I've Never Been to Vegas, but My Luggage Has: Mishaps and Miracles on the Road to Happily Ever After

by Hale, Mandy

  On December 12, 1999, I was immersed in water in the locker room of the MTSU basketball team’s practice gym. How’s that for a unique location? My baptism took place in a giant metal trough—or at least that’s what it looked like to me—that athletes sat in to soak their injured limbs. I definitely win points for my bizarre baptismal sites. It just goes to show that God doesn’t care how you come to Him or how you choose to serve Him, just that you do come to Him and do serve Him.

  I came out of that water feeling so different, so alive, so changed. Gone was the Mandy who lived for herself, and in her place was the Mandy who was ready to live for God. Did this mean I was never going to sin or stumble or fall again? No! It meant I was going to get back up after my sins, stumbles, and falls and refuse to be defeated or defined by them, but rather use them for the glory of God. It meant that my mess was now my message—my tests were now my testimony. It meant I was born again, a new creation, and that as the popular shirts at the time said, Jesus was my homeboy.

  I was so on fire for God that I was ready to jump into ministry opportunities at my church with both feet. Within a few months I was serving in the nursery, helping with campus Bible studies, participating in church plays, and teaching children’s church. I was busy every night of the week. Gone were the lonely days of feeling as if I didn’t fit in anywhere. I now fit in everywhere! I couldn’t find enough places to plug into! I was so happy and joyful and filled with the love of God, it was spilling out of me. And miraculous things started to happen all around me. My dad joined the church with my mom and me, making it the first time he had regularly attended church since he was a teenager. I prayed fervently for a cousin’s troubled marriage to be saved, and it was. I went to a specialist for my lifelong digestive issues and was told I had gallbladder disease, and the doctor was 99 percent sure I would need to have my gallbladder removed. I went immediately to my pastors, and they prayed over me for healing. When I went back to the doctor for followup tests a few days later, he shook his head in confusion.

  “I’m not sure what happened here, Miss Hale, but your gallbladder is, well . . . it’s well,” the doctor said. “There are no signs of disease that we saw on the scans last week. It’s baffling. I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

  Of course I knew what had happened. God happened! Hallelujah!

  One Sunday we welcomed a prophetic minister to our church for a guest sermon. I was particularly excited about this, having witnessed other pastors with the gift of prophecy speak words over fellow church members. I sent a special prayer up to God that I would receive a word. I was still trying to figure out my future and what I was supposed to do with my life, and was feeling increasingly called into some area of ministry. I just couldn’t figure out where. I didn’t see myself as a full-blown pastor, or even a pastor’s wife, so if God wanted to speak through one of His prophets and provide some direction and clarity about my life, I was all for it.

  Sure enough, after the prophetic pastor, whom we’ll call Pastor Dan, finished his sermon, he looked out to the audience and directly at me. I had prayed for a word, but never imagined I would be the first person in the congregation that day to receive one. Pastor Dan called me to the front and began to prophesy over me. If you’re unsure about what it means to have the gift of prophecy, see 1 Corinthians 12:10 about the gifts of the Spirit:

  He gives one person the power to perform miracles, and another the ability to prophesy. He gives someone else the ability to discern whether a message is from the Spirit of God or from another spirit. Still another person is given the ability to speak in unknown languages, while another is given the ability to interpret what is being said. (NLT)

  Though I can’t remember Pastor Dan’s prophecy verbatim, it went something like this:

  Mandy, there is something about you that is very precious to the Lord. I feel like He is saying, “Even in your mother’s womb, I knew you.” There have been seasons that you drifted away from God, but He always pulls you back. He’s never been very far from you. I see you one day speaking into the lives of many young women. I see you on airplanes. [I shuddered a little bit at that one, since I’m sure you recall my love of airplanes from chapter 1.] I see you going . . . the sky is the limit!

  Did you catch that? A full decade before I created The Single Woman, it was spoken over me that I would one day speak into the lives of many young women! How’s that for God knowing who we are long before we figure it out?

  Though I had a new life and a new beginning, some of the same old questions still kept coming up in my spirit: What is the best way to date and keep my morals and standards intact? Will God bring me someone miraculously, or am I supposed to go out and look for my mate? How will I know when I’ve met my potential mate? Is modern dating really the best way to go about meeting someone? Because of all my questions, I started doing what I usually do when I don’t understand something: I researched. My digging led me to a book called I Kissed Dating Goodbye by a guy named Joshua Harris.* The book, in a nutshell, focuses on Harris’s experiences as a young Christian who grew increasingly frustrated with the modern process of dating, so he made the decision to give it up in favor of the more traditional form of courtship. Courtship essentially entails hanging out in groups rather than one-on-one, getting to know other singles as friends and putting romance on hold, and waiting on God to speak to both of your hearts about whether or not you are meant to be together. It was a concept heavily endorsed by the church I was attending, so after giving it considerable thought, I decided to join the movement and “kiss dating goodbye” myself. We had a large singles’ group at church to keep me busy and active. Who really needed to spend all their time obsessing over guys when there were so many other things I could be focusing on?

