Section Two
The Fall
Chris
As Christmas vacation ended and we returned to high school, nothing was the same in either of our lives. Linda and I were a couple, and boy, did we love it! All was fresh and explosive. Life focused on us.
We did everything together when our schedules per-mitted and found creative ways to cope when they didn’t. We had to be in constant communication. Writing notes, talking on the phone or just thinking about one another— that was daily life. Love notes passed to one another between classes (for all seven periods) enabled me to get through the day. I don’t know if we managed to actually learn anything at school during this time.
At home, when we were apart and unable to talk on the phone, we made audio recordings for each other. We’d fill a tape with sixty minutes of our myopic understand-ings of love and then give the other the tape. We don’t recommend this: it can cause extreme embarrassment when someone—not your parents, you hope, or years later your own children—finds these tapes.
Our behavior was obsessive and led us to do things we never imagined. Linda left a job at which she excelled just so we could work together at the local grocery store. The store’s uniform was a lime green polyester number so Linda went from looking great in her short skirts to resembling the character we affectionately know as Gumby. She was still strikingly attractive!
We skipped school regularly until school officials caught us. I was suspended for a few days, and Linda was refused a scholarship opportunity due to these poor choices.
Our love continued to grow, until we made a choice one evening that changed our relationship irrevocably. We didn’t intend things to pan out in this fashion, but once begun, everything tilted into a new dimension.
That evening we had sex for the first time, in my car. We excused ourselves by saying that in our hearts we wanted to completely give ourselves to each other. This seemed the logical next step in such a serious relationship.
Growing up, both of us had learned that premarital sex was wrong, but in our passion we quickly justified our sin. As a result, doors opened in our spiritual lives that allowed the enemy to get a foothold. We felt trapped in a vicious cycle, unable to gain control. We couldn’t figure out how to stop.
We felt terrible about our immoral behavior but experienced defeat after defeat as we struggled with the desires of the flesh. There was no way that I wanted to stop. When you stumble repeatedly in the same sin, you begin to feel hopeless that you will ever achieve lasting victory over it. That sums up our situation. As much as we tried to avoid sexual promiscuity, our flesh managed to find every opportunity to satisfy our desires. It was war within and without.
I was terrified that my mother would somehow find out how corrupt her child had become. She would be crushed if she knew I was sexually active.
One day as I came into the house, I heard my mother say, “Chris, explain to
