by Cole
However, I still had one last secret. I never meant to keep a secret from Cole. It just sort of happened. That conversation at IHOP during VidCon changed both our lives. Cole asked a lot of questions, and I answered them all. I told him about Tommy and about my high school boyfriend. But he never asked if they were the only guys I had ever slept with. If he’d asked me if there were others, I would have told Cole the truth. I had nothing to hide. But he didn’t ask and telling him didn’t even cross my mind. I shared so much about my past that night that it felt like everything was already on the table.
After Cole and I officially became a couple, the subject of my old boyfriends came up during one of our many phone conversations. The stories about Tommy were almost all negative, but most of the stories about my high school boyfriend were positive, which made Cole ask if I still had feelings for him. I told Cole straight up, the guy cheated on me, so, no, I had absolutely no feelings left for him. I reassured Cole that I was over every past relationship completely. “I’m with you 100 percent,” I said. But I could tell talking about past relationships made him question where he stood with me, which was the last thing I wanted to do. I did not want to make that worse, but I also didn’t want to keep any secrets from him.
And I had one more secret.
Not long after MOTION, when God really got ahold of my heart, I started to wonder if I needed to tell Cole the whole story of my past with every last detail. Part of me thought I should, but then I began to ask myself why I would put us through that. Cole and I had talked so much about my past that I didn’t want to go back there again. After all, Cole had told me over and over that whatever I did in the past didn’t matter anymore. If God had forgiven me, who was he to hold it against me? That’s what Cole said.
But should I keep secrets from the man I love? I wondered. We had both expressed our love for each other. I knew Cole would never say “I love you” to any girl he did not intend on marrying. That settled it. I had to tell him. But then I thought about how my secret would hurt him, and I didn’t want to hurt him with something that had happened before I became who I am today. The Bible says that if anyone is in Christ they are a new creation. All the old things have passed away. Everything becomes new (2 Corinthians 5:17). I was no longer the girl who made those bad decisions. Why should I then bring up every part of my past that was only going to hurt Cole and maybe hurt our relationship? Why not just let the past stay in the past?
I didn’t know what to do.
I talked to a couple of my girlfriends and asked what they thought. They didn’t help. One friend told me that it was my past, not his.
“You’re just going to hurt him,” she said. “There’s no point in making him go through all that hurt. You don’t need to tell him.”
My other friend told me I shouldn’t keep anything from Cole. “You need to tell him,” she said. “He’s going to be super-upset if he finds out you’ve been keeping secrets from him.”
Both of my friends made a lot of sense, but they’d said two different things. I still didn’t know what to do, so I prayed a lot about it. The Bible says that if we need wisdom, God will give it to us when we ask Him (James 1:5). I definitely needed God’s wisdom, so I asked Him over and over what I should do. I didn’t hear any voice from heaven, but I decided that the fact I felt like I had a big secret I was hiding from Cole was God’s way of telling me what I needed to do—I had to tell him. The question now was how to do it. There’s never a perfect moment to talk about things like this, so I just blurted it out. One night we were talking on the phone, and I said, “Cole, there’s something I need to tell you.”
Cole
Savannah picked one of the craziest moments in my life to drop the news that she had something she needed to tell me. Weeks earlier the Disney Channel contacted my family about shooting a pilot for a non-scripted reality show featuring my mom and dad and all six of us kids. Our social media presence had caught their attention. So a few days before Savannah dropped this bomb on me, a Disney camera crew arrived at our house in Enterprise to shoot a pilot of our family just doing life in small-town southern Alabama. I mean, how often does something like that happen? I had these cameras rolling on me 24/7. And then Savannah calls.
Savannah and I texted all the time, of course, and she had just left my house a few days before this phone call. And then she calls saying she has news that was obviously not going to be good. The camera crew wanted us off our phones, which was already hard for me because I missed Sav so much and I wanted to phone or text her every moment of the day. I had managed to sneak in a quick phone call during a break in filming when Savannah uttered those words, “I have something I need to tell you.”
I instantly got nervous and started thinking the worst. I even asked her if she had cheated on me. She said, “No, no, no, nothing like that,” which made me feel relieved but still nervous. Then she said that she hadn’t been completely honest about her past. I braced myself for what she was about to say. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. Finally she admitted that she had a boyfriend after Tommy for a few months and had sex with him. The news hit me like a brick. I tried to keep it together but just felt really bad, wondering why it took her so long to be completely honest with me. I knew about Tommy and her high school boyfriend, but I had assumed they were the only ones. Now I knew they were not. I asked her if there had been anyone else, and she assured me there had not.
