Bash
Five months doesn’t sound like long until it’s packed with all the ways you’re trying to learn another person, trying to be what they need, and never wanting to mess things up.
Some days the moods dips without warning—no cause, no fix, just a low threshold.
We just walk through it together, and I try to remind her softly that our brains can get stuck in these patterns.
It’s doing its job; we just have to teach it that it doesn’t need to be on alert all of the time anymore, teach her brain that she’s safe.
Sometimes we argue with it. Sometimes we just sit on the floor and eat cereal out of the box and name five things we can see in the room until she feels better.
I still mess up…a lot. I’ll say something in a clinical way that I swear I’m not trying to bring into our relationship, and I’ll see her shut down because it sounded like I was making her into a patient.
I’ll apologize, and then try again, using my boyfriend voice, not the clinician voice.
And we keep doing that until it feels like second nature and not something that has to be forced.
She’s taught me so much in this time together—that protecting someone doesn’t mean having to solve them, that I don’t need to rescue people in order to feel less guilty about not saving Isabel, that guarding a complex heart and mind sometimes just looks like turning the music down and sometimes looks like blasting it at midnight and dancing like idiots in the campus parking lot, that the strongest thing I can say sometimes is just, “I’m not going anywhere. You’re safe with me.”
She makes me feel like I’m finally living again, like I get to become who I’m supposed to become.
I find new things I love about her every day I get to be around her.
The way she’ll randomly start singing a song that correlates with a situation going on, and I always laugh because it’s always very, very accurate.
The way she gets road rage and then always apologizes afterwards and starts coming up with all the ways they’re probably having a bad day and were maybe just yelling at their kid in the backseat who was crying and didn’t mean to swerve into her lane.
The ways she never stops growing and questioning her journey with her faith, God, and the world around us.
The ways she’s let her guard down enough for me to get to show her the soft, respectful, protective love she deserves to experience.
Loving Lydia has been the most rewarding experience.
My sole purpose has become trying to show her love can be safe, that she can heal from what her father did, what Eli did, what every other man who used her and discarded her did.
Lydia has such a beautiful soul, and I want her to see just how brightly she shines even in the dark depths of all the pain she’s been through—that was never once her fault or hers to carry.
Every chance I get to be around her and experience that light, I take.
And Sundays are slowly becoming my favorite day of the week because it’s full of her.
Not only does she love coming to church with Erik and me, but she’s roped Simone and Lani in, too.
At first, it was so that she felt more comfortable and less out of place, and now it’s because they’ve all sort of just made it a thing to keep coming.
Lani calls it JFD—Jesus and friends day…
except Erik, she’ll always add, and we’ll always ignore laughing.
Granted, she’s the only one who calls it that, but we all share the sentiment with her.
We carpool together, grab lunch after, and then all rotate weeks for who gets to choose what activity we do for the day.
It’s been amazing to watch her grow and to get to grow right next to her.
“You’ve put on three different sweaters, Bro,” Erik says, perched on his desk chair, tying his shoes. “Just pick one and come on. Lydia thinks you’re cute no matter what you wear.”
I glare at him in the mirror. “Don’t ever say cute with that high-pitched voice again. It made me very uncomfortable.”
He laughs, hopping down and patting me on the back as he walks over to the door. “Let’s go, pretty boy.”
I shake my head, turning around and walking out of the door he’s holding open, thumping his head on the way out.
“Ow, dude,” he says, rubbing the back of his head. “So…how are you two doing by the way? I mean, you have to be doing pretty good since you spend all your time with her now instead of me.”
“Do you need a tissue for the tears?” I tease him, tucking in my shirt hem under the sweater and smoothing it out as we walk down the stairs.
He rolls his eyes.
“We’re doing good,” I tell him. “Hard, some days. But the good kind.”
Erik presses his lips together and nods, impressed. “Honestly, I never thought I’d see the day you let anyone in like this, let alone wanted to be this healthy of a partner for someone. My boy is growing up.”
He pretends to get emotional, and I shove him and laugh as we walk across the parking lot.
