About When Letting Go Brought Love Back with Abbie Fly

What if the love story you’re clinging to only grows when you let it go? We sit down with Abbie Fly, oldest of four, marketer by day, fitness coach by sunrise, and high school girls’ mentor every week, to trace a path from campfire faith to a resilient marriage forged by surrender. The conversation begins with a counselor at Camp Tejas who saw Abbie, told the truth, and stood close enough for courage to catch. That seed became a calling: show up for teen girls, listen without judgment, and make room for honest questions about identity, pressure, and hope.

Then Abbie opened the chapter most of us know too well. At Texas A&M, Fish Camp paired her with Mitchell not by preference but by design: complementary strengths, instant friendship, and, eventually, real love. Senior year collided with reality. His petroleum career meant Colorado and years abroad. He chose singleness for the road ahead, and Abbie’s certainty crumbled. What followed was a hard lesson in control. She moved to Houston for a demanding schedule, cut off from church and community, and anxiety filled the silence. Naming the pattern—trying to muscle outcomes—became the first step toward release.

When she returned to Austin during the pandemic, peace met her at the door. Habits reformed. And then the phone rang. Mitchell had been laid off in the oil downturn and, on a promise to himself, moved to Austin. The reunion didn’t hinge on fate so much as formation: this time their relationship centered on faith, daily practices, and candid conversations that aligned values before romance. Abbie’s favorite image (God holding Eve back in Michelangelo’s work) became a lens: withholding isn’t punishment; it’s timing that protects a better yes.

We close with practical takeaways for students, singles, and anyone tired of white‑knuckling: be radically honest with God about fear and desire, seek mentors who tell you the truth, rebuild community before you need it, and remember that surrender does not shrink love, it deepens it. If this story met you where you are, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review to help more listeners find these conversations.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Hi girls, good back. I'm Denise Jackson. And this, you know, if you watch the very beginning of my podcast, almost everybody I talked to in the beginning was a relative. I'm so grateful for them. And it's been a little while since I've had family on, but today I have my uh niece, the oldest in her family, Abby Yuri Fly. And I'm so excited to have her. We have been kindred spirits since the day she was born, I feel like. Um, and so it's really great that she has agreed to be on the podcast today. We're just gonna talk about life. And Abby, I'd just love it if you would just introduce yourself to the girls. Hello, girls.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Um my name is Abby. I am the oldest of four girls, like my Aunt Denise, Aunt Denny, as we call her. Um, I'm the oldest of her brother, Kevin, her little brother Kevin. Um, four sisters. We all have A names, Abby, Anna, Ali, and Adeline. Um, and I love them so dearly. Um I'm married to the love of my life, Mitchell Fly, um, which is where my new last name comes from. We've been married for two years, and I live in Austin, Texas, and I serve um with specifically with the high school ministry at my church, uh Lake Hills Church up in V Cave. I have a full life, I have two jobs, three. Honestly, I feel like I have three jobs because my nine to five job is I do marketing for um a company in Austin. Um, I work, I teach group fitness classes in Austin. So that's my second job. I do that early in the morning and sometimes at night. Um, and then honestly, um serving with my high school girls, I feel like is my third job because it is technically once a week, but um, I I have been with these girls, they're seniors now, and I've been with them since they were freshmen, and I um am constantly, you know, doing stuff with them, getting coffee, meeting up, calling them and checking in on them.

Why Mentors Matter

SPEAKER_00 2:45

That's awesome. Yeah. I uh was someone like that in your life when you were a young woman that kind of made you think, oh, this would be great because somebody really influenced my life like that.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

