Remembering - Part 3

"Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands." Deuteronomy 8:2

After the excitement, and loneliness of elementary school, what would Junior High bring? More internal loneliness and efforts to be cool. The friend hopping continued. I was a good student and found that was a good way to be accepted and liked by the teachers. I participated in every sport (although I was terrible at all of them) and then there were boys...

I had a crush on one boy after another. Many of my friends found boyfriends and I was devastated that no boys seemed to like me. So, I enjoyed befriending everyone's boyfriends. As you can imagine this did not make me very popular among the girls but as these friendships remained platonic I was able to justify myself by saying they were just being silly.

In the meantime, I found myself really wanting to know more about God. I had a little pocket New Testament Bible that my parents gave me one Christmas. I started reading it and would borrow my mom's christian music albums to play on my record player. I said my prayers every night and had a confidence that they were heard and that God is in control of our lives. This isolated me internally from my friends because none of them were Christian. Outwardly I never said anything.

During most of 7th grade my friends and I were fairly well behaved. We swiped a few cigarettes and snuck out a few times at night but we never went farther than the driveway to sit and talk about boys and school.

The weekend after the last day of school there was a block party near my friend A's house. Her mom was a single mom who worked nights so 4 of us stayed the night (Mom never knew her mom was never home when I stayed over) and walked over to the party. The parents of the party host were out of town. They would periodically go to visit their family in Mexico and leave their oldest son (15 at the time) in charge. There was a keg and music and boys. I was 12 and received my first kiss alone in a room with a very cute 15 year old boy. Within 15 minutes he very angrily threw me out of the room when he realized I had no intentions of going further than kissing. I was angry and embarrased. I couldn't find my friends and knew no one else at the party. I went to the side of the house, sat down and cried. I was found there by a boy 1 year ahead of me in school. He sat down and talked to me. We talked for quite awhile and ended up kissing. I thought he really liked me. After that he never spoke to me again. We walked home late that night. The next day the 15 year old came by and apologized. According to him he was drunk at the time. I found out after he left that A had lost her virginity to him the year before, when she was eleven.

That summer we started going to church and I was baptized. I remember feeling so clean after coming out of the baptismal. The little church we attended had a great youth pastor who started to teach us very practical lessons about who God is and what the Bible says. I started to assimilate this information into my mind but wasn't quite ready to be different from my friends. While I took many of them to church with me, none took it seriously. It was just a fun place to go on youth nights. And there were boys there. In fact, that is where I met my first boyfriend.

J was 1 year older than me (I was now 13) and he was in high school. He was sweet and shy and pretty quiet. Most of our relationship was over the phone and when his little sister wasn't around he was pretty open. He happened to be the brother of the block party host and since he lived close to A we saw each other without adult supervision, unbeknownst to my mom. I never let him get farther than kissing and petting outside the clothes. This was frustrating for him as my friends were pretty regularly having sex with their boyfriends.

I spent the night fairly frequently with A. When we weren't at her mom's house we were at her dad's. That was my first experience with both tequila and peach schnapps. Her dad would buy it for us and even taught us some drinking games (I was actually pretty good at Quarters). Believe it or not I had the reputation for being the good girl. Most of my friends were sleeping around and experimenting with drugs. And all before entering High School.