by Trish Ryan
WHEN THE FORTY days ended, our church had a big party, celebrating Easter and spring and all Jesus was doing in our lives, after which Amy and I went home—both of us alone, dateless, and entirely single. We should have been devastated. But it was clear God was doing something, edging both of us closer to what it might look like to be somebody’s wife.
Amy, a quintessential tomboy, felt an unprecedented compulsion to wear skirts and jewelry, even to get her nails done. She called me one day, exasperated, “Where do you go to buy one of those girly bags?” she demanded.
“You mean a purse?”
“Yes,” she replied, disgusted. “God told me I need to buy a purse.”
I, on the other hand, did not get the makeover–shopping spree path to wifely readiness. I needed an internal makeover—a complete overhaul of how I thought about myself, men, and relationships. Amy’s life was redecorated; mine got a down-to-the-studs remodel.
IN THE GOSPEL of Matthew, Jesus warned his followers, “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces.” This line haunted me. I was forever throwing my pearls (my body, my mind, my heart, my soul) in front of pigs, hoping against hope I wouldn’t be trampled. I’d spent the past decade in front of a swine stampede, begging God to change whatever pig happened to mow me down. This was not, Jesus told me, how things were supposed to work. The time had come to raise my standards.
The very idea of standards regarding whom I would and would not date was new to me. Aside from my astrological considerations, I’d had no definitive parameters to rule some men in and others out in the quest for my hand (too judgmental, my spiritual training argued); the truth was, I didn’t think it was much of a quest. I’d read too many magazine articles about the shortage of available men, their reluctance to commit, and how my chances of spinsterhood loomed closer with every passing birthday. At thirty-four, I felt like I was caught in a game of relationship musical chairs, terrified of being the hapless unchosen woman left standing at the end of the game. Scared of being “out,” I assumed that any man interested in me must be sent by God, even if he showed up looking more like swine than royalty. I didn’t know how to fix this.
For starters, Jesus said, this is not musical chairs. He was displeased, it turns out, with my assumption that marriage was a crapshoot in which he had only a passing interest. After all, in musical chairs, it doesn’t matter which chair you end up in, just that you’re not left standing when the music stops. This was pretty much how I’d approached dating—any chair would do. But Jesus suggested the radical idea that not any chair would do; that he had a special, specific chair, just for me.
“That’s fine,” I told him, exasperated. “But what do you want me to do?” My previous spiritual endeavors had kept me busy—moving furniture, worrying about what might happen when Mercury was in retrograde, affirming my unity with the divine flow of the universe. Now that I’d given all that up, I had no idea what to do all day, or even how to think of myself. My old goal was to become a “Fascinating Woman”—Jayme’s phrase for the ultimate manifestation of feminine power. I’d struggled to be witty and sophisticated, alluring and seductive. I thought these were good things, qualities men enjoyed. Looking back, though, I realized how on the prowl I’d been all that time, how subtly aggressive my choices and actions were: scanning the left hand of men to determine their eligibility; dressing, acting, thinking seductively; working to draw male attention my way. Ick. At the same time, though, I didn’t know who I was without the flirtatious sexuality or the sparkling repartee; I was terrified that this Jesus plan would make me into one of those Utah women in a prim flowered dress with a long braid down my back. I didn’t want to be that woman. But I also didn’t understand why I could never close the deal—what was better than fascinating?
Exquisite, Jesus told me. Like the pearl of great price. The pearl parable again. Over the next few days, Jesus told me that I was like that fine pearl—precious, unique, crafted by God, a gem that the right man would search for and esteem. Pearls don’t start out that way, he reminded me, they submit to a process. Pearls are made exquisite, and they are worth everything a man has once they’re done.
A few days later I saw a catalog from Tiffany’s, featuring a string of pearls for $95,000. And I heard Jesus say, Someone will buy those pearls. They will walk through those vaulted doors, count the cost, pay the price, and treasure those pearls forever. I thought of the “faux” pearls a friend bought for $4.59 at the mall to wear as a bridesmaid—how piles of the plastic replicas fell onto the floor, where anyone could pick them up, try them on, put them back, or steal them. They were worth almost nothing. Thinking of my years of dating, I was appalled at how close I came to permanently ending up like those plastic fakes—easily replaceable, untreasured. “Lord,” I prayed, “make me a real pearl.”
THE MOST ROMANTIC story in the Bible is the Old Testament book of Ruth. It is the fairy tale of scripture, a whole book about God miraculously bringing a man and a woman together against almost impossible odds. The story reveals how a good man acts when he is interested in a woman—taking the initiative, making his intentions clear, pushing obstacles out of the way like so many pieces of red tape.
When we first meet her, Ruth’s life is in shambles. Her husband is dead and her country is in famine. Her mother-in-law, Naomi—also a widow—plans to return to her homeland of Bethlehem. They have no family and face the bleak prospect of trying to survive with no protection or support. Against Naomi’s urging, Ruth decides to go with her to Bethlehem. She makes a promise of fidelity to Naomi, declaring, “Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.”