One of the churches that I attended uh was Community Bible Church in San Antonio, Texas. I went to their student ministry on Wednesday nights, um, starting in middle school and high school and in elementary school through part of high school, I went to summer camp with them every year. Oh, hell yeah. They took us to Camp Tejas. Um, and there was a counselor that I had one year, and I don't even remember how old I was, but I just remember that she really made an impact on me. She made a huge impact on my faith. Um, the year that she was my camp counselor was the year that I got baptized at camp. Oh, very cool. Um, and she just was so real with us, and I really felt like I could talk to her and learn from her. And she was such a great mentor, and I think part of me always wanted to be that for someone when I grew up. But then on top of that, I had this feeling. I've always had this older sister mentality where I always told my little sisters, I have I'm not a perfect person. I've made lots of mistakes in my life. And one of the goals that I had as an older sister is to lead my sisters in a way where they didn't make the same mistakes that I did. I wanted them to be able to learn from me from, you know, the the beaten path that I took. And um, I just wanted to do that again. And I felt I felt called um to work specifically with high school girls. I felt like they really need mentorship of people who are not their parents, who they can be honest with, who they can come to with things that are hard as high school girls to talk about to adults. And um, it just felt like something I was called to.

Seeds, Impact, And Legacy

Friendship To Love: The Origin Story

SPEAKER_00 4:41

So I just think about that girl that had such an impact on you who planted a seed in you all those years ago, that uh gave you the opportunity now to fully lean in to the Lord, and you do you you trust him with every aspect of your life. And and that we were talking about earlier just seed time and watering and harvest, and we don't get to do every one of those jobs for every person we come in contact with. But uh I hope that somehow that girl who was such an influence on Abby, maybe she'll hear the podcast, or Abby will run into her one of these days because um it is encouraging when we hear about someone that we had such an impact on. It makes me as an older woman now, it really makes me so happy when I hear the stories. Um, I had a student the other day uh I ran into after 15 years, and he was like a rascal in my class. I, you know, I always loved the rascals because I was such a rascal, you know, pushing the limits. But um, I was so excited to see that he had his own business. He was excited to tell me, and it was in technology, which was I was a teacher of technology, and he said, Yeah, I started learning all of this with you, and I was just I was just like bouncing all day long because of that. And he was happy, his life was happy. Uh, it just means a lot when we see that we made a difference, you know? Yeah. So so one of the things we're gonna talk about today is uh you are a married lady now, and that that happened two years ago almost two years ago, January of 2024. Yeah, and you dated for a while. We did date for a while. Um so let's start at the very beginning, yes, because sometimes we have stories that need to be told just because they could infect someone else, and we hope it will help you if you my husband and I met in college at Texas AM, and I one of the things that you know, I feel like all of us in our faith have we, you know, we have high highs and we have low lows, and there are things that, and I believe we should that the Lord knows all of this about us, and that we should be truthful with ourselves and with others about this there.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

I'm with God, that there are things that we do really well and things that we we don't do really well in our faith. And one thing that I've always been really good at is I always believed that God has a plan and that even if I am angry about something and I don't understand what the plan is, that God He made this path for me and um and I'm walking the path that He that He set out for me. And if I pray and I give it all to Him, then I'm walking on the path that He intended. I has He been faithful in that? Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like there I smile when I think about all these little things in my life that I can look back on and say I was put in exactly the right place for that.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

That's so funny. Like it always takes us looking back, and then we see that orchestration. Absolutely. That's why we need to write our book of remembrance because it's easy to forget all the things he's already done. But when we're going through a hard time again, we need to know that. We need to be reminded. Totally.

