Dede's Search for Perfect Love

CBN.com - “And I remember thinking to myself.  Is this it? Is this what my life is going to be?  This awful awful cycle?”

A series of relationships defined who Dede Nesbitt was, a woman desperate to be truly loved by a man.  It started when she was a child. Dede thought her dad loved her sister more because of her sister’s musical talent.

“My sister started playing when she was 2 or 3 years old. And everywhere we went, he would ask her to play something. And that’s when it became he likes her a lot more than he likes me.”

Dede was raised in church but threw her morals aside at age 16. She hoped her boyfriend would eventually marry her.Unfortunately all he wanted was sex, and not just with Dede.  In fact, he got another girl pregnant. 
           
“I was completely devastated. I was hurt, I had shame, rejection.  I didn’t feel like anybody would love me anymore.  There was something wrong with me.”

She broke up with him and began a 7-year pattern of dating different men, sleeping with each one,  hoping that sex meant love, but each time the relationship ended.

“I was completely done with men.  I was sick of being used.  I was sick of being hurt.  I was sick of putting in my life and energy only to be run over and left.”

Her animosity didn’t last long.  Dede was soon with yet another boyfriend and discovered that she was pregnant.  She wanted to keep the baby, the boyfriend did not.  Willing to do anything to keep him from leaving, she reluctantly agreed to an abortion. 

“I believe I didn’t have a choice.  I didn’t have an option.  From the time I looked up the number in the phone book to for the clinic, to the time I made the phone call, to the procedure being done. To this day I regret it.”

The relationship eventually ended.  Dede started another one and became pregnant again.   She vowed this pregnancy would be different.

“I had already determined in my heart that I was going to have this baby. I had already been to the gynecologist a few times. I was on pre-natals. Everything was going great.”  Nearly three months into the pregnancy, her boyfriend revealed he didn’t want the baby and would take drastic action if she didn’t abort it.
           
“He called me and I said I’ll kill myself if you don’t go through with this abortion.”
           
Dede was afraid he might do it, and agreed to another abortion.

“And then to make the appointment and wait four or five days later.  It was like all these long drawn-out processes.  It was like an eternity and I was so heartbroken.”
           
 Dede sank into a deep despair, needing antidepressants and sleeping pills to function.

“I was able to cope only while the medication was in my system.  I’d pop it in the morning and by 5 or 6pm and it wear off, everything came flooding back.  And I’d sit in my apartment, depressed and crying and alone.”

Dede’s next plan was to end her life.

“Where I lived was over a bridge and I always thought as I was driving home that if I turned the wheel just a little that my car would plummet.  And my very next thought was well you don’t have any friends and your parents don’t know where you are at anyway so no one would come to your funeral so why kill yourself.”

Dede desperately wanted to change.
                       
“I had tried everything else to fix myself.  The drugs didn’t fix me, the relationships didn’t fix me.  Nothing I was doing was working.”
                       
Dede bought a bible and began reading the scriptures she had known as a child.
           
“When I was reading it I learned I could tell god the truth, what I was feeling. I didn’t have to be educated and eloquent.  Just to say, “god I’ve made a mess of my life.  I was a complete wreck.”
And just ask him to forgive me and I remember weeping.”

Dede realized that she was forgiven for her sins and had found the source of love she always desired.

“I felt so filled and so loved that there was no doubt whatsoever   that this was it, this was the real deal.” 
                            
Dede found a church home, joined a women’s bible study and began to grow in her relationship with Christ. And god brought Avery into her life.  They married in 2003 and then had little Ava a few years later. Dede is expecting their second child in December. 

“I was searching for life and happiness.  And somewhere to belong or someone to belong to. And value.  And life in Jesus, he gives you that value.  When Jesus saved me, he saved me.  He saved my life.”