“Yeah,” I say, actually stopping to think about it. “I mean…it’s for her. She makes me want to grow and be better. She’s my best friend, and I want to see her happy, and if I can contribute to that happiness and calmness and peace, I want to—”
“Excuse me?” Erik asks, offended. “That was really meaningful and all, like gold star for you, really. But I’m kinda stuck on the best friend part. I thought I was your best friend.”
I nudge his arm. “You are. You’re just bumped down a notch.” I shrug. “It’s performance-based and you…well, you don’t performatively make me feel the way Lydia does,” I wince. “Sorry.”
“You know what, I think I’ll take that tissue. This is…this is just a lot,” he says, pretending to cry.
“You’re literally an ex-gang kid…I think you’ve got tough enough skin to handle words.”
He gasps. “Low blow, man. And gangsters have feelings too.”
I ignore his theatrics. “I mean, this is all still new for me. I’ve never…done a real relationship before. I’m trying not to mess it up.”
Erik slides back into serious mode for a moment. “I’m actually really proud of you. You have a really good heart, and you two were lucky to find each other. You really are the perfect match and the perfect balance to each other. You…you get each other…on a level other people can’t.”
I look over at him, and he’s giving me these big, proud-parent eyes.
“Okay, don’t make it weird,” I tell him, and we both laugh.
We jump in my car, and Erik plays shotgun DJ for all of five minutes until we drive over to the girls’ dorm.
“Back seat, man,” I tell him with my thumb.
He points at himself like he’s being profiled. “You’re gonna stick me between Pretty and Petty?”
“Yeah, I’ll send you some prayers. Get on. We all know you have a thing for Petty anyway,” I say, laughing. “One day you’re going to have to tell me what the deal is with you two.”
He groans. “Just some unfinished history, that’s all,” he says, trying to hide his smile, and climbs out as the front doors open and three voices all hit the air at once.
Simone is glitter and volume, Lani is smirks and threats, and Lydia is quiet and everything I look for first. She slides into the front seat, and I lean over, taking her chin in my hand and kissing her.
Fake gags erupt from the backseat, and Lydia laughs against my mouth.
I want to bottle that sound up for all the bad days.
“Morning,” I say.
“Morning,” she whispers back.
Lani forces Simone to sit in the middle, and Erik jokes that she won’t catch on fire if she touches him. Lani rolls her eyes and mumbles that she probably would.
The church is the warehouse kind. It’s all pipe and tall ceilings and a propped-up stage.
People fill the rows and greet the people around them.
We find a couple of seats near the back, and Lani nudges me, trying to be funny, telling me I look like a youth pastor today, which makes me second-guess wearing this sweater.
We hit that mid part of the sermon where you sometimes start dozing off or zoning out, when my attention is pulled back to what he’s saying.
He reaches for a stool and sits. “I want to say this plainly…Jesus is not waiting for a better version of you. He meets you where you are. By a well with a woman who’d run out of ‘second chances.’ At a dinner table with people, ‘respectable folks’ crossed the street to avoid. He comes to you.”
People nod.
“This isn’t about religion as a box to check,” he says, tapping the Bible. “This is about relationship—learning to live loved. The grace of God has very little, if anything, to do with your performance. You don’t have to earn this. You couldn’t if you tried.”
He glances across the room. “Grace doesn’t make sin cute.
Grace makes us hate sin, because we finally see what it costs and who paid.
We see all the negative effects. We see why he wants us not to be burdened by the aftermath of sin.
‘Rules’ in the Bible were never just a list you needed to check off to be ‘good’ in God’s eyes.
They aren’t even really rules in the ‘obey or you get the switch’ kind of way, but guidance.
I don’t know if you know this, but God actually knows a lot more than you do. ”
I let out a small laugh at that.
“He knows what comes after those cool and fun sinful things. He knows the pain in you and the pain in people around you that comes from sin. He knows the destruction drugs and alcohol have on not only your body but also on your mind and on the relationships with people around you. He knows the pain, hurt, and emotional ties that come with sleeping around with any and everyone the wind blows your way. He knows the domino effect that stealing, cheating, killing, or harming other people has. He knows who gets hurt when those little lies aren’t so little anymore.
