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Phew... K... Here I go. My name's Julie, my story is a complicated one so em... brace yourself, if you don't have time to read a long story I'd come back to this one ha...
I was raised in a christian home, and my mam and dad loved our King dearly. They raised us right and I came to know God when I was six right after sunday school, the message of Jesus dying for us had just been told to us and we were told we could have him in our hearts forever if we asked him into our hearts- so I went outside when everyone was running around playing, I sat under a willow tree and prayed to him... Little did I know I just made the best decision of my life!
So the next years were just steady, me and him talked a bit but he wasn't my whole life. I got baptised because I loved him alot, but I didn't realise how much bigger he was going to get... So I went into secondary school-Like middleschool in america I think, and things started to change. I was 13, I started drinking with all of my new friends and suddenly guys started noticing me...alot. So I kind of set God aside, caught up in this whirlwind of new things and things that looked so exciting and grown up... Most of my friends had lost their virginity at twelve...(yeah wrong crowd I know) but I was dead set, I'd been raised that you have sex when you are very much in love and married to someone- was the way God wanted it.
So I got a boyfriend, I was 13 and he was 16. My parents didn't approve ( I totally agree with them looking back now) they sat me down and said I was choosing to walk down a road that wasn't right, and choices I made now would affect the rest of my life... I so wish I'd listened. So I was with Pi. for six months... and I thought I was "In love"... I laugh so hard looking back now because I really hadn't a clue. There was no depth to the relationship, I was a child... so immature and naive but fighting against other people thinking I was. So I had been with him 6 months, and in 13 years old land that seemed like 7 years.. and all my friends started asking me why we wern't having sex... I told them I was waiting. They kept asking why and my answer didn't look so strong anymore... then the straw that broke the camels back..Pi. text me "Juls, I'll wait for you, I don't care if it's a week, a month or until we're married" and that was it... I had a "loving" "understanding" boyfriend who was willing to wait for me...surely this was enough? We had fooled around lots before, because I thought it only mattered once we had sex... So a few days later the same thing happened and he just took it that one step further...and I let him. And then just like that.. my gift was gone.
I went to my first christian camp two days later. Teenstreet, a huge collection of christian teens from all over the world meet in Germany for one week. This was where our love affair began... he grabbed onto me so hard that week and I just crumbled..as the reality of it all came crashing down on me. I was his. Totally and completly. I went home after that week changed inside out, ended it with Pi... he never even asked why or fought for me.
So me and Jesus got to know eachother, and he just thought me so much and brought me close. So I went from the summer to the christmas just me and him, but I was starting to struggle with my weakness- I would say men but at that stage they were boys ha... So God brought in Pa. the christmas I was 14. Pa. was such a kind hearted gorgeous christian guy I met at a christian camp that christmas, we took things super slow, emailed for like 4 months and then decided to give it a go and try. When I look back now, I see how much God was protecting me. I know 100% Pa. was God's will for me at that time, rather then letting me get distracted by guys who would draw me away from him he brought someone into my life who challenged me in a good way in my walk with God and thought me what a christian relationship was like...We dated for a year. In that time we had no physical contact whatsoever except for once where something small almost happened and he fasted for four days... he was a really good influence on me.
So during this year I met Ke. (I know at this stage you're like, another one?! Well... this was my struggle...warning it gets worse) Ke. was ... charming, fun, dangerous...not a christian... we became impossibly close during the time I was with Pa... too close. Which set the ground work for what came soon after.
When me and Pa. ended I spiralled into depression. I just couldn't see the point of it anymore. Even when I was with the nice christian boyfriend and we had that relationship I still struggled and yearned for earthly things... what I didn't realise was it shouldn't be my relationship with Pa. that held me but my relationship with God... I started self harming. Badly. I'd have to wear fingerless gloves every day to school and I'd often be consumed by the pain of how badly I'd hurt myself. Not a single person knew. I remember sitting across the table from a christian friend of mine and they said "you know emos wear gloves like that to cover up them hurting themselves" and I said Do they? The hollowness and emptyness over whelmed me and I needed something, I needed my fix to fill that hole... So when I was 15 I started dating a guy who was 20... he was labelled a christian...that really messed with my head, and still didn't fix the gap and I felt like I was screaming at the top of my lungs and no one even noticed I was in the room. I tried to end it...I wrote the notes out... I said goodbye... I cut myself beyond belief and just remember getting dizzy from loss of blood and praying to die... when I woke up in the morning I remember sobbing uncontrollably that I was still alive and breaking down and praying saying "Do you want this?! Do you want my life?? HAVE IT! Cause I sure as hell don't"...and that's exactly what he did.