  That decision started a five-year chapter in my life in which I didn’t go out on a single date, didn’t kiss a boy, didn’t so much as hold hands with a member of the opposite sex. For a while it was fantastic. I felt free, like I was surrendering the outcome of my love life to God. Finally I could stop the endless cycle of bad dates and heartbreaks! I grew closer than ever to God; I had never been more hungry for His Word and wisdom and guidance, and I finally felt as if I could exhale and release all the pressure and stress of finding a mate.

  But about three years after I joined the church, I started to see some troubling trends.

  Leadership had changed and a new pastor had taken over, and with the change came a feeling of oppression that I had never felt inside the four walls of our church. The attitude about dating and opposite-sex relationships felt particularly stifling. One day I was planning to carpool with a guy from our singles’ group to a churchsponsored event in Nashville, and I was harshly reprimanded. “You must do everything you can to avoid the appearance of evil,” I was told. I was baffled, and even hurt. How could carpooling to a church-sanctioned event in order to save much-needed money on gas ever be construed by anyone as “evil”? Because we happened to be of the opposite sex, riding in a car together would somehow cause our morals to fly out the window?

  Another time a big group of us, a mixture of guys and girls, were sitting around watching movies together, and someone cracked a joke about “granny panties.” The next thing I knew, leadership was bringing the girls in the group in to scold us about our improper topics of conversation, and how as ladies, it was our job not to make our brothers in Christ “stumble.” (As anyone can attest to, there’s absolutely nothing sexy about high-waisted granny panties, so if the thought of them made any of the guys stumble, there was an issue much deeper going on with them that had nothing whatsoever to do with us.)

  The final straw for me was one Easter Sunday, when I was scheduled to be a greeter, welcoming people as they came in the door, which I did happily and enthusiastically while wearing a new black dress I loved and felt incredibly ladylike in. It was plain, short-sleeved, stopped around the knee, and was basically an A-line dress without too many bells and whistles, but very class
y. I had twirled for my mom and dad that morning to show it off before I set off for church, and they approved. Yet, according to the leadership team, it was “too low cut” and proved I didn’t have “good discernment in the area of clothing.” I was told later the dress caused such a scandal that instead of just coming and talking to me about it directly, they called a leadership team meeting to discuss it. Once upon a time, we had held leadership meetings to discuss campus ministry and how to reach the unloved and how to further our missionary work, and now there were meetings being held in honor of my A-line Easter dress. (Which, for the record, was not the slightest bit scandalous or low cut. My mom would have never let me out of the house if it had been.)

  Before long, I started to feel exhausted, and church started to feel like a chore. Suddenly all the endeavors and activities and volunteerism I was doing began to feel like a burden. And all around me I was watching couples walk around campus, holding hands, celebrating engagements, and whispering to their friends about the thrill of a first date. I began to feel more and more like I was giving up a vital part of life that I needed to experience to be a fully well-rounded person. I was experiencing the classic symptoms that any Christian struggles with when church becomes more about rules than about walking in the freedom Jesus bought and paid for with His own blood on the cross. For me, being a Christian wasn’t about rules and regulations. It was about my relationship with God, which I cherished. A true, deep, and meaningful relationship with God provides one with guidance and conviction about how to live life that far transcends any legalistic rules.

  Still, I stuck it out for another year and a half. This was the church in which I had truly become a Christian. This was a church that helped mold me and put me on my God-given path, and all those things meant something to me. What I was too naive to realize at the time was that the church itself is run by humans—humans just as fallible and capable of making wrong decisions and wrong turns and wrong calls as the rest of us. I don’t think they had bad intentions; I just think they lost their vision. Their original fire, passion, joy, and freedom got lost in a sea of rules, regulations, and legalism. My volunteering on five committees, watching the kids in the nursery, and kissing dating good-bye wasn’t going to get me into heaven. And it wasn’t going to provide me with true happiness and meaning here on earth. My relationship with God was. And in trying to be pleasing, proper, and sanctified enough to maintain my relationship with the leadership staff, my relationship with God was suffering.

  When I finally made the decision to walk away, it felt like a divorce. It was hard, painful, confusing, and heartbreaking. Ironically enough, I had kissed dating good-bye, and yet still wound up with a broken heart.

  Let me be clear. It wasn’t all the church’s fault. It wasn’t all the leadership team’s fault. It wasn’t all my fault. It wasn’t Joshua Harris’s fault. And it wasn’t even a little bit God’s fault. When a relationship of any kind ends, both parties are responsible. And maybe my need to please people had simply overshadowed my need to please God. There was no blame or anger or bitterness. It was just time to go. When you stop blooming where you’ve been planted, it’s time to put down new roots.

