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

Author:Hale, Mandy [Hale, Mandy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2014-03-11T00:00:00+00:00

Although my prayer time and relationship with God had clearly suffered since I moved in with Steven, I still spent time with God regularly and talked to Him about things going on in my life. I don’t think my problem was that I stopped talking to God; I think it’s that I stopped listening to Him. In late summer 2009, God started to lay something very heavily on my heart—a realization that I wanted to ignore but knew I couldn’t hide from as easily as I was hiding from my closest friends and family.

“If you don’t get out of this relationship with Steven, you are going to end up hurt badly, or worse,” I felt like God was saying.

Still, despite everything I had been through with Steven, I felt powerless to leave. I was scared, uncertain, and so beaten down by the constant arguing, violence, and lies that I felt trapped in a prison of my own making. I wasn’t yet ready to heed God’s urging, so instead I began to cry out to Him like never before. At night, when Steven was in the living room watching TV or tapping away on his laptop, I would sneak away to the bathroom, lock the door, and fall onto my knees on the hard tile, begging God to give me the strength to walk away, once and for all.

“God, I know I have turned my back on You, disappointed You, and disobeyed You, and I humbly ask for Your forgiveness,” I would pray. “And I know I don’t deserve Your mercy, but I am asking for it anyway. Please help me find the strength to walk away from this toxic situation. Please give me the courage and boldness I need to disentangle myself from this dark relationship and find my way back to the light. When I am weak, I pray that You would be my strength. And I am so very weak right now. Where You lead, I will follow. Just show me where to go. Show me what to do. And give me the courage to be obedient.”

Night after night, I prayed this prayer. And night after night, as God supernaturally conspired to bring the perfect circumstances together to ensure my exit from the relationship, I slowly started to feel myself growing a little stronger.

Two events happened simultaneously to bring this prayer to fruition. First, Jeremy’s sister, Erin, with whom I had become dear friends several years prior, had moved back to Arizona and was getting married. She had asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding, and I was honored to say yes and thrilled to get to travel to Arizona to see her. Originally Steven was supposed to go with me, and we had discussed the idea of flying out West together. As the date drew closer, however, he decided he couldn’t take that much time off work, and my dad volunteered to be my travel partner instead.

My dad and I decided that since my history

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