come after we graduated from the local baptist college where we met our pastor-in-training husbands.
5:42 PM
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