DebbyStory

When I was eight years old I went to VBS with "my" church-- the one that my grandparents went to and that we used to go. (We usually just went on Christmas and Easter, if then.) My older sister decided to accept Christ that week, and I remember thinking, well, if she is I guess I will too.

I didn't really know what I was doing; I remember my mom asking me that afternoon, before the Sunday night service which finished the week and included a baptism service if I knew who Jesus was and what he did. I don't remember even having an answer. But, I went through with the baptism and from then on considered myself a Christian. I was really a good kid growing up, never causing anyone too much strife, so when I became a teenager the same held true. But although I was a "good" person by all outside respects, the inside of me was as corrupted and black as could be.

My freshmen year in high school I got a lot of attention from boys for the first time in my life; no one had ever looked my way until then, but all of a sudden I have several guys that liked me and I was overwhelmed by the attention. And I loved it. I had a new boyfriend every two weeks. They were all fairly innocent relationships, though there were several bad experiences throughout the year that started me into a deep-seated depression by the latter part of the winter 1990.

Along about that time, an older guy who lived up the street from me and had a LOT of money, began to flirt with me, and I had sort of liked him all year long, so when he began paying attention to me I was just in awe that this older, VERY cute guy liked me. His house was huge, I had seen it before in passing, and one day in very early spring he invited me over to his place to play Nintendo (still QUITE the novelty at that point). So I walked up there after school that day, and when I got there, I asked to meet his parents and he said they weren't home, but his older brother was. He was sort of zoned out, as far as I remember, in the living room, playing the Nintendo. Since [the guy I liked] said that we had to wait until he was done, he offered to give me a tour of his house. So he showed me the house, each room, and then got upstairs to his room.

He said, "and this, is my room." I didn't know it at the time, but as I went in he closed and locked the door. Well, you can imagine what happened next. Next thing you know he was pulling me down on his bed and, to my protestations, said, "Oh, come on, Debby, you know you have to lose your virginity SOME time.." He was a pretty tall, athletic, big guy and I could do nothing to stop him. Afterwards, he acted really cool and like he was something really awesome. I was shaking and said I wanted to go home, and by what he kept saying, I left there feeling like the whole incident was completely my fault. I didn't tell anyone about that afternoon for a whole year. In fact, my mind completely blocked out the whole thing and I LITERALLY did not remember the event. But I began to be extremely depressed, and though I didn't know exactly why, of course, I felt my life was worthless and without point.

There was at least one time that I know I seriously contemplated suicide, I even had the bottle of pills in my hand, but there were multitudes of time when I would just sit and think about the easiest, best way to do it. (Just the other day I was looking over some poetry that I wrote during that year, and I almost cried because of how lost and abandoned I felt and it was SO evident in the poetry...) Well, that was a really rough year. I didn't go out with any one else the entire year, up until near the end of my sophomore year. When the memory of the rape came back to me a year later, it just ate me up inside and I felt REALLY stupid and empty. Then, just as in the first year of high school, I decided to try to fill that void in my life the only way I knew how. I started dating again. An older guy invited me out to the prom, and comfortable in the stable relationship but completely unhappy, we dated for about 2 years and then broke up the summer after my junior year.

It was during those two years that I began my search for truth. I visited various kinds and denominations of churches (after all, I still thought I was a Christian, I just didn't agree with most of what they talked about! haha..) but never finding anything that I saw of as being "real". All I saw in the churches were people who I classified as "hypocrites" and I wanted no part in it. But I still had this big emptiness inside of me that even my "wonderful" relationship wasn't fulfilling, and I knew it was "religion" related. A friend of mine had recently begun to get involved in Wicca (witchcraft), and it seemed really interesting. I started researching it, reading everything I could about the practices, beliefs and so forth. It was drawing. It was real. It had instantaneous results. I never got "deeply" involved in it, but I dabbled into such things as meditation, spirit guides, out of body experiences, ouiji boards, crystals and the like. I never cast SPELLS myself, but I facilitated a few for my friend who was seriously involved in it by giving her materials that she needed. It WAS real and I was hooked. It felt good.

