F
FaithfulPanda
Guest
I was born from a hooligan who thought it'd be a great idea to leave his girlfriend and 3 kids to go hook up with a younger girl almost 10 years younger than him, and a girl who was a delinquent and wanted to work for the juvenile facility that once housed her. I went through a life where my mother tried to give me the best even though she couldn't afford it. After my father drunkenly beat up my mother and then almost committed suicide after binging on cocaine, my mom and I distanced ourselves from him. I started going to church with my great grandparents as a way to get out and away from the house on Sundays. This church raised me when I wasn't in school being bullied. I was at vacation bible school and Sunday and Wednesday church learning about God but not fully understanding it. Yea I would hear the stories of Veggie tales and the regular stories but I didn’t feel like God was actually in my life. Time went on. My dad was released from prison and made it so I constantly wanted to be with him. Making me idolize him when in reality he shouldn't. My mom, always feeling as though she didn’t matter, would lash out at me when I’d would defend his father. Even going as far as throwing all of my birthday presents on my dad’s lawn after an argument went bad. Later on, My Great Grandmother passed away. My mom, who barely went to church as it was, lost her one reason to ever go to again and felt studying the bible on her own was good enough. But I still wanted to go. I went every Sunday and was then asked to join choir where I started singing as the youngest male to ever join the adult choir at the age of 13. Granted I wasn’t the most popular kid at Church. I was the biracial kid in a primarily white church. But it didn’t matter. People loved on me anyway even though I didn’t understand it. I was going through the motions and knowing God existed but didn’t know God on a personal level.
So there came a point where every teenage boy’s worst nightmare comes in. Girls. In the course of four years of high school, I dated seven different girls. SEVEN! And each one came with a different way to hurt me. The first used me for popularity because I had begun rapping in high school, the second was actually my rap partner but didn’t like me anymore so she dumbed me by saying she was a lesbian but later finding out she was dating another guy. The third got pregnant by her ex then left me, moving to Florida! Fourth was obsessed with sexual things to such a high degree that I almost compromised my virginity on several occasions. Fifth was the second worst because she cheated on me the entire length of our relationship that last a year and a half. She’s now just had her second kid by another guy. The sixth was verbally abusive almost to the degree of my mother. Finally, the seventh was the worst. She convinced me that losing me virginity to her was a good idea. Thankfully I didn’t. We had met up in the band room after school, and as we were about to begin doing “things” the band director came in and caught us. When we had to report to the vice principal the next morning, my girlfriend claimed I had tried to rape her. So through a series of events, I was semi-expelled from school a week before graduation. I say semi because I still got my diploma but couldn’t walk, go to prom, or even go to the last few days of school.
So at the end of my high school career, I was semi-expelled, was constantly verbally abused by my mother because of her stressful job and me not following rules she had set in place, and I was so far from God that I was studying books about paganism and Wicca seeking some sort of salvation. So when I came to college, I had no connection to God. Then I met a girl. Number eight in my history of women, who showed me God’s love. But not all of it. She showed me what a true believer is. A person who isn’t perfect by any means. Who will stumble constantly, but will have a drive to serve to Christ. She is the one I love my first virginity to. I did it freely and out of love because I thought she was the one I was destined to marry. Obviously that isn’t the case. We would have sex and it ultimately didn’t show me the original love I saw in her and it dragged her farther away from Christ. Our relationship continued for a year and three months where in the first 6 months we decided to get engaged after an April fool’s joke. It wasn’t a Godly relationship at all even though we both desperately wanted it to be. We felt victim to the lust of the flesh that is talked about in Galatians and throughout the Bible. Plus because of both of our pasts we couldn’t fully connect with one another and it led to an unstable relationship on top of it being a non-God based relationship. So after a year and 3 months, we parted ways.
The one big thing I left out of all of this is my addictions and self-harm. Granted they aren’t like my parents’ drug and alcohol issues, but they were and are just as bad. Pornography and Cutting. Two of the biggest enemies of a young person in this day and age. Growing up with an abusive mother, so many women saying I wasn’t important whether it was their actions or their words, and no stable Father figure to guide me, I discovered pornography in the weirdest way. I pop up on a children’s gaming website. From then on, porn became a way to save myself from the problems I faced. Mom saying I’m worthless? Porn. Girl cheats on me? Porn. Dad doesn’t want me to come visit him? Porn. Bullies? Porn. There was even a point where because I had watched so much porn that because I felt so unloved and I watched so much of negative sexual acts, I looked for love with men. Was in chatrooms and talking to men older than me because I just wanted someone to love me. Had no idea the amount of love had for me because I was so lost. Then on top of the fact, I started watching tv shows that showcased cutting and its consequences. And instead of not doing it like a smart person, I grabbed a razor and cut myself. But It was almost the same feeling as touching myself while watching porn. Yea this isn’t the average story I’m hitting the hard things to talk about. But yeah. These two things, had enticed me with a feeling of bliss and relief that I could escape.
Thankfully right before college I was able to break the cutting addiction, but the pornography would follow me to college and even affect my relationship with me now ex fiancé. My mind was warped. Not knowing God’s love and believing that love existed in the flesh. Kissing, touching, sex! It all had encased me that I couldn’t escape. I was trapped in a cage of sin that I couldn’t escape. Even after I got baptized I wasn’t able to escape the sexual and pornographic chains that held me. They were my comfort net. My way of feeling love when I wasn’t given it. Even after my break up with my ex fiancé the temptation to look at porn and violate myself haunted me like a little worm in my ear.
