Over email, Verdell Wright, Lola Prescott, Sarah Galo and Keisha McKenzie and I talked about the impact I Kissed Dating Goodbye had on our own lives and how each of us has worked to untangle our lives and relationships from the shame of purity culture.

Lyz Lenz's previous work for The Toast can be found here. This is her first essay for The Butter. Walking the road to Jerusalem, I stumbled over rocks in front of Absalom’s tomb. It was the penultimate day of my trip to Israel with my husband. A trip we had been planning for almost two years. Growing up immersed in Bible stories, my husband and I wanted to put our feet on the land…

There are seven children around the table. My youngest brother has yet to be born. When he is, he will bring the total to eight. But for now, there are seven children circled around the broad oak table in the kitchen. The dishwasher hummed and ratted and the counters were wiped clean. The floors are swept and all that remained of our breakfast of biscuits and gravy and milk was the white crust around my…

I grew up secreted away from the world. My parents didn’t let us watch television or listen to top 40 stations and they rarely discussed current events. My siblings and I were homeschooled, leaving our house only for church, dance lessons and supervised outings to the park. We were to be in the world but not of it, as the Bible instructed—meaning that while we lived in the world, we were supposed to be separate…