In the early fall of my senior year, during marching band season, the seniors had a sleepover in the band room. A bunch of us got into a corner and began "playing" with a ouiji board. I can remember one guy, who was a pastor's kid, come over and say to me (he was particularly a friend of mine) "Hey, Deb, you really shouldn't get involved with those things. It doesn't feel right." I shooed him off and said, "oh, it's just a game. Relax." When it was my turn, I don't know what I asked it, but it responded "Debby Beware". I'll never forget that for the rest of my life. I was so scared. I pushed the board away and went over to another side of the band room, where I went to a corner by myself and, I can pretty much remember my exact words, prayed, "God, if you really are real and true, I REALLY need to know, because I am scared and my life is a mess and I don't feel like I can get out of here." I didn't know if I was praying to THE God, or a god, or the earth, or what; I just knew that something had to change and soon.

A few weeks later, I was sitting in the band room during my study hall (something us musical types did all the time) and got to talking to a cute guy that I was starting to like. I felt weird about him, though, because he was a loud and "obnoxious" Christian, and to make matters worse, a PRO-LIFER!! <shudder shudder>.. but I thought he was really cute and funny and fun to be around, so I liked him, in spite of it all. One week, he invited me to a lock-in that his church was going to have that weekend, and I said "yes", because I saw this as a GREAT opportunity to spend the ENTIRE weekend with this really cute guy. I didn't like the CHURCH part of it, but I had been to a church lock-in before a few years earlier where it was just sponsored by the church and there were DEFINITELY no church activities going on that night. So I figured this would probably be the same deal. So I went.

That Friday night, Matt picked me up after the football game after I changed out of my uniform, and we drove to the church out near Pickerington. I came in late that night, and was disappointed to find that when I got there, everyone was getting ready to go to bed, to ACTUALLY go to sleep. I thought of them all as a bunch of stick-in-the-muds. So, I went to sleep, and the next morning, there was a time of worship and testimonies, which pretty much lasted all day. And it wasn't at all boring. With each worship time and testimony given, I felt this incredible growing sense of peace and joy. These people were different, and their love for God was so vivid in their lives and in their worship. This was my first experience at Pentecostal worship. I thought it was pretty weird that they raised their hands and sometimes prayed out loud, but at the same time I began to experience the REALNESS of God for myself as the day progressed. By mid-afternoon I was crying, and it felt good, and cleansing. That night, during the evening service I went forward and gave Christ my life. I had my first communion service that same night as a REAL Christian, and it was so powerful and moving. To this day, the act of communion is so powerful that it still often brings me to tears. Everything that I had heard all my life about Christ finally became real that night, and I was forever changed.

Fast forward a few years now. (Aren't you happy I'm not going to detail EVERY year of my life?? :) ) My life was so different and changed, but I still felt like there was something that wasn't completely fulfilled. I dated a few different people, mostly Christians but not all necessarily living totally for the Lord, and during my third year I went my own way. I had begun dating a guy who was, by all outside appearances, a GREAT guy- very nice, sweet to me, and we had fun together. But I started getting into things with him that led me away from my close relationship with God. I was holding onto some things which I knew didn't please Him, like drinking - I would go out and drink every weekend, most of the time drinking so much that I got sick. I knew these things in my life didn't please God, I could feel him pounding on my heart to come back to him, but I didn't feel like I was ready to give those things up. Life, and even worship, much to my frustration, often began to be QUITE BLAH.

The first week in May, 1997, I had another party weekend, and I was sick in a friend's car all the way home. I had become disgusted at myself, finally. I decided one night that I was sick of my life the way I was living it and I gave everything up to God. Everything. All my stress and anxiety, my goals and aspirations for my life, everything. I knew God would provide for me and I for the first time in my life put it all in His hands. I also stopped dating, including my "great" boyfriend, but also all the casual dates I'd had for the past year. On the day of Pentecost, 1997 (May 18), Phil -who was one of my best friends- and I went to a rally together and I went forward and rededicated my life. From that point on, I begun seeking after an ever closer, personal relationship with the living God, and he has met me with every step and led me to things greater than I could have ever imagined on that day in May. I prayed for holiness in my life. God responded by baptizing me with his Spirit, which gave me the boldness to live my life for Christ.

