Nobody Loves Me

Nobody Loves Me

Soon thereafter, Kristin began to cry, and then sob, and then say through the darkness, "Nobody loves me... Nobody loves me... Nobody loves me..." amidst her sobs. It was heartbreaking to hear but I didn't intervene. She had a right to cry, vent, and feel that way. How could she not? The Pentecostal church had called the cops on her and had her hauled away. The local pastor had stretched out his arms to block her. The youth pastor had betrayed her. His mentor pastor had insulted her. The Togelese evangelist had tried to use her. The provincial local pastors had beaten her. The Baptist pastor had rejected her. And now, a deliverance minister, who finally had seemed like someone legitimate and who truly cared, had turned out to be a fraud, and broken the camel's back. So she was crushed.

I was also crushed and didn't have the emotional energy to comfort her. So I stayed quiet and hoped that she would cry herself to sleep.

But she didn't. After a while, her crying became louder and louder until she was wailing at the top of her lungs not only, "Nobody loves me!" but also, "Nobody wants to hold me!" and even, "Nobody wants to kiss me!" It soon became apparent that while she was crying out from a genuine sense of despair, she also wanted me to come over, hold her and tell her that I love her, and even kiss her.

I tried to pretend to be sleeping but nobody could sleep through that wailing. I considered walking out of the room, which I could have done discreetly if I had been in the bed near the door. But because she was sensitive to the traffic noise outside and to give her more privacy to and from the bathroom, I was in the bed near the window and would have to walk past her bed to reach the door. Even if I had been in the bed near the door, walking out on someone bewailing that nobody loves her just seemed too cruel, as telling her to be quiet also seemed.

So I walked over to her bed, gave her a kiss, and told her that I loved her. I did love her; my own reaction when the demon cast out of her entered me had proven that. But it wasn't the typical love between a man and a woman, and not because Kristin wasn't an attractive woman. In fact, she was drop dead gorgeous.

I had felt called to the mission field as soon as I was saved in France in my early 30s, and had spent almost a decade looking for a Christian woman who shared my vision, first in France, which has very few Protestant women, and then in USA and online. I had soon learned that the vast majority of single Christian women who profess to love Jesus "with all my heart" really just love themselves, and what they want most is a comfortable lifestyle. At 40, I had decided that too much time already had been wasted looking for a woman whose life is aimed at heaven instead of on herself, gave up, and left on my own for the mission field, where I met other missionaries and soon learned that the married guys with wives and kids end up having (very) little time for doing actual missionary work, which affirmed my decision to remain single.

So I hadn't considered Kristin a potential partner, first because I had already closed my book on marriage. Second, I was double her age. Third and most importantly, I felt like a soldier carrying around a wounded comrade from one field hospital to another looking for a doctor who could help her. My focus was on getting Kristin the help that she needs so that she stops suffering. Having romantic ideations about someone suffering as much as Kristin was suffering would have been selfish and inappropriate.

In any case, she stopped wailing and fell silent, looked up at me for a while with eyes whose tears glistened in the light that came in through the window, then hugged my waist and buried her face in my tummy like a little girl who had found a place to hide, and just held on. After sitting with her on her bed like that for a while, I eventually tucked her in, whispered her goodnight, kissed her forehead this time, and returned to my bed.

The next morning, I sat her down, told her that I had been a womanizer until getting saved in my 30s and was now a middle-aged man who was double her age, while she is a beautiful woman at the peak of her youth who could have any man she wants, so she should choose a man who was raised Christian, is about her age, and has been saving himself for her.

She seemed hurt when hearing about my sordid sexual past but after a pause, replied that I was the only one who didn't betray her, who has been there for her since we met, who didn't have some ulterior motive, and the one she wants to be with.