3: LIKE PIECES OF A PUZZLE

AS I WORKED THROUGH the heart of this book, a letter arrived from a sixteen-year-old friend in Mississippi. It expressed so perfectly what I hope and pray this book will do for you:

Dear Joe,

I sat down and read your letter, and it made me feel so good to know that you care. I thought about the things you said, and I’ve been trying to not let it bother me if someone ridicules me. I have found a new group of friends. Two of them are Christians, I think. I have been a whole lot happier, and your letter was really an encouragement to me. I have my head on straight, and I’ve been concentrating on the things that matter —family, friends, grades, and, most importantly, my walk with Jesus. Thanks for your help.

Love in Him,
Morgan

Much of the collegiate and high-school mail I receive contains broken pieces from the growing-up puzzles of kids’ lives. Most of the broken pieces relate to sex.

This book is simply a personal love letter from my mailbox to yours. I hope it will be a preventive letter to keep your puzzle from breaking. But if yours already has some broken pieces, my dream is that this book will be the puzzle box top, with a beautiful picture of the finished puzzle, so together we can put yours back together as perfectly as it was intended to be. To help us turn the puzzle pieces into a masterpiece, let me introduce you to a friend of mine with a familiar name.

Adolph Coors V. The name alone buzzes your mind with a jillion wild connotations. What’s the first thought that enters your imagination about him? Let me help you with a clue: Though he now runs his own water resources engineering company, I remember like it was yesterday when he was twenty-three years old.

At the time, he was single . . . and a well-buffed athlete to boot.

Got a picture now?

He’s six foot three and as handsome as a model. He has a smile that could melt ice in a Chicago winter.

Got a better picture?

Before you get too carried away, let me paint the real portrait at the risk of bursting your bubble of expectation.

Adolph goes by the name Shane. Yes, he’s a Coors; yes, he’s an heir to the Coors brewery throne. But because of his dad’s convictions, their branch was pulled off the family business tree when Shane was young. Shane is as rare as a pearl in an oyster shell. He’s a strongly committed Christian, doesn’t drink a drop of alcohol, and, prior to his wedding, possessed his virginity with humble security. Then he joyfully married the first girl he ever loved.

Shane Coors, Rebecca Hurst, and I worked together that year when he was twenty-three. How well I recall the two weeks we spent running around America, recruiting staff for our summer camps. Between university visits, we discussed their upcoming wedding and all the hoopla, ceremonial details, ornamental traditions, and expectations that accompany the matrimonial extravaganza.

Yes, we also discussed the honeymoon. As we sped down the road in our truck at midnight, somewhere between Kansas City and my Ozark home, those two lovebirds and I played in our minds with the fun, the anxieties, and the expectations of a Christ-centered honeymoon. Soon those two unspoiled lovers, passionately attracted yet purposefully naive, would discover God’s carefully designed plan of indescribable splendor through spiritual, emotional, and physical oneness.

A romantic novel couldn’t have improved the scene beside me. Rebecca sat next to Shane, with her beautiful brown eyes sparkling like diamonds, as I tried to describe the adventure that awaited them. Her dimples revealed her pleasure as she squeezed her fiancé’s hand tightly.

Shane’s patient demeanor gave her great security, and the Spirit of God that filled her heart enveloped her dreams with peace and harmony.

In my heart, I desire intently that their scenario could be yours. Perhaps I know you, or perhaps this book is our first introduction.

Perhaps you’re in love; maybe you want to be. Perhaps you’re thirteen, or maybe you’re twenty-one. Perhaps you’re naive, or maybe you’ve been there many times. Your heart may be intact, or it may lie in many broken pieces. Perhaps your eyes sparkle with expectation, or perhaps they’re stained with tears.

But let me assure you, unlike Seventeen magazine or Glamour or advice from the latest sex guru visiting the talk show stages, this book is not about hopeless regrets or illusive expectation. It’s about love . . . real love . . . never-ending love —no matter who you are, what you’ve done (or haven’t done), or how many times the misuse of sex through the Internet, television, movies, or real-life experiences has left you reeling from disappointment.

Yes, Rebecca and Shane’s romance would make even the hardest heart long for a similar personal encounter. And maybe theirs is a love story that seems rare in this condom-crazed, sexually distorted society we’ve created.

But I’ve seen too many thousands of similar relationships bloom before my eyes to be superficial when I say, “This love story could be for you.” God didn’t reserve true love only for the perfect; He reserved it for the willing. Great honeymoons don’t require halos; they simply require legitimately forgiven hearts and well-instructed intentions. Yes, bodily virginity is highly preferred and biblically exhorted, but it’s not required. “Spiritual virginity” is available to all true believers, and a vision of the finest that love has to offer is yours for the asking. If you want it badly enough, read on with sacrificial commitment and openness to the blueprint the Creator of the universe drew when He paused to invent “nothing but the best” in sexual oneness in the confines of lifelong marriage.

Discussion Questions

1. How does the story of Shane and Rebecca make you feel? How appealing to you is the kind of premarital relationship they had?
2. What is meant by the term spiritual virginity? (There’s more about it in chapter 4.)
3. Do you think spiritual virginity is something you can have? Why or why not?