How a Crush on a Boy and the Book of Galatians Saved my Life
I told
myself I wasn’t going to the class because the boy I liked was also going.
Mature people aren’t motivated by such trivial things. I told myself that my
reasons for going were genuinely spiritual, founded on a desire to make friends
my age in a city I was having trouble adjusting to. However, any day I showed
up and he happened to skip, I felt my heart sink a bit.
But I kept
going.
Anyone who has ever had a serious
crush is very aware of its spiritual aura. You know the heart-racing, the cold
sweats, and the energy that keeps you awake at night and messes with your
appetite.
You also know what a powerful
motivating force it is. You’ve experienced the pull of the unseen hand that
drags you wherever he is. Even the
best of us can’t keep from succumbing to its power even slightly.
I’ve heard of many stories where
God uses the power of a crush to draw someone towards Himself.
He’s sneaky like that.
The fact that He used a crush on me
doesn’t bother me a bit. I actually think it’s a brilliant marketing tactic.
Especially when the end result was far better than a boyfriend.
Galatians. I’d read it probably 14
times by that point. I was also on my 5th reading of the Bible. I
was very spiritual. I’d also never
done anything bad. I’d never had sex, gotten drunk, tried drugs. I was an A-B
student. Never got fired—in fact every boss I’d ever had loved me because I was
always on time, never showed up hung-over, and had a reputation for being a
hard worker. I had a more-or-less good relationship with everyone I knew. My
parents were proud of me, my siblings adored me, and my community thought I was
cream of the crop.
Basically, I was awesome.
And when I read that and think of
the discord of what I was feeling while all that was going on, I want to reach
for my trash bin and vomit up my lunch.
Here’s why.
While that pretty picture was being
displayed to the world, I was miserable. I was really good at faking happiness. Anyone who knew me would have
called me a happy person. I was a good person and never got in trouble but
every day I lived I wished to God I could do something really bad. I watched
the girls who showed up to church in strapless dresses and while everyone
around me scoffed and whispered about them, I secretly longed to be wearing one
of those dresses, even as I scoffed and whispered to keep up appearances.
I righteously judged people who
said cuss words, got drunk, or made-out with their boyfriend. While I judged, I
longed to let off a string of every swear word I could think of, get seriously
hammered, and suck someone’s face off.
I had sticky notes of scripture
verses pasted all over my bedroom. I read my Bible every morning and often
every night. I kept my promises and did what I was supposed to do.
And I hated myself.
I wanted to die. Literally, I
wanted to kill myself. That’s not hyperbole.
And the worst part was I didn’t
understand why I was miserable. I was doing everything right. I should feel
good and be happy and everything should be going right. The boy I liked should
like me back and I shouldn’t feel guilty for sneaking off to a class on the
book of Galatians.
This is where Galatians enters. As
many times as I’d read it, I had never understood it. As the teacher taught, I
remember thinking, “What? This is in the Bible? How come I’ve never seen it?”
It blew me away.
First of all, I found out that all
the good things I was doing were completely worthless, pointless, and
absolutely contributed nothing to my relationship with God or had any affect on
how he felt about me.
Now, this news could have been
defeating. I could have thought “Really? All that work for nothing?” But all I
felt was relief. It felt so good to find out that I’d failed the test and that
it had absolutely no impact on my final grade.
Second, I found out I was a failure.
No matter how good I’d been, I was a total screw up. I was no better than a
woman who’d spent her whole life prostituting her body for fun. That part was a
bit painful to swallow and is still a little difficult to get my mind around,
but it was a good pain. The kind of pain that produces something far greater in
the end. Like surgery.
Soon I was no longer going to that
class to be with my crush. Soon I was going to that class because it’s where I
was learning about this loving, amazing God who wanted to hang out with me even
though I was a pompous ass and didn’t even want to hang out with myself. I
realized He’d long ago planted this seed in my heart—a seed that showed itself
as dissatisfaction, anger, and fear—and at the right moment gave me water in the
form of a class on Galatians to finally get that seed to start growing roots.
Even though today I’ve read the
Bible 7 times and just finished reading Galatians for a number somewhere in the
20s, I feel like that little seed only has small roots and maybe a little
sprout. But the
freedom of being loved by a God who wants me even though I did nothing to make
myself appealing—In fact, I’ve done a lot of things to make myself
unappealing—is the most amazing thing in the whole, wide world.
It’s the sort of experience that is
more spiritual and far more lasting than a thousand crushes.
And I don't have to fake happiness anymore.
(To be continued.)