Chapter 6

Come, Thou Fount

{

In my mind, a pastor and a girl like me didn’t exactly make couple material. It was one thing to say I wanted to date someone like that Aaron Ivey guy at church. But to actually do it? To actually have that kind of relationship? To have that kind of boyfriend? A good one? I don’t know.

I mean, yeah, I was following God now, loving Him the best I knew how. He was truly moving mountains in my heart and life. I had come to know Him in ways I’d never experienced before. My whole sense of “normal” had begun to change. But still, this didn’t change the fact that I had failed Him bad. And being able to date a good guy so soon after my last ginormous failure would be a little too much to ask, now, wouldn’t it? That’s what I was thinking. How much good stuff do I need to do before I can expect, or even accept, this kind of blessing? (Is that anti-gospel or what?!)

But as God would have it, just a few months after my second pregnancy and miscarriage, that super-nice Aaron guy from church did ask me out on a date. Remember, he had asked me out a year earlier, but . . . I knew better then, and I’d turned him down. He may have thought I was what he wanted, but—if he only knew, huh?—he didn’t really want to attach himself that closely to somebody like me.

This time, though, when he asked, I said yes.

But in saying yes, I wasn’t only saying yes to a date. I was saying yes to a whole lot more. There’s no way a guy like him and a girl like me could just casually go out for a few months and then move on. It was either going to work forever or not at all. The only way I could agree for him to see me, I knew, was if I let him really see me. The real me. With all my dirty laundry to air. Then after he’d seen it, I assumed he’d do one of two things: he’d either run away as fast as he could, or he’d run to me and stay by my side forever. And if I had to guess which one he’d pick, I was pretty confident he’d be out. Either way, it would be up to him. He deserved to know what he was getting into.

So that’s what I did. Or at least that’s what I told him I was going to do. On our first date, I said I had a “few things” I needed to share with him. When I was ready. Which I wasn’t, quite yet. But when I was, I’d tell him. I would. I promise.

I felt in that moment as though I were Cinderella on a first date with the prince. On the outside, here was this beautiful woman in her fairy godmother gown who looked like she deserved to be keeping company with such a great guy; but on the inside, she was terrified he would find out her true identity. She knew she was as much princess material as I am American Idol material. Tone-deaf people like me don’t become superstar musical artists. And girls like Cinderella who’ve spent most of their lives covered in dirt—they don’t get the prince.

So, on one hand, Cinderella was this close to being able to enjoy the freedom of loving someone, and of being loved herself. She was this close to feeling totally comfortable in her own skin, confident, completely at peace, made new all over again. All except for one thing—this one huge thing—that was hanging there in the way.

Her identity was holding her hostage.

And I just couldn’t let that keep happening to me anymore. What I’d done had done enough. I couldn’t stand letting it keep doing it to me for the rest of my life.

So I told Aaron I’d let him know when I was ready to fill him in on all my junk and, to my disbelief, he just said . . . “Okay.”

That was it.

Okay.

He didn’t ask a single question about it. The conversation just moved on. Like nothing had happened.

Okay.

All right, then, so here we see one of the eight million ways that Aaron and I are different. If that had been me, I would at least have asked for some sort of hint. I mean, is what you need to tell me something about jail time? Drug use? Do you have an STD? Are you missing a pinky toe? Come on, give me something. Put me in the ballpark. Don’t leave me dangling to fill in the tantalizing blanks with whatever my wild imagination could think to scribble there.

And yet he didn’t ask me even one more question on the subject. Nothing.

I guess you wouldn’t be surprised to know, then, that the longer we dated, the more I knew I was falling in love with this man—this man who (side note here) had never kissed a girl in his life. And now here he was with me, the girl from church who (true story) everyone said he shouldn’t be hanging around with, the one whose “few things” she needed to share with him involved, among other things, a lot of past sexual sin. Oh, and two unplanned pregnancies. No biggie.

