i was born in a country that no longer exists, at a hospital that has since been condemned, and i was two weeks late. my parents named me brandice (“fire, fine wine”) nicholle (“victory of the people”). it’s kind of an intense name to live up to.
my dad was in the air force, and we moved to japan when i was 3. when i was five, i accepted Jesus into my heart at zion christian fellowship, and life was pretty awesome. we lived there until 1999. i hated leaving. over that summer i gained a lot of weight through emotional eating that would haunt me through high school and the beginning of college.
i learned to love texas, but living here wasn’t easy. my dad worked in the technology sector and after 9/11, he went through a series of job layoffs. financially, it was devastating, and while it isn’t as bad now as it was, it’s still hard.
in spite of the job layoffs and lack of money, my family was and still is extremely close. my life started to spiral out of control in january of 2003. my older sister, adrienne, was diagnosed with a brain tumor on january 12th. by january 15th, she was gone.
both my parents are pastors, and i was raised knowing that God was everything. 2003, however, was my year of hell, and i seriously started to doubt that fact. looking for anything to fill the void my sister left, i had become addicted to pornography by the time i was twelve. i couldn’t stand how lonely i was, and because i weighed at least fifty pounds more than the other girls my age i knew, i thought if i looked like the women in the videos i was watching, guys would like me. don’t get me wrong, my dad is awesome, and he told me all the great things fathers should tell their daughters, but i am hardheaded by nature. :P
at thirteen, my parents let me have a boyfriend. in hindsight, it was a really awful decision, but they were trying to help me. we stayed together for ten months, which for our age was a fairly substantial amount of time. i never did anything sexually with him, but thanks to the exposure to pornography, the desire was there. i look back now and think it was probably a good thing he broke up with me when he did, because i’m not sure if a thirteen year old girl and a fourteen year old boy have enough self control not to do anything stupid. when he broke up with me, he said it was because God told him to, and while i thought he was full of it at the time, now i think he might have been telling the truth.
after having gone through losing my sister, almost all of my friends who didn’t know how to behave around me because of it, and my boyfriend, i was an emotional wreck, and that summer i seriously considered suicide. i remember being on the bridge over the promenade at the air force academy thinking all i had to do was lean a little too far and everything would be over. God Himself had His hand on the side of that bridge, because i just couldn’t jump.
that fall i started high school, and was burned by a girl i thought would be one of my best friends. i told her i had a crush on a guy at our co-op, and she spent the rest of the semester flirting with him. since i was still really self-conscious, i didn’t think there was anything i could do, and i retreated further into myself. i could have been saved a lot of pain if i had just remembered how much Jesus loved me, even if i didn’t feel like anyone else did. unfortunately, i am a student of what my dad likes to refer to as “hard knocks university”, and it was pretty much the furthest thing from my mind. i believed in God, but i absolutely didn’t believe He was good.
fast forward through my spiritual teenage wasteland (because to be perfectly honest, that’s all it was) to baylor university. in april of 2007, when i was a freshman in high school, God told me that baylor is where i would be going to college. for the most part, i was really happy with that, but thanks to that boyfriend i mentioned earlier, who i had gotten back with twice, i decided that i wanted to go to ut austin instead. isn’t it funny how God makes sure you’re on the right path sometimes even when you don’t want to be? i didn’t even get accepted to ut, and that boyfriend and i are thankfully not together anymore. instead, i got accepted to baylor in february 2010.
being at this school has changed my life. it was the first time i had to choose a place to go to church on my own, and after a really freaky first sunday at another local church, someone invited me to go to antioch community. at first glance, it might look like any other contemporary christian church, but underneath that is a group of people that believes God loves us and wants us to be free from our old lives in order to live for Him and serve others. maybe you’re thinking, “aren’t your parents pastors? why couldn’t they teach you this?” the bible says that we have to work out our own salvation, which means that yes, i had to move away from my parents and get up close and personal with Jesus for myself. anyway, i had still been struggling with pornography when i got to baylor and i hated it. i felt like a hypocrite. how could i wear a “true love waits” ring and do what i did?
one night at dwelling place, pastor gulley was talking about purity and how our future spouses are counting on us to be pure, just like they’re being pure. he said that one day before we get married, we’re going to have to look into the eyes of that man or woman of God and tell them whether or not we’ve saved ourselves for them. sure, i’m physically pure, but what about everything else? so that night, for the first time, i told someone about my addiction. she prayed with me and i was really excited. i finally thought i was free.
my mom always told me that people should be most on their guard from sin when coming in contact with HALT. this stands for hungry, angry, lonely, tired. over christmas break, i got too lonely, and let myself fall back into pornography again. i was using it as an escape again, because i was afraid i would not be able to afford to go back to baylor in the spring. that story is an awesome testimony in itself, which you can read a tiny bit of here.
i got back to baylor, and was determined to avoid porn at all costs. i found out someone very close to me also struggled with porn and knowing that made me feel so much less alone. i had an accountability partner at the very least.
i believed i was free from pornography no matter what, but i still felt really guilty. my dad had found out about it once after looking through our home computer history, but my mom didn’t know. i went on a mission trip with antioch over spring break. by that time, i’m not sure if i was righteously indignant or just mad, but i wanted to know for sure that God had set me free. i finally ended up calling my parents and telling them both and they were SOOOO awesome about it. close to the end of that trip, one of the pastors was talking about how, if we were in the presence of God, nothing would amaze us more than the fact that He loves us. right as he said, “God loves you,” i just broke down and cried. it was like God stuck His finger in my chest and was like, “you. you’re beautiful and you’re Mine. I love you. that’s all.”
i am not perfect. i am still a procrastinating, non-sleeping, too-much-pizza-and-caffeine-consuming college student. i have rough edges (okay… a lot of rough edges…) and i will never be a morning person. sometimes, i am still tempted. Yeshua gives me grace not to give in. this is my victory. this is the state of being free.
