by Sean Lowe
After college, I was back in my hometown and—once again—near my parents and my church. Still, I didn’t love God more than I loved myself. When I dated, I broke my promise not to have sex before I was married. I knew this was wrong, so I felt incredibly guilty afterward. Shame, however, wasn’t strong enough to keep me from sinning again. Eventually, it would fade into the recesses of my mind. When I’d talk to another girl, I’d go down that path of destruction again.
I kept ignoring God, even though I felt horrible.
Something’s gotta change, I thought. That’s when I decided to take ownership of my faith. I wanted to—finally—be a man. I wanted to have a real faith, not a list of things I didn’t do.
“All right, Jesus,” I said one night. “Let’s do this again.”
So I got up in the morning every day, went to work at the insurance agency in the strip mall, and prayed for strength to get through the day.
The first thing I’d do, after grabbing a cup of coffee and saying good morning to Andrew, was to go into my office and open my Bible. Even though I’d drifted far away from God, I knew exactly how to get back to him. My dad always told me the Scriptures are alive—the living, breathing Word of God—and he always had his nose in his Bible. We played a game that involved me opening the Bible anywhere and reading a random verse aloud. Dad would, more times than not, be able to tell me which book, chapter, and verse. In contrast, my Bible knowledge had never gotten deeper than those Sunday school stories. When I recommitted myself to Christ after college, I recommitted myself to reading the Bible. I would read a few chapters in the Old Testament, then a few in the New Testament. The more I read, the more my faith grew—by leaps and bounds. The Bible was surprising. Unexpected. Frequently, I’d read a chapter and think, I didn’t know that was in there!
When I asked Dad about some of the more interesting and confusing things I’d learned, he handed me a copy of a book called When Critics Ask by Norman L. Geisler and Thomas Howe. With that resource by my side, I read the whole Bible cover to cover over the course of several months.
Something interesting, even miraculous, happened as I read the Bible regularly. It transformed how I thought. I noticed when I got away from reading it, my mind and life got away from thinking biblically. However, when I immersed myself in the Bible, I saw the world differently.
This became my ritual. I’d pray for God to deliver me from my job at State Farm. Then, since God obviously didn’t seem to be interested in delivering me from it, I’d get on the phone and beg people to buy insurance.
Every day the clock’s hand swung slowly around the dial, and I’d take a break to sit in the break room, watch Seinfeld reruns, and eat my perfectly portioned, Sagi-approved amount of turkey and veggies.
Though I hated limiting my diet, I followed Sagi’s every instruction down to the last ounce. If one of my meals was six ounces of chicken breast, a cup and a half of brown rice, and one cup of broccoli, I’d get out a scale and weigh everything. If he told me six ounces of chicken, I measured six ounces of chicken. That’s how my body transformed so quickly. I never skipped a day, and I never cheated once. I saw big results in just a month.
“Wow, look at those abs,” Sagi said three months after we met. “Would you consider being in my workout video?”
“Really?” I said. “Like, I’d be the guy in the back doing the routines with you?”
“You and a few other guys,” he said. Sagi’s new venture was a ninety-day program to help people gain muscle mass by the makers of P90X, a popular video series you can do at home to build muscle.
“Sure!” I said. “What’s it called?”
“Body Beast,” he said. “But I know what you’re thinking.”
“What?” I asked.
“Probably that when you see this handsome face, you don’t think ‘beast’—you think ‘beauty.’ Right?”
“Um, no,” I said. “But I’d love to be in your video.”
“You should also think about getting some professional photos done,” he said. “I have a guy in Los Angeles who is an amazing photographer.”
“Why?” I asked. “Do you want a picture of me to put on your desk?”
“Look at you!” Sagi said. “You’ve worked hard. You should see if you can get some freelance work as a fitness model.”
A fitness model? Me? Could this be my path out of the insurance agency? Even though it cost me my very last dime, I packed my bags and headed to Los Angeles for a photo shoot.
I was sitting in my office at State Farm, working up the nerve to move on to the list of people I needed to cold-call that day, when I got a text from Andrew.
Hey, send me one of your photos from that photo shoot.
I didn’t think anything of texting Andrew one of the photos. Everyone in my family thought it was all a lark—the video was fun, and I’d already gotten a few magazine gigs.
Here ya go, I texted Andrew, attaching a photo.
Little did I know, this text would change the direction of my life.
A few weeks later, I was walking the dogs when my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number, but the area code indicated it was from Los Angeles.
“Is this Sean Lowe?” a bubbly person asked when I pressed my phone up to my ear. Lola and Ellie were pulling on their leashes.
“This is Tabby from the casting department on The Bachelorette,” she began. “Thank you for submitting your application for our hit ABC show.”
The Bachelorette?
Of course I knew about the show. It was the show that Shay—and even Andrew—watched. Well, I guess millions of people watch it. So do my friends Laura and Stephanie, who watch it with more regularity than some people go to church.
But I certainly didn’t apply to be on it.
“I think there’s been a mix-up,” I told Tabby as I tried to sort through what she was saying. As she talked about “my application,” it didn’t take long for me to figure out what was going on. Andrew and Shay didn’t want me to end up alone, and they wanted to be my matchmaker as I’d done for them.
