At the end of my junior year in high school I had totally come to the end of myself. I had spent a year and a half doing everything imaginable. I won't lie, in the midst of my drunken binges, I thought I was having the time of my life. My friends at that time, like me, were in a stage of feeling unnoticed, less than, abandoned, and so we just spent our nights and weekends having fun. In my mind, they weren't doing anything wrong, they still had good lives in the morning, but I felt like my world was crumbling beneath my feet. During that time I was stupidly courageous, and (in my mind) oh so funny , and for that short time all my problems and insecurities would disappear. But then the morning would come, and I would find myself filled with shame, remorse, and self loathing. With each binge, the self loathing would be a little worse than the time before, until I just wanted to die. It was at that moment that I fell on my face before God and prayed the most heartfelt prayer of my life. Through many tears, I prayed for forgiveness and for God to save me. I told Him that I couldn't change on my own, that he would have to send help. I told Him I did not feel loved or lovable and for him to please send someone that could help me experience His love in a tangible way. God in his infinite mercy did just that. Not only did God provide me with amazing friends at that time, who though they were in a similar predicament as me, were super supportive and motivating, but He also gave me my knight in a flannel shirt!
My friends during my senior year and even my remaining friends from my junior year were so loving and supportive of me. They would listen to my stories, and encourage me always. We all had big dreams together. We would ride around in our cars or lay out at the pool and just dream and laugh. Many of my friends during that period were from Signal Mountain and were friends with Dudley. So they were very encouraging when I said I wanted to date him. Dudley and I had actually been friends since the 9th grade. We even went on one date in 10th grade (he got mad at me because I changed our plans for our second date and that ended that). However, we remained good friends. Dudley always made me laugh. He was just the nicest guy, and he was always so kind to me. I was determined that he was going to be mine. This felt different than my pursuit of other boys. One thing I really loved about Dudley was that he would not let me tell him what to do. He was just so strong, not just physically, but mentally. He knew what he liked and what he didn't like, what he would do and wouldn't do, and there was no pretense about him. He was totally opposite of me in that way. Even after my heartfelt cry to the Lord, unknown to me at the time, I was still very much a people pleaser. I was still looking for that love and acceptance that I had never felt before. I knew my only hope was God, but I was still so broken, that it would take many more years to put me back together. One of my good friends at the time was very close to Dudley. They had been childhood friends and her boyfriend was one of Dudley's good friends, so immediately I put them to work. There were many nights, my friend and I would drive to Dudley's house in Summertown at 2 o'clock in the morning, honking our horn, and getting him to come out and talk with us. One time he went riding with us and I told him that I knew someone that liked him, but that he may not like her because she was kind of chubby! haha! To which he replied, "Well, I probably wouldn't like her if she's fat!" I was like, "I know her better than anybody else." (wink, wink) He continued to act like he didn't know I was talking about myself, but later, he agreed to meet us at a football game. From that day on, there was not one day that we were apart. We had so much fun!!! Four wheeling, hiking, riding around trying to get scared, sledding, bowling, going to movies, hanging out at his house, hanging out with our friends, and the list goes on and on. I immediately fell in love with Dudley's family as well, especially his mom, Betsy. She was the closest person to a saint that I have ever met. She was just so amazing. She worked three jobs when I first met her, but even doing that, she would always invite me to dinner or to family holidays, and I immediately felt a part of their family. I was getting to see first hand in Betsy true holiness. She was so Christlike. She was a nursing instructor in the day, and on the weekends she would sit all weekend with one of her daughter's friends that had been hit on a motorcycle and was in a coma like state. She would take care of the elderly or the sick. I don't think I ever saw her sit down for more than 10 minutes. She was always serving someone. God was answering my prayers in such a big way. However, even though I was sincere when I asked God to save me, I guess I still thought that I could run my life better than He could. How stupid and arrogant is that? I think many twenty year olds don't want to fully surrender to Christ at that age because they think He will take away their fun or they don't want to give up their freedom. What I didn't realize and they don't realize is the only way to be truly free is to surrender every aspect of your life, only then will you know true freedom. But I was still stubborn, and even though I had quit binge drinking, my heart was still very sinful. It was impossible to clean myself up on my own, but that is what I set out to do. I read every Christian self help book you could find, and tried to imitate the people in those books. I watched Christian television almost every night. I watched my future mother-in-law so carefully, because I wanted to be just like her. I was like a sponge, but my heart was still wanting to please everyone more than I wanted to please God. So, like my younger years, if I was with Christian friends, I would walk the walk and talk the talk, and if I was still with friends, that like me still didn't know who they really were in Christ, I would cuss, gossip, drink, and do all the things I did before (just not as bad as before). I was literally still two different people. I think my mom was the same way. To some people, she was the most angelic Christian women, and then there were times she would do things totally opposite of her character. I hated the incongruency in both of us, but it didn't stop us. We didn't have clear boundaries, and we just always wanted the acceptance of everyone around us. We believed in God, feared God, but we did not feel worthy of God's love and forgiveness. Therefore, there was still a lot of pretense to my Christian walk.
