It was really codependent. It wasn’t that she had me wrapped. It was that we willingly wrapped ourselves around each other. We had the same class schedule. Neither of us worked, and we lived together. We spent more time together than a married couple does. We were, like, tied at the hip. I lost my identity in that relationship. She was my identity.
I began to have this reoccurring daydream. In this daydream, I would picture my self-carrying a casket. I couldn’t see anyone else carrying the casket. It was like I was on the front corner as one of the Pallbearers. I didn’t know who was in the casket. I just knew it was someone that I deeply loved. Maybe an immediate family member or very close friend. I didn’t understand what was going on because it was reoccurring. I was becoming more, and more depressed.
I had gone to a Christian University which required me to take some Bible classes. One day I was going into a lecture on the book of Deuteronomy. I was at my wit's end. I went to the back of the class. I sat down at the table and pulled my hat down. The lecture that day was presented by a guest lecturer. He was talking about a paper he had written. The idea was that the major theme of Deuteronomy is the Fire of God. He had written the paper in response to a book that said the major theme of Deuteronomy was the death of Moses. Then he said, “Isn’t it when someone close to us dies, when we lose somebody that we really love, we’re finally willing to turn and face the Fire of God?” When he said that, God reminded me of the reoccurring daydream. At that point, I completely broke. I started crying. It was all I could do to keep from screaming out in class. The tears were just flowing. I didn’t really know what to do. I didn’t know how to respond to God. I had never felt the presence of God nor heard the voice of God until that day. I knew there were things I was doing that weren’t right, but I didn’t want to assume that God’s instruction to me, the next step for me was to walk away from those things, especially when it came to certain relationships.
As I was heading up to my room I just saw the “writing on the wall.” I realized I didn’t have what it took to go any further with this. I couldn’t continue to resist my temptations and all the addictions. I walked into the room and turned on the light, and the fan started spinning. I had a big study bible on my bed. Maybe it was just the natural wind, but I knew, as soon as I saw it, there was something supernatural happening. My bible laid opened there and the pages just started turning. It suddenly stopped. I looked down to see where it had stopped, but before I looked down it was as if the passage came up [off the page] and read me before I could really look down and read it. The passage was James 1:2. It says, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers..., whenever you face trials of many kinds” It goes on to talk about the purpose of that in maturing us. I realized that God was saying that all these things that I couldn’t do, and that we're more than I could overcome had a purpose; that he was using them to get me to a certain place.
When I see other codependent relationships [I understand] they feel like if they give up on this person then that's it. Nobody else will help pull them back in. I’m the door through which they might get saved. I would have explored the possibility of trying to make our relationship a healthy relationship if when I began to get curious about God if she had shown any interest whatsoever.
When I walked away it felt like I was doing a very crude thing, in a lot of ways. Interestingly enough, a couple of months later she was saved. It was a lesson for me that you can’t date somebody into the Kingdom. The people that want to do that are kinda fooling themselves just like I was fooling myself. You have to turn and face God on your own. Then let God do the work in that person’s life.
That’s what happened. She became a Christian, moved on with her life, and is doing very well. I’ve moved on with my life and am doing very well. We’re each better for it.
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