Jesus is My Boyfriend
I didn’t have a boyfriend in high school even though I wanted one.
I didn’t have a boyfriend in high school even though I wanted one. I told myself it was OK. I was in love with Jesus. When you grow up in an Evangelical Christian church, the expectation is that you devote yourself to God until you find a suitable life partner. As a teen, I devoted myself to studying the Bible, memorizing scripture, and singing on the worship team. I was a perfect Christian girl.
During my sophomore year of high school the newly published Purity Culture manifesto, “I Kissed Dating Goodbye,” by Joshua Harris made its rounds through our church youth group. I wholeheartedly adopted the idea that I would save sex for marriage and only date with the intention to marry. More than anything, I wanted to please God, believing I would be saved by my perfection. So when a boy in my high school asked me to the homecoming dance I politely declined. Jesus was my boyfriend.
By my senior year, I had declined enough dates and hosted enough early morning Bible studies to be labeled a ‘straight-edged prude.’ No boys even bothered to ask anymore, even though I starved myself into the same shape as the girls who had steady boyfriends.
When someone finally expressed interest in me it was a guy who went to my church. I was 18, he was 22. He professed his love in a letter, telling me I was the ideal “Proverbs 31 Woman”. He had watched me worship, he wrote, with my hands raised, eyes closed and my face lifted heavenward, love written in the lines of my furrowed brow. He believed I loved Jesus and could love him too.
Sick to my stomach, I marched down to the woodstove in our basement, fanned the ashes into flame, and burned the letter. Sitting at the computer later, my hands trembled with adrenaline as I created my first Hotmail account and a password of expletives (no one would ever guess). I composed my rejection and sent it with a satisfying “woosh.”
If this was love, I wanted no part of it.
In college, I dated a hockey player for maybe ten days. He was my first kiss, but wanted more than just a kiss and I got cold feet. Purity Culture told me that I couldn’t go beyond a kiss. Even more though, I hated my naked body and didn’t want anyone else to see it.
When I finally found love it was on the highest peak in New Hampshire. Gathered in the trail parking lot, I noticed the friend of a friend across from me. He had broad shoulders and a warm smile.
“I’m Mark,” he said, thrusting his hand across the circle before we set out. I offered my hand in return, his touch rippled through me like white caps on a lake. Nothing like the hockey player’s greedy kiss.
I wasn’t supposed to be hiking. Earlier that summer, just after my nineteenth birthday, I was diagnosed with anorexia and admitted into intensive outpatient treatment. The nurse had forbidden any high-intensity activity. She specified running, but not hiking. I told myself I’d be fine, but the fatigue and irregular heartbeat I felt at the summit scared me. In pursuit of perfection, I was not only extremely good but dangerously thin.
After the hike, our group carpooled back home and Mark found his way into the front seat of my car. As we drove south in the dark he asked, “So what’s your biggest struggle right now?” I believed he was trustworthy, so I told him the truth.
“An eating disorder,” I said. Without hesitating he responded, “What are you doing to get better?” His abruptness was both irritating and attractive. I’d been praying for rescue all summer, chasing Jesus for his approval and healing. No matter how many Bible verses I memorized or how fervently I prayed, my struggle with compulsive behavior only intensified. But Mark wasn’t phased by my failure.
He eventually asked me out and I said yes. With Mark as my boyfriend, I found not rescue but a challenge and an unflinching empathy that felt like a love I’d never known. At my lowest point, he became my biggest cheerleader, attending therapy sessions, and gently encouraging me to try foods I was afraid of. A constant caring presence, he was also irreverent and funny. Unafraid of conflict, he poked fun at my perfectionism.
He loved Jesus too. After dating for a few years, we built our married lives around that shared love, playing and singing in the worship team, leading a student ministry, even moving across the country to help a church startup.
After marriage, my eating disorder lingered, morphing into bulimia as I tried to maintain the appearance of a healthy person. For the next few years, I went up for prayer during every church service. With head bowed and tears streaming down my face I cried out for Jesus to save me. Nothing changed.