However, I was totally fooled into thinking I was living the way God wanted me to live, and after six years of dating Dudley, we were finally to be married. That was one of the happiest days of my life. I believed I was totally in God's will, that I was following Him closely, both Dudley and I were in church, and the first part of my dream was coming true. Little did I know that I was still making the same mistakes I had made all my life. I was looking to God as my big Santa Clause in the sky, and instead of truly pursuing Him, I was really pursuing the American Dream. I was looking to Dudley for my security, instead of Christ. I was still trying to look the part of a Christian wife, but without any true surrender. I had almost totally quick drinking by then, thinking that meant surrender, which now I see as being so immature in Christ. Christ was calling for a total surrender of the heart, for me to believe His words, to look to Him for my security and perfect love, and not to put all of that on my new husband. Our pastor that had done our premarital counseling had told us that he predicted we would have two problems in our marriage, my deep insecurity and money. He couldn't have been more dead on. That whole message of not being good enough continued to plague my mind. Every little suggestion Dudley would make on how to improve our lives or marriage I took as deep criticism and the assurance that he would definitely stop loving me, just like everybody else. My father left his baby daughters, other boyfriends had left, Jesus couldn't possibly still love me after all the horrible things I had done, and Dudley would soon discover how unlovable I was, and he would surely leave too. It was a hard road, but Dudley stood strong and has hung in there with me all these years, loving me in spite of my brokenness.
Because of my brokenness and insecurity, I would put God and Dudley through so many tests. I wanted to present the image of a perfect Christian couple setting up their first home, and I would do that by spending loads of money that we did not have. With Dudley being very good with money, and me spending everything we had, it put a definite strain on our family of two. Dudley had decided to go back to school to get his degree, and I was a beginning special education teacher that was really struggling to stay at her job. I loved my students, but I was a terrible disciplinarian! Once again my people pleasing was rearing its ugly head, and I just could hardly bring myself to discipline my students for fear they wouldn't like me. Needless to say, they were able to totally run over me. I would go home every day begging Dudley to quit, I was so miserable. I'm sure that brought him great stress and anxiety, but slowly things got better, and we passed that hurdle. Our marriage was solid because we truly loved each other and were serious about our commitment that we made before God and our friends and family, and yet we would have many struggles along the way. I wanted control over everything. I wasn't willing to surrender to Dudley or to God, because I still had major trust issues. I was still trying to earn my salvation, earn love, and earn acceptance. It was a daily battle. All my victories were always overshadowed by my failures. Two steps forward, three steps back was the course of my life.
Dudley and I immediately wanted children, even though we couldn't afford them. After trying for years with no success, I went to a fertility doctor and discovered I had Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome and was not ovulating regularly. Great news for a girl that was all about trying to achieve and feeling like a failure! My closest friends were getting pregnant left and right, and some already had children, and I just knew this was my punishment for being so horrible in my teen years. My thinking always went to the worst about God. He was still angry with me, maybe he hadn't forgiven me. The shame was still buried deep. As the fertility treatments started, I was blessed with two very special people who cheered me on each week, my dear friend Melanie, and the amazing nurse at the fertility clinic. She would call me Angel and Lovey each week, and told me she was sure it was going to happen, as did Melanie. Finally, after years of trying and two years of fertility treatments, I became pregnant and gave birth to a precious almost 10 pound baby boy, Ben Louis Cole Green. I had never known a greater love. I think I loved him so much it hurt. He was perfection. His birth gave me hope that maybe God was for me and still loved me. Dudley's love became more apparent at that moment as well. I could feel his approval and love for me in a big way, and it brought me reassurance that maybe he did love me as well. When you base whether or not you are loved by your successes and achievements, you are leaving yourself open to so much pain, and a wavering faith. I was like the believer that the Bible describes as being tossed by the waves, not solidly grounded in Christ's love. So in my mind, when things were going my way, according to my plans, God loved me, and when things went wrong, God never loved me and He was still punishing me for all the wicked things I had ever done. Just like before, when I totally rebelled against God, my tendency was to do that again, but in a much more subtle way. It was a very slow fade. Just like the song lyrics, "It's a slow fade, when you give yourself away.
