As my senior year of high school was coming to an end, I
hadn’t really made many plans to what I was going to do when I graduated. The
church that my family attended was planning on doing something they called “The
Thirteenth Year.” It was supposed to be just a year full of discipleship and
growing in God before going off to college. My mom pretty much told me I needed
to be there, and I kind of agreed it would be good for me, and so that was the
plan. That is until they weren’t able to start it that year. Just a few weeks
before I was supposed to graduate and start the program, we were told it wasn’t
happening. So here I am with no idea what I am going to do when I graduate, and
definitely behind the power curve on applying for colleges. We started applying
to a few schools in the state just to see what my options were.

My mom comes home from church one day super excited to talk
to me about something. The youth pastor of our church had suggested this
amazing program called Master’s Commission at a church in Missouri. He thought
it would be really good for me to get away. My mom was so excited about the
idea, I wasn’t as excited. You see, I was dating a guy from my high school at
the time and I was so sure he was the one. I wanted to stay as close to him as
possible, leaving him just wasn’t an option. I wasn’t really at a place that I
needed to be with God at all. I was a broken young woman who had so much
bottled up hurt inside and absolutely no idea who she was. I turned to guys to
find my identity and for all the love that I had missed out on growing up and
would get pretty emotionally attached. I knew who God was, but my mom hadn’t
been a Christian my whole life so I didn’t really grow up in that environment.
I lived with my dad most of my adolescent years and when I moved back with my
mom my sophomore year of High School church was a growing part of my mom’s
life. I was kind of just thrown into the whole church thing and never truly
understood what it meant. I seemingly just grazed through it with the desire of
experiencing it, but never doing much more then sticking my feet in the water.
I was in a pretty messy place, and if I was to go off to college I am pretty
sure I would not be where I am today.

My youth pastor knew that I really needed to experience God
differently. He knew I needed a fresh start for myself, somewhere that would be
committed to me growing. He suggested this discipleship program and it sounded
great and all, but there were some huge things that you had to do to be a part
of it. You would go through a series of fasts while at the school – music,
television, movies, and the big one, dating. The dating fast was the longest –
six and a half months. That pretty much closed me off, I was not going to break
up with my boyfriend and move half way across the country. No way.

Long story short, I ended up “breaking up” with my current
boyfriend and headed off to Missouri. I knew deep inside of me that I needed to
be there, I wanted with everything in me to fight it, but this weird part deep
inside of me was curious. So I went. I also didn’t do a very good job at
breaking up with my boyfriend. We talked all the time, we still planned on the
future together, I still held on to the promise ring he gave me, and I refused
to really let him go. It was pretty easy to hide beings that he was half way
across the country. We were basically in a long-distance relationship.

Even though I refused to let go of this relationship, I put
everything else I had into this year of discipleship. It didn’t start off easy,
I still fought in the beginning, but there came a point where I was tired of
fighting. I was ready to get all of this junk out of me and experience the
happiness that people kept telling me about. We started every day with an hour
of prayer…I couldn’t even pray ten minutes in the beginning, but the more and
more time I spent in the presence of God, the more I learned to pray. The more
I sat in classes that challenged me spiritually, the more I wanted. The more I
served in the church, the more I grew. I was growing in God more than even I
could imagine, my life was transforming, even despite my holding on to this
relationship back home.

After just four months of the program I was a completely
different person. I really knew God, I knew His character and who He was in my
life, and that made all the difference. I understood the love that He had for
me, I understood relationship with Him. I was so excited about this life change
that I sought to share it with my boyfriend back home as much as I could, but
he just wasn’t as excited. It wasn’t something he could identify with. I had
spent so much time learning that we are supposed to seek Godly relationships,
ones that challenge us, and he just wasn’t doing that for me. But I thought,
maybe he could.

Why did I think that? Because I had given him so much of me –
emotionally and physically. I had poured my very being out into that
relationship left hanging on to my virginity by a thread. So in my mind, I had
to make this work. I didn’t deserve anything more than that because I was a
mess. I was just someone’s leftovers and what good Christian man deserved that?
No one. I was going to have to pray that this boyfriend of mine learned to love
Jesus as much as I did, and then everything would work out.

I was wrong. In the midst of a major wall I was hitting, God
was telling me it’s because I wasn’t letting go. Did He realize how hard it was
for me to let go? I couldn’t just end a relationship out of nowhere. I felt the
need to call my boyfriend and ask if he was interested in anyone. I honestly
felt like it was a God thing, I felt like it was giving me a stepping stool to
let go. My boyfriend told me there was girl that had somewhat caught his eye,
but he didn’t want to pursue anything with her because he was in love with me.
He was waiting for me to come home. I cried and told him I think we needed a “break.”
A break? That was my way of letting go and holding on by a string.

