I've been a Christian since I was seven years old. And for as long as I can remember, I was raised in church and taught everything I needed to know about what it meant to be a good girl and a true believer. Good girls were believers who were in church every Sunday, attended weekly bible studies, volunteered for extracurricular church activities and events, and didn’t listen to secular music, drink alcohol, or do drugs. We were also advised not to date (and typically weren’t allowed to date at all) but interestingly enough were taught to prepare for marriage by first pledging allegiance to purity and abstaining from sex until marriage (along with wearing those True Love Waits purity rings), which looking back, probably wasn’t a good idea since some of those teachings shamed many young women back then who weren’t abstaining, were sexually assaulted, or eventually decided not to abstain from sex at all. Even more interesting was noticing that the young men I attended church with we
Writer. Storyteller. Unconventional Believer.