Tools.

Tools.

Last night, my dear old friend Karen and I led the women of our church youth group in a "straight edge" discussion on sex. They've been talking about drugs and alcohol for the last few weeks, and culminated their oh-so punk-rock unit last night with a very frank discussion about sex. And their parents were there.

Actually, only one of the middle school moms came in for just a few minutes of our talk WHICH WAS COMPLETELY AWKWARD, but they did have designated time to group off with their families and lay out any expectations the parents have for the youth, and, most importantly, vice versa.

Karen and I have known each other since back when we were wee virgins, and of course, back when we were wee not-virgins, which put an interesting spin on the preparation and the dialogue with the girls. We wanted to ultimately express to them that pre-marital (or pre-ready-for-it) sex is a fucker of a decision to have to make in the first place for teenagers, even more of a fucker of a decision because they're Christian, and even more of a fucker because they're female. And we used 100% clean language! Impressive. Although at one point, I told them that some of the ideas we were giving them for resistance were "tools, for like, your sex toolbox," which rallied some nervous laughter.

We also wanted to assure them was that God will always love them, and they should never feel separated from that love or from their church family because of what they choose with this. It's a delicate balance, because you don't want to give them a free pass for sex, but feeling marginal in the body of Christ was by far the toughest thing I dealt with as a teenager. I feel it's more important for them to be educated and equipped to handle this. And also to make sure that their toolbox is chock full of sex tools.

God help me if they told their parents that Julia taught them about some good sex tools.