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NARRATOR: For much of her life, Jordan Branch

was chasing what always seemed out of reach.

Acceptance.

Definitely acceptance.

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.

NARRATOR: 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.

I felt very insecure.

Kids really just were really mean.

Called me stupid, dummy, stuff like that.

Or just ugly.

I mean, I just would cry.

NARRATOR: Jordan 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.

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.

NARRATOR: By ninth grade, Jordan 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.

NARRATOR: In high school, Jordan thought

she found what she needed in an older boy and sex.

At the time, it felt like love.

But it wasn't love.

It didn't help at all.

It made it worse, actually.

NARRATOR: Later in college, Jordan

pursued love and acceptance in more ways.

Clubbing.

Getting drunk.

Sex outside of marriage.

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.

NARRATOR: All this time, she still went to church.

Even so, it never occurred to her to run to God.

I didn't know what it meant to seek God.

You know, you smoke weed on Friday

and sing in the choir on Sunday.

And I didn't even know that any of the stuff that I was doing

was wrong.

NARRATOR: After college, Jordan attended a networking

conference.

She met a man there, agreed to have drinks later,

and became the victim of date rape.

Though she tried to press charges,

she was told there wasn't enough evidence.

I was depressed.

I was just all of the negative emotions that you can think of.

I was feeling those things.

And I remember driving down the road and thinking,

oh, well maybe I can run into this tree

and people wouldn't think it was intentionally or was a suicide.

They would think it was an accident.

NARRATOR: A few weeks later, Jordan 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.

It was genuine and it was sincere.

And it wasn't surface-level.

He talked about God about-- in his life and a relationship

with him.

I felt like my eyes had been opened.

After that, I remember going home.

I just started crying.

And I just told God, oh, I get it now.

I've been wrong and I'm sorry.

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.

NARRATOR: Jordan's life soon took an entirely new path.

I might have felt the same initially

but my responses were different.

So 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.

NARRATOR: Now Jordan reaches out to help other young women

through her book and she's 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.

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