"Do you regret it?" My 15-year-old sister asked, looking up at me. "Do you regret waiting that long?"

I paused, searching my conscious. Did I? I was pretty much the last of my friends to have my first kiss — I was 22 years old when it finally happened — and I'd been notoriously mocked for it.

Affectionately dubbed "Extra Virgin Olive Oil," I was viewed somewhere between a joke and a relic with both high school and college friends, who relentlessly attempted to set me up with any guy they could find so that my first kiss would finally be out of the way.

My decision to wait for my first kiss wasn't really that much of a decision. It was more... the hand of fate, and I simply chose not to combat it while it worked.

Fate, or maybe it was God. Maybe there was something more intentional to my circumstances than a pithy fate.

After my sophomore year of college, I started to realize that my first kiss was sacred. So, at 20 years old, I began to ask God to preserve my first kiss for the man He had for me to marry. When I went on dates, I kept the physical affections to a bare minimum. I didn't owe my dates anything, and I had already begun to view a kiss as sacred.

I wanted my first kiss to have a story and a memory to it that would never grow old in my heart.

My little sister has asked a lot of questions about my first kiss and the reasons why I waited so long to partake in its pleasure. She's also asked if I regret who I shared my first kiss with. My first kiss went to a boy who ultimately cheated on me simply because I was not supplying him with the sex he believed he needed. My first kiss went to a boy who had already given a thousand pieces of himself away. But my first piece went to him.

When he kissed me for the first time, it was gentle. Maybe even reverent. In that moment, he held me like a diamond he felt completely unworthy of obtaining. Like I was pure white and he was holding me with charcoal covered hands.

I wish he hadn't viewed me that way, but I do think that contrast between the two of us was important. Him, caught in the dredges of sexual addiction. Me, untouched by the hand of any lover. Maybe a story will come out of it yet. Despite that, I wish he had seen his worth, seen how lovely and redeemable he was. I wish he hadn't stayed in darkness because he felt that was the only place he could go. I wish he had seen that the mistakes of his past do not have to remain a shadow that haunts him even on his brightest days.

When my sister asks me if I regret who my first kiss was with, I tell her that I don't regret kissing that blue-eyed boy. I loved him.

I still do. I wish he could see that, too.

I don't know where his lips had been, and where they were going, in between the times we saw each other. I don't know how many girls he tasted, especially while he was supposed to be with me. I'm not sure I want the answers to those questions.

Somehow, though, I forgive him. I have forgiven him, and I didn't even have a choice in the matter. Just like I didn't have a choice about loving him. I just... I just did. By sovereign hands, it seems. Not fate, though. Never fate. This was far too consequential to be left into the hands of such a pithy master.

I don't want answers to poisonous questions and fears. I just want that addicted boy to become a Godly man; and then, I want him to come back to me.

I'll never regret giving my first kiss to my ex-boyfriend--the blue-eyed love of my life--even if he wasn't all mine. It wasn't about him. It was about me and God. It was about God remaining faithful to me. I remain hopeful that He will still honor my requests; but even if He doesn't, I know that He will give me a reason as to why.

Above all else, I know that I honored Him in the way I behaved, because I laid my desires down at His feet and asked Him to guide them--even the logistics of my first kiss where laid before His throne. It may seem trivial, this kiss that I held so sacred, but it was the principle of the matter. It wasn't about the physicality of a kiss. It was about the symbolism of it, what it meant to me in my life, and the mentality I had impressed into that first kiss for years and years.

When my ex and I started dating, and he asked to kiss me, I felt the Holy Spirit whisper to me: wait until he tells you that he loves you.

So, I did — and four months into dating that boy, we had our first kiss, just a dozen hours after he told me that he loved me.

How can I regret that?

Even though he cheated on me, I know his confession of love was not a lie. He loved me in the best way he knew how. The problem was, he didn't know much about love. To be fair, though, neither did I. It has only been through eight months of separation and agony that I have learned the art of loving--and it is far more dazzling, far deeper and richer than I ever thought it could be.

Love, as I knew it before, was an illusion. This love is a reality, smooth and sweet and enduring. Long-suffering. It looks like Jesus. Jesus in me, loving him, despite all of his mistakes.

I will do anything for the sake of love. Even if it means waiting 22 years. So, when I answered my little sister, it was easy.

"No," I answered. "I don't regret it."

"Wow," she replied, pondering my answer. A few moments later, she scoffed, "I'll never wait that long for mine."

"Who said you had to?" I retorted, with a smile.

Praise the Lord for a first kiss that I will never forget and never regret; a first kiss that propels me towards my sweet Savior.

Soli Deo Gloria.