The Apple Analogy
Girls are like apples in a big tree. The very best apples (girls) are on the very top. But the little boys are too afraid to climb to the top of the tree; they are afraid of getting hurt. So they settle for the not-so-good, lower apples. The apples (girls) on top feel like nobody wants them. They begin to wish that they were like the lower apples. But if they wait long enough, the perfect little boy will come along. He will be brave enough to climb to the top and retreive the very best. So wait and keep yourself pure mentally, physically, and spiritually for your brave little boy.
The Charm Bracelet
Sweet 16 had finally come! I never thought I‘d make it. But I did. And it was amazing. My parents threw the birthday party of the century, and I had more people than I could count. The whole day had been awesome. But as I watched the sun begin to set, I knew the best part was soon to come.
It was late in the evening. Confetti had been swept up, helium balloons had started to sag and gift wrap had been folded neatly and tucked away for my mom’s later use. As I sat at my window studying the dusky sky, Dad peeked into my room with a smile.
“Ready to go, Sweetie?” he asked.
Was that a trick question? I wondered as I scrambled to my feet. I’d been waiting for this night for five long years, and it was finally here! I was now officially allowed to date!
The plan was for my parents and me to go to my favorite restaurant on the night of my 16th birthday and officiate the agreement, go over standards and discuss rules and such. And now we were finally on our way.
I sat across from my parents in a quiet corner booth. Having just placed our orders, I figured it was time to get on with it. “So. I can go out with any guy I want to, right?” I squealed, hardly able to contain my excitement.
Mom and Dad chuckled. Dad answered, “Well, we agreed to that, didn’t we?”
“Sweet!” I exclaimed, doing a little victory dance in my seat. My parents had held me off for years, but now that the time had come, they would let me date any guy I wanted! Of course they knew I had a good relationship with God and wasn’t too short on common sense, either.
“Now wait just a second,” Mom interrupted with a smile. “You have to agree to a little something yourself.”
I was expecting a lecture of some sort, so I was already prepared. “So what do I have to do now?” I asked, leaning forward on my elbows.
“Just open this,” Dad answered, producing a small white box. He gave a mysterious smile.
I hesitated a moment before untying the curly pink ribbon. I slowly opened the lid and saw a beautiful silver bracelet. But not just any bracelet. It was a charm bracelet. And they weren’t just any charms. They were gemstones, small but gorgeous. A dozen dainty charms dangled gently.
“Wow.” I didn’t know what else to say. I wasn’t expecting this at all.
“Now you have to understand this isn’t just any bracelet,” Mom informed me.
“I know,” I said. “It’s so beautiful!” I studied it closer. There were six small charms alternating with six tinier ones. The smaller ones were a deep blue. Sapphires, I guessed. And the other six were each different. One appeared to be just a rock, one was pink, a white one, a red one, green . . . and was that a diamond?
“This charm bracelet is symbolic,” Dad explained, leaning in closer to study it with me. “It represents you and your purity. This is what will guide you through your dating relationships. Your mother and I can only tell you what’s right. We can’t make you believe it yourself. Hopefully, this will.”
I looked up solemnly. “I’m listening.”
“This represents the first time you hold a guy’s hand,” Mom said, pointing to the gray one. “It’s just a piece of polished granite. Seemingly cheap, yes, but it’s still a part of your bracelet. This is pink quartz.” She gently rubbed the next one between her fingers. “It represents your first kiss.”
“This green one is an emerald,” Dad continued. “This is your first boyfriend. The pearl is the first time you say ‘I love you’ to a man other than me.”
I giggled. This was so amazing.
“The ruby stands for your first engagement. And the diamond represents the first time you say ‘I do,’ ” Mom finished.
After letting it all sink in, I cleared my emotion-clogged throat. “What do the six tiny sapphires stand for?” I asked.
“Those are to remind you how beautiful and valuable you are to us and to God,” Dad replied. “Now here’s the hitch in all this, the one and only rule you’ll ever have to follow when it comes to dating.”
Only one rule. Sounded good. But little did I know . . .
“Whenever you give one these actions of love—a kiss, an ‘I love you,’ a hand to hold—you also have to give the recipient the gem to match.”
I must’ve misunderstood. “I have to give him the gem?”
“You have to give it to him,” Mom restated.
I was silent for a moment. I thought they must be joking. But they weren’t even thinking of cracking a smile.
“But Daddy!” I suddenly shrieked. “These are insanely expensive! I can’t just give them away!”
He gave a soft, loving chuckle. “Did you hear what you just said?”
I thought about it.
“Baby, your purity, your heart, they’re far more valuable than a few little rocks. If you can’t find it in your heart to give away your little charms, I don’t think you should be giving away the things they represent.”
I could feel my insides melting, ready to gush out my tear ducts. On the one hand, it made me feel valuable and precious. But on the other, it made me furious. It made no sense. But it would.
A few weeks after that night, I was hanging out with my friends at the beach. Chad wouldn’t swim because I wouldn’t swim. I was more interested in reading than getting caked with sand, and he was more interested in sitting with me than swimming with his buddies. He was sweet. He was cute. And he tried to hold my hand.
I was thrilled for a nanosecond when a certain piece of ugly granite flashed through my mind and made me move out of his reach. I was severely annoyed—annoyed at my parents, annoyed at my bracelet-turned-handcuffs, but most of all, annoyed at myself. I was letting a little rock dominate my romantic life.
