I sort of understood. But I sort of didn’t.
He asked me to prom, which was a big deal for a sophomore. I borrowed a black dress I’d admired from my oldest brother Shawn’s wife, Kaori, and my dad told us to be back by eleven. It wasn’t much time on a prom night, but we knew he meant business. Whenever my curfew neared, my dad would wait near the door and flick the lights on as we approached to let us know he was watching.
Sean and I took pictures at his parents’ house and then in a garden where we had often taken walks before, then headed to the Daytona Beach Desert Inn with friends and danced for hours. It marked the end of his high school years; I still had two more to go, and I wondered how that would affect us. Lots of couples broke up when someone went to college, but it didn’t seem like we would.
The night before my birthday that August, Sean plotted a surprise for me with my parents: He sneaked in after I fell asleep and put a vase of flowers and teddy bear wearing a cameo necklace in my bathroom, along with a tape player hooked up to the outlet. It was rigged so that the play button was already pressed, but the power wouldn’t turn on until someone (me, hopefully) turned on the light. When I did, it played our song: “I’ll Be There” by Escape Club. He’d bought a single of the cassette.
It was the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for me, and I was amazed that my parents let him do it. I still have the cassette.
Sean wasn’t exactly my first boyfriend; I’d been out on dates with lots of guys before, but this was the first relationship that lasted more than a couple of weeks. It was exciting to me, filled with all the heady feelings of first love. We had never actually used that word, but I had thought it plenty.
My youth minister and his wife noticed how head-over-heels I seemed to be, and when they asked how the relationship was going, I even confided that I felt like I might be falling in love. It wasn’t received the way I thought it would be.
“Do you know if he’s saved?” my youth minister asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. He goes to church sometimes.”
“Have you witnessed to him yet?”
I looked down.
“Colleen, if you haven’t, you need to. If he’s not saved, then you have the responsibility to tell him about Jesus. Otherwise he could go to hell.”
“I just try to live my life as a Christian and be a good example.”
“But that’s not enough. This relationship can’t work right now because you’re unequally yoked. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 6:14, ‘Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness?’ You have nothing in common with Sean. If you’re choosing to be yoked with someone who isn’t saved, then you’re in sin.”
I stood there listening, a knot forming in my stomach. What was he telling me? My relationship with Sean was sinful?
“You have to put God first in your life,” he said.
It was a small town; the youth minister knew that Sean’s family wasn’t very religious. And although every word he said to me hurt, I felt that he was looking out for me as he always had. He and his wife had become a big part of my life and my thoughts during my adolescence; he looked for ways for all of us in the youth group to deepen our relationship with God and be better Christians. He wasn’t telling me this because he wanted to ruin my life—it was because he cared about me and didn’t want to see me make a big mistake. Their convictions were strong.
It was just so different from the way I thought, though. I told him I’d pray and think about it, and then as soon as I got home, I couldn’t stop crying. Had I been letting Sean down all this time by not proselytizing to him? I had never been comfortable with evangelism, but was I being a terrible friend by not helping to save his soul? What if the minister was right and I was throwing away the only opportunity to help Sean get into heaven?
I’d told the minister I didn’t know whether Sean was saved, but deep down I knew he wasn’t saved like I was in the Baptist Church. I’d just never asked because I didn’t want to hear the answer. While he supported me as a Christian, religion wasn’t a big part of his life, and I couldn’t imagine telling him that he needed to devote his life to Jesus if he wanted to continue dating me.
All that night, I prayed and cried, cried and prayed. It was torture. I knew that I was going to have to break up with Sean to prove my devotion to God, but it made such little sense to me. Our relationship had been so pure, not lustful. How could it be sinful to fall in love?
When I finally emerged from my room, my parents were waiting on the living room couch to talk to me.
“I think I have to break up with Sean,” I told them. “I don’t think he’s saved.”
The tears wouldn’t stop streaming, and my parents were very supportive.
“We’re proud of you for taking a stand for Jesus,” my dad said. My mom gave me a hug and told me I was doing the right thing. I hoped she was right.
The next time Sean came over, I met him at the door and fell into his arms crying.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“We have to break up,” I managed to get out in between sobs.
“Why?”
I couldn’t answer. Nothing I said would make sense. I tried and tried to say something—anything—to give him an explanation, but I just couldn’t get any words out.
“Are you sure this is what you want? Because you’re crying right now…” he said.
I just nodded. He was so confused—but then, so was I. After several minutes, he let go of our embrace and left, and I was empty. He left there assuming that I was breaking up with him because he was going to college and I was still in high school. I didn’t say, “Let’s stay friends,” because it would just be too painful to see him anymore if I couldn’t be with him. I didn’t think I would ever stop crying.
“Do you feel better?” my mother asked the next day.
“No,” I said. “Everything hurts.” My mom hugged me.