What had I done to deserve someone like this? Better question—what all had I done to never deserve someone like this? In my entire dating life, I had never felt with anyone what I felt with him. I almost had to teach myself how to date all over again, since I’d never dated anyone as a woman who was following Jesus.

In my previous life, we would have had sex on our first date. Or even before.

In my previous life, I would have based our relationship mostly on our physical chemistry.

In my previous life, I would have felt loved because of what we did when the sparks started flying.

But this was so different. At times I felt lost. I wondered how he felt about me. I wondered if his love was true. I wondered how to love him well. I wondered a lot of things. I’d just never been in a relationship with a guy where I was loved for me instead of for what I could do for him. It was wonderful and terrifying all at once. On one hand, I desperately wanted things to be different so I would know I was truly changed. I loved waking up each day to see where our relationship was going next. But on the other hand, I often wished for the old ways because . . . well, at least I knew how to handle those situations. Dating one of the church pastors was obviously not that kind of situation.

Like, when you’re dating a youth pastor, one of the things you find yourself doing is volunteering in the student ministry. So I was sort of in leadership now—sort of—since I was the girlfriend of one of the real leaders. Because wouldn’t that make logical sense? To most people? But the truth is, even though I was twenty-two, I remember sitting through the worship and the teachings as if I were one of the kids in the youth group. Technically I was one of the “leaders,” even though I was in the same boat spiritually as the students I was helping to lead. Because even though I’d practically grown up in church, all I’d really picked up during those years was a bunch of head knowledge. Experiencing real intimacy with God was all new to me.

I felt so inadequate. So out of my element. This dating a pastor was making me do things and feel things I’d never done or felt before.

I’d have to say this is where my journey of shame truly began. Or at least where it truly intensified. I was trying to live up to a title. Because, after all, if I was the youth pastor’s girlfriend, I should have it together, right? What if all these people I was hanging around so closely now—the high school girls, the other leaders, even the main pastors of the church—what if they knew what my life truly looked like seven years ago? Even one year ago?

So I began to stuff all the feelings and memories of my past deeper inside, hoping that if I said the right things and did the right things, I would surely look like a “good” youth pastor’s girlfriend. That way, maybe no one would ever ask me about my life before I met Jesus or the road I’d walked when I was younger. It would be my little secret between me and God. He had forgiven me, the Bible said, so now I just needed to act like a good Christian girl.

Block all the rest of it out.

But that wasn’t going to do. I’d already told Aaron I would tell him. And pretty soon, I couldn’t hold it in any longer.

At the end of May, we were on a trip with some of our students on South Padre Island, a resort town on the Gulf Coast, down at the southernmost tip of Texas. All spring I’d been asking God to confirm in me the moment when I should share my story with this man I was coming to love so dearly. I’d prayed for God to soften Aaron’s heart, to make him ready to hear what I knew would probably land on him with a shock, even though I guessed he’d probably been bracing himself for the worst. I could only imagine how someone who’d saved himself sexually for marriage would feel hurt and uncertain when he realized the one he loved had not.

I was so afraid of what would happen when I was completely honest with him. I was broken over the “me” that I was giving him. He was a man of God with a great future ahead of him. And to be honest, he might have just been better off with someone a bit more put together than me. Someone more holy. I had been following Jesus for a little over a year, not to mention I’d been pregnant nine months earlier. In my mind, Aaron was getting the short end of the stick in this relationship, and I wondered if he would think the same thing after I opened up to him. If he decided he didn’t want to be with me anymore at that point, it would’ve made all the sense in the world.

But as I was about to find out, love oftentimes doesn’t make sense. Not when God is involved.

What happened that night on the beach is one of the most special moments of my life. Rarely if ever have I so tangibly felt the love of the Father. We’d shared a supersweet time of worship on the beach with the students, we’d all taken Communion together, and then everyone had dispersed to their rooms. I stayed on the beach, undetected by everyone leaving. In my heart, I knew it was time. Tonight was the night I would lay it all out on the table. God made clear He was with me. It was time to let Aaron into my whole story.