I furiously glared at it during the whole embarrassing walk to the bathhouse. But then God hit me upside the head with a shocking epiphany. I couldn’t give up my little chunk of granite. It was a part of my bracelet, which in a sense made it a part of me. I wouldn’t be whole without it. It wasn’t a priceless gem, yet it was still valuable. It made sense after that.
Kevin came along eventually. We had fun. We hung out a lot. I thought I might love him. I thought I might tell him so. I thought of my pearl. It turned out that I didn’t love him as much as I thought I did.
So my parents had been right. They couldn’t make me believe the things they wanted me to believe. So they let God and my bracelet do the work instead. Among the four of them, I figured out how valuable I was. How valuable my purity was. How not valuable guys were who just wasted my time and emotions. If they weren’t in it for the whole bracelet, why should they get one part of it?
Nate. He thought my bracelet was awesome. So he never tried to hold my hand. He never tried to kiss me. But he asked me to marry him.
I never knew that so many years of torture could amount to so much happiness. I’d thought it was silly. I’d thought it was overrated. But now, I‘ve never been more glad of anything in my life. As I gave my husband the charm bracelet in its entirety, I wondered why I had found it so hard to hang on to those little rocks when it was so amazing to give them all to the man I truly loved.
But it didn’t end there. Now our daughter wears it.
The Wedding Gift
The gift table was piled high with bright packages. Everything looked dazzling, except one bedraggled gift. Between the fancy gift bags overflowing with brilliantly colored tissue paper and the curly ribbons wrapped around shiny packages sat one misshapen box.
The paper, once sporting pure white roses, was grimy with fingerprints and wrinkled from the numerous times it had been unwrapped and rewrapped. It even looked as though it had been stomped on once or twice. On the gift tag several names were written then crossed out, and finally the name of the groom was scrawled over the others.
Inside, the present, once beautiful and pure, lay soiled, torn and broken.
Who would so carelessly place this gift upon the table waiting for the groom to open?
It Wasn’t Always This Way
Once, the gift had been perfect. Too beautiful and precious to be purchased with money, designed to not only attract the husband but also to cement the marriage, making the two one. The Father had placed one perfect gift into the hands of the bride to give to her beloved on their wedding day. He warned her to guard the gift well and not open it until He introduced her to her beloved, until He put His blessing on their wedding.
But the need to be loved, the pressure to fit in, the fear of losing out, caused the bride to open the gift and offer it to the first boy who showered her with attention. It’ll be OK, she thought. I’ll marry this one someday anyway.
But they grew apart, he moved on, she grew sad, the gift was torn, and when the next chance for a little happiness came along, she opened up the gift again and offered it. It was easier this time: The tape didn’t hold so well, the ribbon was already loose, but once again the couple grew apart, and now the gift was stained. Because of its use, the gift lost value to the bride-to-be, and she pulled it out whenever she needed diversion or to fill the empty space, and each time it grew more worn and lost more luster.
She told herself it didn’t matter. She told herself all people opened their gifts before marriage. She rationalized that it was the only way to attract a man. And though the gift brought her attention, it didn’t bring the love she desired.
After having her heart broken several times, she finally thought back on what the Father had told her. At that point, she put the gift aside and waited. One day she met her beloved, and he was everything she hoped.
What a Gift!
“I have a perfect gift for you,” he told her. “My Father gave it to me to save for our wedding night. I long to open it for you now, but it will be worth the wait.”
The bride hid her tears while he spoke, but she went weeping before her Father with her stained and battered gift.
“I’m so sorry, Father, that I gave the gift away before You chose my groom. Can You give me a new one? I don’t want to give my groom this broken gift.”
The Father smiled sadly and took the gift in His hands.
“I had a reason for my warning, but I want you to know that I will always love you. I can make you whole again, my child, but I cannot make the gift whole again. I will touch his eyes to see your gift as good, but the patches and stains will still remain.”
And so the bride put her crumpled gift on the wedding table, trusting the Father would help her husband find her gift as perfect as the one she would receive.
Our Crumpled World
We live in a society that pushes sexuality at every turn. The clothes we wear, advertisements, movies, songs and television all glorify sex as a normal part of dating. But that isn’t the way the Lord intended it to be used. He tells us to flee sexual immorality for a reason. (See 2 Corinthians 6:18.)
God gave us our sexuality to use as a wonderful wedding present to bless our marriages. When we live outside of His plan for sex we find ourselves reaping the consequences. Sometimes we’re lucky to walk away with only a broken heart and a lower self-worth; other times we become hardened or callous toward men.
You probably know more than a dozen young women who are raising children on their own, because they didn’t wait for the man God chose for them. Although your friends may never tell you, you also probably know more than a dozen young women who are reaping the physical effects of sexually transmitted infections, infertility or even life-threatening diseases such as AIDS and Hepatitis C.
If you’ve made a pledge of purity, keep it!
If you made the mistake of giving up your wedding gift before your wedding night, know that God doesn’t take away the consequences of your sin, but He’s willing to make you whole again. He’ll give you a virgin heart and help you flee from temptation. God is the giver of everything good. We have to trust that He’ll make it worth the wait.
It's a lot, I know, but I hope you enjoyed them!
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