Children and Intimacy: A Sacred Responsibility
Being a parent is awesome.
It’s the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. It’s also the most terrifying
thing I’ve ever done. One such terrifying moment came when my husband and I decided
to give our oldest child “the talk”. She was 11 and was getting ready to enter
junior high. We live in Northern California where the mainstream curriculum on
sexual education is becoming distorted. She is also surrounded by kids of
different upbringings who are not living in harmony with our moral ethics. We
knew the world was eager to teach her its view on sexual matters and we knew we
had to catch her first. The appointed night came. Wringing hands, cold sweats,
pounding heart…and no, that wasn’t the feelings of our daughter. My husband and
I flew a little blindly into this first lesson. I feel for older children…certified
guinea pigs. I’m an older child myself. I did try
to make improvements on where I came from. My parents taught me all I needed to
know the night before I got married…too late. I already knew. I didn’t want my
kids to experience the same. But I was still unprepared. We were calm and downloaded
all sorts of information…your changing body, where babies come from, special
feelings you might have, and reasons as to why you shouldn’t have sex now. We
also told her that these feeling we given from Heavenly Father and that sex was
intended to be a wonderful experience between husband and wife that expressed
love. We told her that our home was a safe space and that no questions or comments were
off limits. We told her that this door of conversation was always open. It was
a good conversation and she absorbed it well. We crawled into bed, gave a sigh
of relief, and chalked it up to “one down, two to go”. Our other two kids were
given the same talk, at the same age. With each subsequent child, our
confidence grew, and the conversation wasn’t so unnerving.
Upon reading this
semester on this topic of children and intimacy, I felt good about the
information I had shared with my kids so far and my attempt to share early on, but
I realized I was still lacking. Outside of a brief mention about Heavenly Father
and sex being a gift to us as an expression of love, everything to this point
had been presented to them as purely pragmatic, functional, scientific, factual.
This is how your body is, this is how it functions, the science behind it is
this, blah, blah, blah. After watching a video from www.churchofjesuschrist.org entitled
“How do I focus on a gospel view of sexuality?”, I felt a prompting that more
conversations had to happen. The video can be viewed below:
Upon reading “A
Parent’s Guide”, a pamphlet found at www.churchofjesuschrist.org, I
came across a section that focused on helping adolescence see this as a time
for developing spiritual power. I was inspired by the counsel it offered. It
said,
“The emphasis
that our society places upon physical sex has blinded many adults and youth to the
fact that adolescence can be a time for developing great spiritual power. Your
teenagers’ naive idealism, which often frustrates more experienced adults, can
be turned to spiritual growth if you temper it by wisely using your experience
to teach them.”
“Teach your
children that it is good to mature and that adolescence can be filled with
beauty and power. Praise them for their spiritual development and maturity.
Teach them also of Jesus, Joseph who was sold into Egypt, Moroni, Joseph Smith,
and others who were teenagers when they began their ministries. These great
leaders developed the foundations of their spiritual strength during their
teenage years, and your teenagers can do the same.”.
This created in me
a desire to share with my children the power that comes from sexual purity. I
want them to know that sexual purity is a spiritual power and that the Lord has
attached blessings, very specific blessings, to remaining clean. I wanted to
sit down and ask them to think, ponder, and identify some of the blessings. It
also made me realize that perhaps a better conversation about sexual purity would
have included the scriptures where we observed past examples of what sexual
purity adds to a person’s closeness to God or detracts from a person’s closeness
to God. Corianton, anyone?
Additionally, I
want them to see the parallels between sexual union and our union with God. In
an amazing devotional given at BYU by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, he expounds on
the parallels and symbolism (I highly recommend reading the address in its entirety). He said,
“May I suggest
that human intimacy, that sacred, physical union ordained of God for a married
couple, deals with a symbol that demands special sanctity. Such an act of love
between a man and a woman is—or certainly was ordained to be—a symbol of total
union: union of their hearts, their hopes, their lives, their love, their
family, their future, their everything. It is a symbol that we try to suggest
in the temple with a word like seal. The Prophet Joseph Smith once said we
perhaps ought to render such a sacred bond as “welding”—that those united in
matrimony and eternal families are “welded” together, inseparable if you will,
to withstand the temptations of the adversary and the afflictions of mortality.