My love for God caused Mark’s faith to break first. He witnessed how devoted I was, each morning rising early to read my Bible and pray, only to lock myself in the bathroom later purging everything I’d eaten.
“I just don’t believe anymore,” he confessed in the car on our drive home from dinner out—a dinner I would later purge. It was as if he said, “I don’t believe in us anymore.” Because I had given my life to Jesus, it felt like in rejecting God he was also rejecting me.
“I love you,” he said, reading my mind in the silence. “But I just don’t believe.” As if that clarity would somehow keep my world from crumbling. The car was moving, but I was frozen. I’d grown up believing that if I didn’t love Jesus with all my heart, my life had no value and I would be tossed into hell. Pinning my body to the passenger seat, as if draped in a lead apron, was a deep sense of dread: I would have to choose to love Jesus or love my disbelieving husband. Jesus was my first love. I didn’t know who I was without him.
Mark stopped going to church. I kept attending, holding on to hope that my devotion would eventually yield healing. After a year of going alone, my love for Jesus was replaced with growing hopelessness. My continued devotion hadn’t changed a thing, so I leaned into Mark’s love, where I found a steady kindness that didn’t require obedience or perfection.
Slowly my conversations with Jesus dwindled. I stopped reading my bible. Stopped praying. Stopped crying out to him for salvation.
Salvation finally came a few years later in the form of my daughter, the life my husband and I made together. As her cells divided, my love multiplied. For Mark, for her, and finally for myself. Her presence in my body taught me to love myself.
Throughout pregnancy, the compulsive binging and purging behaviors subsided and by the time she entered the world, the voice of the eating disorder was a faint whisper. At her birth, I was born again.
Last year, when Mark started going to a Greek Orthodox Church I thought it was a curiosity that would be quenched by a service or two. He has always been interested in history and theology, seeking out his scholarly friends for lengthy conversations. But his attendance grew more regular. Then my daughter, now thirteen, expressed interest and they started going together.
“You don’t have to come,” he said, meeting my skepticism with kind support. “I want you to do what you want to do.” He explained how this church was different from the Evangelical churches we attended together. “Western Christianity,” he said, “Is all about ideas–that leaves room for the ego.” I had certainly gotten caught up in the ideas of the Prosperity Gospel, believing my goodness would save me. “Eastern Christianity is all about the body, the practice of your faith.”
I eventually agreed to go with him, and after standing for what felt like hours grasped his comment about the body. Mine was tired, and like in my meditation practice, I had to bring my mind back from the distraction of my aching feet.
At the end of the liturgy, communion was offered to those baptized into the Greek Orthodox Church, but I could not partake. On her way back down the aisle, a woman offered me, the antidoron or blessed bread. I politely declined, feeling as if I shouldn’t take the bread because I don’t believe in God anymore. She insisted.
“I’m all set,” I said. A look of understanding spread across her face, “Ahh! It’s the carbs! You’re gluten-free.” I smiled awkwardly, unable to speak, a lump of emotion lodged in my throat. It wasn’t the carbs at all, it was my broken heart.
I made my way to the ladies’ room and in the privacy of the stall, let out a small sob.
I loved Jesus with all my heart or a version of him. I believed the Son of God would be there in my lowest moments. I believed healing was real. I gave my whole life, or at least the first twenty-eight years of it, to Him. Yet, so much of me broke in pursuit of Jesus, including my heart. I’d given Him everything, but come up empty.
It was my husband and family that made it whole again.
I’ve been back to church with my husband a few times. I don’t mind going because now I know who I am and believe I have value regardless of who I love. And the yiayias are so nice, taking my hand in theirs, and with their thick Greek accents telling me my children are so beautiful. There’s something mystical about the Byzantine chanting and incense. And I wonder if the two-dimensional Jesus with his flat, angular face surrounded by golden mosaic tiles is the same Jesus I was in love with.
Maybe this Jesus is different. Maybe we could be friends.