Now, for about that last year, I had also begun to like Phil in ways more than friendship. I remember the first time we really spent a lot of time, just us, together talking was at the Chi Alpha Mid-summer gathering the summer of '96. I went to visit Renee Sadler (my roommate of 3 years) at her hometown a few weeks later, and I admitted my growing feelings for Phil to her. Nothing came of it, though, because at that point I was still casually dating some other people, and to be honest I was fearful of dating Phil because I always felt that THIS was the kind of guy I could see myself with forever, and the thought of marriage terrified me. So while I flirted with him for that year, I didn't do much else to pursue it. Besides, I always got completely mixed signals from him anyway. One day he would act like he liked me, the next, like he hardly considered me more than a casual acquaintance.

In July of 1997, I went over to his place to discuss upcoming posters for Chi Alpha, at least that was my reasoning, but I had ulterior motives. I decided that I had had enough of the mixed signals and guessing games, and I wanted to know flat out how he felt about me. To my surprise, he told me that he DID actually have feelings for me but he wasn't sure where he wanted to go with them. Phil didn't date casually like I had done in the past, so he took relationships very seriously. At the same time, I didn't go over and talk to him about this until I was more sure of my feelings myself.

After May, all of a sudden I had NO desire to 'date around' anymore, and while the thought of marriage still scared me, it didn't seem COMPLETELY out of the question for the future. When we had our first date, I didn't tell him then, but I just KNEW that he was the one I was going to marry. We had had this close emotional bond as friends before, and now everything just clicked. From the beginning of it all I asked for God's leading in it, because I had made so many mistakes in relationships before, where I KNEW it wasn't His will for us to stay together but it was what *I* wanted, that I didn't want to push anything that wasn't within His will. Well, we just kept getting the green lights from God, from Philip's healing of cat allergies, to the little ways that I'd seen throughout the year how completely God has taken our totally different past experiences and made them intertwined and compatible to the other.

In both the little and big ways, I saw how God's hand prepared us for each other, and I thank Him every day for a relationship that is so fulfilling and joyful; one that aims first to keep within God's will and be focused on Him foremost. Phil was becoming my best friend after he came to Ohio State for Law School, and on August 8, 1998 I married my best friend.

This page includes my story - the story of how I came to be where I am today and how Phil and I came to be married. It was written primarily for our pastor when we were going through premarital counseling. He wanted to know our stories, our testimonies.
		Debby's Story...

