A Promise Ring Rebuttal

So let's talk about promise rings.

In case you are not familiar with the phenomenon, promise rings rose to popularity during my upbringing. It became customary for many Christian fathers to give these rings to their daughters as a symbol of chastity and the virtue of celibacy. Sometimes, fathers and daughters would even have ceremonies wherein vows were exchanged, cementing the child's dedication to the noble cause of abstinence. Despite this glorious occasion, many teenage girls stumbled just the same.

Honestly, writing all of that out feels profoundly creepy. It's also worth noting that promise rings only existed among gendered lines -- fathers gave them to daughters, but you did not see mothers nor sons involved in similar exchanges. This smacks of sexism and it's pretty damning to our patriarchal experience writ large, but alas, we'll save that tangent for another post.

In essence, promise rings tethered fathers to the sex lives (or lack thereof) of their daughters. The intent seems innocent or even honorable at face value -- Christian fathers want the best for their children, and purity (whatever that means) is best. Although it seems like a kind gesture, the reality of the promise ring often proved to be very different. In my observation, it proved deeply harmful.

Promise rings, and the typical Christian family's obsession with abstinence, seems like protective parenting, but it may have done more harm than good. In my experience, I have heard countless stories where daughters succumbed to temptation and saw their relationship with their parents wounded in the process. After all, their father had a vested interest in the child's virginity, and losing it was an act of betrayal.

That's not where the injury ends, though. Even women who waited until marriage felt utterly sullied by the totally harmless and seemingly holy act of marital sex. They spent years wearing a ring that reminded them that sex must be avoided at all costs, and when the day came that they were liberated from the ring itself, it still left an imprint on their psyche.

The promise ring is a symbol of ownership over something that cannot be owned. As I recalibrate my own values and beliefs, I question how I can raise my daughters in a different vein than the things I have both witnessed and observed in the past. What does it mean to be a successful secular parent?  I'm still figuring that out, but needless to say, I won't be handing out rings to my children or demanding chastity pledges from them. The mere thought of doing so seems idiotic at best, and profoundly harmful at worst.

As Trevor Noah wrote in his book Born a Crime, "you do not own the thing you love." Parents must never mistake possessive behavior with love. I do not want to demand pledges and oaths of my children -- instead, I want to make pledges to them. It is incumbent upon me as the parent to be the one who forges a path of unconditional acceptance and support in their lives.

One day, when they'd old enough to fathom this conversation, I will give them this vow.

I promise not to own you.
I promise not to hinge my love on how you use your body.
I promise not to stake a claim on your personhood or your sense of autonomy.
I promise not to pit your love for me against your desires or choices.

I'm sure there will be times when this is difficult, but I'm choosing to let go of my old paradigms regarding parenting. I'm letting go of my old, broken definitions of love when it comes to being a father, and I'm searching for a new and beautiful definition in the process.

Thank you for reading On Letting Go, a blog about dealing with the wounds of the past. If you're looking for a little background on what inspired this blog, check out the introduction.  Click here for information on how you can find real and qualified mental health services for yourself or a loved one. 

The Road Not Taken

The arts play an important role in our shared human experience. Through the power of music, writing, dance, and visual arts, we celebrate our victories and we mourn our losses. We reminisce and we pine for better days. We flesh out our vulnerabilities through the arts. Perhaps even more crucially, we learn to understand ourselves.

As a creative person, I recognize that one role of the artist is to provide insight into emotions themselves. A well-written song can provide clarity to a feeling you don't even fully comprehend. Sometimes, the verses of a poet can be revelatory, unearthing the truth beneath our muddled mental processes.

So, when I have an emotion I cannot articulate, I feel incredibly uneasy. This is supposed to be my territory, my expertise... right?

A few summers ago, I was a youth pastor, firmly set on a path towards lifetime ministry. Now, that path has utterly dissapearred from sight. I can hardly recognize the landscape around me. In light of that, I feel a strange sort of visceral response inside when I pass a church or see a Facebook post about ministry. It's not a matter of missing that life. It's also not simply an impulse to object to the issues in the church. It's something else...

It's the shock of beholding the road not taken.

We all have diverging paths in our history. We all have paths we chose not to pursue. It seems, though, that there is a particular and oppressive emotion that  wells up when you actually gaze upon the roads you left behind. We see this romanticized on a relational front when you hear songs talk about "the one that got away". We face the notion of what could have been, and our insides seize up like old machinery. How do we understand this feeling and what do we do with it?

I'm beginning to think that the key to overcoming this feeling is a matter of accepting life as you've lived it. You have a unique trajectory that has led you to this place. Perhaps some of the steps you took were ignorant, and perhaps some of the choices you made were not entirely of your own volition. Regardless, we must all wrestle with the reality of where we've been and how we got here.

I also think a key to processing this feeling is knowing how to mourn your losses. We accept that we can mourn people -- a friend, a family member, a former classmate. But dreams die too. Plans disintegrate. Visions vanish. It is not only acceptable, but crucially necessary to learn how to grieve the losses in your life, in whatever forms they may take.

So, as I recognize that feeling inside of me -- the unease of the road not taken -- I will choose to accept the paths I traveled, as difficult as that may be. I will mourn my losses for what they are. I will live each day seeking to understand, process, and accept my life as I try to bend my trajectory into a new and enlightened direction.

Thank you for reading On Letting Go, a blog about dealing with the wounds of the past. If you're looking for a little background on what inspired this blog, check out the introduction.  Click here for information on how you can find real and qualified mental health services for yourself or a loved one.