It continued to hurt like that for weeks. My friends, who had understood and accepted my other Christian “quirks” before, thought I was crazy for breaking up with him. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done, but I had to be right with my God. I had to trust in His plan for my life.
The new school year started and I never saw Sean’s Volkswagen Beetle pull into that parking lot again. We’d never ditch the cafeteria or see Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves or walk through that beautiful garden again. I’d never stand on a higher step to kiss him so I could reach his lips. It was over.
And I really wasn’t okay.
Chapter 2
Someone Else’s Life
EVEN THOUGH SEAN STAYED local for college, I never ran into him. But my brother Erin did on their Daytona Beach college campus. Erin would come home and say, “Sean asked about you,” and it was bittersweet—nice to know he cared, but still painful. It felt like we were star-crossed.
Erin and I were close and he knew my reasons for ending the relationship. I think he was as confused as I was about the whole thing—we both understood that this was what I was supposed to do, but it didn’t feel right to either of us.
I trusted my brother deeply; he had saved my life when my inner tube flipped over and I nearly drowned in a pool at age five. I still remember looking up and seeing his shadowy, skinny body over me as I choked and spluttered out all the chlorinated water from my lungs. He had been my first hero. I didn’t know then that there would be others.
That fall, I tried to go about my normal life and move on. It was a busy year of exploration—I was heavily involved with sports and activities: choir, band, marching corps, flag corps, debate club, Fellowship of Christian Athletes (I was the vice president), Thespian Society, along with my church and youth group. Basically, if there was a club around that didn’t involve doing math or playing Dungeons & Dragons, I was in it.
My senior year was not particularly memorable except that I met Jesse, a missionar
y boy whom my parents and youth leaders instantly approved of. He was three years older than I was and was beginning a career as a pilot. He asked to take me to my prom and I thought he must be the one. All the ducks were in a row: He was a Christian who was going to have a good career, I thought he was attractive, we both agreed on no premarital sex, all the important adults in my life gave their approval…I was not wildly in love with him, but maybe that didn’t matter. It was supposed to be God’s plan, not mine.
When Jesse proposed to me, I was nineteen years old and had just finished my first year at community college. Part of me was mad because now I had to say yes. It took away the possibility of feeling anything stronger for anyone. But I told myself that I was ready. Lots of other young women in my church married young and were starting families. It was not normal among my non-church friends, who thought I was crazy. They came to my wedding wearing pained expressions, sitting in the pews singing along to church hymns while hung over from partying at college.
My gown was a huge, ornate thing with sequins and pearls and a long train. Our wedding planner was a young woman from church who had also gotten married at nineteen. She helped me pick out my all-silk flowers and candles and hunter-green velvet ball gowns for my eight bridesmaids.
Alcohol and dancing were both frowned upon at weddings according to the church, so we didn’t have either of those. We did have a harpist, and my parents and the church elders made all the food for the reception. It was very churchy and kind of boring.
Then came the wedding night.
I was terrified about getting pregnant, and our first experience together was painful.
I have to do this again? I fretted after it was over.
Reality set in quickly after the wedding. In order for Jesse to fly commercially, he had to log a lot more hours in flight, and he had to pay for those hours of training. I dropped out of school and worked two, sometimes three, jobs at a time to support us. I didn’t even think about finishing my college degree or chasing some kind of dream job because I understood my role was to support my husband. Anything else would be selfish.
I knew what the path would be—it was laid out clearly. I would work until his career was solid, then I’d get pregnant and stop working and my life would be about raising kids. That’s how it was for almost all my church friends who were a little older than me. They baked casseroles at five p.m. and had tea sets for their kids and middle-class houses in middle-class neighborhoods. It was all very simple and normal, and I had found some comfort in the idea before.
I took business classes and a certified nursing assistant program at the local community college and then began working as a nurse’s aide full-time, often picking up double shifts. It was exhausting, but it was a job. During off hours, I’d do filing for a couple of doctors or work with the children’s programs at church. It was a lot of obligations, but it was fine. Wasn’t it fine?
Maybe it wasn’t.
A year and a half into the marriage, we moved to Vermont, where Jesse was on salary with TWA. He was often working abroad and I could no longer ignore what was happening in my heart. Things were falling into place just the way they were supposed to, and yet when I took stock of my life I panicked.
I did not really love this man; I don’t think I ever had. Not the way I had loved Sean. Thinking about life apart from him didn’t make me cry—it made me feel relief. I was watching my non-church friends living it up at college, and here I was throwing away any dreams I might have had for my own life so I could have kids with a man I didn’t really love. It made me feel resentful, and the thought of bringing children into this barren ground pushed me over the edge.
I have to put an end to this, I thought. This can’t be where I’m supposed to be.