“I’m sorry,” I said, so shocked that I was having a conversation with The Bachelorette that I stopped on the sidewalk as Lola and Ellie waited patiently to continue on their walk. “I have no interest in being on the show.”
I didn’t want to subject myself to public criticism, after all. And I certainly didn’t think finding real love was possible on a reality TV show.
“Just consider it,” she said. “There is travel, adventure, and—of course, romance!” Tabby was one of the most enthusiastic people on the planet. “You should at least submit a video of yourself in case you change your mind and want to move forward in the future.”
I agreed to think about it, ended the call, and kept walking the dogs.
A neighbor waved hello. Lola lunged for a bird that had landed on the sidewalk but lazily flitted away before coming to any harm.
The Bachelorette?
I called Shay. “What have you done?”
Shay could hardly contain her excitement. “That’s great!” she said. “It sounds like they’re interested!”
“Do you really want a sister-in-law who was a contestant on that show?”
“Contestant isn’t the right word,” Shay said. “You aren’t going on The Price Is Right.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
I said that sentence a little too emphatically. I was twenty-eight years old, stuck in a job I didn’t love. Every day, I answered questions about floods, lightning, and automobile collisions and ate my lunch watching Seinfeld reruns. It wasn’t a bad life, but I didn’t feel I was headed to anything more. “I’m not going anywhere,” may have been a truer statement than I wanted.
“It doesn’t have to be trashy,” Shay said. “We think you’d be great. You’re nice, you’re handsome, and—honestly—you aren’t getting any younger.”
For the rest of the walk, I couldn’t think of anything else. A couple of days later, I got an envelope in the
mail with details about the video and twenty pages of questions. I sat at my desk and looked at the stack of papers. Next to that stack was a stack of insurance claims I needed to get through by the time I left that evening.
Insurance.
The Bachelorette.
Insurance.
The Bachelorette.
I picked up a pencil and started to write. The form was fill-in-the-blank, like an elementary school test, except back then things were simpler.
Do you love me? Yes? No? Maybe?
“Sean Lowe,” I wrote, trying to suppress a laugh as I wrote my name. What am I doing? I thought. I answered all their many questions, and finally got to the end of the forms.
I had to include a couple of photos. Thankfully, I had the fitness images taken in Los Angeles. But I also had to submit a video, and I knew I couldn’t do it by myself. I texted my friends Laura and Stephanie: Help!
It was as if I’d just sent the bat signal to Batman. They agreed to come the very next day, with years of Bachelorette knowledge at their disposal.
“You at least should brush your hair,” Laura said when I opened the door to her and Stephanie. I laughed. These girls were like my sisters, and I knew I could count on them—for support and also a little good-natured ribbing.
“Are you excited?” Stephanie asked.
“There’s no harm in sending in a video,” I said. “There are probably thousands of men across America who are taking it more seriously than I am.”
“Yes,” Laura said. “But they don’t have us. Hand me the letter.”
She and Stephanie looked over my letter and began reading the requirements. “Okay, so there’s a list of things you have to talk about—what you do for fun, how your past relationships usually end, where you live . . . You know, the basics.”
After a little strategic talk about how to shoot the video, they went to work.
“Action!” Stephanie said, holding up her cell phone.
“This is my house,” I said, walking through the living room of my house.
“Cut!” she said.
“Can you make it less cheesy?” Laura asked.
“Who are you, Steven Spielberg?”
“I’m just trying to give you the best shot at this!” she protested. “Now, take two.”
We were laughing so much, I’m surprised we got any usable footage.
“Okay, so this is my house,” I said again. “This is the couch where I watch football on Saturdays. This is where I grill my chicken because I want to be healthy.”
Stephanie and Laura, as much as we had joked, did a great job with my audition video. I took the footage we’d shot, plugged in some of my fitness photos, and I submitted the video to the producers in October.
During November and December, I went on with my life and only occasionally daydreamed about what it would be like to be on the show. Most of the time I trudged through my work. I was thankful to have a job—one that wasn’t putting people’s personal finances at risk but was actually protecting them. However, I was bored. Now, I know that lots of folks build businesses and do great things in the insurance industry. My dad put food on our table our entire lives this way, and Andrew was a third-generation insurance man. The problem, honestly, wasn’t the job. The problem was me.
“Your policy covers theft, lightning, and windstorm,” I was saying into the phone to one of my clients. Just then, Andrew popped into the doorway. “But I’m sorry to say it doesn’t cover your watercraft.”
I continued with my conversation, wondering why Andrew was grinning as though he knew a secret.
“Thanks, Mr. Elias,” I said. “Call me if you have any other questions.”
I hadn’t even said good-bye before Andrew started talking.
“You have a call,” he said. “On line three.”
“Who is it?” I asked.
“Do I look like your secretary?” He smiled.
“Hey, Sean,” the person on the other end of the line said. “This is Tabby from casting at The Bachelorette. How are you?”