	When I was eight years old I went to VBS with "my" church-- the one that my grandparents went to and that we used to go. (We usually just went on Christmas and Easter, if then.) My older sister decided to accept Christ that week, and I remember thinking, well, if she is I guess I will too. I didn't really know what I was doing; I remember my mom asking me that afternoon, before the Sunday night service which finished the week and included a baptism service if I knew who Jesus was and what he did. I don't remember even having an answer. But, I went through with the baptism and from then on considered myself a Christian. I was really a good kid growing up, never causing anyone too much strife, so when I became a teenager the same held true. But although I was a "good" person by all outside respects, the inside of me was as corrupted and black as could be. My freshmen year in high school I got a lot of attention from boys for the first time in my life; no one had ever looked my way until then, but all of a sudden I have several guys that liked me and I was overwhelmed by the attention. And I loved it. I had a new boyfriend every two weeks. They were all fairly innocent relationships, though there were several bad experiences throughout the year that started me into a deep-seated depression by the latter part of the winter 1990. Along about that time, an older guy who lived up the street from me and had a LOT of money, began to flirt with me, and I had sort of liked him all year long, so when he began paying attention to me I was just in awe that this older, VERY cute guy liked me. His house was huge, I had seen it before in passing, and one day in very early spring he invited me over to his place to play Nintendo (still QUITE the novelty at that point). So I walked up there after school that day, and when I got there, I asked to meet his parents and he said they weren't home, but his older brother was. He was sort of zoned out, as far as I remember, in the living room, playing the Nintendo. Since [the guy I liked] said that we had to wait until he was done, he offered to give me a tour of his house. So he showed me the house, each room, and then got upstairs to his room. He said, "and this, is my room." I didn't know it at the time, but as I went in he closed and locked the door. Well, you can imagine what happened next. Next thing you know he was pulling me down on his bed and, to my protestations, said, "Oh, come on, Debby, you know you have to lose your virginity SOME time.." He was a pretty tall, athletic, big guy and I could do nothing to stop him. Afterwards, he acted really cool and like he was something really awesome. I was shaking and said I wanted to go home, and by what he kept saying, I left there feeling like the whole incident was completely my fault. I didn't tell anyone about that afternoon for a whole year. In fact, my mind completely blocked out the whole thing and I LITERALLY did not remember the event. But I began to be extremely depressed, and though I didn't know exactly why, of course, I felt my life was worthless and without point. There was at least one time that I know I seriously contemplated suicide, I even had the bottle of pills in my hand, but there were multitudes of time when I would just sit and think about the easiest, best way to do it. (Just the other day I was looking over some poetry that I wrote during that year, and I almost cried because of how lost and abandoned I felt and it was SO evident in the poetry...) Well, that was a really rough year. I didn't go out with any one else the entire year, up until near the end of my sophomore year. When the memory of the rape came back to me a year later, it just ate me up inside and I felt REALLY stupid and empty. Then, just as in the first year of high school, I decided to try to fill that void in my life the only way I knew how. I started dating again. An older guy invited me out to the prom, and comfortable in the stable relationship but completely unhappy, we dated for about 2 years and then broke up the summer after my junior year. It was during those two years that I began my search for truth. I visited various kinds and denominations of churches (after all, I still thought I was a Christian, I just didn't agree with most of what they talked about! haha..) but never finding anything that I saw of as being "real". All I saw in the churches were people who I classified as "hypocrites" and I wanted no part in it. But I still had this big emptiness inside of me that even my "wonderful" relationship wasn't fulfilling, and I knew it was "religion" related. A friend of mine had recently begun to get involved in Wicca (witchcraft), and it seemed really interesting. I started researching it, reading everything I could about the practices, beliefs and so forth. It was drawing. It was real. It had instantaneous results. I never got "deeply" involved in it, but I dabbled into such things as meditation, spirit guides, out of body experiences, ouiji boards, crystals and the like. I never cast SPELLS myself, but I facilitated a few for my friend who was seriously involved in it by giving her materials that she needed. It WAS real and I was hooked. It felt good. In the early fall of my senior year, during marching band season, the seniors had a sleepover in the band room. A bunch of us got into a corner and began "playing" with a ouiji board. I can remember one guy, who was a pastor's kid, come over and say to me (he was particularly a friend of mine) "Hey, Deb, you really shouldn't get involved with those things. It doesn't feel right." I shooed him off and said, "oh, it's just a game. Relax." When it was my turn, I don't know what I asked it, but it responded "Debby Beware". I'll never forget that for the rest of my life. I was so scared. I pushed the board away and went over to another side of the band room, where I went to a corner by myself and, I can pretty much remember my exact words, prayed, "God, if you really are real and true, I REALLY need to know, because I am scared and my life is a mess and I don't feel like I can get out of here." I didn't know if I was praying to THE God, or a god, or the earth, or what; I just knew that something had to change and soon. A few weeks later, I was sitting in the band room during my study hall (something us musical types did all the time) and got to talking to a cute guy that I was starting to like. I felt weird about him, though, because he was a loud and "obnoxious" Christian, and to make matters worse, a PRO-LIFER!! <shudder shudder>.. but I thought he was really cute and funny and fun to be around, so I liked him, in spite of it all. One week, he invited me to a lock-in that his church was going to have that weekend, and I said "yes", because I saw this as a GREAT opportunity to spend the ENTIRE weekend with