(See D&C 128:18.)
“But such a total,
virtually unbreakable union, such an unyielding commitment between a man and a
woman, can only come with the proximity and permanence afforded in a marriage
covenant, with the union of all that they possess—their very hearts and minds,
all their days and all their dreams.”
He further goes on
to state the following:
“Sexual union is
also, in its own profound way, a very real sacrament of the highest order, a
union not only of a man and a woman but very much the union of that man and
woman with God. Indeed, if our definition of sacrament is that act of claiming
and sharing and exercising God’s own inestimable power, then I know of
virtually no other divine privilege so routinely given to us all—women or men,
ordained or unordained, Latter-day Saint or non-Latter-day Saint—than the
miraculous and majestic power of transmitting life, the unspeakable,
unfathomable, unbroken power of procreation. There are those special moments in
your lives when the other, more formal ordinances of the gospel—the sacraments,
if you will—allow you to feel the grace and grandeur of God’s power.”
These thoughts
floored me. If I could help my children see the sacred union between themselves
and a spouse under God’s law as a symbol of the relationship with Heavenly
Father, then perhaps they would understand why keeping that relationship pure
and clean was so important.
In an article entitled
““How to Teach Children about Sexual Intimacy”, the following statement was
made:
“If we understand
healthy sexuality in the context of it being divine, we are tying into our
divine identity and our divine potential and the divine potential of our spouse
and of our eternal family,” (said Lee Gibbons, product manager with the
Priesthood Department for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints).
My conversation with
my kids about sexual intimacy is, first and foremost, about their divine potential.
And, as a parent, I have a sacred responsibility to help them realize that. I’m
grateful for the chance I have to be a parent. It’s the divine powers of
sexuality that brought my children to me. I hope they realize that within the
bounds the Lord sets, children are a blessing and byproduct of the truest
expression of love. Their spirits are a byproduct of celestial love from Heavenly
Parents who hold these intimacies in the highest regard. I look forward to
sharing my feelings with them about this side of sexual intimacy and sexual
purity. Then, perhaps, it would help them to have not only a KNOWLEDGE of sexual
intimacy, but a TESTIMONY of sexual intimacy.
Citations and Sources
1. Video:
“How do I focus on a gospel view of sexuality?” (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/inspiration/latter-day-saints-channel/watch/collection/family-conversations-talking-about-healthy-sexuality/how-do-i-focus-on-a-gospel-view-of-sexuality?lang=eng),
2. “A
Parent’s Guide”, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
1985, Chapter 5: Teaching Adolescents: from Twelve to Eighteen Years, subsection
“Help Teenagers See Adolescence as a Time for Developing Spiritual Power”,
pg. 42
3. “Souls,
Symbols, and Sacraments”, Jeffrey R. Holland, January 12, 1988, BYU Devotional,
subheading “A Symbol of Total Union” ( https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/jeffrey-r-holland/souls-symbols-sacraments/
)
4. “Souls,
Symbols, and Sacraments”, Jeffrey R. Holland, January 12, 1988, BYU Devotional,
subheading “A Total Sacrament” ( https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/jeffrey-r-holland/souls-symbols-sacraments/
)
5. “How
to Teach Children about Sexual Intimacy”, Marianne Holman Prescott, Church
News staff writer, March 16 2015 (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/church/news/how-to-teach-children-about-sexual-intimacy?lang=eng),
quoting Lee Gibbons, product manager with the Priesthood Department for the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
6. Image attribution: www.mybestlds.com, Quote by Elder Richard G. Scott
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