This month we have been blessed by Alejandra’s eye-opening 30-day challenge of loving ourselves.  She shared with us about her abusive relationship and the dangers of surrounding yourself with those that don’t love you the way Jesus loves you.  That resonated with me so much.  How many times do we continue to snowball into sin, hurt and pain because of those around us?  At times we make certain people so important in our lives but yet those same people don’t think as highly of us as we do of them and half of the time we find that they really don’t love us.  You are going to meet another friend of mine.  Her name is Faith and she is 18 years old.  She agreed to share her story with the hopes of helping someone out there see the dangers of not loving themselves enough and the importance of having the right people around them.

Faith:

At the age of 15, I remember my mom would say, “Faith, you don’t need to search for a guy because you will know when that Godly man shows up. He will be running alongside you.” My mom was telling me this after I had just gotten out of an abusive relationship with my ex-boyfriend. Let me take you back to that painful season of my life where I realized my mother’s words really were a warning from God.

I had gone through a lot in my life and at this time I was just getting back into the ways of the Lord.  I was in 9^th grade and as my life was getting back on track, I met a kid from my Journalism Class.  We started becoming friends and I began to develop feelings for him. As our friendship grew deeper, we both expressed our feelings towards one another.  I felt within me that he was “the one” —  the one God had intended to run alongside me.  We ended up dating and as the school year ended he would come and hang out with my family and me almost all the time.

One night at youth group, my pastor shared his testimony with the group.  He also had me share my testimony.  After it was all done, three teens gave their lives to Christ.  It was then that I thought my relationship with the Lord was good.  He used me in such a great way, everything had to be okay, right?

A week after sharing my testimony at youth group, I lost my virginity to my boyfriend because I loved him so much.  I wholeheartedly thought that by doing this it would show him that I loved him.   My mother had no idea of what had happened, but she came to her own conclusions.  Another week later she expressed that she didn’t feel my boyfriend was good for me.  I became very defensive.  I thought that she was crazy and I refused to believe her.  She didn’t know him the way I knew him, so I thought.  So I kept my relationship going without her approval.

As our relationship continued, my boyfriend and I were now experiencing some difficulties. We were always arguing and he began to publicly disrespect me.  He touched other girls sexually in front of me and didn’t care at all about my feelings.  Not too long after that, he began to isolate me from anyone I was close with.  I know now that it was a form of control.  Everything started getting very unhealthy very quickly.  I would tell my mom about what he would say or do and she saw all the red flags, but I didn’t. I continued to make excuses of why I deserved what he was giving me.  Sadly, I really thought that this behavior was true love.

We would continue to fight over the same things, but it just got worse as time passed on.  It eventually reached the point where he began threatening me. He grabbed me by my shirt and tripped me. He started demanding sex from me every time and I didn’t want to.  My mom’s words would echo in my mind, “Faith, you need to stop being around this boy because he is no good.” She knew I was getting hurt but had no idea of the extent to which it was happening.  I hid everything from her because I knew that if she knew, everything would be over and I would lose him.

So I continued to refuse her advice and continued my relationship with him.  One day, my argument with him got really out of hand.  We got into this huge fight at the end of the school day.  It was the same argument we kept having about his behavior with other girls.  My friends were witnessing everything and made things worse as they started encouraging me to slap him in the face.  I didn’t want to do that.  Before I could finish talking I felt a blow to my own face.  My boyfriend had struck me.  He struck me a second time and I quickly ran to the door to try and escape.  He pulled me into a tiny hallway and slammed me against the window.  When he did that it brought back my memories of when my father use to slam me into different things.  The fear I had at that moment triggered memories in me I had suppressed and just like that, I was reliving my father’s abuse all over again.

After that, I told my mom what had happened and she told me that he was being abusive.  She told me that she wanted me to stay away from him but I didn’t want to face the truth so I buried it.  My mother placed a restraining order against him and pulled me out of that school as soon as possible.  I’m here now telling you that I don’t know where I would be without Jesus.  I know for certain that if I didn’t have Christ I would either be dead or going to jail.  I had to come to grips with where I was mentally and that if my ex-boyfriend didn’t kill me then someone else would have.

Did you ever wish you could go back and tell your younger self, “DON’T DO IT!”  If I only knew then, what I know now I would’ve focused on my Lord and Savior more.  God had his hand upon my life from the time my father was abusing me to the moment I entered that abusive relationship.  I know that the enemy meant something worse to result from my decision, but God turned it around for good.  The Lord had better plans for me than I had for myself.  I know that he only wants the best for his children.

God showed me so much love and the verse that makes my heart melt every time is 1 John 4:18 where it says,

“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.”

I now know the true meaning of love, especially Gods love for me. Nothing will ever change his love for all of us. Nothing!

-Faith

Thank you so much for sharing Faith.  As I was reading your story I saw everything that we have been learning about these last few weeks.  You could see that Faith lacked self-esteem that she felt she deserved what she was getting.  She felt the abuse she received from her ex-boyfriend was as good as her love was going to get from anyone.  How many times have we settled for second or third or even fourth best because we didn’t love who we are?  We have a distorted view of ourselves and for that, we seek out distorted things to fit in our dysfunctional world.

There is so much more to loving ourselves than just loving ourselves the way God loves us.  What if we don’t have the right view of God’s love for us?  So Faith’s story is the bridge to our next topic “Letting God Love Us.”