In mid-October I was at the gym one day when I received a text from Brooks. It was completely unexpected. I hadn’t heard a word from him since the text he sent right after I got sick. Then he followed up with a phone call and explained how he had assumed I’d call him when I felt better. At first I sensed he was trying to pin his insensitivity back on me, but the more he kept talking, the more I fell under his spell again. I kept picturing all the fun moments we’d had together. When he called me again later that evening, his voice sounded so comforting. He was back in Texas for a while, he explained. Did I want to come over for dinner?
I knew I shouldn’t. I knew he was nothing but bad news.
But I went.
Brooks cooked dinner for me. I was impressed. We drove over to Blockbuster and rented three movies to watch back at his place. I swear I had every intention of just watching the movies and talking, but ten minutes into the first movie we were making out. Again, his hands strayed to places they shouldn’t have. Again, he was telling me how beautiful I was, how special, how much he’d missed me. Again, I was swallowing all that praise, hook, line, and sinker.
Once again, I had the good instincts to say no and stop before we went any further—but just barely. The next morning, I kicked myself. I kicked myself hard. What was I thinking?! This guy was not right for me. We weren’t on the same track spiritually. He had not been there for me at all when I was sick. I was so stupid. Yet with one single phone call from him, I’d followed his lead like a dog on a leash.
I vowed I’d never hang out with him again. But keeping vows is not easy, I realized, particularly when those vows are born from willpower only. Brooks didn’t call again, and I didn’t call him. For most of that fall semester, I simply went through the motions at college. I buried myself in my studies, taking almost twice the normal academic load. But my mind was still on Brooks, even though I couldn’t stand the thought of him. I couldn’t understand why I was so attracted to this guy who was so wrong for me. Not only that, but I missed the inspiration of the city and being around people whose career aspirations matched my own. New York City is the land of achievement, and I so desperately craved a sense of accomplishment again. I felt depressed, stuck in my thoughts, and I didn’t know how to move forward.
One Sunday after church, Cindy Froese, the same woman who’d sent me that awesome Facebook message, met me in the lobby and asked how I was doing. I could tell she wanted an honest answer, and I don’t know what exactly came over me, but I started to tell her everything. I’m not usually that way with people I don’t know very well, but there was something so comforting about her presence, so trustworthy—I just spilled it all.
Cindy hugged me and cried with me. After we talked, she invited me to a program at our church called Steps, which had been developed from Celebrate Recovery, a program that first came from Saddleback Church. It sounded suspiciously like Alcoholics Anonymous, and I didn’t have a problem with drinking. But Cindy explained that the program was for everyday people from all walks of life who want to overcome life’s problems, no matter what those issues are. So I signed up. I figured it couldn’t hurt. Brittany was in China then, working at an orphanage, and I didn’t have any boyfriends on the horizon. That meant that, in spite of my heavy academic schedule, I had some free time on my hands.
I soon realized I didn’t know as much as I thought I knew. The program was spread over sixteen weeks, and I quickly caught the vision. Our pastor, Matt Chandler, described the program as a way to address harmful tendencies and face them head-on with truth from God’s Word. The big goal is freedom. You want to figure out why you head a certain direction and then submit that to the Lord and move forward in wholeness. Each week we had homework. Then we got together in small groups and discussed what we’d discovered.
At first I figured the things we talked about didn’t have much to do with me. Fears, resentments, worries, doubts. But the deeper we got into the program, the more I thought, Yeah, actually this is me. I do stuff like this all the time. For instance, while growing up in Sunday school, the Christian faith was presented to me pretty much as a list of dos and don’ts—at least that’s how I perceived it. If I toed the line and kept the rules, I felt good about myself. But if I didn’t, then I thought of myself as a bad Christian. The truth was I had been looking at the wrong benchmarks of what real faith is. I had never looked deep into my heart, where things really mattered. I was just looking at the outside.
I discovered I’d grown up a perfectionist. No matter what my age, I needed things to look a certain way, or I expected people to behave a certain way. I was attracted to outward beauty, behavioral refinement, external style, and good taste. Those things aren’t wrong, but I realized that I’d allowed perfection to become an idol to me. The word idol was defined in the program as anything a person values more than God. For instance, I initially thought Brooks was the perfect guy for me. He was outwardly beautiful, and that’s what I admired him for. I ignored God and chose Brooks instead. The perfect guy had become my idol.
When it came to guys in general, I saw another harmful pattern in myself. Part of me might have been honestly attracted to a guy, but another part of me might simply have wanted to get his attention. If I got it, then I felt good about myself. If I didn’t, then I tried harder to attract him. An exchange like that didn’t constitute a real relationship. It was only a game. I valued the approval of guys so I could feel good about myself, and I put a lot of pressure on myself to look or act a certain way and to always wear cute clothes.
