Anyone who knows me well can tell you- I used to be a little crazy.
I guess I was a pretty sane teenager... sane meaning I didn't party, sneak out, skip school, or do drugs. I did serial date to an extent, but there was one guy I kept coming back to because he was my first love. That ended senior year when he decided I wasn't the kind of person he could love anymore. Other than the dating a different guy almost every week or so, I didn't do anything too extreme. Sure, I had my fair share of crazy friends, more than a few were the kind of people "good" kids stayed away from because they were so different. But those were the people who accepted me as I was, who judged the least.
Then I graduated high school and started my first semester at NWACC (Northwest Arkansas Community College). I was angry, depressed, and looking for some sort of distraction. It started when I discovered pool. Pool, as in billiards. I got hooked because I was what the guys who occupied the pool room at NWACC called a "natural" and they helped me hone my talent. They were good guys. When it was time for them to go to class, they would go. Most of them went to a church and had beliefs similar to my own. So you could say that they weren't bad influences, but the game they played was... on me, at least. I started skipping class here and there, and within weeks I would go to NWACC only to play pool and I would lie to my parents about it. I told them I was going to class, but I was spending all my time poised gracefully over tables covered in green felt. It felt nice to be good at something, and at first it was just that. I was good at something other than books. But when pool got it's hooks in me and I decided I could afford to miss a week's worth of classes at a time, it became an addiction. I didn't realize it until years later, but I was addicted. I would get up early in the morning just to go to school and play. Then I met a guy who wasn't such a good influence. Let's call him Scott. Scott introduced me to a place called Billiards Palace. I'd drive all the way to Fayetteville just to play for hours at a time in a smokey room lit by florescent lights and neon beer signs. Days after I met Scott, I went to the Benton County Fair and met another guy... Let's call him Matt. I began a crazy relationship with Matt in September, weeks after meeting him, and in the months following I began making some of the worst choices of my life. In October I gave him the one thing that I most regret giving away too soon, to the wrong person. I slept with him because I thought I needed to just to prove to him how much I wanted our relationship to work. He was the kind of guy who wanted everyone to believe he was better than them. Somehow I got sucked into that lie and I convinced myself he was too good for me. I became the girl I'd promised myself in high school I wouldn't become in college. When I realized that sex wasn't all he needed to keep our "relationship" going, I started drinking and smoking pot with him and his friends. I started staying out late to go to parties with him. And of course I kept lying to my parents about everything. I know they knew something was going on, and I knew at the time that as long as I kept lying, kept digging myself deeper into this hole, the harder it would be for me to climb back out. By the end of the semester my lies started unraveling because I failed my first semester of college. My parents knew I'd been lying about that, so it was only a matter of time before they found out the rest. I didn't think about it at the time, but I was ruining years of my life. It took about a year and a half of this insanity and the lies before I realized I couldn't take it anymore. I was getting more and more depressed the longer I let it go on.
Then I started shutting out all the horrible parts of my life one by one. I stopped playing pool, I stopped drinking and smoking at parties and started being the D.D. instead. I thought I could keep my relationship with Matt, though. I tried to change him. I thought if he quit smoking, quit doing drugs, quit drinking, quit partying, and kept going to church, he would be the right guy. I thought if he was the right guy that I wouldn't have to have sex with him anymore and I wouldn't feel so convicted every time I went against my beliefs. I wanted to get my life back to where I knew God wanted it to be. I wanted to walk with Him. Deep down I knew that Matt would never be the right guy. It took a few more months for me to realize that I had to leave him. I stopped going to parties with him at first just to see what would happen. I thought maybe he would leave first. I'm not sure why, I'm usually a very independent and outgoing person, but I felt like I needed him and that it would kill me to leave him. I had given him two years of my life, and in those two years I'd grown so attached that I couldn't see myself without him even though I knew I needed to leave him in order to be closer to God. When I stopped answering his every call and quit inviting him to hang out with my friends, he started to get upset with me. And I found that the more time I spent away from him, the more of my independence I got back. In early October I decided that I could do it, so I called Matt and I said, "I need to see you." He thought this was going to be my big apology I guess, because he agreed to meet me. When we were finally face to face I said, "I can't do this anymore. You aren't the one God has planned for me to spend my life with. I can't be the person He wants me to be when I'm with you. I have to break up with you, Matt." He tried to convince me to stay with him, he tried to tell me I needed him, and then he told me he could change and become whatever I needed him to be. I told him it wasn't about what I needed him to be, but who God wanted me to be. I got in my car and drove away. Of course I cried. Of course I thought about turning around and taking back everything I just said, but then I felt God reassure me that I would be fine without this guy.
A few weeks later I was with my friend Jennifer at a Bentonville football game (Go Tigers!), and there was Nathan Sorey...The man God had intended for me to spend the rest of my life with.It's funny, the minute I stopped looking in all the wrong places, God literally placed me right beside "the one." But that's a story for another time. :)
My point is, I used to spend the hours after midnight playing pool and partying with people I thought were my friends. Now, the hours after midnight are spent cuddling my sweet baby boy and listening to his soft inhales and exhales, praying he is asleep for the rest of the night. A vast difference. Praise God.
No comments:
Post a Comment