Janna's Story
The Choice is Mine
by Janna, age 17
"I just want to give you a kiss." These were the very words that changed my life. I had just turned fourteen years old, graduated from 8th grade, and was preparing to start high school. He was seventeen, soon to be eighteen, and was getting ready to enter his last year of high school. We weren't supposed to be together - we weren't even supposed to be friends. He was a "bad boy" and my family hated him. It was that "bad boy" image that attracted me to him. Looking back, I wish I'd listened.
I was home alone and he knew it. He had watched my family get in the car and drive away. He had it all planned out - he knew exactly what he was doing, and how he was going to do it. He came over and asked to come in. I told him no, because I had to clean. But he was not dissuaded. He knew what my objections would be. We weren't supposed to be together, so we couldn't kiss in public. So he used that to get me to let him the house, and I fell for it. I let him in and we started to kiss. But he wanted far more than that. I did not. So when he tried to take it a step further I told him to stop it. He didn't. I yelled at him to stop and to leave, but he did not stop and he did not leave. A man I thought loved me raped me in my grandma's living room.
I felt dirty. I felt ashamed. And I felt guilty. Up until that point I had made the choice to save myself till marriage, but that gift I wanted to present my husband with, my virginity, had been taken from me. I no longer saw any point in even attempting to abstain. I had nothing more to give, or so I thought.
After going in and out of several relationships, being sexually active in most of them, a friend told me about "renewed virginity." I'd never be a physical virgin again, but I could make the commitment, the decision to stop and wait from that point on. I could again save myself for my husband. I decided it was completely worth it to make that decision. However, I'll be the first to admit that it's NOT easy. It's very difficult not to go back and have sex again. But I have friends who've made the same commitment as I have, to remain abstinent again, and it's great. We check up on each other, and when one of us is dating, we go out together in a group. That way there's no opportunity to have sex, seeing that when you're alone all the time it'd be very easy to just go ahead and do it again.
We don't despise sex in any way. In fact, I love sex. It's fun. But I want to wait to have that "fun" with my husband. I want to be able to tell my husband, "I waited for you." He is that important to me. I want to be able to give all of myself to my husband. Not just a portion of what used to be. By the time I meet him I will have had so much time to heal and grow, and will be a completely different person. Right now I am faced with a daily choice: to live as one who is renewed, or to live as one who has no hope for a future. I choose the first because I am worth that. My husband is worth that. Sex is worth that. And so are you.