Isolated, Rejected, and Desperate to Be Loved

For much of her life, Jordone was chasing what always seemed out of reach.  

“Acceptance. Definitely acceptance," Jordone remembers.  "I felt like I wanted to be accepted by people and I wasn’t.  Definitely love.  I just had this strong craving that I wanted to be loved so badly.”

Growing up, she always felt like an outsider --  all the more when her parents sent her to a private school in sixth grade.  

“My hair was different, my skin was different, I was different," Jordone says.  "And I felt very insecure … Kids just were really mean, calling me, you know, stupid, dummy, stuff like that. Just ugly. I mean, I just would like cry.”

Jordone kept silent because she believed no one cared enough to listen.  And even though her family went to church every sunday, she felt the same way about God.   

“I don’t know anything about going to my Bible or going to go pray or going to go talk to God about my feelings," Jordone explained.  "I just wasn’t talked to about that in church or in general. So I just know I’m feeling bad. And I don't know how to handle it, other than internalizing it.”  

By ninth grade, Jordone couldn’t take it anymore.  

“And I took a bottle of Ibuprofen from the kitchen. And swallowed all of the 31 pills in the bottle.  And by the grace of God I threw them all up.”

In high school Jordone thought she found what she needed in an older boy and sex.

“At the time, it felt like love, but it wasn’t love," she sadly recalls.  "It didn’t help at all.  It made it worse, actually.”

Later in college, Jordone pursued love and acceptance in more ways.

“Clubbing, getting drunk, sex outside of marriage.  And I had a very deep level of sadness inside of me.  When I got high I’m not thinking about my insecurities. When I was drunk I’m not thinking about my low self esteem.”

All this time she still went to church.  Even so, it never occured to her to run to God.  

“I didn’t know what it meant to seek God," Jordone says.  "You smoke weed on Friday and sing in the choir on Sunday.  Like I didn’t even know that any of the stuff I was doing was wrong.”

After college, Jordone found a job and attended a conference.  One night, she became the victim of date rape.   She tried to press chareges, but was told there wasn’t enough evidence.  

“I was depressed.  Just all the negative emotions that you can think of. I was feeling those things. I remember driving down the road and thinking oh well maybe I can run into this tree and people wouldn’t think it was done intentionally or was a suicide. They would think it was an accident.”

A few weeks later, Jordone had lunch with a friend, and shared how she was feeling about life.  He told her how Christ could heal her and provide what she’d never found elsewhere.  

“When he started talking about God, it was different," she explains.  "It was genuine and it was sincere. And it wasn’t surface level.  He talked about God in his life. And a relationship with Him.  I felt like my eyes had been opened.”  

“After that I remember going home and I just started crying and I just told God, like oh I get it now. I’ve been wrong. You know, and I’m sorry.  I just poured myself out right there on the bedroom floor.  I just told Him I wanted to rededicate my life to Him.  I wanted to live right for Him.”

Jordone’s life soon took an entirely new path.    

“I might have felt the same initially, but my responses were different," Jordone recalls.  "I would feel sad inside but instead of going to go smoke weed, I would go pick up my Bible. Or I might have felt depressed at one point in time, but instead of trying to go have sex outside of marriage, I would go pray and talk to the Lord about it.”

Now Jordone reaches out to help other young women through her book …..  and she is engaged to be married.  She says she’s found in Christ what she had spent so many years chasing.  

“I just stayed faithful to Him, to let Him deal with those wounds and the sadness. And eventually He got rid of it.  I’ve definitely been able to find acceptance and love in Him, definitely.  This is what love really is. This is what satisfaction really is," she says with a smile.