I Still Believe Read online

  Living at Grandma Marge’s kept my expenses low. I wouldn’t tell Jean-Luc I was nearly broke, though. The Kry would give me a hundred dollars or so for working the merch table, and I was picking up a little money from singing in churches. That was it for income, but I didn’t really have any worries over finances. I had never had much money anyway, so I didn’t feel like I was doing without anything I needed.

  Those might seem like lean times, but I look back at them as very fruitful. I was growing spiritually as part of the great College and Career group at Calvary Chapel Vista. Jean-Luc was pouring into me spiritually and musically. Through music, I was seeing God use me and open doors for me. And finally, I was beginning to feel a specific calling in my life.

  CHAPTER 7

  BROKEN UP AND BROKEN

  It was a request like the others I was receiving from college friends in the spring of 1999: Jason Duff asked if I would lead worship for a Bible study group he led weekly at Palomar College. A supportive group of friends had been finding music opportunities for me in their churches and small groups. I liked to lead worship any chance I got, and being able to help a good friend like Jason was a bonus.

  Jason told me about one particular student he had met in his Bible study group. “She’s amazing,” he told me. “You ought to see how much she loves the Lord.” I could already see how interested Jason was in her.

  Jason introduced me to Melissa Henning when I arrived at Palomar. She had dark brown hair, big ol’ brown eyes, and the best smile anyone could hope to see. Wow, I thought. He was right—she is lovely. Jason definitely had seemed to choose a good one.

  There were about eight students in Jason’s Bible study that night, and we formed a circle to start the praise and worship. It was a small group, but it was an awesome time of singing and praising God. All the students were really into it, but one in particular kept catching my attention—Jason’s friend, Melissa.

  I had never seen anyone our age with such unrestrained passion for God. She sang with complete abandon, arms fully outstretched. She was so deep into the Lord’s presence that I felt like an outsider.

  After the Bible study concluded, Melissa and I chatted briefly. I saw her at the Bible study over the next few weeks and in a few other group settings. Jason kept talking to me about her and how much he thought of her. Jason, though, never said anything that indicated Melissa felt the same way about him. When I observed both of them in the same group, Jason’s hope that they would become more than friends appeared one-sided.

  In fact, as I was around Melissa more, it seemed the only chemistry that was developing was between her and me.

  I called Melissa to tell her what I was noticing, and she confirmed that we had a common interest in each other. But we also had something else in common: we both were friends with Jason. Actually, Jason was one of my best friends, and I knew that he was really optimistic that something would develop between him and Melissa.

  Melissa and I agreed we were in a difficult spot. We didn’t want to hurt Jason, but we enjoyed talking with each other so much and wanted to keep hanging out. We would meet for lunch or coffee and talk about God, music, and a lot of different things. Jason had been right when he said Melissa was amazing. She was just a very happy person—a very joyous person.

  Melissa told me she had been raised in a Christian home, but she had strayed a little—nothing bad, more like not being as committed to God as she should have been. One day God spoke to her heart. She realized what she was doing and recommitted herself to following God. Other members of her family had been traveling a similar path, and she helped bring her family back to an all-out commitment to God like the one she had made. Melissa was a leader and an effective witness, and I admired that about her.

  She was so devoted to the Lord. A few of my fun-loving friends and I had a tendency to get a bit silly sometimes during Bible study meetings. I was young and liked to goof off a little. Melissa liked to have fun too, and she had the most contagious, jovial (and sometimes really loud) laugh. But she would let me know with her adorable little “Stop it!” smirk that I was getting too goofy and needed to rein myself in. I actually loved it when she flashed me that smirk.

  We had been spending time together for about a month, and I was quickly falling in love with her. One time when we were together, I started thinking, I have to tell her, I have to tell her.

  The next time we were together was at her parents’ house. We sat down in her living room, and I felt like we were in our own little world. We started talking, and my heart started beating really fast. I felt myself getting emotional. I was thinking, This girl is unbelievable! I could marry this girl! My heart kept racing, and I noticed my palms getting sweaty.

  Tell her! Tell her! TELL . . . HER!

  “Melissa, I just want you to know that I love you.”

  A shocked look came across her face, immediately followed by an expression that said, I’m shocked, but I don’t want to appear shocked. I wished I could unsay that one line.

  An awkward silence lingered until Melissa let out a small sigh. “Jeremy, I appreciate that, but I can’t tell you that right now. For me to say those words would be a pretty huge commitment.”

  I was both embarrassed and devastated. I was afraid I had freaked her out to the point that I had ruined whatever relationship could potentially develop between us.

  I didn’t sleep well that night. I kept replaying the scene in my head. But, I reasoned, I had needed to tell her. It was how I felt, and I couldn’t help it. She loved Jesus, and she loved other people. There wasn’t a hint of standoffishness or “better than others” in her. If she saw someone who wasn’t dressed in nice clothes or appeared to be down-and-out, she would go to that person and say, “How are you doing today? Jesus loves you!” She was amazing. She was the one for me; I was convinced of it. Yet had I become so caught up in my emotions that I had jumped the gun and ruined everything?

