i n t r o d u c t i o n

My good friend phoned me in tears. A few hours before, his fourteen-year-old daughter had just broken his heart. She was his pride and joy, and he had invested many hours away from his job to be there for her. He loved her with all his heart, but his heart was in tatters. Earlier that evening he had gone to pick her up from a birthday party. After clearing himself with the guard at the security gate, he followed the directions and pulled into the private driveway of his daughter’s friend. The house was well lit and no blinds hung from the windows. As he got out, he could see the kids, including his daughter, run through the house from room to room. It looked like they were having great, innocent fun.

But as he walked up to the front door, he could see plainly what the kids were doing. They were playing some type of tag, and the bed was obviously home base.  He watched as his daughter ran into the room and jumped on the bed, safe from whomever was “it.” Then he watched the young boy she liked jump on the bed, followed by six others. They all laughed and poked at each other, then ran into the next room. But not all of the kids ran. His daughter and the boy stayed back on the bed after the others had left. He watched as his daughter lay back and allowed the boy to kiss her, mouth open and tongue engaged. Then he saw the boy’s hand on her stomach, rubbing her, petting her as he kissed her with great force. And there she lay, allowing him to have her, looking very aware of what he was doing.

My friend raced to the front door and banged on it in desperation to break up the pair. All he could say was, “Let’s go.” The whole ride home he was speechless, not wanting to make something bad even worse. 

He called me because he felt like a failure and did not know what to do. He had been planning to talk with her about how boys think and what they want to do and why, but he had put it off. He thought he had time to do it before his daughter started dating. He had no idea an innocent birthday party would be an opportunity for passionate kisses on a bed. I comforted him and guided him in confronting her and calling the boy’s father. I reminded him that God had given him a gift of knowing the reality of his daughter’s life rather than imagining her continued innocence. It might be easier to think of her as innocent, but it was not who she had become. Reality hit this father hard, but he had a chance to respond with love and strength and make the best of what had happened. Though he felt he had failed his daughter, he was determined to lead her in the way that she should go.

Most likely you have picked up this book to avoid what happened to my friend. You want to equip your daughter with truth and to motivate her to do the right thing when confronted with the opportunity to do otherwise. What you have in your hand is the best tool I’ve ever seen to do just that. I wish it had been around when my own daughter was nine or ten. When she was that age, we had devotions every morning before school. I did my best to prepare her for the coming adolescent years, but there was nothing I found that handled sex in a relevant, nonshaming, biblically sound manner. This book does. Shannon has taken her own experiences growing up and combined those with how she raised her own daughter to give all of us parents a great tool in equipping and protecting our little girls.

This book will help your daughter celebrate her coming adolescence and womanhood. It won’t scare her or provoke her to eat too much or too little to try to avoid facing the realities ahead. It will guide her in making her own decisions and setting her own boundaries that will honor God, herself, and your family. It may save her life, and I know it will save her from great heartache and sorrow if she follows the path Shannon presents here.

You can be certain that your daughter is talking about sex with her friends by the time she is eleven years old. For some it is much earlier. If you are not talking to her about sex, it will cause a disconnection between the two of you. But if you start early, your interaction could form a strong bond as she looks to you and not to the street for truth. You do not want to wait until she is a teenager to begin to prepare her. You want to get ahead of the temptations and lay a foundation that is deep and solid. To paraphrase Proverbs 4:7-8, there is nothing more valuable than wisdom. So find it and give it to your daughter. It might cost you all you have, but God’s truth and embrace that truth, and she will honor you, your God, and your family.” This book will give your daughter the wisdom she needs to make wise choices regarding her sexuality. You do not want to leave this to her school or even to Sunday school. You must lead the way to truth.

Children must learn to establish boundaries. They must come to see that their skin is a God-given boundary. Children need to honor that boundary and expect that others, too, will honor it—and they need to run away when others don’t. This book will help you communicate that foundational truth to your daughter. It will help her see that she has the power to protect herself and give her the confidence to do so. It will help her appreciate that she is “fearfully and wonderfully made” and help explain some of the wonder that is within her.

There is one caution I want to give you before you begin: there is no guarantee your daughter will stay pure once you have read this to her and with her. She still has a mind of her own. There is no formula that always ends in successful parenting because we do not have control of our children. Having said that, I want to encourage you to do the best you can. Your investment of time and truth within her will help her find her purpose and live to fulfill it. May God richly bless you as you work to raise a wise and mature young woman.

—STEPHEN ARTERBURN