“Are you still planning to meet me in person?”
Crystal Dawn stared at the words on her phone. They were from Remy Meyer, a guy she’d been messaging on a dating app for the past two weeks. Remy was from California but had recently moved to Indiana, where Crystal lived.
At least that’s what he said.
Crystal felt a strong connection to Remy. He was in recovery from years of drug addiction, as she was. He wanted to find a job and settle down.
At least that’s what he said.
Crystal trusted no one, especially herself. After all the self-destructive decisions she’d made in her life, all the men who’d lied, cheated and abused her, she wasn’t even sure why she was on a dating app. Or why she felt drawn to Remy.
Crystal had spent years as a drug user in Austin, Indiana. Since getting clean nine months earlier, she’d left Austin and now lived 20 miles away in Seymour, where she was committed to her recovery program. There were so many red flags in Remy’s story, but he didn’t sound like a liar when they finally talked on the phone. His voice was kind, good-hearted, sincere.
But that was probably just wishful thinking. Why risk everything for a voice on a phone? She closed the app and put her phone away. She had to think this through.
Drugs ran in Remy’s family. His mom and aunt overdosed from heroin when he was three years old. By age 13, he was in a gang selling drugs. A carjacking arrest put him in prison when he turned 18. It wasn’t his last time behind bars.
For years he bounced around from California, where he was born, to Florida, Oregon and back to California. He wound up in Indiana after a friend offered him some construction work in Austin.
Every time he moved, Remy vowed to start fresh and stay clean. He signed up for the dating app to meet people in Austin. He’d met a lot of women over the years, but there was something different about Crystal. Something gentle and good. He could tell she’d endured years of pain. She was searching for peace. For God. For sobriety.
Remy wanted those things too. At first, he wondered whether Crystal had relapsed when she stopped responding to his messages. But there was a likelier explanation. Why would a good person like Crystal want to date a junkie like Remy? She’d ghosted him. She was gone. He needed to try to forget her.
Months went by. Crystal ignored Remy’s messages until they stopped. She was 38. She’d been using drugs since she was 13, after a babysitter raped her and shattered what had been a happy, normal childhood.
Decades of addiction had left a trail of wreckage. Failed marriages, her kids taken into state custody, life-threatening overdoses. Before her fourth husband died, he had made Crystal promise that she’d get clean and reconnect with her kids, who’d been adopted by her father.
Crystal overdosed one last time. It proved to be a come-to-Jesus moment. Something deep inside her changed. I’m done, Crystal thought. I want out. I want to be with my kids. This time, she knew she meant it.
She began attending Celebrate Recovery, a Christian 12-step program at a local church. She achieved weeks, then months of sobriety. She found a job and rented an apartment in Seymour. She had no desire to go back to Austin.
Celebrate Recovery recommended at least a year of sobriety before resuming dating. Crystal had been sober nine months when she signed up for the dating app and met Remy. Everything Remy said in their talks came back to one idea: He wanted God, sobriety and love in his life. But she had to stay focused on her own healing. Maybe Remy was the right guy at the wrong time, she decided. Crystal felt bad about ghosting him. But she knew what her sponsor would say: “It hasn’t been a year. You’re not ready.” Was it possible she ever would be?
Remy struggled after he lost touch with Crystal. The friend who’d promised construction work vanished. A job at Circle K helped pay bills, but Remy felt directionless. He started using drugs again. Soon he was selling. Then he got arrested for stealing from the store cash register.
Scared, ashamed, alone in a jail cell, Remy cried out to God. How to break this cycle of hopelessness? Remy stumbled back into his old life after he was released, but God had his eye on him. Walking home one snowy night, Remy took shelter outside a church in Austin called Church of the New Covenant.
Jacob Howell, one of the pastors, wandered outside. He saw Remy and sat and talked with him in the snow for two hours. By the end of that conversation, Remy had an inkling that things could be different. It was a first step toward a new path.
He joined a Celebrate Recovery group in Austin and spent time every day at Church of the New Covenant. He didn’t know where all of this was going, but he liked how it felt.
Crystal heard her phone buzz with a text: “God told me you need to go to the Celebrate Recovery meeting in Scottsburg tonight.” The text was from her friend Lori.
That was odd, Crystal thought. She liked her Celebrate Recovery group in Seymour just fine. Scottsburg was half an hour away.
“Okay, I guess,” Crystal wrote back. “But only if you go with me.”
A church bus made a stop in Seymour to pick up people going to Scottsburg. Crystal and Lori boarded and attended the meeting, which, Crystal thought, wasn’t much different from her regular group. She’d been quiet during the meeting, new faces and all. Nothing gave her a hint as to why God had wanted her to go to a meeting a bus ride away.
On the ride back, Crystal and Lori introduced themselves to people around them. Crystal put out her hand to a man in the row behind her.
“I know who you are,” said the man, smiling. “You’re Crystal.”
Crystal didn’t know what to say. She’d never met this guy.
“I’m Remy,” he said, still smiling. “From the dating app. You ghosted me last year. Eight months ago, to be exact.”
She felt her face flush. “How did you know it was me?” she asked.
“I’ve never forgotten the sound of your voice,” said Remy. “But I never dreamed I’d run into you this way. The bus is from my church, Church of the New Covenant.”
Crystal’s eyes widened. “New Covenant? In Austin?” she said. “The church where Harold White was pastor before he retired?”
Remy nodded.
“Harold White was my friend’s cousin,” said Crystal. “Years ago, he told me I’d attend his church one day. I just laughed at him.”
Crystal and Remy talked the rest of the way. Crystal thought Remy had drifted away. Remy thought Crystal never wanted to see him again.
They were both wrong.
They began attending Celebrate Recovery meetings together. They dated for three months, then got married.
Today they co-lead a Celebrate Recovery group in Austin. They attend Church of the New Covenant, just as Pastor White had promised. Crystal’s kids live with them, and they’ve celebrated their three-year wedding anniversary. As their divine match maker knew they would be one day, they’d both been ready at last.