Overall, I found out through the program that I was pretty horrible at expressing how I truly felt about things. I had learned a harmful habit of bottling my emotions deep within me. I stuffed them down and kept them under tight wraps where I felt certain they were safely stowed away. But every once in a while they’d leap to the surface. If something upset me, I’d never say outright, “This upsets me.” I’d just let whatever bothered me silently simmer. Then a month later my emotions would explode. During my first stay in New York, I’d gotten into an argument with one of my roommates. It wasn’t over anything huge, but I’d let my resentment build for so long that in the end, something small triggered my anger. After verbally lashing out at my roommate, I’d walked down to the corner in my pajamas to call my Mom and sort things out.
Cindy was my sponsor through the entire program. She never judged me. She walked me through each step with compassion, wisdom, and grace. She’d often say things like, “You know, it’s really normal to feel that way.” Or, “Actually, you’re just fine. That’s what most people do.”
As one part of the process, I needed to write an inventory of my entire life under certain categories, such as fear, anger, and worry, recording everything I’d ever done in those categories. One afternoon I read my inventory to Cindy. We met for three hours, and the words poured out of me. It was such a peaceful experience to get all that weight off me. To just admit all my struggles and get them out in the open. Cindy is an amazing listener, and it felt good not to be trapped by any secrets. It was one of the most freeing moments I’ve ever experienced.
My life adopted a new sense of ease. The lure of Brooks faded from my mind. I felt forgiven. Free. For the first time I began to truly grasp what grace is all about. God loved me no matter what. I didn’t need to perform for anyone, much less him. He was continually inviting me to good places, places that he had prepared for me, and I was overwhelmed by the strange mix of his power and gentleness.
That fall I took one more semester at DBU before graduating in December 2009, one semester early. I’d taken such full academic loads my last two semesters that I had more than enough credits to get my degree ahead of schedule. A lot of my friends were starting jobs, getting married, and moving on with their lives—but I had no idea what I wanted to do. Still, I felt at peace with that.
I decided not to return to New York in the summer of 2010. I spent that summer at home, working at a Mexican restaurant. It was a far cry from the glamour and
glitz of New York. But it was a fun place to work, and I felt like I should just do something down-to-earth.
One day I went for a long drive, just thinking. I drove out of the city and saw the wide open spaces east of Dallas. The road seemed to stretch on forever in front of me. The road itself wasn’t beckoning, but God’s voice seemed to be calling me onward. This difficult season is over, he was saying. And you came through it just fine. Now let’s go on together, and you’ll see what’s around the next bend.
Cindy had told me something like that once. “God wants to use you mightily for his purposes, in ways you can’t yet imagine. But before he can do a work through you, he needs to do a work in you.”
I smiled, turned my car around, and headed for home. I was eager to get on with whatever was going to come next.
CHAPTER 17
The Start of Something Wonderful
Lauren
Brittany got married.
She didn’t marry that guy she had been dating when she visited me in New York, but this wonderful, happy bear-of-a-guy named Shaun Morgan. Shaun turned out to be everything her other boyfriend wasn’t. The other boyfriend was an okay guy, but sort of dark, almost like he always wanted to separate Brittany from her family and clutch her all to himself. Shaun wasn’t like that at all. He wanted to draw Brittany closer to her family, not further away. What was important to Brittany was also important to Shaun.
They’d met at Dallas Baptist more than a year before the wedding. In September 2009 they had their first date, and when Brittany came home, a couple of us girls hung out in her room, debriefing their evening. “This sounds weird to say so soon,” Brittany confided. “But I have this feeling I’m going to marry him.” We didn’t think she was weird at all. We all knew Shaun, and we all knew Brittany. Both of them were easy to connect to, and we just knew it would work out between them.
Shaun and I clicked right from the start too, which was important to me. When you’re a twin, you have extremely high standards for whoever dates your sister. But I was like, This guy’s great. He proposed to Brittany during an unforgettable date on top of the headquarters of a bank in downtown Dallas. He’d arranged everything ahead of time with the security guard, who let them sneak in. Brittany was totally surprised—and totally happy. She said yes in an instant and never wavered in her decision.
For a few months during the middle of the engagement, I experienced moments of angst. I pictured Brittany and her husband living in their own little house, painting walls, arranging furniture, both heading out the door to work each morning. Some days I was completely happy for them. Other days I couldn’t believe we’d actually grown old enough to get married. But the closer the big day came, the more I became genuinely excited for them.
The wedding itself was absolutely wonderful. Brittany looked gorgeous in a slim-fitting, floor-length white dress. I was the maid of honor. There were seven other bridesmaids plus a cute flower girl. We all wore purple strapless dresses and carried white bouquets. Matt Chandler, from The Village Church, performed the service. There was beautiful singing and a touching Scripture reading, and Shaun washed Brittany’s feet in a symbolic act of devotion toward her. Everyone could see the love Brittany and Shaun had for each other.
Then we partied. Their reception was held in a lavish ballroom on the top floor of a building downtown. There were tiny white lights and gold-backed chairs and candelabras and flowers and a huge, frosty, four-tiered wedding cake. The band played really fun music, and everyone shimmied around on the hardwood dance floor. The whole event seemed like a divine evening. God was at the center of their wedding, and you got a sense that this is the way it’s supposed to be.
Right around that time I made some of my own advances in the dating world.
There was this guy, James. He was that sincere, solid one I mentioned earlier, who girls lined up to date. Tall and broad-shouldered, James was the real deal. He wasn’t a player at all.
