Truth, Dare, or Super-Revealing Truth - A Freudian Discussion on the Sexual Development of a Child

We've all got embarrassing stories from our youth about the time we licked the floor for a dollar or didn't make it to the bathroom on time. Nicknames like bug-girl or pukeshoes rarely lose their sting. But, most of us eventually get to the point where we can chalk everything up to being six and laugh about these mortifying moments. But, some of us... all of us, I think... have things that haunt us. 

You might have figured out the genre of the kind of things I’m going to talk about by the title. 

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to a female friend of mine about lust and dating relationships. I found the Christian teens’ perspective on the subject of sex to be startlingly negative, even beyond what I’ve come to expect from youth-grouper girls. I listened to her talk about how horrible and disgusting various acts were, and how much she hated lust. She admitted that is was excruciatingly difficult for her to touch her boyfriend, a fine Christian young man, or to let him touch her, because she was absolutely convinced that it was going to cause him to burst into flames of lust/damnation. I was going to address this directly, because the prevalence of the assumption that boys’ brains are just walking snuff films, waiting for the sight of some girls’ upper neck to hit the ‘play’ button, is something of a pet peeve of mine. But then she suddenly began to talk about how it was difficult for her even to accept that it’s okay for married persons to lust for each other. After a moment of thought, I looked into her face, her pretty round face with her pretty round eyes and asked her directly, “Why do you hate lust so much?” 

She blinked at the question, and paused for thought. Her eyes began to fill up with tears, but she straightened up and answered, slowly and deliberately, “Because it scares me. Because it has hurt me. It hurt my mother, it consumed my grandfather, it has destroyed my family and damaged my friends.” The clarity of her response struck me, and she went on. “It’s something I used to struggle with.” the tears left her eyes, and seemed to be replaced with disgusted shame. “I don’t anymore, but I used to. Thank God I don’t anymore, but I really used to. I used to do horrible, disgusting things. Awful things. Thank God I don’t do any of those things anymore, I used to be so messed up and disgusting.” Her tone skipped back and forth between shame and disgust; she seemed to be playing the part of the sinner and the judge, being careful to feel guilty and not let herself off the hook for even a moment. 

Finally, I stopped her, and gently asked her what the horrible awful thing she did when she was little could possibly be. “Please don’t judge me.” She begged, shaking her head, her eyes tearing up again. I shook my head and reached for her hand, and bad habit of mine when people become emotional. Note to the planet: if someone’s talking to you about negative sexual experiences, they usually aren’t going to want you to touch them. Just by the way. 

I promised that there was nothing, nothingnothingnothing she could tell me that would make me judge her or think less of her. She caught her breath, and told me about how, when she was a little, this ‘perverting, disgusting little girl’ (another note: no matter what, it’s not good to get on people about their own judgmentalism while they’re making a confession. Do it, but do it later) used to get her to pretend to have sex with her. This was before my friend really had any idea about what sex was, and this behavior didn’t go on long before she told her mom. 

After a moment, I began to say, “It’s normal to experiment at that age (around nine). Something had probably happened to that girl that made her-” “No.” unwilling to let herself off the hook for even a moment, she went on. “That’s not the worst thing that I did.” I prompted her to go on, promising again that I wouldn’t think less of her for anything she had done. After a long preamble about how sickening she thought the coming confession was, and many promises that she didn’t do anything like that anymore, she finally shut her eyes, shook her head, looked me the in face and said, “When I was eleven, I did some masturbating.” 

I was floored. 

She quickly went on to say that it wasn’t that bad, she hadn’t done that much, she only did it for a little while…. but I could not get passed the initial shock.

THAT was her deep dark horrible disgusting perverted secret?! She masturbated when we was eleven?

I honestly had no idea what to say. My first reaction was to tell her, “Oh my gosh, honey, darling, there is NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT.” But, I knew that she did, in fact, consider masturbating a sin, and that most, if not all of the people in her/our circle felt the same way. Maybe you do to. Let’s not go there right now. 

So, instead, after a moment, I said, “At eleven, your body is changing. You have a new, adult body, new hormones, new everything.” I shook off the feeling of talking to an elementary schooler and went on. “It is normal, completely, one-hundred percent normal, to experiment with your own body at that age.” She was shaking her head, unwilling to accept this, until I finally got her to look me in the eye, and I said, “Every. Single. Solitary. Person. In the entire world. Has done that.” She paused and shook her head again, and said she would believe if it weren’t for two mutual friends of ours, because she was absolutely certain they would never do anything that vile…


People, listen to me, I know this has been a long post, but I swear it’s almost over. Everyone experiments sexually to some extent when their growing up. These things can leave a lot of shame and do a lot of damage. But thinking of yourself as perverted or being ashamed of things like that is wrong. I’m going to write more on sexual development stuff, but first I want to talk about forgiveness. 

God is super cools with your past, if you’ve given it to Him and asked Him for forgiveness. Seriously. Jesus did not recoil in horror when He saw you mess around with whatever might have been your secret when you were ten, I promise. The fact that you watched porn when you were fourteen is only a problem if you're still watching it. Jesus does not think you are dirty, He does not think you are perverted, and He is NOT ashamed of you. There is not a hotter place in Hell or an inferior place in Heaven for masturbators. It’s okay. Forgive yourself and move on; Jesus has.