Breakup, Calling, And Control

SPEAKER_01 8:06

So one of those things is how I met my husband, and we were both um leaders for something called Fish Camp at AM, which is new student orientation, freshman orientation, and we were leaders for a couple years, and then our junior year, we both applied and got accepted to the chairperson program. So it's, you know, you there's about a hundred of us, 50 women, 50 men who um are chosen to essentially orchestrate and create these camps that the freshmen will come into in the summer. And the way that they have these juniors going into senior year perform this task is they pair them together. So the pairing process is sort of like a matchmaking task. You take this assessment and you talk about your strengths and your weaknesses and what you need in a partner and things that you don't work so well with. So they can put you with someone that for the next nine months you'll work really well with. And there is a pref sheet as well. So you can you can pref, I want, I would prefer if I got who I wanted this person as my partner. And I think you can, I don't remember how many it is, but you pref you pref several people. And so I filled out this form and you know, I I went on uh coffee chat dates with different, you know, boys, and it's very, it's there's actually a pretty strict dating policy, so it's not romantic at all. It's just you're trying to find someone that you work well with. I had several people that I wanted to put on my pref form. And so I did. I filled up my form, I filled up my test, and I turned it in. I had Mitchell Fly was not someone I even knew. I didn't know him at all, I didn't meet him at all during this process. He absolutely was not on my pref form because I didn't know who he was. Um, I had heard his name one time because my roommate, who was in the same program, told me that she was gonna pref him. That's the only reason I knew what his name was. Um, and so when I turned around, they do this big reveal and they reveal who your partner is. And I turned around and I was looking at a stranger. And I immediately felt pretty nervous because I said, Oh my gosh, this is not somebody who I prefed. And I um was really nervous by that. And um, when I talked to the directors who pair you up together, one of them told me, um, we paired you together, neither one of you prefed each other, but your assessments that you took were mirrors of each other. You just, we thought you two would work really well together based on you complemented each other really well. So I decided to trust them. And um that was on a Friday. And by the end of the weekend, he and I were best friends. I mean, it just everything felt so natural. And we were spending a ton of time together. Um, and we we became best friends really fast. And actually, for the next, gosh, I don't even know how many months, a year, actually, we were just friends. So for that entire year, we were friends. Um, but we spent every weekend together, you know, and and again, it was just it was all it was friendship. But um, over the course of the year, I knew that I was developing a pretty big crush on this boy. Um, but at the same time, I had really never in my life felt this level of friendship connection with somebody. And um, there were some other factors that we date, we both dated other people during the course of this year as well. And I I got to a point where I really was kind of falling in love with this person, but we weren't dating. And I also was terrified to even tell him that I had these feelings because we were so close as friends. You didn't want to lose the friendship. I didn't want to lose the friendship. So I was in 2018 and early 2019, we started dating. Um, the problem with that is it was our second semester of our senior year. So we started dating, and I was both feet in. I said, Oh, I'm gonna take every egg that I have and I'm gonna dump it into this basket. Um, I'm in love with this boy. It's obviously meant to be. And I really felt like God was telling me that this was my husband. I felt like I'd never been more sure of anything. I'd never felt this way about somebody. I never felt more like compliment with somebody. And um but there was a problem, which was that Mitchell had a job in Colorado. And after that, he was actually set to go overseas for several years for this rotational program. He was part of, he was a petroleum engineer, and he decided a few months only after we had started dating that he um wanted to go into that life as a single person. And that shattered me. It really did. And you know, I had been through heartbreak before, but in this moment, I was so sure that God was telling me that this was the man I was gonna marry, that when that was taken away from me, I felt really lost in that time.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

I understand. That's just a hard season. You know, when you fall in love and and you know in your heart that's who you're supposed to be with, and then they walk away, it just hurts. It's uh a big time that uh God's asking us, who are you putting your faith in? Are you putting it in this guy? Or are you gonna put it in me? And so keep telling us our your story because I feel like that's what you came to.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

It definitely is, and I um I just love sharing the story because I think it it's such a good testament, in my opinion, of like sometimes God will use even the things that He is putting in your life and saying, Yes, I am putting this in your life for a reason, but first I need you to recenter your priorities to come back to me.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

So we we were broken up. Um, I ended up um choosing a job for after college in Houston. And um, I was really excited about it. And as much as I would love to tell you girls, that I chose this job in Houston because I wanted to live in Houston, which I did, I thought I did at the time. But I, if I'm truthful with myself, um there was a part of me always that that knew that if Mitchell were to ever move back to Texas, it would be Houston, because that's where his company was. Only had one office in Texas, and it was in Houston. And so I was kind of hanging on to this hope. And I, this is something that I've always um struggled with. You know, I talked about earlier the things in our faith that we're really strong at and the skills that the Lord gives us that we just have kind of we got it. And then there's other things that we struggle with, and we kind of have to come and lay at the foot of the cross and say, Lord, help me with this. And one of those things for me is control. Yeah, um, and I think there's probably a lot of reasons for that.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

