My beautiful daughter, Alyssa, just had her thirteenth birthday. She is the last of my daughters and the eighth in our line up to hit this wonderful teenage chapter of her life. I think it’s safe to say that this isn’t my first round-up when it comes to facing the hormone induced roller coaster ride that this particular phase of growing up brings, so yeehaw y’all!
We started out her special day with meeting her dad at a Japanese buffet for an early lunch together. I enjoyed introducing her to different types of sushi and watching her find pleasure in receiving the undivided attention of both of her parents – something that is not easy to attain when you have 9 siblings! It was a delicious meal and was truly wonderful for us as parents to have one-on-one time with our girl!
After our tasty lunch, we drove to a nearby church and pulled into the empty parking lot to sit and present Alyssa with her first gift of the day. We had picked out a beautiful ring with the August birthstone on it. This would be her purity ring.
Before presenting this gift, my husband brought out a list of agreements that he and I had prayed about and carefully put together eleven years ago, just before our oldest, Julia, had her thirteenth birthday. We decided early on in our parenting journey, that we wanted to make a covenant with each of our children when they got older. This covenant would be a promise not just between them and us as their parents, but all three of us would be making a promise to our heavenly Father.
While this covenant is worded a little differently for our boys then it is for our girls, the heart of the promise is the same. We are asking them to trust God’s design in placing them under our protection and in our care until they reach the place in their adult life when God leads them from our home to a new life independent from us as their parents. We are asking them to rely on the wisdom that we have gained through a life time of experience as well as studying God’s Word and to trust that we have their best interests at heart.
A big part of this promise is to agree to maintain their sexual purity and to be able to experience this for the first time with the person that they love the most, within the confines of marriage. Our desire for them is to allow God to bring the right person at the right time and for that person to be someone who is pursuing God and will value our son or daughter as precious and worth waiting for. While we are not planning any arranged marriages, we do ask that they allow us to have a say in their relationship decisions and that they be open to any insights or concerns that we may have about the person that they are dating.
We realize that this is not a common way of approaching guy/girl relationships in this day and age, even in the Christian community, but we believe that the purity of the children that God has entrusted us with is worth going against the modern way of thinking that can lead to poor choices, baggage from being involved emotionally and physically in multiple relationships, immorality, and far to often, failed and broken marriages. We are called to stand and be different, not to do things the same way as everyone else.
When we make this covenant with our children, we also present them with a ring to symbolize the commitment they are making. They will wear this ring on the fourth finger of their left hand, the same place that perhaps one day, they will wear a wedding ring. This can often lead to inquiries from others as to why they have a ring on that finger. We want our kids to be proud to wear their rings and not be ashamed to show that they are committed to purity. We live in a world where sin is lurking around every corner and temptation is waiting behind every door. These rings can also serve as a reminder to them of their covenant when they are faced with either of these.
We do not take this agreement lightly, and we make sure that our teens know the seriousness of what they are committing to. So far, eight of our kids have agreed to this covenant, including our birthday girl, Alyssa. We are proud of each one of them for being willing to take a stand for purity, and though it is not an easy or popular promise to make, we believe that it is a promise worth making.
