Bruises left behind

Have you ever fallen down? Tripped or hit your shin on something? You do a quick assessment and see you’re not bleeding or missing any limbs so you move on with your day. You shake it off and continue on. But later that evening your body begins to tell you that something happened. There is now a bruise and your body is a little sore. It’s clear that you didn’t walk away from that incident completely unharmed. Scientifically, a bruise is caused when there is damage to our blood vessels as a result of trauma. But what about the emotional bruises left behind? Spiritual bruises? What about mental bruises? Sometimes we go through things and in the moment we say we’re okay and we continue on, but later deep bruises on our heart are revealed. I didn’t notice the bruises I had been leaving behind on my own heart until here recently. Our world tells us to “keep moving” so that’s what we do, we go through something and shake it off. But then all that adrenaline wears off and we begin to feel what’s happened to us. I was under the impression if I viewed dating and sex through a lens of “it’s just causal” and “I don’t really have emotions” that I couldn’t be hurt. But when I took that mask off, some really deep bruises began to surface. For years I allowed my heart and my soul to take a hit, accepting the unacceptable from men and even myself. I’ve had two serious relationships. The first one began at a super young age and lasted until my twenties. It was toxic, abusive, and looking back at now it’s almost embarrassing to admit what I allowed to occur. My second relationship was terrifying. He was loving and kind, but my baggage from all the years of abuse made me feel less-than and ultimately that relationship ended too. That’s when I decided that I would stick to causal dating and sex, I wouldn’t catch feelings, and I would use men the way I had been used so often before. This is when the bruises began to surface. God has given us very clear instructions on how to experience intimacy and when sex should take place - in marriage. But like the statistics, I fall in the 75% of people who didn’t wait until they were married. Hear me when I say that none of this is meant to cause shame, uncomfortably, or embarrassment, but rather share the things that God is restoring in my own life each day. 1 Corinthians 6:18 tells us that those who commit sexual sin, sin against their own body. Which if you’re like me, you first read that and think “I don’t know about that, it felt good at the time”. But those are the bruises I was talking about. At the time you are feeding into your flesh, ignoring your heart and soul begging you to stop what you’re doing. At the time I didn’t realize that I was giving parts of myself away that I wouldn’t get back, that I wouldn’t be able to give to my future spouse. And realizing that now, my heart hurts for both me and my spouse. Truthfully, God’s grace seemed to be that He allowed me to continue on for some time, but it was also through His grace that He decided it was time for me to process the pain that I had been inflicting on myself. Confronting my impurity was painful, but it was the very thing that led me to healing. What a joy for those, like me, whose record has cleared from sin (Romans 4:7-8). Messages about sex and dating have always brought some kind of shame for me, but those feelings of shame and guilt are not Godly. If there is anything I’ve learned in my healing it’s that even when I was choosing sin, God was still choosing me. And that I can’t wait to experience love and intimacy with my husband, the way God intended.