“Stop it!” my little sister screamed.
I was playing piano, and – I’ll admit it –
it sounded like a cow dancing on top of the keys. I was playing
a song from one of my music books. It was a song that I knew
quite well. In fact, having played it many times before, I
had mastered it. But instead of playing the song as I had
learned it, this particular day I intentionally chose to do
a bit of musical “rearranging” of my own. Completely
ignoring timing, I hit the keys whenever I wanted, turning
whole notes into half notes, half notes into quarter notes,
and I completely disregarded rests all together. The result?
Rather than making beautiful music, the only thing I managed
to make was an annoyed little sister.
If we evaluated the situation, we’d find that the piano
was in tune; I was capable of playing the song correctly,
and there were no dancing cows anywhere in sight. The problem
lay all in the timing, or rather, the lack thereof. I had
totally disregarded timing. I played some notes too soon or
too late, held others too long or not long enough, resulting
in unharmonious chords, very offbeat rhythm, and a ten-year-old
girl who was ready to string me up. When we look at the sexual
activity of teens, we see many of them making the same mistake.
Many teens are ignoring timing in their sexual behavior, the
results are proving to be anything but harmonious.
When it comes to sex, timing is everything. Having sex at
too young of an age can yield some pretty disastrous results.
According to the 2008 Wayne County Youth Risk Behavior Survey,
“The age at first intercourse and number of sexual partners
is associated with increased risk for unwanted pregnancy.”
The younger a person is when he or she begins to have sex,
the more likely that person is to experience an unplanned
pregnancy. How does this information relate to Wayne County
specifically? Nationwide, 46.8% of high school students report
that they have been sexually active. The state percentage
for North Carolina is 50.8%. The number of high school students
in Wayne County who report being sexually active is 59.4%,
topping both the national and the state percentages. The percentages
for African American and Hispanic teens are even higher, at
68% and 61.8% respectively.
While ignoring timing when playing the piano may yield no
more than an annoyed little sister, ignoring timing in sexual
behavior can produce far more damaging effects in the lives
of teens. The website Worth the Wait reports that “seven
out of ten teen mothers drop out of high school,” and
“the long-term wage earning power of teen fathers is
greatly reduced.” According to the North Carolina State
Center for Health Statistics, in 2007, the high rate of sexual
activity among Wayne County teens led to 294 births in unwed
teen mothers. That, in turn, resulted in seventy-five abortions
that year in Wayne County alone. And according to The Alan
Guttmacher Institute, the number one reason women and girls
choose to have an abortion is because the pregnancy is inconvenient.
The pregnancy interferes with work, school or other responsibilities.
What’s another way of saying inconvenient? Poor timing.
When I first started taking piano lessons, I was introduced
to rhythm before I was allowed to play a single note on the
piano. My piano teacher spend hours having me to tap out beats
and count rests over and over again, explaining how important
it was that I master timing if I ever wanted to be successful
at learning to play the piano. “Timing is everything,”
my piano teacher explained. The same holds true for the lives
of teens. Timing is everything, and if we are ever going to
be successful at life, teens have to master the principle
of timing. We have to understand that “to everything
there is a season.” Then we have to be able to recognize
the seasons we are in and govern ourselves accordingly.
As a teenage boy, I’m keenly aware of the constant
bombardment of sexual messages that permeate our society.
Turn on the TV, listen to the radio, walk down the aisles
in Wal-Mart and sex is there. It calls out to you from racy
lyrics in a song. It tries to get your attention in steamy
bedroom scenes in movies and on TV. It’s on the Internet.
It’s on billboards. It’s everywhere you go. Advertisers
know sex is a powerful selling tool. They use it to sell everything
from cars to cigars. Corporate America knows that if they
market it with just the right amount of sex, they could probably
get us to buy cyanide-laced soda…by the gallons! And
this is the environment we teens try to survive in. So is
it any wonder that many of us get distracted and end up making
the wrong decisions? So what’s the solution? How do
teens avoid the devastating effects associated with earlier
sexual behavior in an environment that relentlessly inundates
us with sex?
Some say using condoms is the best way for teens to avoid
STDs or an unplanned pregnancy, but what do the facts say?
Pro-life America reports that “among teenagers, the
condom failure rate regarding pregnancy is 36%! On average
that means that one out of every three teenage couples using
condoms will become pregnant each year.” I don’t
know about you, but I’m not willing to risk my future
on anything with a 36% failure rate. The fact is there is
only one foolproof way to avoid the hazards of teen sex and
that is through abstinence. Abstinence never fails. Abstinence
won’t have you lying on your deathbed at the age of
twenty due to AIDS. Abstinence won’t cause you to drop
out of school because you’re pregnant. Abstinence won’t
force you to get all dolled up and trudge to the altar for
your shotgun wedding. But what abstinence will do is help
secure a brighter future for you, one filled with a lot more
options.
Start talking about abstinence and may teens moan and groan
about how old-fashioned and uncool abstinence is. But abstinence
is a whole lot cooler than any STD you can name. Abstinence
is a lot cooler than having your life derailed because of
an unplanned pregnancy. And what many teens fail to realize
is that abstinence isn’t about not having sex. No one
is saying sex is bad and that you should never have sex. In
fact, sex is good. Say it with me, sex is good! (Not that
I know personally, but I’m pretty sure it is, and I’m
looking forward to finding out for myself someday!) What abstinence
is about it timing. It all goes back to timing. Abstinence
is about waiting until the right time to have sex. How will
you know when it’s the right time? You’ll know
it’s the right time when the pros outweigh the cons.
You’ll know when having sex puts neither you nor your
partner at unacceptable risks. You’ll know when neither
your future nor the future of your partner is jeopardized
by your decision. You’ll know when your decision to
have sex is based on wisdom and maturity and not based on
impulse and a lack of self-control. You’ll know when
your decision is based on selfless love and not on selfish
lust. That’s how you’ll know. That’s what
abstinence is about. It’s about acknowledging that timing
is everything.
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