So I got grounded... for a month,(can't remember why but God provided a sufficent reason) so I had to stop seeing Mr. Twenty year old. God pulled me in and kept me close... very close. He became my absolute best friend, my lover, my King. We were so intimate... I spoke to him like I'd speak to someone sitting beside me and he talked right back. That soft still calming voice became so familiar and so strong to me that he'd interupt conversations with friends ha... He's was so loving, so personal, so intimate. It was just me and him. No one understood what had happened and when I tried to explain all I could say was sheer desperation and realising nothing did it for me but him was what had brought me to this point.
I went to a christian camp with him and it was just a really powerful weekend, definately rode on the buzz but it was just so lovely because for 10 weeks I had been on my own him and me at this crazy intensity level, then there was people around me wanting to worship and talk about him and I loved it, felt at home. People started making comments about how great I was and how much of a leader I was and one girl made a joke saying "Ha you're like the holy spirit in walking form" .... and pride slipt in... and crushed it. It ruined it. I gave satan a foothold and wow... he held on. So like two weeks later I slipped up in a tiny way and I basically closed off... I'd slipped up and there was no going back... I started hanging around with my other friends more... and Ke. was there... and was so thrilled to see me... always... we started seeing eachother... There goes another year and two months of my life without him... When it came to the sex or no sex stage... I remember my last thought before it happening being "Why not? You've done it before?" .... What a quick lie... What an easy excuse to use. So we were together and I loved him Alot. A whole lot.
And then it ended... so I moved onto the next one, ... An. ... but he wasn't enough so I started dating another one at the same time, Ke. .. then a girl started showing interest... and I thought, why not? She's beautiful? No I'm not joking. I'm trying to be as honest as I can be here... So I had a thing with her, and then left it to date An. for awhile, had sex with him, Then left An. to date Ke. ... had sex with him. I was becoming an expert at how to work people and get what I wanted without people even being aware I was working the situation to my advantage... I'm not saying this in a proud way but in a humiliated way. I took the people skills that God gave me as a gift and used them to get what ever I wanted. I could hook a guy in minutes. I began to forget what memory was with who, they were all so faceless and I felt like I was in the same relationship over and over again. I always went for the hard to get, and when I got them, when they fell, and they started to adore me and worship me and I got bored and started to feel sick at how affectionate they were. Love repulsed me but wow... how I hungered for adoration and would do anything for it. Even after I would end it with a guy I'd keep in very friendly contact with them and test the waters every so often seeing if I could still have them if i wanted to... I needed that hold over them, even when I didn't want them to have me I wanted to hold their hearts. Another girl, and a couple more returning trying again trips to the same guys and I was just worn out... As you can tell I was dying slowly. I could not have been more unsatisfied, more hungry, more unhappy, more unrested and not at peace. Sex and Men became the drug I couldn't stop using but hated so much. It was my drug, my thing I abused, for power, for a high, for satisfaction, for adoration...to feel totally accepted by someone because I very much didn't accept myself.
In the middle of all of this I went out one night, got so drunk it is beyond explanation and got raped by a stranger...and blamed myself.
Then like 5-6 weeks ago I was persuaded to go to a woman's conference in a local church and I went, very annoyed I'd been dragged into it because it was the place I felt the least comfortable. I went and stood, silent, as they sang "I am free to run, i am free to dance, i am free to live for you, i am free" and I whispered to one of my best friends standing beside me and said "Free is the last word I'd use to describe myself". I went and stayed with three of my christian friends that night and just poured my heart out. I told them I thought it was too late, I'd gone to far, was beyond God's grace, he couldn't excuse the things I'd done. One of the girls, she's very close to god's heart and very in touch with the spiritual world, she just start sobbing, and broke into a panic attack at the lies poring out of me that i'd been feed. I went to sleep that night and had a dream about my three christian girlfriend's I'm close to, and the four of us were sitting in a prayer meeting in a circle. Suddenly the girls stomachs lit up and they had beautiful flowers growing inside them. I remember marvaling at how gorgeous they were... but they I noticed my own stomach had lit up, I looked down and there was a unkept thirsty plant, but a big plant none the less... and he spoke... in that beautiful voice of his and said "That will always be there. No matter how much you fight it or deny it. I will always be part of you. I will never stop calling." I woke up bemused, and went to the conference. The message was about the things that keep us from God, the things we hold between us and him, and try to carry into a relationship with him, like past abuse, rejection, sex, pride, unforgivingness, self abuse... I just sat there, listening, as silent tears ran quick down my cheeks. It was me. He was giving this message to 200+ women so I'd hear it... She said to write down what it was keeping you from him, to walk up and drop it into the box, and let it go. Leave it at the foot of the cross. Just drop it. My list was long... When I made that long walk up, i felt that placing it wasn't enough and I ripped it to pieces... I wanted nothing to do with any of it anymore. And he gave me the freedom to walk away from it. Freedom that was found in him and not in these things I had held so close to me.
