“I heard Liam likes you.” 

I choked on my Arnold Palmer. Drops of tea spilled onto my thrifted sundress. My friends laughed and pointed towards the marks that now stained my neckline. I sat straight up in my lawn chair and smiled. 

It was July 2022, and I’d spent the first two hours of a high school graduation party avoiding drunk and sweaty teenagers and politely declining hard seltzers. One by one, each girl I had arrived with got swept away by a boy our age. I’d find them cuddling on a patio sofa, jumping up and down near the DJ booth in the backyard or sitting together on the dock with their bare feet dangling in the water. Eventually, I was walking around the most lavish graduation party I’d ever been to, alone. 

I was the last woman standing. Typical. So I retreated to the empty garage, sank into a Minnesota Vikings lawn chair, and called my mom to come and get me.  

But after hearing those five words, she’d have to pull me away from the party kicking and screaming. 

I had my first kiss 30 minutes later in the house’s fourth-floor guest bedroom. It wasn’t on a canoe in the rain, or on the bow of a ship headed towards a 400-foot-long iceberg, but even 17 years of Hollywood-influenced expectations couldn’t change my mind. It was perfect. I felt lighter the rest of the night, floating from one group to another, relieved that I’d gotten a smooch of approval and no longer stood out as the unchosen friend. 

Two weeks later, the doorbell rang. My hands shook as I fidgeted with the last button on my brother’s hand-me-down flannel. I looked out the window to see Liam waiting on my front porch step. I swung open the door and threw my arms around him.

I sat in the front seat of his black Chevy pickup truck and imagined where he planned on taking me. Images of a picnic basket and blanket laid down in a gazebo flashed in my mind. I could practically taste the chocolate-covered strawberries and glasses of sparkling cider.

Suddenly, the car jolted as he pushed the gear shift into park. I looked up to see an empty parking lot and the shore of a big black lake. A small, rusty playground sat to our right, and a tall, flickering street lamp to the left. 

“We’re here,” he said. 

He unbuckled his seat belt and leaned in to kiss me. I pulled away, let out a nervous laugh and lied that my mom needed me home for dinner. We drove back to my house in silence. 

A week later, while eating seafood in South Carolina with my family, a mutual friend texted me that he and Liam had gone skinny dipping with a group of girls from their school. 

I looked down at the same thrift store dress I wore the night he kissed me. It was a faded blue, floral thigh-length dress with ruffle sleeves. In the restaurant booth, I pulled my phone close to my chest and searched for the names of the girls on Instagram. I scrolled through their photos. Tight tops. Mini skirts. Blown-out hair and glowy makeup.

I came to the conclusion that the underwhelming first kiss, first date and subsequent skinny dipping were a result of one thing: I wasn’t pretty enough. 

So a year later in October 2023, I walked into a house party in Phoenix, Ariz. with a head full of highlights and a face caked with Elf Halo glow foundation. 

It was my first semester of college at Grand Canyon University, and I’d spent the last six weeks attending chapel in a 7,000-seat arena, staying out all night at college bars and avoiding the voice in my head telling me this wasn’t the place I was meant to be. 

But through my cognitive dissonance, I experienced a new, exciting phenomenon: Male attention. A reward for the time and money I’d spent on crop tops and overpriced makeup. 

It was frequent, always at nighttime and regularly in the form of an unoriginal pick-up line or the exchange of Snapchat QR codes. 

And the attention continued in the backyard of this college house party. I stood in a circle with my roommates, laughing and cheering for a shirtless boy doing a backflip off the roof and into the pool. I felt a light tap on my right shoulder and turned around to face a tall, muscular sophomore with a snake tattoo on his arm and a bushy black mustache below his nose. 

He reached out his hand and smiled. My heart fluttered. He said he’d seen me from across the party and had to come introduce himself. In the back of my mind, I saw the Vikings lawn chair and the empty garage. I no longer wandered parties alone, but attracted eligible bachelors from across them. And I felt a sick sense of accomplishment for it.  

Until he leaned into my ear and whispered with beer-stenched breath: 

“You look like a slut. And you want to attract guys just to turn them down ‘cuz you love the attention.” 

I froze. Dumbfounded. Any smugness I once felt towards my influx of male attention vanished instantly. 

He looked me up and down, snickered and walked over to another group of girls. My breath grew heavy and my eyes filled with tears. I looked down at my tight black, low-cut top and tugged down at the hem of my denim mini skirt. I felt gross. And out of place. Like a stranger in my own body. 

I spent the rest of the party dodging my roommates’ photo ops and praying that no one else could see the scarlet letter on my chest. Curled up in my single twin bed that night, I reached a new conclusion: If I dress like I’m proud of my body, I’ll attract boys who want to make sure that I’m not. 

Fast forward to August 2025, and I’ve narrowly avoided dating for the past year and a half after transferring to Bethel. Every spare moment that isn’t dedicated to Welcome Week training or decorating my dorm room in North Village is spent with my eight best friends, laughing, chatting and watching “How I Met Your Mother” on our big beige sectional couch. The concept of spending time alone with a boy felt like a distant memory, until one fateful morning, when I decided to venture into an eerie, soulless land called my Instagram DMs. But this time, the most recent message seemed more promising than usual. 

“Hey Emily! I think you’re beautiful and seem Godly. Would love to get to know you if you’re single by chance?” 

I clicked on his profile. 

He was handsome, smiley and a youth pastor at a church near Bethel. 

Finally. A sweet, Christian guy, the kind I’d invite to a family game night to play Yahtzee and Phase 10, wanted to pursue me. Take that Mr. Snake tattoo. A youth pastor thinks I seem Godly, and I wanted to prove that pastor right. 

So for two hours, I tore through my closet and handcrafted the perfect combination of a cute and Christian outfit for our first date: A long-sleeve navy and white striped sweater, denim jean shorts (ones that, with my arms at my sides, went past my fingertips, of course) and a pair of white Reebok sneakers. I analyzed the final look in my floor-length mirror and smiled. Surely this version of myself — modest, wholesome and sweet, a true Proverbs 31 woman — could win over the guy I’d convinced myself was the one. 

But after three hours of walking around the North Loop and listening to him rant about why overweight individuals could never be successful church or political leaders, why a future girlfriend should travel with him across the country to any church he might be promoted to and why straight men shouldn’t enjoy watching musicals, I realized he, in fact, was absolutely not. 

When he dropped me off, I sprinted up the steps, ran into my dorm room, and leaped into bed. My phone buzzed. “Such a blast with you, could’ve hung out all night! Let’s do it again sometime,” he said. 

I was shocked. We didn’t laugh, make jokes, engage in conversation or connect on even the most superficial level. He just watched me stand there, listening, nodding my head and folding my arms in my American Eagle sweater. And that’s when it hit me. I got what I wanted. I proved my “Godliness” to the pastor, enough for a second date. 

But I didn’t need him to tell me that. I already knew. 

And I’d spent the last four years of my life waiting for a boy to tell me who I was, routinely reinventing myself if their reactions weren’t validating. It didn’t even occur to me to question them. I was the one who needed fixing. 20 years of attending church and reading my Bible, and I’d forgotten there is a God who knew me before I was even born and loves me as I am, freely and unconditionally. A God who says I’m beautiful, radiant and made in His image. A God who says that I’m clothed with strength and dignity, worth far more than rubies. A God who, through Jesus, allowed himself to be crucified on a cross so that I could have eternal life. 

If this God says that I’m pretty, then who else would I need to hear it from?