Even if these people were right and God really could fill the voids in my life, all I really wanted was a boy. If I could just get one of them, I figured then I’d let God have the rest of me.
So I kept going to the parties and stuff, looking for boys who’d kiss me and tell me they liked me. I kept a list of guys I had kissed in my journal. As that list grew and grew, I started to feel a sense of accomplishment. The higher the numbers got on my list, I congratulated myself for being desirable. If I could get all those guys to kiss me, then I must have been of worth to them. Looking back, I’m not even sure why I was allowed to even go to those parties. My mom was not very permissive. I had to beg to be able to do any of those things. A lot of the time, she started out saying no, but after I whined enough, she’d give in. Maybe she felt sorry for me because she knew I was miserable at home. Or maybe she thought that since I was going to parties at the homes of the good kids, they weren’t that bad. I never went to parties with people at my own school. I always went to them at my old school, where my old friends lived. The nerd-herd ones. But that school was so small that everyone went to everyone’s parties. The nerds with the party-animals, the football players with the quiet people…everyone got along. So that’s how I got to know people I otherwise wouldn’t have met.
I went to a few parties the summer before my senior year and wound up making out with Caleb a few times — the one rom Junior High that had been my “first kiss”. After that, he was like my back-up. We got together in a dark corner any time we saw each other, but in between those times, we didn’t even keep in touch.
One night I got to a party pretty early and left to go to Circle K to buy some gum. I recognized the cashier as a guy I had circled and hearted in my yearbook because I had had a huge crush on him when I had him for a class. He recognized me too, which blew my mind. I never though guys like that could acknowledge my existence. On top of that, he was pretty fliratatious and told me to come back. Within hours, I was back, giving him my phone number.
He didn’t call, so I figured it was a fluke. Until two weeks later when he called and suddenly wanted to pick me up in an hour. I happily obliged though, because I couldn’t believe i was going to get to go out with Steve! He drove up and Fred was instantly irritated with him because he had a nice car and an earring, but somehow I still got to go with him. We drove to the farthest mall possible, played a few games in the arcade, and then he asked if I wanted to go to the river. I was fine with that, until I realized what he wanted at the river. I had to tell him that I didn’t do that… I was saving it for marriage. He went home really disappointed and didn’t call me for another 2 or 3 weeks. Again, he wanted to pick me up in an hour. Again, we drove to a far away mall, stopped at the arcade, and went to the river. Again, I told him it wasn’t going to happen and he was visibly upset. Three weeks later, same story. I should have learned my lesson by then but I thought maybe he was starting to understand. And also I was so caught up in the idea of a really cute guy paying attention to me. That night he was more aggressive than ever. I stood my ground and he finally dropped me off, looking really mad. The calls stopped. When school started, I told some of my friends about Steve, just to find out in return that he had been living with his girlfriend the whole summer. I could not believe it.
My last year of high school started that August in the worst way possible. I thought the summer would calm things down with Mario, but he was still really, really distant. I had spent every second of the last two years with him, so without him, I couldn’t really find a place that I felt I fit in. I just kinda wandered around at lunch time. It used to be my favorite time of day, but suddenly I was dreading it.
Immediately, I started to get really, really depressed again. If I was awake, I was crying. I missed Mario with all of my being, but Lisa had clearly reclaimed her spot as his best friend. As much as I tried to talk to him, he never budged. It was like he became an entirely different person. Out of all the men I had ever lost in my life, Mario was by far the most painful.
During all my wandering, I became better friends with Jesse, the blue-eyed million-dollar-smile boy. He was a Christian … a strong one and a vocal one. He couldn’t care less what people thought about him. So he wasn’t ever jumping from friend group to friend group, trying to be accepted. He was by himself a lot. So I would run into him a lot when I was by myself and wound up having some pretty decent conversations with him.
One day it occurred to me that if I had a Christian guy, all my problems would be solved. A Christian wouldn’t expect me to do the things all these other boys expected. And then we could learn about God together and build a life doing things He wanted us to do! I began to think that God sent Jesse to my school for a reason.
So, I began pouring my energy into getting to know Jesse. We did a lot of things togther. He organized a Christian Bible Club, which I went to. We did the See Ya At the Pole prayer. We did our homework together in the band room. I invited him to sing at the Youth night at my church and he actually came and sang. We went to a Christian concert with his youth group.
I tried to tell myself I was getting closer to God this way, but in all honesty, I was only concerned about getting closer to Jesse. For sure, I was interested in God things. But even more than that, I wanted Jesse to notice that I was interested in the things he was interested in.