They started to sing "I am free to run, I am free to dance, I am free to live for you, I am free" and I started to sing- for the first time in years. Nothing could have quietened me at that moment. It was the greatest high I'd felt in years, the weight had been lifted, the distance taken away. My King! My King was with me! My lover loved me! My lover still was there! He'd never stopped calling and I finally just stopped fighting it and went back home, where I belonged, in his hands. It was rough going the first two weeks, alot of stuff I had to close up in order to be free to do this, free to be with my king, to live for him, to be his. But Church felt like home. Worship felt like breathing. Reading my bible I felt like a starving woman who'd just had a feast put infront of her. My love for him is so desperate and needy and I'm wrecklessly abandoned in it!! I've spent every second with him for the last couple of weeks, sitting at his feet, in his pressence- finally HOME!!!!I go on the bus, he's sitting beside me, reading my bible, he's teaching me, resting at night, he's the one who settles me. I AM FREE!! Free in him!! Forever more! He NEVER leaves, he never ever ever stops loving, never stops wanting us with everything he is. He is not a distant or aloof God, he is a close, caring, best friend, lover, brother King who will come as close as we allow him!! Invade my heart my life and my head Jesus! Because I never want to move from being with you! Praise God!!! Freedom and LIFE in him!!!! Through you the darkness flees!!! Praise the Lord!!! God Bless brothers and sisters, sorry for rambling
xx
I was raised in a christian home, and my mam and dad loved our King dearly. They raised us right and I came to know God when I was six right after sunday school, the message of Jesus dying for us had just been told to us and we were told we could have him in our hearts forever if we asked him into our hearts- so I went outside when everyone was running around playing, I sat under a willow tree and prayed to him... Little did I know I just made the best decision of my life!
So the next years were just steady, me and him talked a bit but he wasn't my whole life. I got baptised because I loved him alot, but I didn't realise how much bigger he was going to get... So I went into secondary school-Like middleschool in america I think, and things started to change. I was 13, I started drinking with all of my new friends and suddenly guys started noticing me...alot. So I kind of set God aside, caught up in this whirlwind of new things and things that looked so exciting and grown up... Most of my friends had lost their virginity at twelve...(yeah wrong crowd I know) but I was dead set, I'd been raised that you have sex when you are very much in love and married to someone- was the way God wanted it.
So I got a boyfriend, I was 13 and he was 16. My parents didn't approve ( I totally agree with them looking back now) they sat me down and said I was choosing to walk down a road that wasn't right, and choices I made now would affect the rest of my life... I so wish I'd listened. So I was with Pi. for six months... and I thought I was "In love"... I laugh so hard looking back now because I really hadn't a clue. There was no depth to the relationship, I was a child... so immature and naive but fighting against other people thinking I was. So I had been with him 6 months, and in 13 years old land that seemed like 7 years.. and all my friends started asking me why we wern't having sex... I told them I was waiting. They kept asking why and my answer didn't look so strong anymore... then the straw that broke the camels back..Pi. text me "Juls, I'll wait for you, I don't care if it's a week, a month or until we're married" and that was it... I had a "loving" "understanding" boyfriend who was willing to wait for me...surely this was enough? We had fooled around lots before, because I thought it only mattered once we had sex... So a few days later the same thing happened and he just took it that one step further...and I let him. And then just like that.. my gift was gone.