My heart jumped into my throat. Andrew stood awkwardly in the doorway, waiting to get a signal from me about whether it was good news. He was texting Shay everything I said. It was pretty obvious this was more exciting for them than it was for me. Some couples grow a garden; others get an aquarium. Andrew and Shay’s hobby was getting me on The Bachelorette.
The call was brief, friendly, and inconclusive.
“So?” Andrew looked at me expectantly.
“They were just calling to check in on me.”
“Doesn’t it seem like that’s a good sign?” he asked.
“Well, they didn’t say they wanted me,” I said, shrugging. “I gotta get back to work.”
“Hey,” Andrew said. “I’m your boss. Shouldn’t that be my line?”
A week later, I discovered a very strange coincidence. I was taking a road trip to Baton Rouge with my good friend Austin to catch an LSU game, which meant we had about four hundred miles of music and conversation. I was somewhat embarrassed to tell him about the possibility of being on The Bachelorette, but it felt weird to keep it from him.
“You’re never going to believe what Stephanie and Laura got me to do,” I said, bracing myself for a few jokes. When I told him we made a Bachelorette audition video, his eyes got big, and then he broke into laughter.
“Well, I’ve got some bad news for you,” he said. “I’m working on the same video.”
“You applied to be on the show?” I asked, stunned. Not only was it a weird coincidence, he just didn’t seem like the type of guy who would want to be on that show. I guess I didn’t either.
“My friends submitted an application without telling me.”
“Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could go together?” I asked.
“Yeah, you think that now,” he said. “But you’ll be heartbroken when I end up with the girl.”
“Have you heard anything from casting?” I asked.
“Not yet.”
Suddenly, it hit me. If Austin hadn’t gotten a call—and I had—the show might actually be interested in me. I played it off in the conversation, but that night my mind reeled with the possibility.
How strange would it be if they were truly interested?
Christmas and New Year’s came and went, and I caught myself thinking more about the show than I admitted to Shay and Andrew. But one January morning, my phone rang again.
“Hello, Sean,” said Tabby. “I’m calling to invite you to be a part of a casting call in Los Angeles over the weekend.”
Casting call was not in my normal vocabulary. I spent my time using terms such as accelerated death benefits, annuitization, and insurance premium. So when I rushed into Andrew’s office to tell him the news, it felt nice to hear the words roll off my tongue.
Andrew picked up his phone. “I can’t wait to tell everyone.”
“I haven’t told Mom about this,” I said. Everyone in the family was aware of my new Bachelorette option, except Mom. There’s no way my mom, a traditional, Southern woman, would like to hear that her son was heading off to be on a reality TV show.
I urged Andrew not to tell her. “There’s no reason to alarm her, especially since it’s unlikely to happen.”
I flew into LAX on Friday. When I landed, there was a driver holding a sign with “Lowe” written on it. I’d never been greeted by a driver, and a shot of electricity went through me.
Is this really happening?
“Mr. Lowe?” he asked, taking my bags and ushering me to his black town car parked at the airport. We drove for a while until we got to an out-of-the-way hotel. A staff member of The Bachelorette met me in my room, gave me a schedule for the weekend, and told me what to expect.
“Your interview is scheduled at three o’clock. But don’t come out of your room,” he said. “If you need anything, give me a call.”
“No problem,” I said, looking around the small room that was going to be my home for a couple of days.
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br /> “But why all the secrecy?”
“From here on out,” he said, “everything’s a secret. There are reporters everywhere who’d love to get a photo of potential next bachelors. We have to keep you hidden.”
“Okay,” I said, as if hiding from roving reporters were the most normal thing in the world.
“Seriously, I’ll make sure you have all the food and drink you want,” he said as he was leaving. “But don’t come out of your room.”
“Wait,” I remember asking him. “Am I the first guy to arrive?”
“I honestly can’t say,” he said before ducking out of the room.
I sat down on the bed, took off my shoes, and flipped on the television. There was a minibar that had small bottles of alcohol and candy bars, but none was on my list of Sagi-approved foods. Suddenly, all those days of eating according to my schedule seemed as though they might pay off. If the producers liked me, it would be because of my personality—but it couldn’t hurt that I now had a great six-pack.
The small room’s window looked out into a boring parking lot, and the television couldn’t distract me from the thoughts running through my head. When it was finally time for my interview, I couldn’t wait to get out of the hotel room. I was more excited than nervous about it. I was the type of guy who always hit it off with my friends’ parents. How much different would it be to impress the producers of The Bachelorette?
“Hello, I’m Chloe Kingston,” a woman said to me, extending her hand. “I’m one of the producers, and I’ll be asking you questions.”
The room wasn’t huge. It had a small table set up with candy and soda along the wall. A cameraman had set up a camera in front of a chair. Chloe sat slightly away to the left of the camera.
“I know it’s strange to be filmed, but act naturally,” she said. “There are no wrong answers. We’re just trying to get to know you.”
“Sounds good,” I said. Chloe was in her early thirties, with blonde hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. I had never met a producer for a television show, but I imagined them to be more businesslike and professional. It turns out the producers of The Bachelorette are very personable and not formal whatsoever. Part of their job is to befriend cast members so they’ll later open up to the producers during interviews.