I have no idea how long I sat there in the sand alone before he eventually came out looking for me. At the time, I was lost in praying, crying, begging God to make this easy. For me. For Aaron. Only in looking back does it make me giggle that God would choose a moment when we were out of town for me to do this. I mean, if things had gone bad, it would have made for an awkward bus ride back home.

But Aaron found me in the same spot where I’d been all night. He sat down in front of me, his back to the ocean. I think he knew, too—this was it. This was the moment when I would tell him all those things I couldn’t say five months earlier. I was finally ready.

Even as I type these words, I can still hear the waves crashing against the sand, like a metronome of my heart. One beat after another, one crash after another. The moon was our only light, as though we were alone on an island and the rest of the world had disappeared. The glow of God’s presence seemed to be all around us as we entered into one of the most intimate spaces we’d ever shared together. As the story poured out of me.

And I held nothing back.

I started from the beginning, just as I’ve done with you in this book, and all the shame and all the sorrow came bubbling over through tears that streamed down my face. I don’t remember how long I talked, but I do remember that Aaron never wavered—never looked surprised, was never annoyed, never upset. Nothing but love shone through his eyes. The whole time. Till I’d said everything I’d been wanting to say.

There. I’d done it. I had said it. All.

And what would happen next, I honestly didn’t know. Would our relationship continue? Maybe so, maybe not. I had been feeling as though it was about to go somewhere, somewhere really special, but it was all hanging on this moment. Would I prove to be simply too much for him to handle? I would have been devastated if that were the case, but I had come to terms with the fact that he might just walk away. And I’d decided I could live with that—because in opening up my heart and telling all the truth about myself to Aaron, I was doing more than just letting the man I loved into my mess; I was also trusting God with this story for the first time as well. Trusting Him enough to share my mess with someone I loved. And even if my ugly story wasn’t going to end up being safe in Aaron’s hands, I knew it was safe in God’s hands. I knew He would do something special with this moment, even if it didn’t lead to anything special anymore between Aaron and me.

In my sixteen years of marriage, I can only think of about five times when I’ve seen Aaron cry. But that night, as I was talking to him, as we held hands on the beach and looked into each other’s eyes, tears began falling down his cheeks. I could tell they weren’t tears of anger, disgust, or regret. He was crying real tears of sorrow. Crying with me. Compassion and love were overflowing as he rubbed my hands while I shared. The only time he let go of them was to wipe away tears from both of our cheeks.

After I finished, I stared at him through the tears in my own eyes and waited for the results. In my deepest of hearts, I wanted him to stay. But in my flesh, I knew he didn’t have to. No one would have blamed him if he’d bailed and decided this was just too much. People had already advised him to steer clear of girls like me, so it would’ve been no big deal for him to raise the white flag and leave the relationship.

But instead, his words to me set the precedent for my healing from shame that would continue over the next ten years. Because even though it would be a long time before I could share these parts of my story with anyone else, I knew in that moment this man would be by my side until one of us left this earth.

He looked at me and said, “You have nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed of, Jamie, because that’s not even the girl I know. You aren’t defined by your past. I love you.”

It was—and still is—the most Christ-like encounter I’ve ever experienced with another person in my entire life. It gave me a glimpse of what it felt like to be seen the way God truly sees me. I knew in my head that God delighted in me, that He loved me, that He cared for me, that He believed in me, that He forgave me, that He could (and would) use me for whatever good purpose He desired, that I was still capable of bringing Him glory. But my heart would often try to convince my head that those things weren’t true. Yet He used this indescribable moment with my future husband to proclaim to me through a human voice all the things about my true identity that He was already declaring. He used Aaron to be an example of the love of Christ for me.

I was changed forever that night.

By telling it all. And by receiving even more.

