Our Story: Fall and Redemption
I know I haven’t done a
Fruit Check Friday
in about three weeks, but I promise it will return next Friday! But for today, I wanted to continue on to Part Two of my relationship with Toby. If you missed
, read it NOW! Ha, I’m joking. But, no, seriously….go read!
Alright, Part Two! Grab a snack because this is going to be a
long
post!
In Part One, I left off right where we officially became boyfriend and girlfriend. Boy, was that first year great! Y’all know that honeymoon stage where the other person is pretty much perfect and can do no wrong. You stay up on the phone until 3 a.m. knowing you have to get up for school at 7. You sit on the phone for hours just to hear each other breathe (or was that just us? Lol).
We were each other’s first love
. Because we lived in two different towns and were both carless, we saw each other every two weeks which allowed me to get butterflies every time I saw him for the first year we were together. I promise our first fight wasn’t until nine months into our relationship, in which by this time I thought we had the perfect relationship.
2008
Prom 2009
But August 2009, when we both began college is when things started going downhill… QUICKLY. We went from talking on the phone for hours every day to playing phone tag. When we did talk, it’d be for a few minutes because either he was busy with his new friends, I was busy with my new friends, or we’d hang up on each other because we’d just got into an argument about who’s neglecting who. Yes, we were quite dramatic! On September 23, one month after our one year anniversary, I called it quits. I didn’t really want to, but between me being the only taken girl in my new group of friends and me suddenly taken aback that our relationship was no longer the romantic fairytale and required work, I threw in the towel. I cried. He cried. And we began this destructive back and forth I-want-you-back-but-not-just-yet cycle that went on for over a year.
By this time it’s now January 2011. To this day, I have no clue how and why I allowed myself to continue wanting this man back!
I guess I truly didn’t know my worth.
It was evident in that I let go of most of my convictions: I was getting drunk and entertaining multiple guys. When Toby and I got back together in January, I threw what little convictions I had left out the window: I started smoking (and not cigarettes, I might add) and I was no longer the last standing virgin in my group of friends. Anyone who knew me before heard me constantly swear up and down that I was going to save myself until marriage. To this day, my heart is still broken over this.
Oh, and for the record, Toby never pressured me into doing anything. EVER.
Yikes! Those shorts!
2011
The next two years consisted of sex, alcohol, weed, another breakup, and arguments, all while praying that Toby would give his life to God and go to church with me.
HUH?
I was still a “church girl” and he constantly reminded me that he felt there was a higher entity, Jesus was a prophet, and that was that. No changing his mind. A lot of our arguments stemmed from me trying to force him to get saved. I was miserable in our relationship and I was miserable in life. But I loved him and wanted to make this work. Gosh, I was a confused little soul!
March 2013, I felt the Holy Spirit convict me so much one night. I always knew that this wasn’t the life I was supposed to live, but I would drown out that voice with alcohol. But this night, I didn’t. Over the next few weeks, I began to get closer and closer to God, and I reached a point where I told Him that I was done with pursuing sin and wanted to live for Him. I told Him that my relationship with Toby wasn’t honoring Him and that I was willing to let Toby go for good, even though he was the only person I wanted to be with.
I asked Him to close the door to our relationship if it wasn’t in His Will for us to be together. I told Toby what I told God, he accepted my decision, and I waited to see what God wanted me to do. Was it hard? Heck yeah: I cried just about every night for a week!
While all of this was going on, I began attending the church I go to now, The Gathering Oasis in Atlanta. Toby had been going with me (he never fought with me about going to church, just about the whole repenting thing). I remember when we met the pastor and I told him we were coming up on almost five years together, he exclaimed, “Wow! Oh, we need to get y’all married!” to which I gawked and thought,
bruh, I don’t even know if I am supposed to even be with this dude!
Super long story short, as I constantly prayed for God to send confirmation on whether or not I was supposed to let go of the relationship, God began working on Toby’s heart. I began to see changes in him that only God could make. I no longer nagged Toby about coming to church or giving his life to God, he did it on his own with the help of the Holy Spirit. I remember we got into this HUGE fight to where he stormed out and went home. Knowing he had a habit of giving me the silent treatment, I blew his phone up trying to contact him. After the tenth call, and me telling God that I was giving up (yet again) on this relationship, Toby calls and says “hey, sorry, I wasn’t ignoring you. I was reading the Bible. I’m sorry and I love you.” Talk about mind blown! Toby never mentioned reading the Bible outside of church! But from then on, I began seeing just how much God was changing him and our relationship. We stopped pursuing sin, and Toby even suggested that we no longer kiss and hug a certain way anymore so as to make sure we don’t fall into temptation and sin.
Has this journey of pursuing purity and being God-led in our relationship been easy?
Not at all!
Stuff from our past likes to rise up every now and then. Sometimes I don’t want to be the girlfriend with the gentle and quiet spirit. We both still have a lot of growing to do, but I am so grateful that God saw fit to allow us to grow together and push each other to Christ. The fruit of being obedient to Him is amazing, although I didn’t see it last year when I was crying out to God when He was working on Toby and me. Getting worked on by God is painful! So much bad stuff had to be removed. But now, I get to enjoy a Christ-centered relationship:
we pray together and for each other, we both have a personal relationship with Christ, we are talking about marriage (something I cried about for the last three years of our relationship), and we push each other closer to Christ.
God is so faithful!
He made beauty from our ashes. THIS is why I share our story. God took two messed up sinners with a dysfunctional relationship, and turned it around for His glory! I know there are couples out there who can relate or who feel like they can't live for God after they've messed up. I know they think that God could never use them or their story. I've been there. This post is for
you
.
Whew! I know this was long, so if you made it this far, thank you for sticking it out! In September, I will write a post answering any questions about our relationship.
In the meantime, if you have any questions you would like answered about our relationship please feel free to ask! I feel that Toby and I have a unique story that God wants to get the glory out of. You can tweet me, dm me, and ask on Instagram (all @tifferbee), find me on Facebook and message me (Tiffany Gregory) or you can shoot me an email at
.
Summer 2014
Love you, sis!
Tiffany