We kept talking, but I could hardly hold it together. It was hard being so far away, knowing there were these older guys she had been with who lived right by her. The whole situation just scared me. Then one of the film crew people came over and told me that they needed me back on camera. Now I had to walk back in with my family and put on this happy, smiley front while inside I was dying. The last couple of times Savannah and I had been together I could tell she had something she needed to tell me but I think she was just too ashamed and embarrassed to do it in person. I told Savannah that I wanted to fly out to California right that minute and talk it out and settle everything, but we still had another couple of days of filming to do, so I’d come as soon as I could. I owed it to my family to be with them and do my best, so I tried. I smiled and laughed and goofed with my brothers, but my stomach was churning. I understood why she hadn’t told me before, but I still felt angry. Her not telling me something this big felt like I’d been lied to. I got mad, which made me feel terrible because Savannah already felt so guilty over something she’d given to God. He’d forgiven her. Why couldn’t I? I had to see her.
The film crew finally wrapped up everything they needed for the pilot, which was not picked up, by the way. They finished shooting on a Sunday. As soon as they left the house I told my parents that I was going on a road trip. I did not tell them that I had booked a flight to California for the next morning. My flight out of Atlanta was super-early Monday morning. Because of the three-hour drive, I had to leave my house in the middle of the night. With the time difference, I arrived in Los Angeles as the sun was coming up. No one knew I was there, not my family and not any of my friends. This was something Savannah and I had to work out between us, and I didn’t want to explain anything to anyone until we had.
The drive to Atlanta and the flight to Los Angeles gave me a lot of time to think. I kept coming back to how Savannah must have felt telling me. She had to have wanted to tell me when she was in Alabama a week before, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. We always had so little time together that we both worked hard to protect whatever hours we had and make them special. Dropping this kind of news on one of our weekends would have created a lot of tension and sadness.
In addition to putting myself in her shoes and considering all she had to have gone through to finally tell me, I reminded myself that she hadn’t been walking with Jesus during that time. The woman with whom I had fallen in love and now admired for her strong walk with Christ was not the girl who had made these poor decisions. I had a strong commitment to wait until marriage to have sex,
but if not for God in my life, I’m sure I would have made other choices. In those first few months of dating, I knew Savannah looked at me as some kind of Mr. Perfect. That had to make her feel dirty. The truth of the matter is, I felt like a loser around her. I had never had a girlfriend, and here was this beautiful California girl who could have any guy she wanted, and for some reason she picked me. She used to say things like, “I hope I don’t scare you away.” I always thought that was so funny because I was like, “Scare me away? You are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, and you are funny and fun to be with and my best friend. I am not going anywhere.”
As for being perfect, I was anything but. Just because I had not done anything physically with someone doesn’t mean I hadn’t thought about it or that in my heart I didn’t want to. I’ve already talked about the struggles I had and how in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said that if you look at a woman with lust, you have already committed adultery with her in your heart (Matthew 5:28). By that standard I wasn’t perfect and I wasn’t pure. I’d looked at inappropriate stuff on the Internet, stuff that can and does ruin people’s lives and their marriages just as badly as having sex. I had to turn all of that over to Jesus and ask for His forgiveness just as though I’d actually slept with someone I wasn’t married to.
I also realized I still had unrealistic expectations of my future wife and of sex. In my mind I’d made sex the be-all and end-all as if it was the most important part of marriage. That opened my eyes to see that you can have an unhealthy view of sex even with a commitment to wait until marriage. When Savannah first dropped this news on me, I was upset, but then I was glad that she’d waited to tell me because it forced me to look deep inside myself. I also knew that if she’d told me everything at once, I probably would not have been able to handle it. I might not have ever pursued her. Then I might have missed out on this incredible woman God had for me, the woman for whom I’d prayed for most of my life. Actually, Savannah wasn’t who I’d always dreamed of—she was better.
Savannah
When Cole first told me he was flying out, I tried to stop him. “No, no, no,” I said. “Don’t do that. We’ll figure it out.” But Cole didn’t want to figure it out. He wanted to work it out. There’s a big difference. He is the kind of person who wants to work through everything all at once and fix it. Me, I would rather just go to sleep and wake up, and it’s a new day. I really did not want to talk about all of this face-to-face because my mind flashed back to my ex-boyfriend, who would blow up and punch holes in walls and lose his temper if I even looked at another guy. Even though I knew Cole was not that guy, we had not had any kind of real issues up to this point. I thought I knew how he’d react, but you never know.
When I picked up Cole at the airport, I met him at the baggage claim as usual. He kissed and hugged me, but things were tense. We didn’t have our usual laughing, hugging, crying reunion. And I could tell he’d been crying. Cole’s usual self is so happy, so joyful. It pained me to see him this way because I knew he was hurting. Even the car ride was super-awkward. This was definitely not a visit we’d put on YouTube.
Finally Cole said, “Okay, I need to know everything.” I explained that after one of my breakups with Tommy a year ago, I had met another guy, and we dated for a few months. I had been so hurt from Tommy that I gave this new guy everything. Tommy found out about him, and things turned physical between them. Then Tommy gave me his usual “I’ve changed; please take me back” speech, and I did. As I told Cole my story, I tried to put myself in his position. I wondered how I would react if I was a virgin and had never had a boyfriend before and this guy I loved just dropped all this information on me. I would have been heartbroken. I don’t know how I could have handled it.
But Cole, he handled it beautifully. We talked through everything, and we cried a lot, and he held me, and when it was over, it was over. He didn’t shame me about it or treat me any differently. He said, “We’re good. I love you, and we’re good.”