I went to my first christian camp two days later. Teenstreet, a huge collection of christian teens from all over the world meet in Germany for one week. This was where our love affair began... he grabbed onto me so hard that week and I just crumbled..as the reality of it all came crashing down on me. I was his. Totally and completly. I went home after that week changed inside out, ended it with Pi... he never even asked why or fought for me.
So me and Jesus got to know eachother, and he just thought me so much and brought me close. So I went from the summer to the christmas just me and him, but I was starting to struggle with my weakness- I would say men but at that stage they were boys ha... So God brought in Pa. the christmas I was 14. Pa. was such a kind hearted gorgeous christian guy I met at a christian camp that christmas, we took things super slow, emailed for like 4 months and then decided to give it a go and try. When I look back now, I see how much God was protecting me. I know 100% Pa. was God's will for me at that time, rather then letting me get distracted by guys who would draw me away from him he brought someone into my life who challenged me in a good way in my walk with God and thought me what a christian relationship was like...We dated for a year. In that time we had no physical contact whatsoever except for once where something small almost happened and he fasted for four days... he was a really good influence on me.
So during this year I met Ke. (I know at this stage you're like, another one?! Well... this was my struggle...warning it gets worse) Ke. was ... charming, fun, dangerous...not a christian... we became impossibly close during the time I was with Pa... too close. Which set the ground work for what came soon after.
When me and Pa. ended I spiralled into depression. I just couldn't see the point of it anymore. Even when I was with the nice christian boyfriend and we had that relationship I still struggled and yearned for earthly things... what I didn't realise was it shouldn't be my relationship with Pa. that held me but my relationship with God... I started self harming. Badly. I'd have to wear fingerless gloves every day to school and I'd often be consumed by the pain of how badly I'd hurt myself. Not a single person knew. I remember sitting across the table from a christian friend of mine and they said "you know emos wear gloves like that to cover up them hurting themselves" and I said Do they? The hollowness and emptyness over whelmed me and I needed something, I needed my fix to fill that hole... So when I was 15 I started dating a guy who was 20... he was labelled a christian...that really messed with my head, and still didn't fix the gap and I felt like I was screaming at the top of my lungs and no one even noticed I was in the room. I tried to end it...I wrote the notes out... I said goodbye... I cut myself beyond belief and just remember getting dizzy from loss of blood and praying to die... when I woke up in the morning I remember sobbing uncontrollably that I was still alive and breaking down and praying saying "Do you want this?! Do you want my life?? HAVE IT! Cause I sure as hell don't"...and that's exactly what he did.
So I got grounded... for a month,(can't remember why but God provided a sufficent reason) so I had to stop seeing Mr. Twenty year old. God pulled me in and kept me close... very close. He became my absolute best friend, my lover, my King. We were so intimate... I spoke to him like I'd speak to someone sitting beside me and he talked right back. That soft still calming voice became so familiar and so strong to me that he'd interupt conversations with friends ha... He's was so loving, so personal, so intimate. It was just me and him. No one understood what had happened and when I tried to explain all I could say was sheer desperation and realising nothing did it for me but him was what had brought me to this point.
I went to a christian camp with him and it was just a really powerful weekend, definately rode on the buzz but it was just so lovely because for 10 weeks I had been on my own him and me at this crazy intensity level, then there was people around me wanting to worship and talk about him and I loved it, felt at home. People started making comments about how great I was and how much of a leader I was and one girl made a joke saying "Ha you're like the holy spirit in walking form" .... and pride slipt in... and crushed it. It ruined it. I gave satan a foothold and wow... he held on. So like two weeks later I slipped up in a tiny way and I basically closed off... I'd slipped up and there was no going back... I started hanging around with my other friends more... and Ke. was there... and was so thrilled to see me... always... we started seeing eachother... There goes another year and two months of my life without him... When it came to the sex or no sex stage... I remember my last thought before it happening being "Why not? You've done it before?" .... What a quick lie... What an easy excuse to use. So we were together and I loved him Alot. A whole lot.