I left and moved in with a few friends in Burlington, though Jesse cried and begged for me to stay. He would call and check to see if I’d changed my mind, and reminded me that God’s will was for us to stay together. He alternated between upset and angry, and filled me with guilt. I agreed to give our marriage another try, but I was still deeply unhappy and finally took the chicken’s way out: I waited until he had left for work in St. Louis and filed for divorce. I knew he would be gone for a week or so, and I hadn’t alluded to any problems before he left. If I had told the truth, he wouldn’t have gone and there would have been a big emotional struggle and I might have given in again.
I had him served with papers in St. Louis, which I know shocked him. My parents were concerned and upset.
“You’re in sin. You’re not following His will,” my mother said.
“I can’t stay in a marriage where I’m this unhappy. Don’t you understand? All sins are equal in God’s eyes, right? So if I ask for forgiveness and try to live a good life…”
“If you’re looking for our blessing on this, we can’t give it.”
It was a dark time, but I didn’t go back on my decision. Jesse wouldn’t file because he felt it was a sin, so it was up to me to see it through. I didn’t have the money for an attorney, so I didn’t use one, but he did. There wasn’t much to fight over, in my mind—I wasn’t asking for support; I just wanted a clean break. But there was one thing he wanted to put in writing: He had his attorney indicate that I was having an affair. I wasn’t. But apparently that would absolve him of the sin of divorce.
Once I had broken through that barrier of committing what my parents thought was a really huge sin, I felt I had little to lose, and I started making up for lost time.
It gave me the space to figure out who I was as an individual. For the first time, I stood on my own two feet and stared off into this vast unknown, knowing that no one else could live my life for me or tell me how I should live it. For too long, I’d been obeying rules that were not sitting right in my heart, and now I had to choose my own path, even if it meant alienating my family and some of my friends.
The loss of almost everything familiar made it feel like there was a big hole inside me, and I had to fill it up. I started working in human resources in the banking industry, and I began putting myself through community college again, taking classes in psychology and religion. I wanted to learn about religions aside from my own and what their belief systems entailed, not just what everyone had told me they were about. I partied with friends and drank too much, dated…I probably went overboard on just about everything. The more I tried to fill that empty space, the more untethered I felt.
One of the things that I counted on for some kind of grounding was cycling. Every day I felt the rhythmic motion of the pedals under my feet, a sort of meditation on wheels. And every day I also ran. Getting outdoors and being active was the best way to quiet my mind.
My parents were so upset that I was “secularized” and thought I would lose my faith in Christ, when in actuality, the opposite happened. It took a while of exploring to get there, though.
I started seeing all the aspects of my life as choices rather than obligations. I used to go to church on Sundays because that’s just what you did; now I continued searching for a relationship with God that was something more personal and connected. I searched for communion with God in everyday places, and it felt empowering. Sin was no longer a black-and-white thing for me. Sometimes in life, we make errors, and through those errors, we find growth that can make us stronger. Not everything was a sin, I realized. Some things were just mistakes.
I went through therapy to help me try to figure things out—to unpack my whole past and try to determine what was real and true and what I could safely discard from my life. Then one day I decided to show up at a Quaker meeting, without knowing what to expect. There were about sixty people in the room, all shaking hands and greeting one another. It was a more diverse group than I’d imagined—all ages, some with tattoos, just “regular people” you’d see around town. After a few minutes, someone rang a bell and said it was time for the meeting.
We all sat in a big, open circle and each person offered a blessing to the person next to them, one at a ti
me. Then, for the next fifteen minutes, it was mostly silent. You’re supposed to just sit there and reflect and pray silently and speak only if you feel moved to do so by God.
This is so weird, I thought at first. I was uncomfortable without a priest speaking at the front of an altar, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. But as I settled in, other feelings bubbled to the surface: I felt an energy of love and peace and equality.
After those fifteen minutes had passed, someone stood up and said, “I want to thank God because something wonderful has happened in my life. I thank God for this healing and light.”
He spoke briefly about the blessing that had come into his life. That connected organically with another person in the room, who also stood and said thanks to God for a good resolution to a health problem, and another stood to say thanks for his family all spending the holidays together. Several others stood and shared, and all of them had a communal tie—like a brightly glowing light of interconnectedness. At the end, someone rang a bell and everyone shook hands or hugged, then we went off to share a meal together. They had a Bible study afterward.
It was powerful for me, anchoring me to the idea that God was in that space and with these people, not only in the particular type of church of my youth. It was enough to open my communication with God again. Even though I went just a few times, it was a beautiful experience that brought me into a community of strangers who didn’t feel like strangers.
My parents were upset for quite a while about my divorce, but that improved with time as well. There was never any big, formal scene where we hugged it out, but they stopped bringing it up all the time and our conversations became less strained.
What I learned over this time was that while most of our families love us and want the best for us, they may not always know what is best for us. We need to take responsibility for our own lives and choices, even if it means disagreement and inciting anger. You can’t let fear of what others will think or their disapproval keep you from being happy in your own life.
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