100% Pure

Pure (pyoor), adj., unadulterated; uncontaminated; unpolluted; clean; untainted;

wholesome; chaste.

I have a confession to make. The first time I made this confession left my audience picking up their jaws from the floor. They never thought they’d hear me admit something as unspeakable as sleeping with my boyfriend.

There, I let it out already.

Three years ago, when I first shared this experience during a CLP of SFC, I was a mixture of nerves. While praying for guidance and inspiration at the prayer room, I made up my mind to share about how God had been generous to my family at the time when my dad was hospitalized, how several kind souls effortlessly extended their helping hands (with checks dangling at the end) to me.

But then, God kicked me in the shin and specifically told me to spill the beans.

I was new in SFC then. I was on fire, shuttling myself from the city to the country and back just to be able to attend gatherings and small group prayer meetings during weekends. Week days, I worked in a local lifestyle mag. I was involved with someone then—my GG. We were doing okay in our relationship. But it wasn’t perfect.

You see, my boyfriend was into drugs. No, he wasn’t the type who would occasionally take a puff or a sniff here and there. Man, he was hooked! He was literally neck-deep into the quagmire of substance abuse.

I knew he was into it, but we never talked about it. On the outside, he looked like someone who was slowly turning away from his old ways. He went to Mass with me, hung out with my SFC friends, stuck it out with me during prayer meetings. Oh such joy! I was having a positive effect on the guy. Or so I thought.

On our second year, things between us started to become queer. We spent more and more time together… alone. I don’t need to go into the gory details, okay? Let me just state this matter-of-factly: I consented to sleep with him.

This went on for quite some time. And much to my surprise, I was actually enjoying it. At first, I felt guilty, ashamed that a leader like me could actually fall into such trap. But after sleeping with a guy once, he doesn’t expect a girl to say ‘no’ the second time. And so we went on with it. And before I knew it, there was no guilt anymore! After I have fallen so many times, I became so well-adjusted to falling that somewhere along the falling and rising, I simply refused to get up.

But one morning, something strange happened. No, I didn’t hear thunderclaps nor a roaring voice while a swift breeze swept across my face. One morning, I just roused from sleep like I normally do, sat up, and said, “God, I don’t like this anymore.”

The angels must have had a concerto up there, but as for me down here, while sitting up on my bed, I didn’t hear anything. I didn’t even feel anything—no stirrings in my heart, no lump in my throat, no goosebumps. But I knew that as soon as those 6 words left my lips, more strange things were going to happen:

Strange thing #1: I got an offer to work for a Christian publication.

Strange thing #2: As soon as I accepted the job, I found a nice place to live

near my new office.

Strange thing #3: No less than 6 months after I switched jobs, I found a new

SFC chapter wherein I could serve.

I was like a dying plant that a gentle gardener took from my old pot, the toxic dirt being brushed away and planting me into rich new soil.

So what does being pure have anything to do with this story? With what I just poured out in here, you could say that I am far from being one. Not!

You see, another strange thing happened. Just when I was feeling low, worrying how my “market value” would drop should other people learn how “damaged” I had been, I learned about consecrating my purity to God again, about making a new commitment to turn away from my sin, and remaining pure until my wedding day. My second virginity.

It was the best gift I got so far—the knowledge that my past does not define my future, that my slate had been wiped clean, that it didn’t matter how soiled I had been but what truly counts is that my sins have been washed by Blood. Not even an iPod Mini could top that!

Is this stuff too heavy for you? I hope not. Today is an age when sex is a commodity, and sleeping with someone is called an “experience” rather than sin. But I’m gunning for a future when purity becomes the “in” thing.