And for that reason, I’ve never felt another day of shame in front of Aaron about my past. Not once. We don’t even need to talk about it anymore. It’s not part of our normal day-to-day conversations. I just know. That night on the beach proved his love and acceptance of me. All of me. The good and the bad. It was done. And it was incredible—as anyone who’s ever felt the relief of getting their secrets out in the open will tell you.

I had known Jesus loved me and redeemed me, and I didn’t need Aaron to accept me to make any of that any more true. It sure did feel good, however, knowing I was loved by my Father in heaven in spite of myself, and also by the man I would eventually marry.

Yet even as loved and accepted as I felt in that moment, I continued to live in fear of what others would think of me and how I would be perceived. So in many ways—in most ways—I kept hiding the pain in my heart, along with the true experience of my redemption. It would still be many more years before I’d finally learn this important lesson: When we hide the mess we’ve been through, we also hide the redemption that God has lavishly poured on us.

We can’t proclaim His grace until we expose our mess.

Every Tuesday, as I’ve mentioned, I get the joy of spending two hours at the local jail with women who want to learn about Jesus, helping them figure out how to do life again once they are released. It’s a seven-week program. We talk with them about creating a résumé, dressing for a job interview, finding safe housing, getting a bus pass, finding a rehab center—all the things they need for re-entry into the world.

But we also talk with them about Jesus in one way or another. Some weeks we share Him through our prayers and conversations. Other weeks it’s through presenting the gospel to them in a way that hopefully makes sense. Because more than anything, we pray their lives will be changed. More than we want them to get good jobs, we want them to know how much they are loved, adored, cared for, and treasured by the Creator of the universe. We want them to know that their true freedom comes from Jesus.

One week after class, a few of us were chatting, and Sara (one of the women we’d met there) was sharing with us her plans for the next few years. After her release, she hoped to get into a certain program that would help her get back on her feet. She desperately wanted this to work, and I sensed she was actually hopeful for her future. She had been in jail before, been in rehab before, even been in the program before that she was now so eager to get into again.

But beyond hoping she was finally on the right track this time, she was wrestling with a much deeper question as well. Would God, when He looked at her—when she was on the outside—would He still see her crimes? Would He still expect her to pay time for her sins, the way she was doing now in jail?

Makes sense, doesn’t it, why she would ask that. Why wouldn’t the same principle that held her in jail translate into her future? Why wouldn’t she need to keep paying for her sins until a holy God decided she’d paid enough?

She was certainly right about one thing. Our sins do need to be paid for. But not by us, we told her. That was done by Jesus on the cross. We need to believe in what He’s done and stop trying to do the impossible ourselves. Because when we are followers of Jesus, the only thing God sees when He looks at us is the righteousness of Christ, not the guilt of our sins.

For a split second, I saw something in her eyes I hadn’t seen before. A sigh of relief went almost visibly through her body. You could tell the gospel had clicked with her.

Freedom. Forgiveness. No more guilt and shame.

And even as we were explaining this to Sara, her reaction reminded me how I’d felt, too, in my early years of following Jesus. I’d known I was covered in His righteousness. I’d known I didn’t deserve it and couldn’t do anything to earn it. I’d known salvation was a free gift from God. But sometimes I wondered if I could be good enough to take away all the bad things I had done in my life.

Truly, Sara is just like us. As a follower of Jesus, she is free. Clean and forgiven. Righteous before God. When He looks at her, He doesn’t see her past; He sees only the girl He loves because of what Jesus did over two thousand years ago.

It would be years before I truly understood this.

Thirteen months after that conversation on the beach, Aaron and I would be married. Throughout our dating and engagement, we had grown in our love, and I had grown in my relationship with the Lord. Yet as much as I felt loved by Aaron, in the back of my mind I always felt so used and dirty. I just couldn’t seem to let it go. I knew God had redeemed my life, but it didn’t change the fact that I had been sexually active since I was sixteen years old. Neither God nor Aaron ever did anything to make me feel condemnation, but I so desperately wished I could change my past.

