After Is My Husband Comparing Me to Former Lovers posted, I received several messages from men.   This is in response to those emails.

She’s wearing white under false pretenses.  You know the truth.

She was the perfect girl, so sweet and helpful and uplifting.  She loves Jesus.  Her character and lifestyle confirm she is trying to live out her faith.  You felt like Superman in her presence.  Then, she took a risk and allowed you to see into her past.  And even though she has sought God’s forgiveness and repented, now every thought of her is clouded by what she told you.

She’s no longer perfect.

As one with pre-marital sexual experience, I can tell you, her greatest wish is to go back in time and make better decisions.

Sin is bondage.  It chains our hearts with regret.  It is easier to ask for forgiveness from Christ than it is to forgive ourselves, sometimes.

Why did she make those decisions in the first place?  She may not really know why she did what she did, but you should ask her.

Maybe all she heard was DON’T and wanted to see what all the hullabaloo was about.  Afterall, sex just goes downhill after marriage, or so she heard.  God’s design of marital sexual intimacy had never fully been explained.  It’s far more than physical pleasure, but a melding of physical, emotional and spiritual intimacy. No Christian ever spoke plainly to her that sex after marriage is made all the more beautiful if you only experience and learn with your husband.

Maybe she was desperate from male attention since dad was never around.

Maybe she was rebellious and hard-hearted and didn’t care about God’s laws.

Maybe she was abused and her mind corrupted by bad company.

You have forgiven, but want to forget.  How do you begin to process this?

See her as Christ sees her.

“If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is – that she is a sinner,” said Simon the Pharisee. Jesus said to the Pharisee, Simon, “Do you see this woman?  I came into your house.  You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair……You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet.  Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven – for she loved much.  But he who has been forgiven little loves little…….Jesus said to the woman, ‘Your faith has saved you; go in peace,’ “ Luke 7:44-50.

Jesus wasn’t blind to this bold woman’s sin.  However, he valued the abundant love and faith of her heart more.  He extended her grace and forgiveness.

In this present moment, does the heart of your lovely lady overflow with love and faith?  What are you valuing more, her heart or her sin?

Forgiving can lead to forgetting. 

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.  See, I am doing a new thing,” Isaiah 43:18-19. 

“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold, the new has come,” 2 Corinthians 5:17.

Your part in this is to not wallow in dark thoughts, but, to allow the Holy Spirit to fill you abundantly with mercy.  I truly believe that as forgiveness overtakes your heart, the Lord grants a bit of amnesia.

Don’t let this be a territorial dispute.  Seething that other men invaded your territory.  Do not dwell on the past.  Love the new creature God has given you in your wife.

Every marriage grieves.

At some point in a marriage, you grieve your expectations.  Whether it is the expectations of your spouse’s sexual experience or of how life was supposed to go in general, you grieve.  Things don’t go as planned.

It is hard to hear this when your heart is throbbing with pain, but it is truly a blessing to grieve early on.  When you grieve early on, you have the ability to live a larger part of your life loving the ‘real’ person,  not the person you have put on a pedestal in your mind.

When you know the aches and sins of your spouse, they no longer have to hide their failure.  Together, you can bolster each other up in spite of the flaws and failures and because of flaws and failures.  You can’t deny you have flaws and failures, too, just in other areas.  Maybe you were a technical virgin, but have viewed your share of porn and masturbated to it.  Or you lied on a job application or you cheated at cards or shoplifted.

Appropriate perspective of marital intimacy.

When you consider that the whole of marital intimacy as spiritual, emotional and sexual, you see that sexual intimacy is only 1/3^rd of the package.  It’s an important third, and shouldn’t be neglected.  But, it’s not the entirety of marriage.

Does she point her life constantly toward Christ?  Does her character shine with patience, kindness, humility, forgiveness?  Is she servant oriented and consider other’s feelings?  Does she work hard at her tasks, whatever they may be?  Does she strive to be hopeful and joyful even when circumstances seem stacked against her?  Is she open and honest, but not condemning, when things aren’t so good?

Consider her other qualities and don’t let her failure to keep the hymen intact overshadow the new creation God has made.

Consider your purpose.

God has given you a broken vessel because you have a greater purpose.  Your purpose is to nurture this woman into all that she can be to fulfill her role in God’s Kingdom.

What did Christ do with the adulterous woman (and yeah, I’ve always wondered where the guy was, cause it takes two!)?

Christ set the adulterous woman free.  He set her free from the sin of her soul.  He also gave her a second chance and set her free to have a full life.  “Go and sin no more.”

Your wife or fiancé needs your Christ-like love so that she can learn how to forgive herself.  She needs you to be her partner in having a full life.

So, what do you do with this information?  You pray and evaluate.

If you can forgive fully one day and then not be able to the next, you are still working toward forgiveness.  It’s a process and doesn’t happen all at once.

But, if this is really a stumbling block, you are the one who has to work this out prayerfully.  Pray for God to reveal your underlying issues.  What is keeping you from forgiving?  Search scripture, find a trusted mentor to talk with.  Don’t let it ferment in your heart.  Air the issue out and find resolution.

Here’s the hope.

Some ‘wives of noble character’ are born.  However, I think the vast majority are cultivated.  If you partner with Christ to nurture her heart toward self-forgiveness and help her feel her value as a woman, while she is walking in the character of Christ, she will help you feel like Superman every day!

Even if you weren’t the first, you will be the last.  And who wouldn’t want to spend the rest of their life with a woman whose heart glistens like a ruby for her husband!?

If you haven’t read Is He Comparing Me to Former Lovers, I recommend you do.  Thoughts in that post are relevant to this and are also applicable to wife or husband.

My prayers are with you as you come to terms with the mess of life, sometimes known as the consequences of sin.