Chapter 17 #2
When Mateo puts down the guitar, I wish for a translator. I can pluck out words as he starts to speak—Jesús, la luz, Espíritu Santo—but I know I’ll be lost before long.
As if she can hear me squinting, Camila leans into my ear, easy and practiced. I smile. She’s going to be my translator.
“This week we’re talking about unconditional love,” she whispers, the echo of Mateo.
The topic feels broad and specific at once, speaking to both my entire life and my experience of love in this country.
The Scripture verses and sermon notes are familiar, but something about them in this tropical breeze, with the absence of spectacle and the comfort of fellow sojourners, feels different to me. Sacred. More intimate.
Camila leans over again: “Has there ever been a time in your life when you were given unconditional love by another person when you didn’t think you would get it? When you felt like your sin or unworthiness had marked you with shame and rejection, but you received grace instead?”
The question hits my stomach like a fist to a sack of flour.
Shocking grace, a wild response, after pain and guilt and regret . . .
In my real life, yes, there sure was.
I find myself floating out of my church seat and back to the three-month anniversary of dating Reid, following my twenty-first birthday. I smile at the sweetness of celebrating month-iversaries; oh, to be young and in love almost twenty years ago.
It was summertime in Newport Beach, both of us living at home, working internships: he in finance, me in the local theater’s communications department.
He had the idea to celebrate up in Los Angeles, the city where we’d met—so he picked me up and drove us to a restaurant downtown: Windows, named aptly, with crystal-glass walls on the top story of a tall business tower.
I clutched his elbow, feeling elegant in my little black dress as he snaked our way to the table with a sweeping panorama of the neon-lit skyline.
We might as well have been in Manhattan.
The low lighting of the restaurant and electric sky view were impossibly romantic, intoxicating.
I remember taking the seat across from Reid with his black suit, handsome features, and earnest manners thinking, I love him.
Oh my gosh, I love him.
We hadn’t said it yet.
We’d only been dating a few months, but we’d fallen fast. When we met, I’d been heartbroken still, but soon enough I couldn’t recall the last time I’d thought of Holden Locke.
Until another church sermon I’d never forget, a few weeks before this anniversary date, about sexual purity, of all topics.
I was sitting next to Reid at a wonderfully hip and extremely popular Sunday night church service for college students and twentysomethings in Orange County.
And I remember praying Reid couldn’t read my mind when the pastor got to the part about why God designed us—in his perfect will—to only ever be with one man or woman.
Why wait till marriage, basically.
He was here to “unpack” this.
“Every time you sleep with someone,” the pastor explained, “you bond with them—mind, body, and soul. Sexual intimacy was designed by God for true union. So when you rip away from that bond, it will hurt. Then, next time you sleep with someone new, you bond again. And then you rip away, again.” His voice rose.
“And over time, you start to go numb.” He paused.
“Because you’re bonding. And you’re ripping!
And you’re bonding, and you’re ripping!” Between every repetition, he smacked his hands together and tore them away.
The sound was jarring.
I swallowed.
Reid leaned over, smiling. “Ouch.”
I stared dead ahead, willing away the clog at the back of my throat, along with the hot tears searing the backs of my eyes.
Don’t let him see.
He’ll know.
And this will be over.
The best thing that has ever happened to me will be over before it starts.
I think of that sermon now, for the first time in years, seeing it differently.
Unpacking it differently. I can still hear the pastor’s palms slapping together and separating—again and again and again—echoing in the trendy industrial building.
Maybe at twenty-one, I did need that message.
But almost two decades later, I also see its faults.
Not in the calling to honor God with our bodies; that truth remained.
But the notion that intimacy outside of marriage leaves you irreparably damaged, broken, and torn apart?
I recall no mention of mercy. No hope of redemption.
It was a warning of terror, truly. If my children ever hear a similar message, I pray it includes the key piece I missed that night—the promise of grace.
I, for one, never intended to sleep with Holden.
Of course I didn’t. I was the girl with the purity ring. But over time, lust and toxic mind games and unhealthy attachment and yet another desperate attempt to keep Holden’s affections on me—only me—to lock down his promise that we would be together forever . . . I let it happen.
I gave away my virginity to someone who stepped on it, and my heart.
Bonding and ripping.
Gulp.
Somehow in the fire of a hot night, it even became my idea somehow. I asked him for it, playing and teasing, begging to push the boundary.
“Are you sure?” Holden whispered into my ear.
“Yes. I love you so much,” I said, having no clue what that meant. “Are you?”
“Of course,” he said, thumbing my bottom lip. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
He didn’t promise anything, jerk. He couldn’t even show up to coffee. I gave him my body and a piece of my soul. And he didn’t call the next day. Or respond to my calls that whole week.
