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"If I had a house fire, this would be one of the first things I'd grab," says Shannon Ethridge, leafing through the scrapbook cradled on her lap. The album's filled with handwritten letters and snapshots from the young women she's taught as a guest lecturer and mentor at Teen Mania Ministries in Lindale, Texas. They're thanking her for the impact her message of purity has had on their lives.
Shannon, an abstinence advocate, counselor, and former youth pastor, first broke the silence on female sexual temptation with her groundbreaking book, Every Woman's Battle, published in 2003. In it she dispelled the notion it was a male-only problem by candidly describing her personal struggles with sexual integrity. She continues to share her story and the lessons she's learned through a series of frank books that explore how to maintain sexual integrity in our sex-saturated culture. They include Every Young Woman's Battle and the newly released Preparing Your Daughter for Every Woman's Battle (all WaterBrook).
Although the pixie-ish 37-year-old became a Christian as a child, she admits, "I was saved, but like so many teens, I fell away from the faith." After years of promiscuity, at age 21 Shannon experienced a life-changing encounter with Christ and became involved in youth ministry. A short while later, she met and married Greg, her husband of 15 years. But to her surprise, even after marriage she still found herself "looking for love in all the wrong places."
Her quest for freedom from her desperate search for attention and affection led her into a greater intimacy with God. She founded Women at the Well Ministries (now Shannon Ethridge Ministries) in 1999 to teach women how to discover the joy and healing she found in her passionate pursuit of Christ. Today, the lessons of her past give Shannon the authority not only to tackle the topic of adult sexual temptation, but that of teen sexuality as well. And, as the mom of daughter Erin, 13, and son Matthew, 10, she feels an urgency to equip parents to address this particular arena. "When I was a teen, the pressure to have sex was enormous," she says. "But for our children today, it's overwhelming."
In this exclusive TCW interview, Shannon talks about her past, her healing, and her hope for our daughters—and for us.
You've said you "graduated from the school of hard knocks when it comes to recognizing and overcoming sexual and emotional temptations." How so?
When I was 12, several uncles made inappropriate sexual advances toward me. Then, when I was 14, an 18-year-old boy date-raped me. I never told anyone about the rape because I wasn't supposed to be alone with a boy, and my parents didn't know I had been. I thought they'd blame me for what happened. So when my mom and dad actually let me date a year later, I didn't feel as though I had a reason to withhold sex. I went from one sexual relationship to another.
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