  I had to keep asking that question for a couple of weeks, because my declaration of love created a period of awkwardness between us. We weren’t hanging out together every day, so I had a lot of time to analyze and speculate. During the times we were together, I felt a need to convince her that I was normal. Then I thought about how that approach could get weird because in trying to do things to prove I was normal, I might start doing things that weren’t normal for me. I was in that confusing position where I started overthinking what I should do instead of just being myself.

  Since we hadn’t been seeing each other every day, I couldn’t try to see her more often because that could look like I was trying too hard. But then I also couldn’t see her less—to “give her room”—because that could look like I was trying to take a step back from her after she said she didn’t love me. Unfortunately, I didn’t know of a book titled What to Do When You Say ‘I Love You’ Too Soon that I could read for advice. I was on my own to fix the mess I had created.

  One thing I knew for sure was that I was not going to tell her “I love you” again until she said it to me. I wasn’t going to make that mistake a second time.

  CRUSHED

  Although the awkwardness lasted a few weeks, it seemed more like a few months. But we worked our way back to where we had been before my bomb in her parents’ living room, and our relationship even began to grow beyond that point.

  After we had recovered from my blunder, we recognized the time had come that I needed to let Jason know what was going on. I didn’t know when or where or how I would tell him. I wasn’t practicing a “So, Jason, we need to talk” speech, but I knew that when the first opportunity presented itself, I needed to start the conversation.

  That opportunity came when a bunch of us were hanging out at the beach. Jason and I were off walking alone and he said, “Hey, I talked to Melissa last night.” Jason called all the members of his Bible study periodically just to check in and see how they were doing. I felt bad for him as he said he had called Melissa, because the lilt in his voice made it obvious he still had
feelings for her.

  “I gotta tell you something, man,” I began. I paused so he would know that the “something” was serious. Little did I know that Melissa and her sister Heather were nervously watching from a distance, holding hands, and praying for our conversation.

  “Melissa and I have been hanging out, and we both like each other.”

  “What!” He asked if I was serious. When I said I was, he understandably became a little mad.

  I kind of freaked out because I realized the conversation wasn’t going to end well. It’s not like I had expected Jason to say, “Oh, that’s okay. It bums me out, but I’m okay.” Certainly not. But he took the news hard—really hard. Telling him was more difficult than I had expected.

  “Out of all the girls, why Melissa?” he asked. “You knew how I felt.”

  “It just happened,” I said. I tried to explain myself but did a poor job. Truthfully, though, I’m not sure I could have given an explanation that would have made our discussion go better.

  Jason was crushed, rightfully so, and nothing I could say was going to help.

  He was upset, and I was feeling the impact of how badly I had hurt him. I dropped to my knees in the sand and cried.

  “Dude, I’m so sorry,” I said. “I don’t want to do anything to hurt you.”

  But I had.

  Jason was the type of guy everyone loved—I loved Jason. He had a loyal following, especially from his Bible study group, because he was a good leader who genuinely cared for the people he led. The phone calls he made to the group’s members demonstrated that.

  To the friends Jason and I shared, I looked like a jerk who had stolen Melissa from him. I didn’t believe I had stolen her at all, but I became a bit of an outcast among that group. It took time for the wounds in those relationships to heal, but eventually they did. I still love Jason, and we still are good friends.

  There was one person’s negative reaction, however, that I was completely unprepared for: Melissa’s.

  When Melissa saw how badly Jason was hurt and how many of our friends defended him, friction developed between the two of us. If what we had done was wrong to that many people, Melissa wondered if our being together actually was wrong. I tried to convince her otherwise, that the others weren’t supportive of our relationship only because they thought Jason had been wronged. They didn’t know how sensitive we had tried to be toward Jason, how we had kept things quiet at first to gauge what there actually was between us before I talked to him.

  “I care for you and you care for me,” I would tell her. “We totally care for each other. We both love the Lord. There’s nothing wrong with this.”

  “I just don’t know,” she would respond. “It seems like there’s too much confusion around all this for it to be right.”

  We continued to date, but the fallout from my conversation with Jason dented our relationship. Jason and I remained friends, and Melissa and Jason remained friends, but there was a noticeable distance that had entered into the relationships.

  About a month after I told Jason about Melissa and me, the three of us were part of a group from Vista’s college class that went on a mission trip to Maui. It was a great time of evangelizing in some of the island’s poorer parts, away from the tourist areas. We saw God do remarkable things in people’s lives there.

  But what had happened between Melissa, Jason, and me felt like a distraction. I think with the God-things that were taking place on our trip, we were all hyperaware of God’s purpose in our being there and the importance of being fully focused on the Lord and what He wanted from us on that trip.

  During some downtime, when Melissa and I were apart from the others on the beach, she told me she needed to break up with me. Her reasons were the same ones I had been trying to counter.

  “It just doesn’t seem right,” she said. “There are too many issues and too much friction. With everything that’s going on, I just don’t feel that the Lord can be in this. I just need to be in the Word right now.”

