I remember the crisp fall afternoon as if it were yesterday. With about a year’s worth of following God under my belt, I was proudly divulging my newfound faith with a man I’d looked up to for a long time. Even as a less-than-religious teenager, I had always admired when this former coach would share his thoughts on marriage and its sacred dimensions. “Wait for it, Abbie. that’s one of the best gifts you can offer God and yourself and the man you marry. be patient and save yourself for the one,” he’d say. Clearly at that stage in my life, theological reasoning wasn’t compelling to me, but this man’s pursuit of an idea worth living for, or waiting for, surely was. In a matter of moments though, his pedestal of commitment in my mind crumbled.

Giddily, I explained, “I understand now! And I agree with your thoughts on waiting and abstinence as something of great significance and even endearment.”

He stared at me somewhat blankly and what seemed to be condescendingly.

“Oh, Abbie, college has you where it’s meant to. I was like you for so long, too, thinking God must have a plan for my life and I was to wait for that one special woman. But I guess something of a reality check hit me when I turned thirty.” He continued, “I couldn’t wait anymore, or maybe just didn’t want to wait anymore. And God obviously didn’t care about my desires or else He would’ve brought me a wife. So I finally gave up on Him and decided to face life’s current situation by myself. God could tag along if He wanted, I guess, but life just seemed too short to keep playing the waiting game.”

It was as though my nineteen-year-old passion had been squashed into the body of a nine-month-old who spilled her milk. I felt as though I’d done something frightfully wrong. It was as if I’d just shared the stupidest idea on earth. But wait a minute, I thought. Wasn’t this the man who’d initially drawn me toward the idea of saving sex until marriage?

This crushed me on a number of fronts because it crushed my normal. And not only that, but it crushed the admired state my normal was striving for. C.S. Lewis said that reality is iconoclastic, meaning reality needs space to rebuild itself, continually refreshing its icons. The ways and wavelengths of reality get fuzzy, and lines get blurred over and tired of waiting, so we fall privy to creating our own.

My most forthright inner dialogues are usually about waiting for one thing or another, usually revolving around my anger that I have to keep waiting. And when I take it a step further, I realize that much of me prefers a fantasy. I’d rather have secure, easy, around-the-clock interaction with eros than this vacancy. I want the honeymoon. I want feeling-based love and don’t care if it’s an illusion; even a temporary lure from the literal sounds lovely. I want lots of maids and margaritas and sex on warm sand. I want pleasure. I want flirting and feasts, with no morning after. Bottom line: Waiting is hard, and maintaining hope in the midst of waiting is harder, no matter how strong my beliefs. Waiting well, then, seems practically out of the question.

What would it look like to be content in our waiting and with our sexuality, as both singles and marrieds, not because we’re perfect at waiting for sex or we’re perfectly sexual but because we’re content in our humanity, in our femininity and masculinity, in our longing for union with the trinity?

We were made for more than we can now have or even have the capacity to have in our fallen nature. We were made for unblemished intimacy and the gourmet ecstasy. But we settle for crumbs. We settle for less because we’re bored by waiting and discontent by our lot. Boredom says, “I’m unable to enjoy myself.” Discontent says, “I should have become someone else by this point in my life.” But what if God really knew what He was doing? And what if He didn’t need our pending plans or stunted dreams to make His plans and dreams happen? What if love really never ended or failed (see 1 Corinthians 13:8) and truly came first (see 1 John 4:19) and followed after (see exodus 14:19)? What if He truly was quick to forgive and quicker to unleash mercy (see Joel 2:13)? What if love’s ways were always creating (see Genesis 1:1), restoring, and searching for ways to capture us anew (see Psalm 139:23), especially that which feels dead and broken (see Ezekiel 37:1-14)? What if God knew what He was doing, even in the midst of suffering (see Job 30:26-27; Isaiah 53:3; Romans 5:3)? And what if He was at work precisely in our silent caverns of waiting?

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This is an excerpt from Abbie Smith’s latest book, Celibate Sex: Musings on Being Loved, Single, Twisted, and Holy (Navpress, March 15th). $1 of every sale goes to the fight against sex trafficking. For more on Abbie, or details on this project, visit www.unsteadysaint.com.

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