God Bless This Mess(35)

We were supposed to be going to a recruitment event for the sorority that day. A mandatory event. Instead, they said, “It’s okay. We’re going to sit here with you. You’re gonna take that medicine, and we’ll watch out for you. It’ll be fine.”

I was shocked that they cared as much as they did.

The medication didn’t have any negative effects. I was fine. And while the meds didn’t fix everything for me, they definitely allowed me to care more. To invest in my life again. And once I cared again, my heart was set on fire for the Lord. Those sorority sisters kept me accountable. The four of us would become great friends after that. They watched out for me. We went to church together. We had all kinds of conversations, and it wasn’t just about me. We talked about all of the struggles they were having, and we bonded over those. And then we just started having fun together.

It was so weird to me: going through the lowest lows of my life somehow led me back to the Lord and into the arms of these friendships.

For so long it had felt like even my family wouldn’t accept me and my feelings, let alone any of my peers. So to have these girlfriends there for me was huge.

I started journaling on a regular basis to help me get through it all. I found it amazing just how much it helped to write down my feelings and thoughts, hopes and dreams.

I went back to church. I carried a notebook and pen into church with me every day. Brady came right along with me, at least as far as going to church. He never missed church on Sundays. There were Sundays when I went to church with him and his family. But it’s almost like the better I got, and the more on fire I was for the Lord, the harder it was for Brady to keep up. We were both running this race for God, but he kept going at a comfortable pace while I began to sprint. He was at church every Sunday, but on Saturdays he was still going to parties and doing whatever.

If there’s one thing I learned, it’s that you can’t pull somebody somewhere they don’t wanna go.

We still had issues. I still felt like I couldn’t trust him. I wondered about him sometimes. I didn’t understand his behavior. As I said, I wouldn’t learn about some of the things he was hiding from me until years later. It was just a feeling I had. I lived in fear that he was cheating on me or doing things at parties that would hurt me. Things I didn’t know about.

I did my best to ignore that feeling. I loved him. He loved me. I wanted with all my heart to make it work.

But the first time I ever heard God speak to me, He told me to break up with Brady.

I was in church with one of my girlfriends when it happened. It wasn’t a big booming voice like something you’d hear in a movie; it was more like an internal knowing. An internal whisper that wasn’t mine. It wasn’t me talking. I wanted to be with Brady. I wanted to make it work. I’d been in love with him for seven years!

I just couldn’t deny what I’d heard. I heard God whisper, “You have to let go.”

It wasn’t a question. It was clarity. I knew it had to be done.

The night before it happened, Brady and I had gotten into an argument. We’d gotten into lots of them. At that point it was almost a cycle.

He showed up after church with flowers to apologize. He was so adorable and sweet—but I looked at him and said, “I don’t want to do this. I can’t do this anymore.”

Of course he didn’t believe me. He was sure I didn’t mean it. “We’ve been together almost four years!” he said.

But I explained to him that I felt God speak to me, and it was time for this relationship to end. And it ended. And as soon as he left, I felt this overwhelming peace.

I knew I had done the right thing.





Chapter 12


Breakup Skinny


Brady proved me right: when we broke up, he immediately started hooking up with other girls. I knew he didn’t love them, and it made me feel sick that the intimate moments we shared might not always have meant the same thing to him as they did to me.

At that point, the thought of allowing myself to have sex again, with anyone, became upsetting and hurtful to me.

I learned a lot from my relationship with Brady, including a lot of what not to do.

It doesn’t matter how much you love somebody. If your relationship is not built on the right foundation, it’s just going to end up hurting you more in the end. The fact that we started our relationship by sneaking around in secrecy was a lot of fun, but it wasn’t a solid foundation. We started with him cheating on his girlfriend to be with me. So doesn’t it make sense that he might turn out to be someone who wouldn’t always be reliable in the way I wanted a man to be reliable?

I do think that the Lord can completely heal us. There are cases where something starts on a rocky foundation, but both people can grow and change and live happily ever after. If it’s supposed to happen, it’s going to happen. I believe that. I believe that the Lord can restore marriages and relationships of all kinds. But when we broke up, Brady went in the opposite direction.

I spent some time by myself, thinking about what I’d been through and what I wanted in the future. I wasn’t interested in dating again right away. I didn’t think my heart could take it. But I wrote down a long list of qualities I would like to see in a partner—a list that included trust, and honesty, and someone who wasn’t interested in partying all the time, but who was up for an adventure, and who came from a good family and offered stability. I wanted to be with someone funny, someone who didn’t make me question whether he’d chosen me, who had good friends, and for sure someone who was on the same sort of spiritual path I was on.