They arrive in the new land as the barley and wheat crops are being harvested. It was traditional in those times for the harvesters to leave a certain amount behind in the fields for the poor to gather. So Ruth goes out to glean what she can behind the harvesters and ends up in a field owned by Boaz, a wealthy relative of Naomi’s deceased husband. Boaz notices her in the field and inquires about her to his foreman, who reports that she is gathering food for her widowed mother-in-law. Impressed by this, Boaz approaches Ruth and blesses her. He gives special instructions to his workers to leave extra for her to gather. When Ruth returns to Naomi with their food, she tells her how kind Boaz was, how he took special care of her.
“That man is our close relative,” Naomi exclaims, “he is one of our kinsmen-redeemers.” In that day and age, a kinsman-redeemer was the nearest relative of a deceased husband who could marry the husband’s widow and thus save her from a life of poverty. Naomi tells Ruth to stay in Boaz’s field for the duration of the harvest, knowing he will watch after her.
After the harvest, when the men are threshing out the wheat and barley, Naomi suggests to Ruth that she ask Boaz to act as her kinsman-redeemer. She sends Ruth to the threshing floor in her finest attire, with instructions to hide there until the men have fallen asleep. When Boaz is asleep, Ruth lays at his feet. In observing this custom, Ruth was asking Boaz to fulfill his role as her kinsman-redeemer, either by marrying her or by finding someone else to do so.
“Who are you?” Boaz asks when he wakes up.
“Spread the corner of your garment over me,” Ruth responds, requesting his covering and protection. “You are my kinsman-redeemer.”
Boaz is thrilled. That very day, he goes to the one other man who is a closer relative to Naomi than he. The other man does not want to marry the widow as it will endanger his own estate, so Boaz redeems Ruth, taking her as his wife. Their son, Obed, is part of the lineage of King David, and, ultimately, Jesus.
I read this story over and over and over again—underlining, highlighting, searching for clues about what Jesus wanted me to know. It was like a new type of husband wish list, but instead of physical qualities and random interests, this list focused on the kind of man God would send to save the day, the qualit
ies of his nature and character. I wanted this kind of man—a man who had his own life together. A man who recognized me as wonderful, precious, and desirable, who acted with clear intention to earn my respect and love. A man who saw beyond my past and wanted to build a new life with me; a man who made his intentions known to the whole community and claimed me as his own. I prayed about this, begging God to make good on His word. This story was in the Bible for a reason, I believed—to give me a tangible example of God providing a spectacular husband for one of his daughters. I wanted to make sure God knew I was taking my place in the “prepare me for my husband” line.
IN THE MIDST of this self-analysis, I realized that I still hadn’t done much to sort out my biggest question about the Bible’s teaching on relationships—God’s supposed prohibition against premarital sex. I still didn’t understand why it was such a big deal. If two people were in love, committed to one another, and wanted to sleep together, I reasoned, why wouldn’t God bless that?
Now that I’d read the Bible, I had to admit that God doesn’t equivocate on the matter—in the sixty-six books of the Bible, He is remarkably consistent: I created sex for marriage. That’s it. The whole first section of Proverbs warns of the dire consequences of extramarital intimacy, admonishing each man to marry young and enjoy his wife: “May her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be captivated by her love.” In Deuteronomy, God decrees that newly married men should stay home from battle for a full year to learn how to pleasure their wives. Is this how Christian couples make up for all those months of premarital chastity? I wondered. Throughout the Bible, God equates marital sex with satisfaction and happiness, while unmarried sex “leads down to the grave.” King Solomon cautions, “Do not awaken love before its time,” repeatedly in Song of Songs, and almost every chapter of the New Testament warns of the dangers of sexual immorality, equating it with spiritual suicide. God’s solution to our sexual urges, the Apostle Paul said, is marriage: “Each man should have his own wife, and each woman should have her own husband.” That sounded good to me. I just wasn’t sure how to get there, or what to do with all the choices I’d made before. I was too embarrassed to ask anyone directly—it wasn’t something I could bring up in our coed small group, or discuss one-on-one with Will. And I couldn’t ask Paul and Pascha, either, because, well, they were married. I wasn’t sure my new faith was strong enough to withstand married people who were having all the sex they wanted telling me how and why I couldn’t have any.
One night after our small group, I asked Pascha to pray for me. I didn’t tell her why. Silently, I asked God for guidance. I wanted to know what the parameters were on this no-sex thing, and how much of “not quite sex” a Jesus follower could engage in before it became a problem. I’d read a passage in the book of Isaiah where God promised, “Never again will foreigners drink of the new wine for which you have toiled . . . those who gather the grapes will drink in the courts of my sanctuary.” This struck me as applicable to my love life, somehow; I didn’t want any unauthorized gathering of my grapes.
Pascha prayed silently for a few moments, then said, “I feel like God is saying, Keep the banana away from the rest of the fruit. Otherwise, the whole thing will rot. Does that mean anything to you?” I stared at her wide-eyed, then burst into giggles. Keep the banana away from the rest of the fruit—that was certainly clear. Pascha gave me a hug and sent me on my way, having no idea about the nature of the message God had just sent through her. This seemed like some rather amazing grace.