this really cute guy. I didn't like the CHURCH part of it, but I had been to a church lock-in before a few years earlier where it was just sponsored by the church and there were DEFINITELY no church activities going on that night. So I figured this would probably be the same deal. So I went. Little did I know the huge plans God had for me... That Friday night, Matt picked me up after the football game after I changed out of my uniform, and we drove to the church out near Pickerington. I came in late that night, and was disappointed to find that when I got there, everyone was getting ready to go to bed, to ACTUALLY go to sleep. I thought of them all as a bunch of stick-in-the-muds. So, I went to sleep, and the next morning, there was a time of worship and testimonies, which pretty much lasted all day. And it wasn't at all boring. With each worship time and testimony given, I felt this incredible growing sense of peace and joy. These people were different, and their love for God was so vivid in their lives and in their worship. This was my first experience at Pentecostal worship. I thought it was pretty weird that they raised their hands and sometimes prayed out loud, but at the same time I began to experience the REALNESS of God for myself as the day progressed. By mid-afternoon I was crying, and it felt good, and cleansing. That night, during the evening service I went forward and gave Christ my life. I had my first communion service that same night as a REAL Christian, and it was so powerful and moving. To this day, the act of communion is so powerful that it still often brings me to tears. Everything that I had heard all my life about Christ finally became real that night, and I was forever changed. Fast forward a few years now. (Aren't you happy I'm not going to detail EVERY year of my life?? :) ) My life was so different and changed, but I still felt like there was something that wasn't completely fulfilled. I dated a few different people, mostly Christians but not all necessarily living totally for the Lord, and during my third year I went my own way. I had begun dating a guy who was, by all outside appearances, a GREAT guy- very nice, sweet to me, and we had fun together. But I started getting into things with him that led me away from my close relationship with God. I was holding onto some things which I knew didn't please Him, like drinking - I would go out and drink every weekend, most of the time drinking so much that I got sick. I knew these things in my life didn't please God, I could feel him pounding on my heart to come back to him, but I didn't feel like I was ready to give those things up. Life, and even worship, much to my frustration, often began to be QUITE BLAH. The first week in May, 1997, I had another party weekend, and I was sick in a friend's car all the way home. I had become disgusted at myself, finally. I decided one night that I was sick of my life the way I was living it and I gave everything up to God. Everything. All my stress and anxiety, my goals and aspirations for my life, everything. I knew God would provide for me and I for the first time in my life put it all in His hands. I also stopped dating, including my "great" boyfriend, but also all the casual dates I'd had for the past year. On the day of Pentecost, 1997 (May 18), Phil -who was one of my best friends- and I went to a rally together and I went forward and rededicated my life. From that point on, I begun seeking after an ever closer, personal relationship with the living God, and he has met me with every step and led me to things greater than I could have ever imagined on that day in May. I prayed for holiness in my life. God responded by baptizing me with his Spirit, which gave me the boldness to live my life for Christ. Now, for about that last year, I had also begun to like Phil in ways more than friendship. I remember the first time we really spent a lot of time, just us, together talking was at the Chi Alpha Mid-summer gathering the summer of '96. I went to visit Renee Sadler (my roommate of 3 years) at her hometown a few weeks later, and I admitted my growing feelings for Phil to her. Nothing came of it, though, because at that point I was still casually dating some other people, and to be honest I was fearful of dating Phil because I always felt that THIS was the kind of guy I could see myself with forever, and the thought of marriage terrified me. So while I flirted with him for that year, I didn't do much else to pursue it. Besides, I always got completely mixed signals from him anyway. One day he would act like he liked me, the next, like he hardly considered me more than a casual acquaintance. And then came US... Before May 18 of 1997, I had thought for sure that Phil knew that I hadn't received he baptism before, but I found out later that he had no idea. After that day, we started hanging out a bit more often. In July of 1997, I went over to his place to discuss upcoming posters for Chi Alpha, at least that was my reasoning, but I had ulterior motives. I decided that I had had enough of the mixed signals and guessing games, and I wanted to know flat out how he felt about me. To my surprise, he told me that he DID actually have feelings for me but he wasn't sure where he wanted to go with them. Phil didn't date casually like I had done in the past, so he took relationships very seriously. At the same time, I didn't go over and talk to him about this until I was more sure of my feelings myself. After May, all of a sudden I had NO desire to 'date around' anymore, and while the thought of marriage still scared me, it didn't seem COMPLETELY out of the question for the future. When we had our first date, I didn't tell him then, but I just KNEW that he was the one I was going to marry. We had had this close emotional bond as friends before, and now everything just clicked. From the beginning of it all I asked for God's leading in it, because I had made so many mistakes in relationships before, where I KNEW it wasn't His will for us to stay together but it was what I wanted, that I didn't want to push anything that wasn't within His will. Well, we just kept getting the green lights from God, from Philip's healing of cat allergies, to the little ways that I'd seen throughout the year how completely God has taken our totally different past experiences and made them intertwined and compatible to the other. In both the little and big ways, I saw how God's hand prepared us for each other, and I thank Him every day for a relationship that is so fulfilling and joyful; one that aims first to keep within God's will and be focused on Him foremost. Phil was becoming my best friend after he came to Ohio State for Law School, and on August 8, 1998 I married my best friend. Click here for some more thoughts from Debby - One Way Only (John 14:6)