Hopelessly Devoted to You | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: Hopelessly Devoted to You | Previous Challenge Entry
By Margaret Holahan
02/11/21
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“Hopelessly devoted to you” crooned Olivia from the radio. “If only”, I think. If only those words were real. If only I could say Josh was hopelessly devoted to me. But these last few weeks had shown those words to be meaningless...at least in my life.

As I hear those words again, I jump up and turn the radio off. With tears streaming down my face I’m tempted to hurl the radio through the open window. But this is Pa’s radio and that alone causes me to stop with hand poised above the radio.

In my mind I can see Pa turning that radio on and then walking over to Gran. He takes her hand and says “Let’s dance Ginny”, then leans across and plants one on her left cheek.

Anyone watching could clearly see Pa’s devotion to Gran. Not hopelessly, just devoted…because he loved her and she loved him, and they both loved God. The same was true for my mum and dad too. They mirrored that same kind of love and devotion their whole lives. Not hopeless devotion, just devotion to each other made all that stronger because of their relationship with God.

When I met Josh, he seemed so cool. He was good looking and so athletic. But he didn’t know God. I thought that didn’t matter. I thought my relationship with God was enough for both of us. Boy was I wrong. Josh refused to come to church with me. He said church was boring and irrelevant. After a few months he started pressuring me to skip church and spend the day with him. At first it was just every now and then, but before long I’d stopped going altogether. I didn’t want to lose Josh and I figured God would understand. But I missed God. I missed my Church family. And life with Josh was not as wonderful as I thought it would be.

Josh liked to drink hard and party even harder. I found out recently that he was cheating on me with one of his ex-girlfriends. How could I have been so blind. My friends had tried to warn me, but I wasn’t prepared to listen. We broke up the following day when he was sober enough to talk about it…and to blame it on me because I wouldn’t sleep with him.

I thought Josh cheated on me because he wasn’t hopelessly devoted to me. But I was wrong. It’s been a few weeks now since we broke up and Josh has already moved on. Actually, he’d moved on while we were still together. What I’m now realizing is that Josh wasn’t devoted to me at all, but he was hopelessly devoted to himself. Hopelessly devoted because Josh never once reflected that kind of devotion to me or to God. While I had let me hopeless devotion to him, affect my relationship with God, my relationship with my family and my relationship with my friends. But I knew it wasn’t too late to change.

I turned the radio back on and with a smile sang the last few lines of that song with Olivia. I know those words aren’t true for me…and I don’t want them to ever be true. I want what Pa & Gran had. I want what my mum and dad have. They were not hopelessly devoted to each other, but they were devoted to each other because they loved each other. Both couples mirrored that same kind of devotion for each other their entire married lives. Not hopeless devotion, not even just devotion. It’s a devotion filled with the hope of a future full of love, respect, and honesty. A devotion based on the truth of their love for each other and their love for God. That’s what I want for myself.

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