  At CCBC, we guys would joke about the “Bible college way” a girl would break up with her boyfriend: “It’s not you—I just need to be with Jesus. He’s my boyfriend right now.”

  That wasn’t what Melissa told me, but it sure felt that way. I was devastated. I had told her only that one time, but I loved her. I believed with all my heart that she was meant to be my wife.

  So, I did what any other mature young man being dumped by the woman of his dreams would do: I cried like a baby and called my mother.

  “What’s wrong with you women?” I asked my mom. “This is crazy. I thought she was the one!”

  I was crushed, and my mom knew it without my having to say it. She listened as I vented. Then in her typical calm, precise way she redirected my focus from my perspective to God’s perspective.

  “Your only choice,” she reminded me, “is to be patient and trust Him.”

  Did I hang up from my call with my mom and go skipping out to the beach, high-fiving everyone along the way? Of course not. I still hurt. I still was confused. I still was crushed. None of that changed. But my mom’s advice caused me to pull back a little from everything I was feeling and look at the larger picture of the reason for the trip.

  When I look back now, I see at least one good result that came out of Melissa’s breaking up with me during that trip: it broke me to the point that I put all my focus on God for the rest of our time in Maui. In my brokenness, I saw how God could use me in amazing ways.

  After Melissa broke up with me, God was the sole purpose of my trip. I shared the gospel with anyone who would listen, and people accepted Christ as their Savior right there on the spot! Radical things took place. I walked up to a group of fifteen kids and started a conversation. They opened up to me and made me feel welcome in their group. We were having a great talk. I shared some of the things that God had done in my life, then about Adam and Eve and how sin was brought into the world, and how Christ came to cover all that sin.

  “Man, I love Jesus,” I told them. “He’s changed my life, and he can change your life.”

  Every kid in the group wound up bowing his head and praying to accept Christ. I had my picture taken with that group, and I still have that photo. Seeing my picture with those fifteen kids reminds me not of what I did, but of what the Holy Spirit did. At a moment when I was completely emptied of myself, broken, and humbled, the Lord used me.

  In fact, He probably was able to use me at that moment because I was completely emptied of myself, broken, and humbled.

  CHAPTER 8

  “JUST ONE PERSON”

  Melissa and I still had the same group of friends, so after she broke up with me on the mission trip to Maui, we still saw each other every couple of weeks or so. Those meetings made me feel uneasy.

  We “kind of, sort of” got back together for a brief period, but then she broke it off again.

  Every time I saw Melissa, I hurt.

  If we were in the same room, I would say something short to her, but for the most part I tried to avoid her. She still tried to be my friend and would want to start a conversation, but I couldn’t handle seeing her and being just friends.

  Near the end of summer 1999, after spending about a year and a half with Grandma Marge, I moved out of her house. Marge was a special woman, and the room and board she gave me truly were a gift from God. I can reflect now and see how God placed her in my life for more reasons than to give me a place to stay.

  We had great discussions, and I learned from her years of experience serving the Lord. As I came to learn some of the events she had been through in her life, including the death of her husband, I was amazed at how she never questioned God. She knew the Lord was with her, she loved Him, and she seemed to anticipate that she was going to be with Him soon. I remember Grandma Marge as a faithful woman with a resolve that was both rock solid and sweet.

  A friend from Vista, Danny, had asked if I wanted to share a place with him. By that point, I was making enough from singing i
n churches that I could afford to pay my part of a bargain-rate rent—although I did have to eat more than my share of tuna, eggs, and ramen noodles to save money. (I ate so many ramen noodles that I won’t even touch a package of them now.)

  I bumped into Melissa less frequently, but I still thought of her often and really missed being with her. In October, a friend told me Melissa had been having stomach pains and was going to have tests done to see what was causing them.

  The day of her tests, I went with a group of friends to visit her at her family’s house. The test revealed she had a large, noncancerous cyst, and Melissa was her usual upbeat self.

  It felt strange visiting Melissa in her family’s home, but it was good to see her again. She was happy to see me, but of course she was the one who still wanted to be just friends. The group of us had decided to visit Melissa to let her know we cared about her, but I still really cared about her, and I didn’t want to linger at the house too long.

  About that same time, another door opened for me musically. With Jean-Luc as producer, I recorded my first CD: a ten-song, independently released project titled Jeremy Camp: Burden Me. We recorded it in San Diego at Horizon Christian Fellowship, thanks to Pastor Mike MacIntosh.

  I’m still grateful for Jean-Luc’s mentoring and support after Melissa and I broke up. I was getting more opportunities to play in churches, and I continued to play sometimes with The Kry. Music helped me gradually move away from Melissa and on with my life.

  I eventually reached the stage where I could accept that Melissa and I most likely were not going to get back together. I didn’t really want us to get back together because she had broken up with me (twice—kind of, sort of) and I didn’t want to run the risk of getting hurt again.

  Then in the spring of 2000, a friend asked if I had heard about Melissa.