Chapter 7 
Chapter 7 “When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first.”
—LUKE 11:24–26, NIV 2011
LISA: As Al mentioned in the previous chapter, I traveled to New Orleans one weekend with his family. They said they wanted to visit Judy and Jim, and that made sense to me. At the time, though, I was not very interested in a visit with the extended family. I just wanted to see Al.
When we pulled up to Judy and Jim’s house, I could hardly contain my excitement. I did not understand why Al had become more and more difficult to reach by phone over the previous weeks, but I was about to find out. He knew we were coming to visit, and when we arrived, he was on a date with someone else. That was his way of breaking up with me. When he and I speak publicly now about how God has redeemed and restored our relationship, Al admits he had no plans to continue dating me once he moved to New Orleans and that he did not have enough character or integrity to inform me of that decision. That hurt me more than anything I had experienced in my life to that point.
After the trip to New Orleans, my broken heart sent me into a complete free fall. Before Al left for New Orleans, we had talked about the possibility of a long-distance relationship. I really did believe him when he said he thought we could do that. Besides, I believed that our physical intimacy would keep him loyal to me.
Until that point in my life, my experience with men other than my father or my brother was basically limited to the man who molested me. I knew that as long as I was available to him in inappropriate ways, he paid attention to me. I think, subconsciously, I expected Al to respond the same way. As long as I was willing to maintain a sexual relationship with him, I reasoned, he would still be my boyfriend. After all, I told myself, he really was a great guy.
Was I ever wrong! Al turned out to be everything I thought he was not. In some ways, I began to view him as I viewed the man who abused me—as nothing more than a user. In other ways, even though I was furious with him, I could not let go of him. Clearly, he was trying to push me out of his life, but I could not get him out of my heart. As I struggled with my feelings for him, I made a blanket judgment against all males, deciding that they were only out to get whatever they could take from women and girls. I went through a season of completely giving up on the whole idea of love and never wanting to be involved with a guy again. But that did not last long.
For the next year and a half, I was a complete wreck. Most of that time, Al was still in New Orleans, but even after he came home, it was months before I heard from him. I was so devastated that I made one bad decision after another. I had little support from the people around me, and my mother said, “I told you so,” because she never really liked Al anyway. That only made matters worse, because even though I was angry with Al, I could not stand to hear anyone say anything negative about him. I had been so infatuated with him for so long that I could not just erase him from my mind. By then, I had been interested in him for three or four years and we had been involved in an intimate relationship; I could not simply pretend none of that had happened. I had been through many experiences I thought were positive with him, and in spite of the fact that he hurt me, I was not willing to start believing the worst about him, even though I had plenty of reasons to do so. My thoughts and feelings were very complicated. I did not understand them, so I just continued to wrestle with them.
I was powerless to do anything about the mess I was in, so I said to myself, “I am so messed up and miserable that I’ll just see how many other people I can mess up too.” Seething with anger and disappointment, I was determined to make others miserable too.
Seething with anger and disappointment, I was determined to make others miserable too.
When school started that fall, I skipped classes often and did poorly when I did go. In a frantic effort to find a substitute for my love for Al, I sought fulfillment in drinking to the point of passing out, having sex with anyone available, and chasing guys who seemed out of my reach. Though I am not proud of any of this now, I told myself at that time, “To hell with everything. I’ll just get satisfaction wherever I can.” I was driven and desperate, with no shame and no fear in my pursuit of guys. In fact, I even ended up in fights with other girls because I slept with their boyfriends. If I wanted a certain young man and knew he was involved with another girl, I went after him with greater intensity, as though the challenge made the conquest sweeter. I was in terrible shape, doing great damage to myself and to other people.
I believe now that my biggest problem at that time was thinking I knew what love was, when I did not really know anything about it at all. I had a gaping hole in my heart, and it cried out to be filled. I thought the way to meet that need was through relationships with guys. In fact, I dated people I did not even like, just to feel like I had a boyfriend, even if the relationship only lasted a week or so. Many times, as soon as a relationship got started, I wanted out of it. I could tell the person I was with was not going to meet my needs; that deep longing in my heart still was not satisfied. I did not know that Christ is the only one who offers perfect love or that only He could fill the emptiness inside me. I certainly did not know what healthy, mature Christian love between a man and a woman—even a young man and a young woman—was supposed to look like. Without that knowledge, I simply kept going from one guy to the next, looking for someone to make me feel significant. No one could do that, of course, because people are not made to function that way. Only God can heal a heart and give a person a sense of worth and value. Only He can lead people into healthy relationships and lay a foundation of true love in a person so all other relationships can be healthy too.
When spring of my junior year in high school rolled around, most of the girls turned their attention to the prom—what they would wear and, more importantly, who their date would be. I hated the thought of the prom!
One of my friends had been involved with the same boyfriend since ninth grade. She was in love with him and talked a lot about their plans for prom. I could not bear to admit to myself or to anyone else that I did not have a date, so I lied and told everyone Al was coming back to West Monroe for the weekend to take me to the dance. I so desperately wanted that to be true that I almost believed it, but I knew intellectually that no such thing was going to happen. I had not even spoken to Al in months.
I wanted people to think someone cared about me the way my friend’s boyfriend cared about her. I knew Al was not interested in me at that time, but I didn’t want anyone else to know. My sense of self-worth was so destroyed by then that I had no capacity to be honest with others about my life or about the pain that was raging in my heart.
