Confessions of a 'Good Christian Girl'

Sweet friend, have you ever looked in the mirror unable to recognize the person staring back at you? I sure have! Growing up I heard more than once, “you’re such a good Christian girl”. What was meant to be a beautiful compliment made me about as uncomfortable as a pair of skinny jeans after giving birth. If I’m honest, I didn’t fully understand the criteria placing me in this category other than loving Jesus and attending church regularly. Whatever it was giving me this title, I sure knew I didn’t want to disappoint anyone or be stripped of it.

By high school I had developed a mental list of rules ‘good Christian girls’ would never break. This list included what I categorized as large-scale sin behaviors to smaller minor infractions. Some rules I never broke or even thought about breaking, that is until I did. Attending a small private Christian college seemed the most logical decision for a girl who wanted to make all the right choices. What better way to stay on the straight and narrow than being surrounded by a bunch of college students on fire for Jesus, or so I thought. I still look back at my naivety of thinking Christian college would be like an extended summer at church camp but with more classes and less free time. Until this point in life, I felt I'd mostly succeeded at keeping my list of rules. That is until I got emotionally tangled up with a guy who would usher in the slipperiest of slopes. Instead of finding my footing on that slope and running with my ‘good Christian girl’ persona intact, I would instead slip further and further into sin, guilt, and shame. This vicious cycle pulled at me like an undertow, and me not knowing how to escape or feel worthy of escaping. There is no doubt hindsight is 20/20 sweet friend, but at that time it was more like crawling around blindfolded in the darkest of rooms. I’m not sure what part was harder, looking at myself in the mirror and seeing a girl I barely recognized staring back at me, or showing up back home to my family pretending to be that ‘good Christian girl’ I desperately still wanted to be. In my mind there was only one viable solution to remedy this sin in my life...accept a marriage proposal and vow to honor the man I had physically given myself to for the rest of my life. Sweet friend, Jesus is the only viable solution to our sin problems! There is no action we can take that involves us absolving our sinful choices apart from Him. As time passed and wounds healed, I recognized my Heavenly Father wanted nothing more than to set me free from that toxic and abusive situation, not have me marry it. In the book of Genesis God, Himself tells Cain “sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” Sin has existed since the garden of Eden when Adam and Eve chose what appeared to be a better way than God’s way. Their son, Cain allowed sin to have its way resulting in him murdering his own brother Able; the first Biblical account of human bloodshed. Sin is part of this fallen world and because we are not God we are by nature sinful. 1 John 1:8 tells us, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” This means we will never be good enough or perfect enough! This is why we needed God to send His perfect son, Jesus to be nailed on a cross in our place. Romans 5:8 tell us, “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Sweet friend, He knew every sin we would ever commit in this life, yet He still chose death on the cross so that we could have the gift of eternal life (John 3:16). 1 John 1:9 tells us, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” I no longer identify with that ‘good Christian girl’ trying to follow a strict and exhausting set of rules. Instead, I identify as a daughter of the most High who was redeemed by His perfect love, who is covered by His blood, and who can walk in freedom knowing nothing I could ever do can pluck me from His hand (John 10: 28-29).