One evening I was serving customers at Uncle Julio’s Mexican restaurant, and James came in for dinner along with his older brothers. James was so cute. One of his older brothers was getting married in two weeks, and James didn’t have a date to the wedding, so just on a whim he asked me out. I ended up not going to the wedding, but the ice was broken between us. We dated a few times after that, just casually.
James was a year and a half younger than me, which took the pressure off—no one urged us to get serious too quickly. We went out to dinner a few times, and I started seeing more of his substance and depth. He loved God and was committed to growing spiritually. He was working hard to pay his own way through college and planning to go to law school after he finished his undergraduate degree. On one of our earliest dates, we were driving back from dinner when a van flipped over on the freeway ahead of us and caught fire. James screeched our car to a stop, made sure I was okay, sprinted to the burning van, and helped pull the people out. Once the rescue crew had arrived and taken over, James hopped back in the car and sort of shrugged it all off, but I knew he’d done something genuinely heroic. That was just like James.
Neither one of us wanted to date exclusively at first, so we put any idea of a relationship on the back burner for a few months while we both focused on other things. But then in January 2011 we ran into each other again, and it was like no time had passed between us. We went rock climbing together at a nearby indoor facility, then went out to dinner a few times and just had a lot of fun. The weeks passed, and as we started spending more time together, I knew this was becoming serious. We started calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend, and I realized that’s what we now officially were. I felt safe with James. Secure. I genuinely liked him. When I secretly considered our future together, I circled around the picture cautiously, but I knew that if I was with a guy who had the same qualities as James, we would have a really good shot at something wonderful together.
I knew it for certain one night a few weeks into 2011 when James came over to my house for dinner. My parents were out of town, so James and I went out and got some food, came back and ate it, then watched a fun movie together on the couch. At about midnight we kissed each other good night; then I opened the front door so he could leave. Ten inches of snow had unexpectedly fallen in the past hour. What were the odds of that? It never snows in Dallas!
James called his mom, and she told him absolutely not to drive home (nobody drives in the snow in Texas). We both nervously laughed about the predicament that put us in. How convenient. But James slept on the couch, and I slept in my bed. It just felt good not to have a boyfriend pressure me physically in a situation when he could have. Having James sleep over felt . . . comfortable, I guess. Like we were at home together, and relaxed with each other, and we could be like that for a long time to come.
About that time I started a new hobby: boxing. I’ve always stayed in shape, but I wanted to try a different workout regime, so I found a great coach, Rudy Barrientes, a former national Golden Gloves Champion. I bought some fun pink boxing gloves, went to work, and absolutely loved it. Rudy showed me the fundamentals of the moves, and we started sparring every other week. The hits were full force from me, and maybe half force from him, but he wasn’t exactly hitting me softly. I loved the challenge of the sport. The physicality. A person can’t be hiding in a shell when she’s in the center of a boxing ring.
The world of style and fashion still mesmerized me, and I looked for ways to stay involved with that industry. I quit my job at the Mexican restaurant and started working at a clothing store to help pay bills. In March 2011 I flew to France to cover Paris Fashion Week. I’d never been to France before, although I’d covered the Montreal Fashion Week a few months earlier and been exposed to French-speaking culture a bit.
A good friend of mine lived in Paris, and she offered to let me stay with her. She worked long days, so her boyfriend, Mathieu, a Frenchman, offered to take me on a tour of Paris shortly after I’d arrived. Mathieu had a little moped, and I sat behind him as he drove me pas
t all the famous sights—the Eiffel Tower, the canals and bridges along the Seine River, and the majestic flying buttresses of the Notre Dame Cathedral. Paris is an absolutely breathtaking city.
Early the next morning I needed to find my own way to the venue where Fashion Week was being held. I’d studied some French language guides before the trip but didn’t speak much more than a few words, so I immediately got lost in the Paris subway system. The people of Paris were much more gracious and helpful than in the tales I’d heard about Parisians, and I soon found my way to Fashion Week and connected with some photographer friends I knew from New York. They were having an equally confusing time navigating the city, so for the rest of the week we hung out as a team and got lost together.
The designers and industry insiders at Paris Fashion Week were surprisingly more relaxed than the people I’d encountered in New York. Maybe it’s the European sophistication thing, but everybody in Paris was down-to-earth and far more welcoming than I’d imagined. I loved meeting the models—they were so free, their styles were amazing, and their personalities were great fun.
The editors I was writing for wanted the articles to absolutely drip with description, so one of my pieces for Fashion Windows began with this illustrative opening, which I hoped met their expectations of liquidity, while offering a touch of humor.
Ann Demeulemeester [a designer] lavished undeniable beauty upon us at her show on Wednesday as models were transformed into hybrid birdlike creatures. Saturated in pure black, this collection focused on dramatic leather details, Amazon warrior reflections, and belts loaded with feathers as armor. Spiked hair dyed black and white echoed Cruella De Vil in the most sartorially pleasing of ways, and when it should have been intimidating, it was just simply a manifestation of beauty and strength.4
Still Lolo Page 13