I felt a huge weight had been lifted off me. Secrets in a relationship can eat you up and tear you apart. Before I finally confessed to Cole, I felt like I was lying to him every day. I felt ashamed of myself and wondered why I hadn’t told him already. By that point I was too embarrassed to say anything, which made me feel horrible about keeping my secret from him. Now that everything was out in the open, my past truly was completely in the past. Cole forgave me for not telling him before, but he also never held my past against me.
Today when I tell my story, I have a lot of girls come up to me and tell me how my sharing helped them confess their pasts to God and receive His forgiveness. Do I wish I’d walked with God my whole life and not messed up? Of course. But God was able to take my mistakes and turn them into something beautiful. He gave me my incredible daughter, who helped me meet Cole. God loves us so much, and He is so amazing. He can take the things that we are ashamed of and use them for our good. Only God can do that!
Looking back, I see how this conflict made our relationship stronger. Before, we had this lovey-dovey, perfect little relationship. Though it hurt our hearts, this conflict snapped us out of that dreamy part of our relationship and showed us what life together was really going to be like. We would figure out how to communicate through any pain and hurt and come out on the other side more committed to each other than ever. Conflict and misunderstandings are part of life. They hit every relationship, especially if you stay together very long. Every couple has to learn how to deal with them in a positive, Christlike way.
This episode also allowed me to see a side of Cole I needed to see before I committed my life to him. Part of my fear of telling him was that he might keep bringing it up time and time again. I’d experienced that in the past. But Cole was different. When he flew out, he told me that we were going to talk it through, but this was going to be the last time we were going to discuss it. Even though my news hurt him, he promised to get over it. “If I keep dragging it up, what’s that going to do for us?” he said. True to his word, he has not brought it back up. I have. I’ve asked him if it bugs him. He always gives the same answer: “No, because I know you are mine, and the way that you love me makes me never think about those things again.” Cole’s response to my dark secret showed me once again that this was the man for whom I had prayed. This was the man I wanted to marry. If I ever had any doubts, those doubts were gone. When we went through our worst moment as a couple, I saw Cole’s best come out. I loved him even more for it.
15
Pondering the Big Move
Savannah
I feel like we managed being in a long-distance relationship like champs. We were winning at the love game! But when one or the other of us left after our visits—and the euphoria of being together wore off—it was kind of excruciating to begin the countdown clock again.
During one of our conversations after a visit, Cole said, “I love talking to you on the phone every day, but I’m almost sick of it. I just want to be with you every day, both of you. Man, it would be so awesome if, once this semester’s over, I could just move out there with you.”
I thought he was just doing some wishful thinking, but I agreed with him. “I so wish you could,” I said. “That would be the best thing ever. We’ve been doing long distance for nearly five months now. I can’t imagine five more, but obviously we’ll do it because what choice do we have?”
“Yeah,” Cole said. He paused for a moment, then laughed. “How crazy would it be if I actually moved after this semester and came out there permanently right after Christmas?”
“Totally crazy,” I said, laughing. Then I realized he might be serious. “Is that even a possibility? Could you even do something like that?” I asked. I didn’t want to get my hopes up, but I really, really wished he could. We’d briefly discussed me moving to Alabama, and I was willing to do it, but we had to stay in California so Tommy could have his visitation times with Everleigh.
“Technically I can do whatever I want. Online classes are alwa
ys available, so I could do all my classes from California if I wanted to. And I really think I need to,” Cole said.
I couldn’t believe my ears. “Well, why don’t you do it?” I said with a laugh.
“Why don’t I?” Cole said. Then he burst out laughing. “How crazy are we?”
“I don’t know. Pretty crazy, I guess.” I laughed.
Maybe it was crazy, but I was so ready for him to live near me. The worst part of long distance was not being able to do just the normal dating things, like going to buy groceries together or putting gas in the car or just cuddling on the couch while we watched TV. With long-distance dating, our time together was so short that every date had to be an event. We didn’t really get to see each other in normal settings. When you have only forty-eight hours together twice a month, you feel like you have to make every hour special. It was always like, we’re going to Disneyland, or we’re going to Universal Studios. It was never, today we’re going to pay some bills, or we’re going clothes shopping for Everleigh. I was so ready just to be able to do real life together.
The biggest reason I wanted Cole to move to California full-time was Everleigh. I knew he loved her and she loved him, but he had never had to be with her 24/7, which is the job description of a dad. I hoped being a full-time dad wasn’t going to be too much for him. After all, he was only twenty, and he was walking into an instant family. Up to this point he had exceeded all my expectations and then some, but I still wondered how he would handle the day-to-day demands of being a dad. Everleigh was still just three years old. Even though she was a great kid and very mature for her age, even the best three-year-olds can be hard to live with sometimes. When Cole came out for a visit, she was usually on her best behavior, but that was only for a couple of days. I hoped Cole could handle it when she was at her worst—and when she stayed that way for a while, as every three-year-old can do.