Bond.
Rip.
Shame.
When I finally saw him again two weeks later—out of my mind with questions and anger and grief—I marched up to him, seething, “What the heck?” when I saw him eating lunch with a freshman.
He said casually, “Hey! Good to see you again. We should catch up sometime.” Before promptly going back to his greasy Panda Express and new blonde.
The pain knifed through me, for weeks—but thankfully this was the final straw on top of a year’s worth of bad signs from this guy.
I had Quinn to make sure of it.
She saved me, really.
Now here I was—on a hot date worthy of The Bachelorette, suspended above Los Angeles with my dream guy, three months into the most wonderful, reciprocal, healthy, godly dating relationship I’d ever had . . .
But I knew he thought I was a virgin.
Of course he did.
We were two Christian kids who shared the same values and lived their lives by the Bible the best they knew how. The types who saved themselves for marriage.
The thing is, I knew God and I were fine.
That sense of forgiveness hadn’t come instantly—I grappled with it, like an athlete overcoming an injury.
But over time, I came to believe that grace covered me, that I was already healed.
It didn’t take away the regret but did wash away my shame.
And yet, somehow, feeling clean in the eyes of my treasured new boyfriend, so good to his core?
This was more difficult for me to comprehend.
Putting skin to the supernatural is hard.
I knew this might be our last date. But I had to be honest with him. Heart rattling, I dragged a sip of my water, chomped on the ice.
“You okay?” Reid asked, grabbing a dinner roll.
“Not really,” I rushed. “I have to tell you something.”
His smile melted me. “Of course.” He sat back. “Anything.”
You don’t mean that, I thought.
“It’s hard for me to tell you,” I started. “And—I don’t know, it’s kind of awkward. Because I know we’ve been dating a little while but haven’t really talked about our . . . past relationships.”
He shrugged. “Do you want to talk about them? I just figure they’re in the past for a reason.”
This buoyed me. Yes, I thought. Exactly! They are!
“Well,” I said. “I just want you to be sure you’re . . . okay. With . . . me. All of me.”
“Wait, did you kill someone?” His brows ascended. “For the record, I’m completely okay with a light criminal record.”
I tried to smile. But I couldn’t hold it in anymore.
“I’m not a virgin,” I spilled, eyes down on my silverware.
“I always planned to wait until marriage. I really did. But my last ex I mentioned, from USC—he was not a nice guy. I regret it. I regret it so much. He was awful to me. And I can never, ever take it back. And I can’t”—I paused, elevating my eyes to his—“give you that. I wish I could. But I can’t.
And you deserve to know. Before this goes any further. ”
First, he looked relieved. I think he really was bracing himself for a confession of grand theft auto, or worse.
Secondly, he looked sad. But not sad for him. Sad for me. Sad I’d been carrying this—the shame and the fear and the burden.
Third, he looked happy. That I told him. That I cared to tell him. That I was brave enough to be honest when I felt it was time.
He pushed his glasses onto his perfect nose. “What makes you think I’m a virgin?”
My jaw dropped.
I’d assumed—completely assumed. He’d only cited a couple past girlfriends, none of them serious—and he just did not seem, quite frankly, like the type of guy who had a sexual history.
I covered my mouth. “Oh my gosh. I’m so sorry. You’re . . .”
“Totally a virgin.” He grinned. “I’m messing with you. But should I be insulted, or—”
Against the odds, I burst out laughing—and balled my napkin to throw at him over the table. “You did not just get me!”
“I think I did.”
Then he stood up. He came over to my side of the table, knelt next to me, cheek to cheek, and burrowed me into his arms. It was the opposite of bonding and ripping defined in one hug.
He held me there.
Quietly.
Lovingly.
Until, at last, I relaxed.
“I am so sorry that happened to you,” he said. “What a loser.”
I sniffed.
“Can I tell you how much I don’t care?” he said, temple to mine.
“I mean—I care that he hurt you. I care that you experienced that and have had to deal with the pain and regret of it. Mistakes suck. But any thoughts in this beautiful head”—he tapped my temple—“about me caring that this exists in your past?”
He turned his face to mine, grabbed my chin so we were eye to eye.
He searched my face, and I felt a tear slide.
He wiped it away, kissing the damp skin precisely where it had fallen.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t you dare be sorry,” he said. “I love you. Exactly the way you are.”
“Are you crying?” whispers Camila.
There’s no Reid to wipe my tears anymore.
Hastily I smear them away.
“I’m fine,” I say.
She frowns. “You sure?”
I nod. “I’m sure.”
When Mateo closes the service with one final song, he sings the words in English:
Love came down and rescued me.
Love came down and set me free.
I am yours.
I am forever yours.
I know I’m forever God’s. Am I Reid’s?