I was not living in a fantasy world where Al was concerned. I was well aware of his feelings—or lack of feelings—for me. I just decided to lie to other people about the relationship. When the time came to go to the prom, I made up an excuse for why Al could not come, and I invited someone else at the last minute.
This was an absolutely horrible time in my life. I never consciously considered suicide, but I did do things like getting drunk and then getting behind the wheel of a car. More times than I can count, I remember waking up in my car, in a field, with no idea where I was, how I got there, or who was in the passenger seat next to me. I thank God now for His amazing protection, which kept me safe and prevented me from hurting anyone else.
At some point during those miserable, out-of-control days, I reached a time where the idea of having a steady boyfriend was more attractive than simply sleeping with one guy after another. In my heart, I knew no one would ever take Al’s place, but I decided to try to find someone who could serve as a consolation prize. A friend introduced me to her cousin—who was about six years older than I was—and we started dating. He acted as though he really cared about me, and that was important to me. For a while, I thought maybe I had “found someone.” My parents knew this young man’s family and thought they were nice people, so they basically thought my relationship with him was acceptable despite our age difference. But it wasn’t. I wish now that someone had tried to stop me from getting involved with him, but I know that had anyone interfered, I would have only clung to him more tightly. I was so rebellious and still so hurt over Al that no one could tell me anything; I was totally deaf to good advice.
My new boyfriend was old enough to buy alcohol and drugs, and at the time, I viewed that as a plus. Now that I had an “older man,” I reasoned, I had a new supplier of all the things Al once provided me with, including sex.
My boyfriend and I had been dating about nine months when I found out I was pregnant, several weeks before my seventeenth birthday. He was so excited; I was not. In fact, I was frightened, confused, and burdened by the whole situation.
“What am I going to do with a baby?” I asked myself, knowing I was completely unprepared for motherhood. But my biggest concern of all, and the question that ran through my mind nonstop, was, “What will Al think if he finds out about this?” Even though he had clearly broken up with me, I never got over him. No matter how many other guys came and went in my life, including my boyfriend at the time, I continued to hold out hope that Al would someday come back to me. If I had a baby, I reasoned, there was no chance that would ever happen.
No matter how many other guys came and went in my life, I continued to hold out hope that Al would someday come back to me.
The dominant message about abortion in those days was the same one we hear today: “A fetus is not a baby. It is just a glob of tissue.” I believed that message. After all, I was only sixteen. I was mature enough in my actions to get myself into that situation but not mature enough in my thinking to consider ways to get out of it. Besides, the people who told me it was just a glob of tissue were doctors and nurses. I trusted them with medical matters, never considering that they might be wrong. So I decided the only thing I could do was to abort it. I had no idea what I was doing and never thought about the consequences of my decision. I look back on those days now and can hardly believe how I processed the events of that time. The darkness in my life was overwhelming.
My boyfriend was furious with me for choosing to have an abortion. He loved me—at least he said he did—and wanted to marry me, even though I was not even seventeen. He wanted us to have our baby, but I could not do it. I did not love him; I still loved Al, and I was not willing to do anything that might keep him from choosing to resume our relationship.
Even though my boyfriend was angry about my decision, he was also extremely concerned about me—so much so that he sent his mother to the doctor’s office with me. After I went through with the abortion, everything was over between him and me. Despite the fact that he claimed to love me, I could not stand to be anywhere near him because he reminded me of what I had done.
Not too far from where Al and I now live is a billboard that has a picture of a little girl on it. Under that photo are the words Kill her now and it’s murder. Next to the picture of the girl is a photo of a fetus, with the words Kill her now and it’s abortion. I like that sign, in a painful kind of way, because it clearly connects abortion with the taking of a human life. I am sure that is one reason the repercussions of abortion are so devastating for so many women.
The abortion was more traumatic for me than I ever thought it would be. Anyone who tells a pregnant woman she can just get rid of a fetus and move on is dead wrong. Abortion is much more than a physical procedure; it is a major life decision with severe emotional consequences that often last for years and years. I still think about that time in my life—not every day, but fairly often—and wonder how I could have possibly even considered taking someone else’s life. I have to remind myself that I simply did not see it in those terms when I was a teenager. All I could think about was what a burden it would be to my life and the fact that if I married the baby’s father and that relationship did not work out, Al would not even think about reconnecting with me. I was so messed up!
In the weeks after the procedure, I laid low. For the first time in a long time, my level of interest in guys decreased. I equated guys with sex, and now I equated sex with pregnancy, and I did not want anything to do with that.
A few months later, the familiar ache in my heart began to resurface. I hated the aloneness of my life; I wanted to be with someone. I soon started dating a guy who lived down the road from me. He had a really cool car and I was impressed with that, but I remember little else about him. We dated for about eight months, but I did not have a physical relationship with him. I could not take that chance again.
He seemed to really like me and even mentioned marriage. I liked him, too, and for a while I went along with talking about the possibility of marriage. But in the end I did not like him that much. I still had high hopes of Al’s coming back into my life as my Prince Charming and sweeping me off my feet. I had no reason to believe that would happen. In fact, at the time I had every reason to believe it would not. But that did not keep me from hoping.