The Bare Naked Truth by Bekah Hamrick Martin

Author:Bekah Hamrick Martin [Martin, Bekah Hamrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780310734031
Publisher: Zonderkidz
Published: 2013-06-04T16:00:00+00:00

SPOTLIGHT

Author and Speaker Tricia Goyer

If boy crazy is a virus, I caught it in the fifth grade and the symptoms lasted for years. I always had a crush on a boy in my classroom, and my daydreams would fill the space between his desk and mine. I daydreamed about my first kiss, about romantic slow dances in the school gym, and even beyond that. I doodled wedding dresses on my math homework and picked out baby names for our children. While other kids planned for a car or a summer job or college, I planned how I would respond when that special someone told me he loved me back.

From fifth to eighth grade, the crushes didn’t amount to anything. Not one of the guys I fantasized about liked me. Not one talked sweetly to me over the phone. During this time I read teen romance books and watched all the romantic shows, and as I watched boy-woo-girl, I’d think, “Why can’t someone love me like that?”

I was just finishing my eighth-grade year when I found what I’d been looking for. Steven was six feet two inches tall and a sophomore. Blond hair, blue eyes, handsome smile. He was honestly the cutest boy I’d ever seen. He was the older brother of my friend Tracey, and one day she shared a secret. “I think Steven likes you.”

Her hunch was confirmed the next time I visited Tracey’s house. While Tracey went to help her mother set the table in the dining room, I got my first kiss on the back porch. Steven’s lips were soft, sweet. My heart pounded in my chest. The emotions rushed through me, and it — all of it — was more than I dreamed. I didn’t just have a boyfriend; I had Steven. Older, handsome, in-love-with-me Steven.

We dated for months, chatting on the phone and going on walks and kissing. What the movies depicted was true. This was it. Yet before I even started high school, the physical side of our relationship demanded a lot — all of me. I gladly gave myself to him. After all, I was in love. I could feel it. The emotions were real.

The lesson of love, of course, is that as wonderful as falling into it is, having it taken away hurts more than one can imagine. I faced that pain just a few months later when Steven’s family moved away. I was heartbroken. I was empty. I felt as if a part of me had been stripped bare. I didn’t realize at the time that it had.

Before then, I didn’t consider the reason God had planned sex for the marriage bed — when commitment was sure. When one couldn’t be taken away by a parent’s move. When a life together could be made into a reality.

The emptiness inside led me to another guy’s arms and bed. I ached to feel loved again. Yet the more I gave, the more I lost myself. And when I found myself pregnant at fifteen, my child faced the biggest loss of all — his life when I chose abortion.

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