is it brainwashing? or is it simply Christ?

This week has by far been one of the hardest academically speaking, it has pulled me in a million directions and has caused a great lack of sleep. Here it is Friday and I am able to rest, a thought flows through my head though and it has been keeping me up all night into the morning. I love to look back on my life, I am finally at a point when I can stare my mistakes in the eye and praise God for him taking me out of some pretty dangerous situations. I still  remember the words though, the words spoken in my colorful past full of lies and deceit and deception. I remember being in denial about an abusive relationship. I remember justifying all that I had done wrong. I remember hurtful words that I allowed to describe me. I remember everything. It ranges from the terrible things I have done to the terrible things that have been done to me. I'm not here to point fingers however ; that would be useless. Fast forward to now. my life has clearly changed. The things I once fought for , are things I no longer care about. The acceptance and approval from my boyfriend, or the acknowledgment of my intelligence, the great skills I possessed I no longer cared for. These things and many other items used to be my life, it is what I lived for. The most vivid memory is the summer of 2008, it is a summer I will never and can never forget.
I decided to go on a Christian leadership project for two months. I was unaware of the changes that would follow on that trip. I was in love ( I guess as much love as a 18 year old could be in). This person meant the world to me and I lived for them in some twisted way. I fooled myself into thinking I was independent but I could not live without this person. We had been through so much and I just knew in my heart that we were destined for each other. I found out later that summer that I was wrong. You see, I molded myself to being the perfect person for this man. I guess in a way I tried to make us perfect. I chose to look over red flags and honestly I looked over who I was. The intentions of this man may have been pure but the timing and the source of it all was all wrong. You see no matter how pure the intentions were the applications were tainted. It's all tainted without Christ.
According to Webster's dictionary brainwashing means Intensive, forcible indoctrination, usually political or religious, aimed at destroying a person's basic convictions and attitudes and replacing them with an alternative set of fixed beliefs.
Now humor me for a second, I thought I was doing the right thing with this guy prior to that summer. I thought we looked like the model couple and everything we were doing honored God and everyone else around us. I fought so hard for a "religion" to  the point where my boyfriend at the time faked his commitment to Christ. There are things I will never know and also things I will never be able to apologize for.
But on that day May 24th, I realized that this religion that I had been fighting for would lead me nowhere, nor was the relationship I was in. Both the relationship and religion led me to a place where I was destroying a person's basic convictions and attitudes and replacing them with an alternative set of fixed beliefs.
These alternative set of beliefs were what I thought to be true. But in my race for wisdom , I only found foolishness.
Romans 1:19-23 says [19] For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. [20] For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. [21] For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. [22] Claiming to be wise, they became fools, [23] and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
and Romans 2:15 [15] They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.
 I use these two passages to prove my point. I went against what my conscience was saying to do. I replaced Christ without anything else that I thought could satisfy me. I put my pride and work into being the perfect bride for this man, I wanted a life together more than anything. I was willing to be separated from my family for our sake. Although there were many signs that we both should have separated, I refused to listen because I was willing at all costs to be with this person. I usually am not vocal about my past in this way but I can not believe how I failed to see the pattern I was beginning.

I know that I know that I know that God has changed me through his son Jesus Christ. Call me crazy but I think I was brainwashed in the beginning before Christ. I was brainwashed into thinking that I could find my satisfaction in someone who could not love me and who I could not love as well. No matter how much effort I put in efforts were futile because there was no foundation. We were building upon ourselves, building upon sand. I am finally happy, I am finally satisfied and it is not because I attended some church service and walked down an altar, it is not because I have been a member of a community, it is not because I was looking for a new fix. I am happy because Christ found me, I am happy because he was there all along. I needed to taste something that was futile in order to know his worth, his love. I had to endure that situation of having what I thought was the only thing keeping me alive to my real source of life. You see God saved me, not because I was better than anyone else, he has stood by me through some hard decisions because he loves me. I had a terminal condition and if he would not have saved me when he did I would have been running to the next thing that looked like it would satisfy.  I have had many criticisms about my new life, about the new decisions that I am making. My only rebuttal is that I know what life was like in bondage, I know what it was like to be brainwashed, and now I know how freedom tastes.
It is that I have been walking in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights and right when I begin to realize that I am going to rot away, a well appears with the most amazing spring water ever made. That's Christ for me. Don't feel sorry for me because I am not brainwashed, I have been freed from a doctrine that dictated my life. I have been freed by the blood of Christ whose love is inseparable. It has caused this radical change , I have no other explanation for it. I don't do things because I have to, I do them because I want to adore a God who has loved me enough to sacrifice his son for a sinner. Not for a model class citizen but for a depressed, tired, sinner who needed a savior. Is this brainwashing? No with all the confidence in the world I can tell you it is simply Christ.