Many have asked the question in these dating streets, does body count matter? As far back as I can remember, my body count mattered for me. To be honest, I never thought about how many women my future spouse may have been with. God showed me in January 2021, he would separate himself from anything that could jeopardize our love. I had a supernatural confidence in our love through prayer. I also know the version that he and I will get no one else has ever had before. When we are resurrected like Lazarus and come back to life, we will never be the same version that comes forth. Lazarus was never the same after he experienced Christ resurrection power and when you allow the old you to die and Christ to live, you won’t be either.

I’m about to share why I fully embraced abstinence over seven years ago. I want to honor God, myself, and my future spouse. I shared in my memoir, how I only wanted to be with one man. I imagined I would wait to give my virginity to my husband. Although, I never had anyone to tell me my virginity was special growing up. I just intuitively knew it was. I ended up in a vulnerable situation and looking back, I know now, I was like a bird caught in the snare of the fowler that escaped. I didn’t know a lot of things, but I made a decision based on a promise and like a child I believed him.

I decided to be with a man that was 21 years older than me, and I was just turning fifteen years old. I believed him when he said he would marry me at 18 years old, so I gave him my virginity. I had just finished my first year in high school, and I couldn't believe the stories I had heard. My friends shared with me they were sexually engaging and then told me the boy “quit” them. My mind was not able to comprehend how easily abandoned they were after giving something that could never be given back. So many times through the years when I would hear couples in my church and online that got married young and are still together, I would get sad. I knew I had the capacity to love and grow with someone like this even at fifteen so I made the decision.

I wouldn’t talk to any of the boys in high school because I didn’t believe they understood my value. So, the enemy set the perfect storm up and brought me into an unexpected situation which led me to believe that an older man would understand and value me more. I slowly realized the damage this relationship had done to me looking back and how it began to deepen my beliefs on men. Our relationship didn’t end in marriage as promised, not at 18 years old and not at 44 years old. However, after a pregnancy that ended in abortion at 17, and a forced encounter that ended in a second pregnancy and no contact for 17 years to help me raise our son. After being divorced three and a half years, and getting in a new relationship 2 years prior to him reaching out to me that resulted in me being a run away bride, I went back. I allowed him to finagle his way back into my life. One of the main reasons was because body count mattered. I was in recovery and my ex-husband was given 6 months to live. I had two sons from my ex-husband. I still had healing to do and now I was being faced with their father’s death sentence. I had lost hope, and my heart became sick.

These are only fragments of why choosing abstinence has been so important to my spiritual alignment, personal development, and growth. Someone on a post recently asked me how I could let someone mistreat me like this and I am so beautiful. Beauty is not a shield from abuse. Love is real love. When we know how much God loves us, we won’t allow ourselves to be devalued and mishandled.

Now with another promise of marriage and much older, I trusted him again. This time I ended up with an unplanned pregnancy and him abandoning me again until 2 months before her birth. He misled me to believe he was divorced at that time and he didn’t tell me he was sick before her pregnancy. He ended up dying shortly after her second birthday.

I remember the day I cried out to God after my daughter was born. I cried loud and hard this time but not long. I asked the Lord to never allow me to dishonor myself again by sleeping outside of marriage. I made a resolve in my heart to take care of her with or without his support. I knew I was done. I never thought I would have another child and especially not with him, but I had placed myself in a compromising situation. Getting pregnant with my daughter was one of the most expensive prices I ever had to pay for my sin, but God knew she would be here. No baby is an unplanned pregnancy in heaven, they are to us sometimes in the earth.

Giving birth to my daughter made me remember everything I dared to believe God for and became a catalyst to remember my value. The enemy told me she would forever be a reminder to me of my fall from grace. God immediately told me she would always be a reminder in my life from him of everything the enemy said I would never get but will. I wanted to be an example to her in my walk before the Lord and that meant choosing abstinence. My obedience began to prophetically align me with everything God had promised me. I want to encourage others and state that at times choosing abstinence is challenging.

However, I know that it is possible because God has kept me when I didn’t want to be kept. Choosing abstinence for me is God restoring my virginity spiritually and allowing me to give my husband what I gave away at fifteen. God revealed to me in December 2020 that every time I was ever rejected, he was preserving me for my future spouse. It’s God’s method of divine restoration. Allow him to restore your soul and prepare you for your future spouse. I look forward to getting remarried to my purpose partner to fulfill our assignment together. God is going to honor my future spouse for being willing to wait and honor God, our future union and me even though it isn’t easy. It’s going to be so worth it!!! I pray that as you also trust God and honor him in spirit and in truth that he will bring divine alignment and divine restoration into your lives as well, in Jesus’ name.

 2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

Never

You never kissed my lips,

Never took your hands and pulled me close by my hips,

But you’ve held my heart in your hands,

Whispered in my ear as I easy dropped in heavens grandstands.

Never held my breast, 

But you laid your head on my chest,

When you listened for my heartbeat, 

while you sat at his feet.

Never saw me undressed,

Never caressed,

My body.

but you got the peep hole,

 to my soul,

Lingered in chambers of my heart waiting for you to explore,

In places your hands can never reach but I can’t ignore.

Never laid down next to me in bed,

But you live in my head,

completely unpacked,

and unwrapped,

as my prize,

in my 5th floor high rise.

Occupying residence,

with evidence,'

by faith,

in my future life,

I am your wife.

Never tasted,

But got me wasted,

Never between my thighs,

But reminiscing on my highs,

Never picked up a phone to Facetime,

to tell me you’re all mine,

But you stay in my face all the time online,

Loving you out loud,

waiting and still proud.