Stats:

29/6’5/265lbs, lift 3x/week, pray and study the bible daily, church 2x/week. Read the sidebar. Homeowner, small business owner. Family is involved and well-known in the community.

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Preface:

I'm not a writer and I often have difficultly putting my thoughts on paper in a clear, chronologically-coherent manner; ergo, I encourage any of you who'd like to offer constructive criticism, or request clarification, to do so. This will be a two-part field report of sorts where, in Part I, I give you a snapshot of my previous relationship struggles and how I got saved and in Part II I will discuss my journey trying to navigate the Christian dating scene with a godly woman and what I learned from it. Part II is still in the works, so if you have any topics or points you think I should cover, please let me know. Also, if you've followed any of my posts up to this point, you'll probably notice that some have been deleted as I am constantly paranoid someone from my church or circle will see them and put two and two together (I realize how absurdly unlikely that is).

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And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

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In 2010, my uncle asphyxiated himself in my grandmother’s garage. Two neighborhood kids found his lifeless body kneeling, held up only by the rope weaved through his arms, over a support beam, and around his neck.

Having never met my real father, and despising my alcoholic step-father, my uncle was the only father-figure I ever truly loved and respected. He was a God-fearing man who, despite suffering from depression, was seemingly growing in his faith in the years leading up to his death. From the outside, he was as alpha as alpha gets. Looking back, he was living in a tremendous amount of sin and was a slave to the women in his life. Still, I couldn’t quite come to terms with how God could let one of His children break like that - I was angry. I was angry with God and I was angry with my uncle.

Fast forward to 2012… the anger I felt was just as vibrant and consuming as it had been two years prior. Having spent 12 years in Catholic school, I was at least somewhat versed in the Word and believed wholeheartedly that God was real; however, I never had a personal relationship with Jesus and my uncle’s suicide made me question everything.

In order to better understand his mindset and situation, I decided to check out what the church he went to was all about. Surely, those “non-denominational”, born-again creeps had something to do with him killing himself. Surely, they were preaching their own, bastardized version of scripture.

I wish I could remember the exact date, but going to his church one Sunday in 2012 would change my life. I can’t explain the joy or peace I felt, but I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior that day.

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I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. Revelation 3:15-16

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I won’t get into a lengthy, detailed description of my life from 2012 to present, but I will say that, although I was saved, I always had one foot stuck in this world. I’ve been a serial monogamist since the age of 16 and, at 29, I’ve been in five LTRs, three of which lasted over three years each. I felt convicted to not live with them, but I did anyways. I felt convicted to not have sex with them, but I did anyways. I was living in sin and ignorantly thought going to church on Sunday’s was enough.

In 2015, only two weeks removed from a four-year LTR, I met “the one”. How absurd it is to even type this out realizing, at some point in my life, I thought such a thing was even possible. She was everything I thought I needed: low n-count, went to church, good family, intelligent, physically my type.

Oh, and she was a self-proclaimed liberal feminist who studied gender in college.

We had sex on our second date and professed our love for each other on our third.

Anyone literally face palm yet?!

Long story short, our relationship was great for the first year and slowly decayed over the last two when, four months ago, everything came to a head. Between our polar opposite world/political views and my conviction to live a godly life, it was clear our relationship had been doomed from the start. We ended things amicably and she moved all her belongings out within 24 hours.

Now, even though I was convicted to start fresh and become the godly man I knew I needed to become, I felt this resentment for having never been single and enjoying the dating life all my buddies had enjoyed. That’s when I came across The Red Pill - one of the best and worst things to happen to me.

I swallowed TRP and hit the dating scene. It was too easy. I plated and slept with nine different girls over the span of two months after my breakup. The validation I'd get from these women was like a drug. Combine that with the validation I'd get from my boys when I bragged to them about my sexcapades and it's easy to see how guys get addicted to the "game". Despite enjoying the sex and the praise from my friends, each morning after a hookup I’d wake up feeling miserable and guilty. It wasn’t until I got a text from one of those girls, accusing me of forcing her to have sex, that I realized I needed to cut the crap and go all in for Jesus. Thankfully, I had textual proof that the sex was consensual and she ended up apologizing, but nonetheless, that experience scared the heck out of me.

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But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. Galatians 5:16

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This brings us to this past November. I finally made the commitment to God and went all in. I started studying the bible, going to church twice a week, working on my mission, discipling, improving myself both physically and spiritually and I cut off all the girls I had been talking to. I was on fire for God and finally walking the walk instead of just talking the talk. Saturating myself with scripture and praying on a daily basis made it easier to flee from sexual sin and combat other temptations.

Everything seemed to be falling into place and I thought the next step in my walk was to find and pursue a godly woman.

In Part II I’m going to go over how I met that godly woman I thought I needed, where I went wrong, and what I learned.