Through a series of circumstances that happened that week, I
had so much confirmation that I wasn’t letting go like God had wanted me to. We
had a guest speaker (who happened to be my husband’s older brother) come in and
lead a chapel for us. His message was about how holding on to certain things
can keep us from experiencing fully what God has for us. He instructed us to
write on a piece of paper what it was we weren’t letting go of, throw it to the
front of the room, and leave and never pick it up again. I knew that it was
speaking to me. There were many more things that happened, and I knew that I
just needed to fully let go. So I called the boyfriend and ended everything…then
I called my mom to tell her because I knew if I told her I wouldn’t go back on
what I had just done.

Now, the week that I said we were taking a break was the
hardest week ever. I felt so emotional, so heartbroken; I just had the hardest
time. But the minute I made the phone call that ended everything I was
overflowing with the peace of God. Isn’t
it amazing how God fills us to overflowing with peace even in the hardest of
situations for us? I had finally done what God had asked me to do, and even
though it was hard, God’s peace went with me.

Fast forward a little. There was this boy that I had been
working in my elective with all year long. I thought he was weird and way too
quiet. Seriously, I talk more than anyone I know, and the kid never talked. He
basically lived at church in the elementary area and was always helping with
some project or hanging out with some kids. So many people in the program said
he had liked me, but I always blew it off saying it would never happen. I mean
really, he was the weird quiet kid. Right around the time I was ending
everything with the boyfriend back home, I began to talk to this weird kid a
lot more. Never as more than just friends, but he really became one of my best
friends. He had a heart for God that was unbelievable, and he gave me advice
that I never heard from a guy. The more he became my best friend; the more he
started to fall in love with me. People would tell me over and over again that this
“weird kid” liked me, and that we should date after the fast was over. They all
said we would be the cutest couple. And I shot them all down, every single one
of them. I distinctly remember getting so upset at one girl for saying it all
the time. I told her it would never happen, he just wasn’t the guy for me.

Why did I feel this way? Because I didn’t think I deserved
him. Seriously, I even told him that once. About a month before the
fast was over I told him I needed to talk to him. I wanted to tell him my story
and what a mess my life had been so he would see that he deserved so much
better. I was just a girl in a bunch of broken pieces and he was such a Godly
man that he deserved a Godly woman. I told him it wouldn’t work. I cried. He
sat silently. We hugged. End of story.

Well, not really. He came back the next day and told me that
none of that mattered. We all make mistakes, and who is he to not forgive me? The
end. That’s all he said, I was astonished. I tried to move forward thinking
that it would never happen, I am pretty sure I even prayed that God would
change his feelings. Know what happened? He changed mine. The more time I was
around this guy, the more I was intrigued by his love for God. He challenged me
like no one had ever challenged me before, and he had no idea. Just watching
him made me want to be a better person. I was falling for this guy. God had
completely showed me something entirely different, the man who I thought I didn’t
deserve because I was a mess, is the very man that God said I deserved. Talk
about the grace of God. I knew just weeks before the dating fast ended that
maybe this guy could be the one for me.

Fast forward to a month later and the dating fast is ending.
I wake up the day the fast ended to a dozen roses, chocolate wrapped in my
favorite colors (I have no idea how he knew), and a note on my doorstep. The
note was Proverbs 31 written out…the woman I strived so much to be like and
thought I never could be because of my messy past. He said that was me. Later
that day, after church, he took me to a park and asked me to be his girlfriend.
I said yes! And here we are, four years to the date that I started a
relationship with this weird, quiet boy. I could not have chosen a better plan
for my life!

If you’re reading this far, thanks for staying with me! J
I am glad you cared enough about my crazy little love story not to quit way up
there. But there’s a reason why I wanted to share this with you…

Ladies, God’s plan for you is far better than any plan you could ever
have for yourself. No matter what mess you feel like your life is in, how many
pieces of you that are broken. God’s grace is sufficient for you. God forgives
you and remembers no more of your past and all you have to do is ask Him. Don’t
let the mistakes that you have made ruin the future ahead for you. God has a
plan, despite your past. Be willing to let go of everything that you have
planned for yourself, and be willing to embrace what God has for you. He will
never fail to surprise you.