Healing

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Looking Back on Why I Kissed Dating Goodbye

I remember the first time I heard author Joshua Harris on Focus on the Family. The topic was his successful book “I Kissed Dating Goodbye.” I was shocked, elated and relieved all at once.
“Finally, someone gets it,” I thought.
Needless to say, I went right out and bought the book, and read through its pages about God having something better for us, that He never intended for us to go through all that needless pain, that keeping physical intimacy at bay till marriage is worth much more; and that Harris had been continually scrutinized in the mainstream media for presenting such ideas.
Memories of my past came back like shards of broken glass: The boy that I had met at sixteen, the one I thought I’d wanted to marry, the one I became too involved with too quickly; the one I’d never gotten over. A certain pain that had kept me from forming any other relationships with guys flooded my insides. This feeling, I could only keep at bay by distracting my mind, which had been clenched by hurt ever since the Christmas of 1995. That was when we’d broken up. It was very suddenly (though it had been brewing for months), it was three days before Christmas, and it was over the phone. I remembered my mom repeatedly saying to me that she needed to use the phone as we were discussing the stuff of mine that was still at his house. He assured me he would get it back to me. Not wanting this conversation to continue, I said, "My mother needs to use the phone

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