He knows the resentment that can build up in a marriage when one spouse continues to talk down on the other and stays in their selfish ways when they’re supposed to be one flesh, loving each other the way God loves us, lifting each other up, and continuing to serve each other every day in the small, meaningful ways.
These aren’t things he tells us and warns us against to ‘take our fun away’.
He’s trying to protect you, not control you.
If he wanted to control you, we would all be perfect little robots with no free will, but that’s not the case.
That’s never what he wanted. He cares about you, he cares about your heart, he cares about your mind, he cares about you affecting the other people around you—who he also cares about.
The shame can sometimes say, ‘I am bad,’ so you hide. Grace says, ‘I am loved,’ so you step into the light and let yourself be held.
Quick sidebar. If you’re walking through things like anxiety, depression, addiction—God isn’t rolling His eyes at you. Bring your meds and your prayers. Bring your counselor and your community and all your questions. The church is not a museum for finished people; it’s a hospital for the living.”
A hum moves through the rows around us.
“What do we do with this grace?” he asks.
“You know, there’s a big difference between remorse and repentance.
Remorse is, ‘I feel terrible…and I’ll probably do it again by Friday.
’ Repentance is a change of direction. Not sinless perfection—direction.
Think about a GPS—if you miss your turn, it doesn’t say, ‘You idiot, journey canceled.’ It says ‘Recalculating.’ That’s grace.
It gets you home, no matter how many wrong turns you take. There’s always a way back.”
He stands again, energy rising with him. “Some of you are terrified of that word ‘repent’ because you heard it weaponized. But in Scripture, repentance is an invitation back to life.”
He nods toward a galvanized tank by the side wall. “That’s why we baptize. Not because it makes God love you or magically gets you into heaven, but because it’s a wedding ring—the outward sign of an inward reality.’”
He softens. “And if you’re thinking, ‘But I don’t feel ready.’ Welcome to the club. Nobody gets baptized because they nailed it. We do it because Jesus did, because He told us not to be ashamed of the journey and who’s navigating it.”
He gestures to a table with clipboards and kind faces around it.
“We’re doing our baptism block party next month.
If you even think this might be your next step, talk to the team after service.
They don’t have a quota. They just have time.
If you’re not there yet, cool. Keep coming.
Bring your questions. God’s not scared of your process. ”
He pauses, looking around. “One last thing before I close out. If you’re here and the night gets loud sometimes, if you’ve ever thought about not being here tomorrow…
please hear this. We’re not just a Sunday service.
We’re real people. Let someone know. We’ve got a care team, peer-led groups, and counselors we trust. If all you can say is ‘I’m not okay,’ that’s enough.
You are worth the call. You are worth the inconvenience. You are not a burden; you’re a person.”
Silence, the good kind. The kind that fills full in your chest, and pricks a little behind your eyes.
He opens his hands again. “Jesus meets you where you are. He won’t leave you there. Grace is free; walking it out takes courage and community. We can do ‘courage’ together. We can be ‘community’ together.”
The band comes back. People stand. The air feels lighter in that way that happens when someone just tells the truth and doesn’t try to fix you with it.
During the last song, Lydia taps me again. When I look down this time, her eyes are full, and there’s a glint to them. “I think I want to get baptized,” she whispers.
It’s not dramatic. It’s not a movie scene…but my chest still does the most undignified, excited flip. “Really?” I whisper back.
She nods, a tiny, tight motion. “I’ve been thinking about it for a few weeks now, actually.”
Something unclenches in me at her strength. “I—” I swallow, and it feels like a decision I’ve been walking toward for years. “I think I want to do it with you.”
Her mouth parts. “Really?”
“I haven’t…” I admit, a little embarrassed. “I kept waiting to feel like the perfect Christian. Which is…not the point.” I glance at the stage, then back at her. “New direction, right?”
Her smile starts small and then breaks wide, the kind that makes me want to grab a camera and freeze us in this moment. She squeezes my hand, and I smile down at her, amazed by this girl, amazed by where I’m standing….amazed by God.