But part of it is because you're an oldest child, and we talked about that. I always I I've struggled with that too. And when when God really emphasized that I needed to humble myself before him, that was probably one of the hardest things for me to come to grips with because we're supposed to be strong, we're supposed to be able in my mind as the oldest and fighting and being a woman in the world at that time, and in your time, we convince ourselves we have to stand up for ourselves. So it was a weakness to say, yes, humble me, Lord. I was a little afraid too. What are you gonna do? Um, and I, you know, when I get afraid, then I want to be stronger. So I feel like that was that is something in our personality. That's where the control is coming from. Um, but God wants us to give him the control. And when he does, when I finally did let go, it was so much better than I could imagine because I didn't have to carry all the weight. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

Uh and I think that um a lot of people probably find that to be true, but it's hard to get to that point.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

To that point, it's a pivot point. It definitely is. Are you gonna are you gonna lay it down?

Houston, Burnout, And Spiritual Drift

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Are you gonna keep on tugging it and carrying it right now? So so I had moved to Houston um for this job where I totally was only doing it for myself. But you know, in the back of my mind, I I he was always there. And um, you know, I I tried going on dates with other people and I just wasn't interested, really. And and I was feeling really discouraged. But on top of that, something happened to me in Houston that I had never experienced before. And that was I really started to experience depression and anxiety for the first time in my life. I had never really, I'd been through a lot, a lot of really challenging things growing up. Um, but I have never really had felt this level of low. Um, and honestly, something just came into my mind that I'm remembering was probably a big part of this, which is the job that I was working, which was a really challenging first job. I also had a really challenging schedule. So I worked Thursday to Sunday, um, 12-hour days. And because of that, I didn't find a church. Yeah. I never found a church or a community of Christians. Exactly. Yeah. And so um I had tried to find, you know, when I got off late on Saturday nights, I would try and find churches and and I never really felt one that I felt at home in. Um, and I also I kind of honestly I was slacking because I would get off these 12 hour days and just be exhausted. And so I would just go home. And I was not, I was not reading my Bible. I was not spending time with the Lord in person or by myself. And instead, I was just letting myself spiral into this um darkness, into this darkness.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Well, and you had help because Satan was Satan works all the time in those weaknesses. He doesn't want Abby Fly being mighty in the land, and yet he lost because she is. Praise God.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

Well, you know, and and I say praise God, yeah, because I I felt like I was in this hole that I just couldn't get out of. And and I've told people many times, you know, I didn't have a problem with the city of Houston, but I felt I never I was always uneasy. I always felt uneasy. I never felt at home. I would come home to where I lived, and I didn't feel like it was home. And I started to experience homesickness kind of for the first time. And um, you know, I I was really always kind of a jump two feet in uh off the highest dive at the pool. And and um I was never really afraid or or felt like homesick. I was very independent growing up. And this was the first time that I really felt like I want to be back with my family. And so I started looking for new jobs and um I was looking for jobs in the Austin area. One thing that was really true hard for me about that is I knew in the back of my mind, with my own thinking, when because at this time I was still very much trying to be in control, or I was thinking if I move to Austin, um, then I have to let go of this idea of me and Mitchell getting back together. Because in my mind, he his job was in Houston. There was no path in my brain where he ever ended up in Austin. Um, so I finally, it wasn't even, I wish I could tell you that it's because I just said, Jesus, take the wheel. Um that wasn't it. I mean, I did hit a point in my faith where I said, Lord, I'm gonna just let you be in control. Um, and I and I'm gonna let go of this dream of trying so hard to be with this person because I thought I'm supposed to be with him. I'm in control, I want to be with this person. I just let it go. And I said, you know, I'm done with this. And I got a job and I moved back to Austin. I actually moved home to Wimberley for a little while.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

Which is awesome for me.

