CHASTE COURTSHIP.
YOU TOO CAN DO IT!!!.
This is not to judge those who have a different opinion and choice of lifestyle or did theirs differently, neither is it an attempt to present myself as a “Holy/perfect individual”- DEFINITELY NOT. I am human and that understanding of my limitation is what helped me and by extension us to be able to pull this through but for now, let’s focus on this post.
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In April 2015 I got engaged to my fiancé now wife and we got married in March 2017 almost exactly 2years of courtship.
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At the point of engagement, I was 25 years and she was 24years so just like you, our hormones were doing “tombolo tombolo” but we were both Christians and had personally decided to stay celibate till we were married. Hence from even when we were still just friends leading up to the proposal and eventual wedding we had this resolution to stay clean, initially individually and later on as an intending couple. But we all know that decision is not enough without commensurate action/measures so I would be outlining and explaining some things that helped us with personal examples, hoping that you would learn from them.
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Firstly, we came to terms with the fact that our hormones and flesh do not hear scriptures after they have been kicked started. So To keep our chastity pact, one of the things I did was to instruct her to not visit me without the company of a female friend. At the time, we both lived in the House Officers’ quarters at UNTH and so it was not a matter of distance. This ended up meaning she never visited me after that instruction. When I visited her, we stayed in the sitting room and she had 2 other flatmates so it was a relatively safer place.
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See, this is not a matter of discipline. Being a doctor I know that physiology does not know whether you are born again or not and so it’s better not to bring yourself to the point where you need to quote Bible to your hormones (Kolewerk). In addition to the above measure, we agreed to not stay longer than one minute in the car once I stopped driving (Trust me, no church has this in their courtship rule book).
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Secondly, you cannot run a holy courtship without being sensitive and honest about your feelings. Denial of them will be the beginning of failure. I remember the day I brought her back from Bible study on a rainy night, she was on a phone call when we got to her apartment, so we stayed longer in the car. Once she finished the call, she told me “let’s leave this car, it’s getting too comfortable”.
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Thirdly, your friends and colleagues will not necessarily encourage you.
I once travelled with her from her village to Enugu during our NYSC after the burial of a relative for some official stuff. When we were done, I called one of my senior colleagues and told him I needed somewhere to sleep, surprisingly he offered to vacate his apartment for both of us (Hahaha) but that was not what I was asking for. I paid for her to sleep at the UNEC guest house while I went to sleep with my friend in his house. The next morning, I picked her up and took her to the garage to return to her base.
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Don’t forget that this had nothing to do with church rules as our engagement and eventual wedding were essentially atypical from my denomination’s point of view and they had little or no control over how it went. These were personal decisions and resolutions we made on our own.
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Furthermore, your boundaries hold for both your fiancée and other females in your life.
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I have a female friend whom I value so much that was travelling to Calabar with a male colleague from their base while I was in Akwa Ibom. It happened that they arrived at Akwaibom late at night and could not continue their journey to Calabar so she called me. I was still struggling financially at the time but I didn’t want to tell her. So I managed to get her a comfortable guest house and the three of us had dinner there together after which I carried her male colleague to my house and she slept in the guest house.
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The next morning, I went to pick her and took both of them to the park to continue their journey.
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In addition to this point, I was saddled with the responsibility of coordinating a campus fellowship that at a point was made up of only sisters whom I had no choice but to work with. They are here on Facebook and none of them can accuse me of making advances at them. One of those days a senior pastor visited the church and promptly redeployed a brother from the headquarter to assist me in the work before wahala go burst for church.
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These are all true life stories not meant to claim anything or condemn anyone but to encourage singles that still choose the path of chastity before marriage not to give up in the face of widespread sexuality beckoning on them all around. I would rather not make this post at all.
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Number five, try to meet in places where you can be accountable to people: I recall cancelling a visit to Ondo state during her NYSC because there would be no adult supervision and it would be a tempting environment.
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Number six; Not getting pregnant before marriage does not in any way reduce your chances of doing so afterwards neither is there really a guarantees either way. As a matter of fact, the pregnancies of my two sons came as a result of very slight miscalculations in my wife’s ‘safe period’. We never sat down to say Ehee, now let us make a baby in our own image like in Genesis chapter 1 verse 26. It just happened, so stop fretting over these things and don’t let yourself be guilt-tripped into reducing your standards. For your information, a pregnancy can end in several negative ways so what if that was your criteria for marrying a girl and she could not conceive?
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In case you are still unsure of what you are reading, our first kiss was on our wedding night. I know many people have honoured their chastity vow too but either does not have the opportunity and/or platform that I have today.
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I’m aware that a post like this will not go viral even though many would read it. It will also make some followers unfollow me but this is my story which sooner or later would still have come to light.
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I say so because without this truth maybe the other motivational stories I tell would never have come to be as my secretary in my first business who felt it was okay to wear tops that had her breast almost popping onto my table when she bent down (before I rebuked her) may have had a baby for me and I would be trapped in Etinan local government with her.
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The phrase – “Take me as I am” is not only restricted to when something negative is involved. This is the other secret of my success that you often accuse motivational speakers of hiding because a baby mama in the mix would have aborted all the other success stories that happened later on in my life. So next time be more specific as to which secret of success you want to hear.
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While It’s within your civic right as a human to decide whether to or not to get intimate before marriage, it is not okay to attempt to ridicule or hush people who choose otherwise and are making a sincere effort to live true to it, that won’t be fair anymore.
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Finally, it is important to state that a chaste courtship will be near impossible if both of you are not 100% into it because there will be days when one party will be “weak” and need the other person to remind them of the reason why they are doing what they are doing and as such I want to thank my wife Amarachi for being supportive in her capacity to keep those 2 years of courtship pure.
I hope that someone somewhere will draw strength from this to hold on till the end.
© Dr Chidiebere Nwachukwu
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