His uncles were pastors and they had couple churches in El Paso. One night, he invited me to one of them. It was a Charismatic type church. He once told me that the difference between his church and my church was that at his church, they believed your relationship with God was actually supposed to change your life. I was slightly offended when he said that, but I blew it off bc he was Jesse.
When I went with him to his church that night, I saw what he meant. People were on fire for God there and I could sense it the minute I walked into the building. Even the youth were bursting with holy happiness. At my church, us teenagers didn’t even mention God when we weren’t in front of the youth pastor. Yet, these teenagers were talking about Him freely and openly, obviously not embarrassed. To see people my age praying to God with their eyes closed and their hands stretched up to Him was almost too much to handle. Their joy was contagious, though, and soon I was overflowing with it too. I found Jesse talking to a group of guys and I went and gave him a big hug. I thanked him for bringing me there and he grinned from ear to ear. Later that night, he gave me a ride home and we talked a lot on the way. I thought things were really starting to happen with him.
A few weeks later, he invited me again, but he told me he wouldn’t be able to come. Instead I could go with our friend Nydia. I agreed because I really liked it there and it had been a really rough week. I was missing Mario a lot, still crying over him every single night–and he was getting annoyed that I was making such a big deal out of us not talking as much anymore. For him to just be able to forget me that fast really hurt. So I wanted to go to church, if nothing else to get my mind off of my debilitating loneliness.
When we got there, I wasn’t prepared for the emotion that I was feeling. I found a chair, sat down, and collapsed in prayer. I prayed the most heartfelt prayer I had ever prayed. I told God how lonely I was, how sad I was. How worthless I felt. I told him how much I missed Mario and how useless I felt without him. I told Him I would only feel better if I had a boyfriend and I begged Him to send me someone who would take away some of that loneliness. I told Him I was laying everything out on the line. I imagined taking all of the love I had for Jesse and holding it in front of God. I said, “Here it is Lord. Take it if you want. If I shouldn’t feel anything for this guy, take these feelings and destroy them. But if there’s a chance for us, let it be so.” What happened next really baffles me to this day.
I felt almost weightless, and the room seemed to light up, even though all the lights were off. I felt all of my despair lift off of me. Then I clearly saw Jesse in my mind, as plain as if he were truly right there. Then I saw an image of me and him and I understood that it was in the far future. It looked like we were working together, side by side. Whatever we were doing, everything had worked out and was great. I took it to mean that we were going to get married and that we were going to do God’s work together. Of course! It made perfect sense! God knew that if he sent me a Christian husband, I would be able to do His work better! I began to thank God for His mercy, I thanked him for saving me from my misery. When I snapped out of it, I realized I had been crying like a baby, but I felt so much better. I can honestly say that the Mario situation didn’t bother me to the point of tears again.
I guess I expected to go to school the next day and see Jesse smiling at me, telling me that he had had a revelation …
… telling me that he finally understood that we were meant to be …
… that he was sorry he hadn’t seen it before.
It didn’t happen that way though.
Life went on. Day in and day out I went to school with high hopes…only to come home discouraged. I started reading books about Christianity, thinking that maybe I needed to work on making myself worthy of that vision coming true. Or had it been wishful thinking? It had felt so real though! Nothing I read could tell me how to know for sure what had happened that night, so I grew even more discouraged. Jesse was still treating me like just a friend and I was getting lonelier by the second. I still held on to the hope that God had spoken to me, though, so I managed to stay guy-free for a few months. I didn’t kiss anymore boys for the rest of the semester.
When school let out for Christmas break, I was still full of hope. My youth pastor, Mark talked me into getting baptized. I was a little hesitant for many reasons, but one of them was that the pastor was a smaller guy. I didn’t think he’d be able to hold me. When I used that as an excuse, Mark told me that I could ask someone else to do the baptism. At that, I perked up. I asked Stanley if he would and he said he’d be honored. So it was set for January 2nd, 1994.
That morning while I was getting ready, the phone rang. I had been putting applications in at different places, trying to land my first job. The man at the other end of the line said he was ready to put me to work if I was interested. I said okay and he told me to come in the next day. Thrilled and excited, I headed off to church.
The baptism went better than I expected. As Stanley told the congregation about me, my heart was bursting with love for him and his family. He told them how I had practically been adopted by them and how much they had grown to love me. I felt like the luckiest girl ever, being able to follow God’s command to get baptized and sharing that with a man who felt almost like my dad. I heard him say, “I baptize you, my sister in Christ,” and I went under. As I came up, I was overjoyed.
1994 was starting out great.
Out of the Box 
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