Hopeless Romantic
I am a hopeless romantic. Since as far back as I can remember I just wanted to be loved. I grew up watching Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, and even better, Titanic over and over again. I have probably seen Titanic about 100 times—I wish I was exaggerating. Being this way hasn't always worked out to my benefit, and in many ways it has.
Here's how it hasn't worked out to my benefit. Some of you reading this can probably relate to a lot of what I am about to tell you. Middle school was the start of my quest to find out what love was all about. When I started middle school I was overweight and tall. All of my friends were shorter and skinnier. I felt overlooked, so I tried to make myself look more like the other girls. I prayed that God would stunt my growth and make me lose weight. Well, God didn't stunt my growth but I managed to take control of my weight. I just didn't eat; I became anorexic. I was so happy to be dropping weight fast, and was anorexic from seventh grade until I was in high school. I was a part of the dance program at school and I remember my dance teacher seeing me in my leotard and asking me what had happened. One moment I was overweight and within a summer I became skinny. Meanwhile, my grandmother knew something was wrong because I had stopped eating the dinner she prepared for me each day; my dance teacher knew it too; and so did my pediatrician. I remember like it was yesterday my pediatrician’s amazement as she looked at my chart and saw the weight I had been at my last appointment. She asked me how I managed to lose the weight so fast and I know I lied to her. She just told me to try not to lose any more weight. I could see in her eyes that she was concerned.
I began to be more confident, and boys started to notice me. One guy asked me if I had always been at the school because he had never seen me before. I was in eighth grade and about to graduate, and he hadn't seen me the whole time we were in middle school together. That's just how invisible I was.
When I graduated from middle school, I vowed that I would be a new person, a cool, popular person. Everyone was going to notice me and maybe I would get a boyfriend. I did become pretty popular in high school and part of that was because my brother used to go there. With this new attention I really became full of myself. I got my first boyfriend; my first love, I thought. I thought he was it, the one. At only fifteen, I thought I had met my future husband. (I'm embarrassed to even write this now.)
This boyfriend of mine, needless to say, was not the one. That relationship is one of my biggest regrets. I was not ready for ‘love’, and that quickly became obvious. I told my mom about me and this guy, and she couldn't believe that I was seeing someone, since I was so young. She scolded me while tears ran down her face. I remember the feeling of being in trouble, but it was different than any time before. This was different, I was in a place I knew I never wanted to be again. Then she made a terrifying request that shook me to my bones. She asked me for my boyfriend’s contact information, she was going to speak to his mother about this. I was petrified, now his mother was going to know about me.
My mother was disappointed in me, I crushed her world it seemed. What came next changed my life forever. My mother found out from my boyfriend’s mother that my boyfriend was seeing someone else and she had no idea who I was. When she broke the news to me after school the next day, I was devastated. At that point I realized that this world was a cruel, cruel place. It was against me and I had to fight to come out on top. I felt betrayed, small, stupid and unfit for the world. Here I was with the purest motives, trusting someone with everything, thinking that this was the best time of my life and that I was in love, and it turned out to be the darkest time of my life, the most traumatic. It was worse than a bad dream, this was reality.
I continued my search for love, but this time I was going to be smart about it. If the world wanted to play, well, I would be the best player. That's exactly what I became, a player. If the world wasn't going to be loyal - why should I? I thought this way I wouldn't get hurt, but again I was wrong. The relationships that followed only got worse. I came out on top sometimes, but most of the time I was the loser. I endured hurt after hurt after hurt. My heart got harder and harder until it was ice cold. This went on until I was twenty years old.
Now here's how being a hopeless romantic worked out to my benefit. I grew weary of the life I was living and I knew God was watching me the whole time. I'm not quite sure how I managed to shut God’s voice out of my head and continue to live the life I had been living. I grew up in the same church since birth and knew what it looked like to be a disciple of Christ from living with my mother who was one. I knew after every sinful act that God was watching me and was not pleased. I would pray regularly that I wouldn't die, because I knew I was headed straight for hell. I had recurring nightmares that Godzilla was chasing me, and I would hide but it would always show up to devour me. A lot of times I woke up in the middle of the night from these dreams. I was running from something big in my life, and now I believe it was God trying to get my attention.
When I had nothing else to give the world, when it had taken everything I had, I finally surrendered my will and put up the white flag. One morning, I woke up after crazily partying the night before and said out loud, "I think I’m done now" as I was hung over, with a pounding headache. I could hear my mother getting ready for church, it was Sunday morning and I was going to go to church as usual. Surprisingly I had never stopped going to church even though I wasn't ready to commit to the life of a disciple. As I saw it, I wasn't ready to give up all my vices. I thought, If I become a Christian, how will I find love? There aren't many Christian men out there, so I could be single for the rest of my life.
Those were just some of the thoughts I had, but I still got up out of bed and went to hear the Word. There was a divine reason for going that my mom nor I had no clue of. We arrived at our usual location for service and no one was there, so I was sure we were going back home, but my mom was determined for some reason. So we drove for about 30 minutes to another location and there was everyone meeting in a combined service with another region of the church. God must have set this up, because the message was speaking directly to me, piercing my heart, and convicting me like no other. A couple of days later, I contacted my former youth ministry worker, Carolyn Thomas. She didn't answer, so I left her a voicemail, hung up and wept like a baby. I knew that this was the beginning of a whole new life for me.
I started to get together with a couple of women from my church to study the Bible. The things I learned blew my mind. I couldn't understand just how I could have been going to church for twenty years and not have known so much about what the Bible really said, and this is from hearing a ton of sermons. God was revealing things to me I had never known before – now it was personal. I learned about the cross and how Jesus gave up his life for me, and what was I doing? Turning my face away from him and walking away. I was "doing me" and hurting God, yet he still wanted to have a relationship with me. Now that's True Love.
I was also observing the women studying the bible with me. I wanted their glow, their undeniable joy that just radiated from them. I eventually got that glow—I was glowing because I was falling in love, but with God this time around.
Before I had decided to study the Bible, there was a guy I had been seeing on and off. During my studies I couldn't help but think of calling him, to give him a chance at learning this good news. I pulled up to the house where I was going to have my study, and I was early so I called the guy. He was not interested to say the least, and even told me that he hoped I would drown when I got baptized. That shocked me so much that I don't even remember the rest of the conversation. Being still a work in progress, I cursed him out at the top of my lungs as I sat in my car.
I couldn't believe what had just happened over the phone, and now I had to walk into the study. I was embarrassed because here I was, trying to change, but I had just cursed out this guy moments before. Before we started the study, someone asked me if I was okay and I just broke down; I was so hurt because I was still losing at this thing called life. Satan was trying to take me out; he didn't want me to turn my life over to God. From that time on my Bible studies were very frequent because I wanted to get baptized soon; I wanted out of this life. One week later, on March 28, 2010 I was baptized into Christ. It was the best decision I have ever made in my life and a decision I will never regret. So you see, being a hopeless romantic paid off—I became hopelessly devoted to God. I was in love, and soon afterward I met Patrick Genova.