As our wedding day approached, I started to become anxious about the intimate aspects in our marriage and what it would be like when we started sharing those together. I worried that I would know too much, or would seem too comfortable with it that first night. I desperately wanted our wedding night to feel new and different and special. While all my friends who hadn’t had sex were praying for things to go well on their wedding night, praying for it not to hurt too much, I was praying in the other direction. I was asking God to strip away any memory of sex, to make me uncomfortable, in fact, in the intimacy of the first night. I wanted Him to literally make me feel as though this was the first time I had ever done it.

I had shared some of these concerns with my friend Rachel. And the night before our wedding, she gave me one of the sweetest gifts ever—a letter that spoke so deeply to my heart. I still have it to this day. I cherish her words to me so much. And while I know this letter is a little long I promise it’s worth it, and I have a feeling you might really need to hear it all, the way I needed to hear it that night.

It went like this. After apologizing for not having enough money to buy me anything else—Ha! We were college students then!—Rachel wrote:

God gave me something very precious that I believe He wants me to give to you for your wedding gift. The other day I was just flipping through my Bible and these words jumped off the page. God spoke volumes to me as I read this passage in Ezekiel. As I thought and prayed about what I could give you as a gift, God spoke to my heart and told me to give you these words from HIS love letter. I pray that God speaks directly to your heart words of hope, peace, and love. You are awesome, and He wrote these words for you . . .

She then wrote out the entire passage from Ezekiel 16:8–14, which I’m going to print out for you, too, because whatever God says in the Bible is a whole lot more important than anything else I’ve been trying to write here.

Ezekiel 16 is a prophetic description of how God treated His people after many generations of their idolatry and rebellion, enough that He’d been forced to discipline them severely by allowing the Babylonians to invade and conquer their land, hauling them off into captivity. So in these verses, He speaks to them as though they’d been an adulterous woman, yet He does it in language that could only come from a Husband who wanted nothing other than to see them clean and pure and restored to wholeness again.

Here you go, then . . .

Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your naked body. I gave you my solemn oath and entered into covenant with you, declares the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine.

I bathed you with water and washed the blood from you and put ointments on you. I clothed you with an embroidered dress and put leather sandals on you. I dressed you in fine linen and covered you with costly garments. I adorned you with jewelry: I put bracelets on your arms and a necklace around your neck, and I put a ring on your nose, earrings on your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. So you were adorned with gold and silver; your clothes were of fine linen and costly fabric and embroidered cloth. Your food was fine flour, honey and olive oil. You became very beautiful and rose to be a queen. And your fame spread among the nations on account of your beauty, because the splendor I had given you made your beauty perfect, declares the Sovereign Lord. (Ezek. 16:8–14 niv)

I’m getting chills at this point, as I was reading. I had been praying such crazy prayers, I thought, realizing there was no way God could truly answer them in the way I was hoping He would. And yet right here in the Bible was my Father in heaven, talking to someone just like me, telling me exactly what He plans to do with His children who’ve made such a mess of their lives that they can’t clean themselves up any other way, unless He does it for them—something He not only can do, but actually wants to do because He loves us so much.

Rachel finished her letter like this . . .

I know that God has made you a new creation—it is so evident. God has restored you from the pain and regrets of your past. You are completely pure in the sight of the God who has created you. He has washed you, adorned you, and put a crown on your head and called you beautiful. Isn’t that so incredible? Isn’t HE so incredible? We serve such a faithful God, who takes so much delight in the work of restoration.

Tomorrow as you dress in your wedding garments, remember how Christ dressed you. The reward He has given you is priceless—an incredible, godly man who loves Christ and you. I pray that your love for each other grows over the years. You and Aaron have been such a testimony to Matt and I. I am so honored that you would let me be such a special part of your wedding. I praise God for you and for our friendship. You are so awesome, and I love you so much. I pray that tomorrow is the most wonderful day of your life and the beginning of a thousand more! Thank you for everything! Happy Wedding! Have sweet dreams! —Rachel

Whew! Huh?

