I’m not married, so I’m not particularly accustomed to celebrating anniversaries.  But I’ve got a big one coming up, and I think I may just do some celebrating.

On November 24, 2006, I will celebrate the 20th anniversary of my first chastity talk.

Twenty years.  I’ve been giving talks on chastity for twenty years.  Never mind that I can’t even believe I’ve been a “grown up” for twenty years.  Of course, I’m probably a fool to acknowledge this in public, because now teenagers everywhere will realize that I was literally giving these talks before they were even born. 

Oh, well.  It’s too big a deal not to share with all of you.

When I gave that first talk, I was practically a teenager myself.   Fresh out of college, I was working in the Silicon Valley and feeling a very strong call to speak to teenagers about God’s plan for love and human sexuality.  But strong though the calling may have been, I had no idea I’d still be at it 20 years later. Many, but not all, of you probably know the story.  My senior year of college I attended a four-part speaker series on chastity and the Theology of the Body.  I was completely blown away.   The day after the final talk, a friend asked me if I was in love.  I apparently had that “glow” about me.  And I was in love, in a sense.  I was in love with what I’d just learned about God, about His love for us, about the beauty of our creation as male and female.  I was deeply distressed that the world hadn’t heard everything I had just learned, and I wanted to do what I could to change that.

In the course of those talks, I realized for the first time that chastity isn’t primarily about avoiding pregnancy and disease.  It’s about love – about finding and living real love.  I looked at the world around me, and it was obvious that most of the promiscuity that surrounded me was driven by just that – a hunger for authentic love.  They were looking for it in sex, and it clearly wasn’t working.  I realized that we had what they were looking for, and we weren’t telling them about it.  That didn’t seem right to me.

Another aspect of the “calling” I haven’t discussed was the pro-life aspect.  Even at that young age, I was a “veteran” of the pro-life movement.  I had written on the subject of abortion.  I had attended rallies and lectures.  I had counseled in pro-life pregnancy centers.  It was very important to me, but also very challenging work.  I was young and sensitive, and the gruesome nature of abortion itself was never far from my mind.  It weighed on me a lot.

Through that work, I had come to realize that changing laws was important, but by itself it would never be enough.  As long as we lived in a society where so many people viewed sexual activity as a right, we would always have “unplanned” pregnancies and thus a demand for abortion.  I knew that, in the end, the only real solution would be to restore respect for the power and dignity of human sexuality

So speaking on chastity would be leading people to real love, leading them to Christ, and leading them away from abortion.  Of course I wanted to do it!

I didn’t give my first talk for over a year after that speaker series.  I felt called.  I read a lot about chastity.  I talked a lot about how I wanted to give talks. I graduated and got a job. 

And then, in the fall of 1986, I got a call from a local pregnancy center.  They were starting a speaker’s bureau to go into the local schools, and they wanted me to give the talk on chastity.

On November 24 of that year,  I spoke to the 7th and 8th grade classes at Star of the Sea elementary school in San Francisco.   They were enthralled.  They wanted me to stay longer.  They wanted to skip recess.

I knew I was onto something.

One talk turned into five.  Five turned into 30.  Word spread throughout the San Francisco Bay Area (ironic place to start, isn’t it?) that a young woman was going around talking to teens about chastity.  The demand was so great, I had to quit my job.  My now-publisher, Ignatius Press, hired me to promote their new chastity curriculum.  Within a year of the first talk, I was “on the road,” giving talks in cities all over the country. 

Twenty years later, the demand is still there.  I can’t keep up with it like I did at 23, but it’s still there.

My ministry has changed over the past few years.  I speak more to adults and less to teens.  I don’t travel full-time any more.

But I will always, always believe that sharing God’s message on the beauty of human sexuality is the primary vocation of my life.  And I am amazed, humbled, blessed and incredibly, incredibly grateful that He has given me that opportunity for the past 20 years.

God is so, so good.