A FEW MONTHS later, the topic of sex came up in a class at the Vineyard. Someone braver than I asked the question about why God says sex between two committed yet unmarried people isn’t okay, and Pastor Dave gave the first reasonable explanation I’d ever heard.
“First,” he said, “it’s important to acknowledge that God created sex. If you read the Bible, it’s clear that God is pro sex—He thinks sex is great. But it’s also clear that sex has a spiritual component; it’s not just another random activity in our day. Something happens in the spiritual realm when we join our body together with someone else.” Dave called this a soul tie, describing how sex forms a bond between people, linking them together in a way that is not casual or without consequence. “It’s similar to how glue fuses two pieces of paper together,” he said. “When the glue dries, the pieces are now one, and it’s almost impossible to get them apart.” This was God’s design for sex, Dave explained—sex was the glue in a marriage, linking couples together through God’s supernatural power. I thought about my past relationships, how I’d hoped sex would create an unbreakable bond that would make the relationship last. It felt good to have my theory confirmed. But why hadn’t it worked?
“When we sleep with people we aren’t married to,” Dave continued, “we form ties that aren’t supposed to be there. We become glued to that person, spiritually, in a way that is deeper than the rest of our relationship. We might feel committed,” he acknowledged, “but if that commitment doesn’t include marriage, then it’s not the level of commitment God created sex for. And the Bible suggests that eventually, these relationships crack under the stress of supporting this imbalance.
“Then when we break up,” he continued, “it’s like tearing the glued paper apart—we rip and stick to one another. Neither party comes out whole, or free from leftover debris. When we do this repeatedly over the course of adult dating, we end up feeling like a mere shadow of ourselves, with pieces and bits and baggage from each past relationship stuck to us, haunting us in a way we can’t seem to get away from.”
Wow, I thought. That’s exactly how I feel: covered in chunks from all my disappointments, awkward bulges that pop out to torment me when I least expect it. I couldn’t remember ever not feeling like a weary veteran of love’s front lines. But what was I supposed to do?
Seeing our discouraged faces, Dave described how Jesus could help: “Believe it or not,” he said, “God has good news for us in all of this. He wants to take away the baggage from our past, and give us a chance to start fresh. If we repent, and ask Jesus to break the soul tie binding us to a person, he will. We can be free: of the debris, and of issues that resurface and ruin new relationships. It can be that simple.”
I was sold. That night, I told Jesus that I was sorry for every man I’d been intimate with, every man I’d allowed past first base, every man I’d seduced to try and make him love me. It seemed audacious, but I asked Jesus for the chance to start over. “Please forgive me, God,” I prayed. “I don’t want to be tied to these old relationships anymore; please break these ties binding me to them—dissolve the glue; I don’t want to be stuck anymore.” I expected to feel dirty, riddled with failure and guilt; I assumed there was a shame-filled price I had to pay, a moment of reckoning where God would rub my nose in my pile of mistakes to ensure I understood how badly I’d screwed up. But instead, I felt clean. And free, like the load I’d assumed was just part of the weight of being me had been lifted off my back. Telling these things to Jesus, laying them out without hype or drama, admitting, I did this. And this. And this. I am so very sorry. Please forgive me, felt good. Really good.
A FEW DAYS after Dave’s sex talk, I read the letters written by the Apostle Paul (the Epistles, my study Bible called them), the words of encouragement he sent out to help early Christians understand how to live once they said yes to following Jesus. I was touched by Paul’s hopeful prayers for new believers, how he beseeched God to show us how much He loves us and how much power we have in Jesus—to help us understand that living in us, Jesus is able to do “exceedingly, abundantly, above all we ask or imagine.” Some of Paul’s other teachings confused me, though, like the one that seemed to speak directly to dating: “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers.”
“What’s up with that?” I asked Gwen one day. “Why would followers of Jesus only date other Christians?” This narrowed the pool of available men considerably, particularly in greater Boston.
She smiled and answered, “Oh, honey, Ch
ristian guys have way more to offer. Think about it—if you call your boyfriend after a bad day and he’s not into Jesus, all he can say to you is ‘I’m sorry, that sucks.’ There’s nothing he can do to help. But a guy who is into Jesus can say ‘Let me pray for you’ and that changes everything. He can support you in ways no other man can.”
I couldn’t imagine a man I was dating saying “Let me pray for you”—it sounded so intimate; sacred, almost. Later I saw a tiny article in Reader’s Digest, confirming Gwen’s words: “Seventy-five percent of people who pray with their spouses often describe their marriages as ‘very happy,’” it reported, citing a study by sociologist Andrew Greeley. “Those who pray are also more likely,” it added, “to rate their spouses as skilled lovers.” Sign me up for that! I thought, tearing out the article and slipping it into my wallet.
But I still wasn’t clear how this mysterious way of dating worked. How did Christians find each other? How did they start dating? I wondered about the practical side—how could you spend so much time with someone you’re attracted to and never do more than kiss? It sounded impossible. I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to have a man love me, propose to me, marry me, knowing he wouldn’t be “getting any” until after the wedding.