Rachel got me. She knew me. She understood how desperately I wanted to be a new creation sexually. But what she was trying to remind me—what I had forgotten—was that God had already done it, more completely than I could ever ask or dream. He had made my whole person a new creation by doing something only He could do, something He does because of the gospel. As the Bible says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17). Because of Jesus, and only because of Jesus, I was able to hold my head high as I put on my white wedding dress to marry the man of my dreams.

Aaron, of course, never knew me during my wild and crazy days. He only knew what I had told him. (Which, I’m sure you believe me by now, is more than enough!) But I knew the great work God had done in my heart, as did a handful of people in the church on that day. My parents, for instance, had walked through so much with me, and they stood there to testify to the truth of how He’d made a new creation of my life. My best friend, Amy, who knew all the stories from my past, stood beside me as I proclaimed my love for Aaron and how far God had brought me in my walk with Him.

That’s why, although every bride is able to remember the details and moods and feelings of her wedding day, I had something a little extra to celebrate as the doors of the church opened and the bagpipes began to play “Come, Thou Fount,” a song that meant so much to me then, and even more to me now.

My dad and I looked down the aisle to my waiting groom, while everyone stood. I felt so proud of the woman I had become. I could feel my dad beaming with pride, too, for what God had done in both of our lives. Although not everyone in the room knew where I’d been, they all knew where I was going and that Jesus had changed my life.

As I walked toward my future husband, I sang the song in my heart that, to this day, I can hardly sing without my eyes welling up with tears.

Come, Thou fount of every blessing

Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;

Streams of mercy, never ceasing,

Call for songs of loudest praise.

Teach me some melodious sonnet,

Sung by flaming tongues above.

Praise the Mount! I’m fixed upon it,

Mount of Thy redeeming love.2

Do you know it? Can you hear it? You want to just sing along with me? Come on . . .

Here I raise my Ebenezer;

Hither by Thy help I come.

And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,

Safely to arrive at home.3

This is the part of the song—this next part—where, every time I sing it, the tears begin flowing. For although I grew up in the church, I was truly a stranger to God until He sought me out. I knew a lot about Him, but I had been so far from Him. Still, He brought these incredible words to life—in my life—just as I hope He’s done in yours.

Jesus sought me when a stranger,

Wandering from the fold of God.

He, to rescue me from danger,

Interposed His precious blood.4

And then that last verse. Oh, that last verse . . .

O, to grace how great a debtor

Daily I’m constrained to be.

Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,

Bind my wandering heart to Thee.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,

Prone to leave the God I love;

Here’s my heart, Lord, take and seal it,

Seal it for Thy courts above.5

I can’t think of a more perfect love song I could have sung to my heavenly Father as I made the walk down the aisle to my husband. We had chosen this song because we knew how God had rescued both of us from danger by sending His Son for us. We knew we were prone to wander, and we were begging Him to seal our hearts, both to Himself and to one another. We were committing our lives to Him as the Savior of our souls and the author of our salvation, wanting to love Him and love each other well for the rest of our days.

With the possible exception of that night on the beach with Aaron, never before had God’s kindness been more personal to me than when I stood with my groom in that church. When God changed my life and I started following Jesus, I never imagined He would lavish such love on me by giving me a man who not only loved me dearly, but who also saw Jesus in me and not my past.

I was finally learning to receive God’s loving-kindness.

If I’d only known how sweet it could be.

But you know what? I still didn’t realize even then—even standing next to Aaron, even with my redemption on such dazzling display in that life-defining moment—just what Christ had died to do for me, how complete and utterly boundless His grace is for me. It would be years before I dealt fully with the shame that entangled my heart, while I continued to believe if I could just act the part, I could overcome all the bad stuff by doing all the good stuff.

What I quickly learned, however, was that acting the part is suffocating to the soul. There’s only one way to end the bondage and finally settle into freedom. Would I have the courage to open myself even wider than I’d already done, so that I could be more contented and confident in Him than I’d ever been?