And then it ended... so I moved onto the next one, ... An. ... but he wasn't enough so I started dating another one at the same time, Ke. .. then a girl started showing interest... and I thought, why not? She's beautiful? No I'm not joking. I'm trying to be as honest as I can be here... So I had a thing with her, and then left it to date An. for awhile, had sex with him, Then left An. to date Ke. ... had sex with him. I was becoming an expert at how to work people and get what I wanted without people even being aware I was working the situation to my advantage... I'm not saying this in a proud way but in a humiliated way. I took the people skills that God gave me as a gift and used them to get what ever I wanted. I could hook a guy in minutes. I began to forget what memory was with who, they were all so faceless and I felt like I was in the same relationship over and over again. I always went for the hard to get, and when I got them, when they fell, and they started to adore me and worship me and I got bored and started to feel sick at how affectionate they were. Love repulsed me but wow... how I hungered for adoration and would do anything for it. Even after I would end it with a guy I'd keep in very friendly contact with them and test the waters every so often seeing if I could still have them if i wanted to... I needed that hold over them, even when I didn't want them to have me I wanted to hold their hearts. Another girl, and a couple more returning trying again trips to the same guys and I was just worn out... As you can tell I was dying slowly. I could not have been more unsatisfied, more hungry, more unhappy, more unrested and not at peace. Sex and Men became the drug I couldn't stop using but hated so much. It was my drug, my thing I abused, for power, for a high, for satisfaction, for adoration...to feel totally accepted by someone because I very much didn't accept myself.
In the middle of all of this I went out one night, got so drunk it is beyond explanation and got raped by a stranger...and blamed myself.
Then like 5-6 weeks ago I was persuaded to go to a woman's conference in a local church and I went, very annoyed I'd been dragged into it because it was the place I felt the least comfortable. I went and stood, silent, as they sang "I am free to run, i am free to dance, i am free to live for you, i am free" and I whispered to one of my best friends standing beside me and said "Free is the last word I'd use to describe myself". I went and stayed with three of my christian friends that night and just poured my heart out. I told them I thought it was too late, I'd gone to far, was beyond God's grace, he couldn't excuse the things I'd done. One of the girls, she's very close to god's heart and very in touch with the spiritual world, she just start sobbing, and broke into a panic attack at the lies poring out of me that i'd been feed. I went to sleep that night and had a dream about my three christian girlfriend's I'm close to, and the four of us were sitting in a prayer meeting in a circle. Suddenly the girls stomachs lit up and they had beautiful flowers growing inside them. I remember marvaling at how gorgeous they were... but they I noticed my own stomach had lit up, I looked down and there was a unkept thirsty plant, but a big plant none the less... and he spoke... in that beautiful voice of his and said "That will always be there. No matter how much you fight it or deny it. I will always be part of you. I will never stop calling." I woke up bemused, and went to the conference. The message was about the things that keep us from God, the things we hold between us and him, and try to carry into a relationship with him, like past abuse, rejection, sex, pride, unforgivingness, self abuse... I just sat there, listening, as silent tears ran quick down my cheeks. It was me. He was giving this message to 200+ women so I'd hear it... She said to write down what it was keeping you from him, to walk up and drop it into the box, and let it go. Leave it at the foot of the cross. Just drop it. My list was long... When I made that long walk up, i felt that placing it wasn't enough and I ripped it to pieces... I wanted nothing to do with any of it anymore. And he gave me the freedom to walk away from it. Freedom that was found in him and not in these things I had held so close to me.
They started to sing "I am free to run, I am free to dance, I am free to live for you, I am free" and I started to sing- for the first time in years. Nothing could have quietened me at that moment. It was the greatest high I'd felt in years, the weight had been lifted, the distance taken away. My King! My King was with me! My lover loved me! My lover still was there! He'd never stopped calling and I finally just stopped fighting it and went back home, where I belonged, in his hands. It was rough going the first two weeks, alot of stuff I had to close up in order to be free to do this, free to be with my king, to live for him, to be his. But Church felt like home. Worship felt like breathing. Reading my bible I felt like a starving woman who'd just had a feast put infront of her. My love for him is so desperate and needy and I'm wrecklessly abandoned in it!! I've spent every second with him for the last couple of weeks, sitting at his feet, in his pressence- finally HOME!!!!I go on the bus, he's sitting beside me, reading my bible, he's teaching me, resting at night, he's the one who settles me. I AM FREE!! Free in him!! Forever more! He NEVER leaves, he never ever ever stops loving, never stops wanting us with everything he is. He is not a distant or aloof God, he is a close, caring, best friend, lover, brother King who will come as close as we allow him!! Invade my heart my life and my head Jesus! Because I never want to move from being with you! Praise God!!! Freedom and LIFE in him!!!! Through you the darkness flees!!! Praise the Lord!!! God Bless brothers and sisters, sorry for rambling
xx