  I look back on my time there now with nothing but gratitude. I might never have gotten on track with God had I not gone to that church. I might never have had the seed planted in my heart that my destiny was to speak life and hope and healing into the lives of women across the world. And I most certainly wouldn’t have become the woman I am today.

  As for the kissing dating good-bye situation . . .

  This is no criticism of Joshua Harris. He’s a great writer and a great man of God, and I read his follow-up book, Boy Meets Girl, and loved it. But I do feel as though I missed out on very vital and formative dating years in the five-year gap when I kissed dating good-bye. The period from ages twenty to twenty-five is when most people really come into their own and figure out what they’re looking for in love—and get their hearts broken enough times to learn a few lessons along the way. I have none of that knowledge or experience to fall back on. Do I regret making the decision I did? No, because everything happens for a reason, and I cherish that time I spent “dating” God. I know there was a purpose to choosing that path I might not understand fully for years to come. But would I recommend to someone else to abstain from dating? No. I would recommend that they abstain from dating in an unhealthy or immoral way. That they work on their relationship with God first, their relationship with themselves second, and only then focus on other relationships. You can date purely. To never put yourself in a situation that requires you to put your morals, self-love, dignity, and self-respect into practice is to assume that you aren’t strong enough to put those things into practice, and that’s insulting.

  If you make the choice to abstain from dating in favor of courtship, that’s great. I’m not discouraging that. I think it’s a personal decision that everyone has to make for themselves. But do it for you. Do it for God. Don’t do it because it’s what you’re expected to do or told to do, or because you’re striving for someone else’s approval. The only approval you need in this life is God’s and your own. And you can never go wrong by following His lead on the dance floor of life, whether it means dancing solo or with a partner.

  * Joshua Harris, I Kissed Dating Goodbye (Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 1997).

  Chapter 5

  A Few False Starts

  Two years into college, I finally made the decision to declare my major as electronic media journalism. I’m not sure why it took me so long to reach that conclusion, since it perfectly combined my lifelong passion for movies, TV, and writing. I studied every aspect of the world of journalism, from creative writing to on-air talent to advertising to TV and radio production, and I absolutely loved every second of it. Finally, I had found my niche.

  In spring 2002, I proudly walked across the stage to accept my diploma from Middle Tennessee State University with my parents frantically snapping pictures from the audience. I just knew I was going to go on to do great things, and the perfect TV job was going to drop from the heavens and into my lap.

  Instead, I was about to fall through the looking glass into an insane kaleidoscope of careers that seemed better suited for the Mad Hatter than for a recent college graduate.

  First, I saw an ad in the paper for a “Marketing Representative” at the local mall. This sounded right up my alley. An entry-level position, surrounded by clothes, flexing my newly minted marketing muscles; I could do this! I was surprised at how easily I got the position, and even more surprised when I arrived on my first day to discover that the mall was launching its Easter marketing campaign that weekend, and I was being dropped right into the middle of the chaos.

  About ten minutes after I reported for duty, the mall’s head PR person came galloping toward me, dragging a big, hairy bunny suit behind her.

  “Mandy! Hi! We’re so excited to have you on board!” she crowed.

  “Um, hi,” I replied, already feeling dread start to mount in my gut. “What can I do to help?”

  “Well, you have perfect timing, because the high school student we hired to dress up like the Easter Bunny for our launch today dropped out just a few minutes ago,” PR Girl chirped enthusiastically. “And we thought you could just ‘hop’ right in and replace him!” She giggled like her pun was the funniest thing in the world.

  I looked down at my sweater set and dress pants, my effort to look professional on my first day, then looked over at the big lump of fur and massive bunny head lurking behind PR Girl.

  “Well, okay,” I said slowly, trying to rack my brain for reasons why I couldn’t possibly don the giant suit. Wasn’t I allergic to faux fur?! But it was my first day on the job after all, and I didn’t want to walk away from my very first job out of college with my tail between my legs. Particularly a white, furry tail.

  “Great!” PR Girl exclaimed, grabbing the huge, smiling bunny head and plunking it down on my head. “Now just pull this suit
on over your clothes, and I’ll point you in the right direction. You’ll be launching the mall’s Easter campaign by leading a processional of our kiddie models through the food court!”

  I discovered in horror that my vision was extremely limited with the bunny head on, so I could scarcely see what was happening around me. How was I supposed to lead a processional anywhere when I couldn’t see a foot in front of me? I had to gaze out of a small screen embedded in the bunny’s teeth that had absolutely no peripheral vision. Before I knew what was happening, the music was starting up, and PR Girl was shoving me out onto the bright pink runway, where giggling, smiling, pastel-dressed clusters of children began to gather around me. One clutched my hand on each side and began to pull me down the runway.

  Because I could only see straight in front of me, I’m pretty certain I sent children flying right and left all around me as I tried desperately to wave and look like a merry, friendly Easter Bunny instead of an irritated, humiliated twenty-something. Somehow I made it through the processional without doing any serious damage.

  Real world: 1. Mandy: 0.