https://youtu.be/QASREBVDsLk
Right after God had given me the desires of my heart, which was an amazing husband and a beautiful, healthy baby boy, I was dedicated to be faithful to Him. We were in church, I was studying my Bible, and that would continue through the birth of my next adorable, healthy baby, our red headed Jackson Creed Green, who brought so much laughter to our family. When things were good, I felt close to God. However, just like a spoiled child, if I was not getting my way, I would turn to other things for my happiness. Things like food, or shopping, or looking to my kid's accomplishments as my self worth as a mother. I was starting the same cycle all over again, totally unknown to me at the time. I was trying to please people again, and teaching my kids to do the same. I wasn't teaching them about the unconditional love of God, about not earning salvation, but accepting it as a free gift, of learning to love God because of who He is and what He did for us on the cross, not for what he could give us or do for us, and I was totally trying to be my own god, trying to control everyone and everything (which by the way is exhausting).
I believe God lets us totally get to the end of ourselves so He can finally become God to us. Both of my pregnancies were extremely hard with hormone treatments and shots, violent sickness, Fifth's disease with Cole, placenta privea with Jackson, (which led to steroid shots, total bed rest, panic attacks, and a C-section), and during all of this Dudley going back to school, and a lack of money. Shortly after this time period, Dudley started having extreme anxiety (I wonder why?) and I had a near death experience that led me to being in ICU for weeks and a surgery that would lead to many other health problems through the years. With all the wonderful things that were happening to us, our boys, our time with family and friends, we would become neglectful of those good things, as we dwelled on the bad things that had happened to us. After all God had brought us through, you would think our faith would be rock solid, but instead, at least for me, I was always fearful of what God would do next. That fear of God and not trusting His goodness slowly crept back into my life. God had saved my life not once, but twice. He had given me a faithful, strong husband and two amazing boys. I had discovered I had a brother from my dad that I had never known. We were part of a huge loving family. We both had meaningful jobs. However, instead of praising God every day and living as His faithful child, I thought I could run our lives better. When I look back, I think how could I be so stupid? I thought the same thing as I just completed the first 16 chapters of the Bible and studied God's chosen people being led out of Egypt, out of slavery, on their way to the Promised Land, with God performing all these amazing miracles and provision along the way, and yet they would turn their backs on God and start worshipping man made idols. Who would do that? I'll tell you who, me! How could I not see God being my Father all along? How could I not see that he saved me from pregnancies before marriage, from being killed the many times I drove drunk, from being arrested, from being barren, from poverty, from marrying the wrong person, and most of all from being lost for the rest of my life? How could God save me from all of that and me not trust Him enough to totally surrender my life to Him? Was it pride? Was it fear from being rejected so many times before by so many people, especially men? Was that feeling of abandonment keeping me from experiencing the love of the one who would never abandon me? Was it from unforgiveness in my heart? Or was it just because I was so stubborn and spoiled that I wanted to run my own life? I don't really know, all I know is that now, I finally want to surrender. I want to have a genuine relationship with God, just because He loves me and laid down His life for me. I want to know Him better and trust Him more, in the good and the bad. I know now that nothing I do or don't do could earn my salvation, that instead, it is God's grace filled, undeserved gift to me. All I have to do to qualify is to believe and trust. I am not rejected or abandoned, but fully known and fully loved. I am the daughter of the Almighty King and nothing can take that away from me. I am not fatherless, but Father filled. I am so thankful to be His, and I want everyone else to feel His love and redemption. We have a good, good Father. I pray you find Him for yourself.