Choosing Peace And Moving To Austin

An Unexpected Call: Mitchell Returns

SPEAKER_01 20:13

It was because we got to connect again and spend time together. It was wonderful. And um, and then eventually that summer of 2020 at this point, um, I moved to COVID. Um, I moved to Austin. And in June of 2020, I was living in Austin. Um, I felt such a sense of ease. Just right away, I felt this ease. And um, I still hadn't found really a church that I loved, but something fortunate that came out of um COVID is that a lot of churches started doing services online, and so I was attending church again, but from my home. Um, and I was spending more, a little bit more. I wasn't really there yet, but I was crawling out of this hole that I had put myself in. And I was making time every Sunday, which was a good start. Well, before the Lord. Yeah. And I I felt a lot happier. I felt like I was in the place where I was supposed to be. I just knew that this that's this city, that Austin is where I was meant to be. And I felt really um calm and at ease, at peace with that situation. Um, and then one day I was in my kitchen and my phone started ringing, and it was Mitchell Fly. Um, and at this point, we had off and on been, you know, kind of friends again. We had been texting and he'd helped me with some accounting stuff because he's really good at that stuff. And so it's not like we hadn't been in communication, but I had really in my mind shut that door of a relationship with that person. And he called me and he said, guess who's moving to Austin? I just remember being confused and kind of feeling like my face get a little hot. It just was, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. And he said um he had been laid off because of COVID. Sorry, Mitchell. But he had been laid off. And um, he said that he had told himself a while ago, um, at the beginning of COVID, when uh the oil industry was really not doing well, if you don't remember, um, something happened with oil. Oil that went negative, which means really bad things for the oil industry. And they were furloughing a lot of employees. And um, Mitchell told himself, if I get laid off, I'm gonna move to Austin. And I didn't even know that was a possibility. We hadn't discussed that. It only was living in his head. So when he called me, he said, Yeah, I told myself a while ago, if I get laid off, I'm moving to Austin. And he got laid off and he picked up, packed up everything in his truck, and he moved to Austin. That's awesome. Um and that to me, and at this point, I still hadn't reopened that door.

SPEAKER_00 23:05

Yeah, because I remember you saying, uh, your mom, I think, said something to me about um, oh, she and her old boyfriend Mitchell Fly, he's in Austin too now. And I said, So what does that mean? And she said, Well, I don't think Abby really is that serious about it because she's just she just doesn't act like it. So you weren't acting too serious at that point. You were holding back.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

I was holding back, but I I think it's because I, you know, I told myself I'm over this person, which was not true, uh, by the way. But yeah, but I, you know, I it was a really crazy moment for my faith because it was, you know, you talk about God being able to move mountains, and I'm not saying that this was a mountain that he moved, but it was a mountain. It felt at the time like an impossible situation. I mean, what are the odds that this boy that has never in his life said in as far as I know anything about having a desire to live in Austin and he was in this industry that doesn't have to be a good thing?

SPEAKER_00 24:07

And the worst person he's calling to tell is you, you know, it's all all of that, like you know, it's hard. Yeah, love is hard, yeah, because you know, it's like a coming together of two humans to be one. Right. So why are we surprised that it's hard? And I think guys especially are gonna be the most reticent to let that go out into the world. But then when you get hurt, then we close off too. Right, yeah.

God’s Timing Reshapes The Relationship

SPEAKER_01 24:33

So when when we he moved back to Austin, and and as you might have been able to tell, we did eventually start dating again. She's a fly girl. And and I did take his last name, but um one thing that was hugely different the second time we dated versus the first time, and this is kind of going back to both the idea that I truly believe God has placed every single instance in our life for a reason, but also that he he has not just the plan but the timing and he will hold things back. There's um there's a painting in the Sistine Chapel. Uh-huh. Um I don't remember what it's called, but it is an image of God holding back Eve. He's holding her and he's touching it's the foot. Oh, yeah, and Adam was Adam. And I think that that that image is so cool because it's like he's saying, I I this is my plan for you, but I'm it's not ready yet. And I know when the time is. No, I know.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

I really don't know. And it's one of my favorite paintings. Well, and it mirrors your life, so it really was significant in your life at that at that point.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

Um that's good. The thing that was different when we got back together um was our relationship with each other, and it's centered around the Lord. Um, in college, we were both Christians, we never spoke about our faith. It was not a factor in our relationship. Yeah. And um, and I really think that the decisions that we were making because of that were what tore us apart, honestly.

