How we met

Happy Valentine’s Day! I bet you are thinking that I am going to share a cute story of how I met my husband. I would think that too... after all, it is Valentine’s day. Maybe one day I will share that special story, but today I want to share how I met my Jesus. We are all searching for love, and life. Many of us think that love and life can be found in a mate. While my husband is truly wonderful he is not the one that completes me. He will never be able to fulfill me the way I long to be fulfilled. Only the one who created me can do that.

So here is the story of how I met the lover of my soul.

I grew up in the south where it is proper for everyone to go to church on Sunday. So every Sunday, that is where you found my family. We might have been dressed in our best Sunday outfit but we were little hooligans to get there. My poor mother, we fought more on Sunday mornings than any other time of the week.

God was kept to Sundays. We never talked about it, but from a very young age I had an interest in God. I knew he was there for me and that He loved me.

Middle school was really difficult for me. I so badly wanted to be loved and accepted and I was far from that. Kids were cruel. People threw food at me. I remember one night in 7th grade crying out to God for one friend. Then 8th grade came.

I quickly learned that I really liked attention from boys. I started doing whatever I could to hang out with them. I started going to the parties and smoking. By the time I got to high school I was living for the party. Every week, I was trying to figure out how I was going to get the alcohol I needed for that weekend.

While I was living for the party, I was also getting in a lot of trouble with my parents, fighting with them, and still never truly feeling loved by my friends or any of the guys I was dating. I might of looked like I was the life of the party on the outside but on the inside I was screaming out for someone to see me.

It was Valentine’s Day of my freshman year of high school. I was supposed to go on a date with a drug dealer from my school and when he showed up to my house to pick me up my parents sent him home. I was furious, and fought with my parents. They told me the only place I was allowed to go was Young Life but I had to find a ride. I called a few people and they were already at Young Life. So, I had a big pity party and cried in my room. I remember crying out to God that no one really loved me except for him and that I would be better off with Him. I ended up overdosing on pills. Fear came over me... I did not really want to die, I just wanted a way out of the way I felt in that moment. I called my aunt who called my parents. They came home and took me straight to the hospital.

After this moment, I had to go to a lot of counseling. Clearly, I needed it! But that is when I learned that drinking is a depressant... which was not helping me. At this point I realized that I wanted to be a different person that I needed to be a good girl. But I had no idea how. I tried for months to be a "good girl" but kept falling back into the same life style.

My sophomore year all of my friends were going to a Young Life camp in the mountains called Windy Gap. When we got there, I remember the speaker saying that there is nothing that YOU can do to get into heaven. I was SO confused. I had been trying so hard to be a good girl. We had cabin time where I processed out loud that I did not understand. I was mad. I had been trying for the past few months to be a "good girl". But that was not enough.

That night is when I heard that Jesus died on the cross. That is when it clicked that there was nothing I could do to get into heaven, but that he had already done everything so that I could have life with Him. I can't explain how this all made sense to me… but in that moment it clicked. I had met the one who paid the penalty so that I could know real Love. Jesus.

From that moment there have been a lot of ups and downs, but one thing I know is that from that moment on my life has never been the same. I heard a quote last week that I thought was so true. If you don't ask Jesus to take over your life, tomorrow will probably be same, but the day you do ask Jesus to be Lord of your life... you are on a grand adventure. Oh how this is SO true!

Jesus is the Lover of my Soul. He is the one who sees me. He is the one who knows everything about me and loves me anyways. He is my best friend. He is my provider. He is my redeemer. He is the one who made me new.

Jesus is the best love story ever written!