My Ice Blue Secret

In any culture that prizes virginity before marriage, the loss of it can leave you frozen in shame. And sometimes the hardest person to forgive is yourself.

***********************************************************************************

I wasn’t a virgin when I married.

Supposedly, no big deal if, like me, you’re from the Woodstock generation that coined slogans like free love and question authority.

A shocking disqualifier if you grew up in the more recent Purity Culture.

How can both perspectives be true?  Let me tell you a story.

Back before the pill, my biological mom got pregnant out of wedlock. She had to leave college, go into hiding, and place me in foster care. At nine months I was adopted by wonderful parents unable to have their own children.

Eighteen years later, on a cold, snowy night, while my parents were out, friends came over for bread, cheese, and a bottle of Chianti wrapped in a straw basket I later learned was called a fiasco. The cheese was sharp, the bread stale, the wine like vinegar. My best friend and her boyfriend disappeared into my parent’s room. My boyfriend and I laid down on my childhood bed, and it was over in a second.                     

Why did I give in without a beat of passion? At the time, I might have said curiosity. Or maybe I’d hoped making love would make me love the boy who claimed to love me. 

Instead, I felt trapped in the stifling space beneath a staircase I could no longer climb.

Shortly after giving away my virginity, I saw a commercial for Ice Blue Secret deodorant. A young bride sits at a dressing table in a satin wedding dress. Her veil sweeps back over a tiara that looks like a crown. Her mother, in a silk suit with matching pill box hat, hands her daughter the deodorant, whispers a secret, and the daughter smiles. The ad links the steam of the long-awaited wedding night with the need for an antiperspirant. However, the implied bliss requires a pristine bride whose snow-white purity has never been melted, a figurine princess atop a wedding cake waiting for her prince.

When the ad was over, I turned off the TV, grabbed my parka, and my mom’s snow shoes and headed towards the bird sanctuary at the end of the neighborhood. In the frigid air, I walked through clouds of my own breath. At the forest edge, I strapped on the awkward rawhide netting and climbed into deep powder. Trudging through the trees, I heard the coo of mourning doves and the squawk of blue jays. A bright red cardinal slashed my view, and I came to the ice blue conclusion that by abdicating the virgin throne atop the wedding cake, I was secretly damaged and no longer worthy of true love. 

To look at me, you’d never know my identity was frozen in sexual shame. I wasn’t fully aware of it myself. I went off to college and graduated Phi Beta Kappa, but every subsequent romance included sex. This included living with my husband for three years before we were married.   

When he finally proposed, my adoptive mom, a fantastic seamstress, offered to make my wedding dress, but when we got to the fabric store, I said I didn’t want a white dress, a train, or a veil. I probably couched my decision in counterculture protest, but looking back, I felt like I didn’t deserve to be clothed in the symbol of purity. My mom was obviously disappointed she couldn’t give the gift only she could give, so I relented, taking my vows in a simple off-white gown with tiny, covered buttons down the back. A crown of pink carnations and baby’s breath in my hair.

I wish I could add that marriage solved my shame, but it continued to work its wiles. As a young-married with my first child, I felt trapped as never before. Who was I besides a mom? Leaving my profession to stay home with my daughter meant endless work largely unacknowledged. Haggard from midnight nursing, was I still desirable?

My answer was to audition for a local musical. To my surprise, I got the female lead. For three months I rehearsed falling in love with another man in an orchestrated courtship. When the play was over, I foolishly told my husband I was leaving him for the leading man. What set off a tsunami of heartache, plunged me deep into the forgiveness of God.

Ironically, I now see I idolized sexual purity as much as if I’d grown up in the Purity Culture, robbing myself of the free love of Jesus.

Pre-marital sex has consequences. I’m living proof. But God’s standard of purity is holiness which cannot be retained or attained. It must be reclaimed through the sacrifice of Christ. (Romans 3:23)

So, sisters, no matter what you’ve done or haven’t done, no matter what has been done to you, question every authority, without or within the church, that identifies you as anything less than the chosen, holy, beloved of God (Col. 3:12).

This is the gift only our heavenly father can give, the grace that melts every ice blue secret. 

“The blessing by faith, I receive from above,

Oh, glory! my soul is made perfect in love.

My prayer has prevailed, and this moment I know,

The blood is applied, I am whiter than snow.”

James L. Nicholson 1872

Cover photo by Osman Rama on Unsplash