Honest Faith For Teen Girls

SPEAKER_00 26:10

We all think it's so easy to be born, to be called and then knit together and born into the earth that we should just our faith should be settled, but it's not, it's a struggle. Our flesh struggles, and it's almost like through the struggle that we learn that we are struggling and that God is that ever-present help in time of need. So, I mean, it it's when we're when you're talking to these girls and when he's talking to the guys because he does the young men ministry, that honesty is so good because it helps them not to spiral down into the depression. It it helps them to realize they have an enemy that's working against them, and it helps them to choose because it's our choice that changes everything. We choose, and then God is there, and he's ready to be there always with us. But if we don't choose, he he lets us choose our way. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

And that that's one of my favorite parts about working with the high schoolers is is getting to have those conversations with them. And and um one of the reasons I love sharing with them the story of Mitchell and I and our, you know, not traditional, untraditional um relationship is because there's a lot of feelings in high school relationships. And, you know, I'm not saying your high school boyfriend is gonna be who you end up with, but I'm saying it's actually not about either of you. It's about your relationship with the Lord, and it's about your future partner's relationship with the Lord. And at some point, you just are gonna have to trust that it's going to work out the way that it's supposed to.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Yes, that's good. I like it. Okay, well, so we've reached the end of this podcast, and so I know that you have some piece of advice that you'd like to give those young women today that you hope they'll remember.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

I think the advice that I will give to you is to be radically honest with yourself and with the Lord about your struggles. I think that for a lot of us Christian women, it can be tempting to portray this level of this image that you have it all together, that you have it all figured out. And I don't think that not only is that not true, but it's also not helpful to a community of Christian women trying to um grow and run towards heaven together. And he can't move in you unless you are real with him, have real conversations with him.

SPEAKER_00 28:51

You have to have a relationship with your father first. Yeah, love the Lord your God with everything that's in you, and then you're able to love others and especially, you know, your the boy that you think is gonna be your husband or your husband down the road, the hardest thing is to let go of that passionate love so that you can have the love that God will give you. And I'm here to tell you that once you do, it feels like you're gonna lose something. But once you do, your love for your husband becomes so much more magnified because you're loving with God's love through you instead of your own selfish love. 100%. Well, I want to pray for our girls today. And so if you have anything to add, you just jump in or as we pray. Okay, Father, I just thank you for uh the girls that are watching this. I thank you that you see them in uh the deepest places in their heart, the longing to have someone to call their own. We know that. But first, we just ask you to nudge them gently uh into your word, to show them that you love them already so much. And there's no one else that can give them the love that you give them. So I just pray that you would open the doors, send the laborers to the harvest so that they would learn to choose to love you with their whole hearts, and then bring the right person, the right mate into their lives that will strengthen them and compliment them and build them up in their inner man with your word and with with your with prayers that are your word for them, Father. I just thank you for that. And um, if you have anything to add, Abby, just go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

Lord, I pray that you help these girls to come to you as they are. Yes. Um, I pray that you you give them the ability to have a relationship with you that is honest, where they can bring the things that they're struggling with to your feet, and that you help them through those times and that you remind them that it's okay to um not understand and it's okay to be frustrated. Um, but the most important part of navigating is that lack of control and the lack of understanding is um to remember that you ultimately have it all figured out for them. And and just um I pray, Lord, that you you help them to believe that, to trust that, and to to just leave it all at the foot of the cross.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

Amen. In Jesus' name. Amen.