Why does all this matter? It’s because hurting myself has left my heart broken and without God even after I had taken the steps to dedicate my life to him. I had this thought that if I accepted him, got baptized and was as positive as possible, everything would work in my favor. Oh how wrong I was. Its more than that. Yes, daily we will sin, but the point of being saved by the unending hope is that Christ. What I’ve learned in my 20 years of life from different religions, different people, and my own struggles is. God. Yea God. He is the key to everything. Jesus is his way of reaching us. I went to Catholic school for middle school and high school where I was told the priest forgives your sins, Mary and Saints go to God for you. But in reality, Jesus says “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man shall come to the Father except by me.” I was sucked into porn where people give each other constant rounds of physical contact that is supposed to be enjoyed in the amazing gift of marriage. And it’s like huh?
So from my story if I could offer you any advice, it’d be these things:
· Don’t suffer abuse. Self-inflicted or inflicted by others
· Don’t be a person who says they’re a Christian but don’t act as if they are daily. Fully commit to God’s glory. It’ll be work but it’s worth it. I’m working on it now.
· Lust is not love. It’s not what you’re meant for. You’re meant for a love that’s greater than any bed time fun or image on a screen can give you.
· Love yourself. Because for so many years I hadn’t. I’m just now starting to fully love myself as a child of God.
· You can conquer anything with God in your corner. So give yourself to him and no one else.
So there came a point where every teenage boy’s worst nightmare comes in. Girls. In the course of four years of high school, I dated seven different girls. SEVEN! And each one came with a different way to hurt me. The first used me for popularity because I had begun rapping in high school, the second was actually my rap partner but didn’t like me anymore so she dumbed me by saying she was a lesbian but later finding out she was dating another guy. The third got pregnant by her ex then left me, moving to Florida! Fourth was obsessed with sexual things to such a high degree that I almost compromised my virginity on several occasions. Fifth was the second worst because she cheated on me the entire length of our relationship that last a year and a half. She’s now just had her second kid by another guy. The sixth was verbally abusive almost to the degree of my mother. Finally, the seventh was the worst. She convinced me that losing me virginity to her was a good idea. Thankfully I didn’t. We had met up in the band room after school, and as we were about to begin doing “things” the band director came in and caught us. When we had to report to the vice principal the next morning, my girlfriend claimed I had tried to rape her. So through a series of events, I was semi-expelled from school a week before graduation. I say semi because I still got my diploma but couldn’t walk, go to prom, or even go to the last few days of school.
So at the end of my high school career, I was semi-expelled, was constantly verbally abused by my mother because of her stressful job and me not following rules she had set in place, and I was so far from God that I was studying books about paganism and Wicca seeking some sort of salvation. So when I came to college, I had no connection to God. Then I met a girl. Number eight in my history of women, who showed me God’s love. But not all of it. She showed me what a true believer is. A person who isn’t perfect by any means. Who will stumble constantly, but will have a drive to serve to Christ. She is the one I love my first virginity to. I did it freely and out of love because I thought she was the one I was destined to marry. Obviously that isn’t the case. We would have sex and it ultimately didn’t show me the original love I saw in her and it dragged her farther away from Christ. Our relationship continued for a year and three months where in the first 6 months we decided to get engaged after an April fool’s joke. It wasn’t a Godly relationship at all even though we both desperately wanted it to be. We felt victim to the lust of the flesh that is talked about in Galatians and throughout the Bible. Plus because of both of our pasts we couldn’t fully connect with one another and it led to an unstable relationship on top of it being a non-God based relationship. So after a year and 3 months, we parted ways.
The one big thing I left out of all of this is my addictions and self-harm. Granted they aren’t like my parents’ drug and alcohol issues, but they were and are just as bad. Pornography and Cutting. Two of the biggest enemies of a young person in this day and age. Growing up with an abusive mother, so many women saying I wasn’t important whether it was their actions or their words, and no stable Father figure to guide me, I discovered pornography in the weirdest way. I pop up on a children’s gaming website. From then on, porn became a way to save myself from the problems I faced. Mom saying I’m worthless? Porn. Girl cheats on me? Porn. Dad doesn’t want me to come visit him? Porn. Bullies? Porn. There was even a point where because I had watched so much porn that because I felt so unloved and I watched so much of negative sexual acts, I looked for love with men. Was in chatrooms and talking to men older than me because I just wanted someone to love me. Had no idea the amount of love had for me because I was so lost. Then on top of the fact, I started watching tv shows that showcased cutting and its consequences. And instead of not doing it like a smart person, I grabbed a razor and cut myself. But It was almost the same feeling as touching myself while watching porn. Yea this isn’t the average story I’m hitting the hard things to talk about. But yeah. These two things, had enticed me with a feeling of bliss and relief that I could escape.
Thankfully right before college I was able to break the cutting addiction, but the pornography would follow me to college and even affect my relationship with me now ex fiancé. My mind was warped. Not knowing God’s love and believing that love existed in the flesh. Kissing, touching, sex! It all had encased me that I couldn’t escape. I was trapped in a cage of sin that I couldn’t escape. Even after I got baptized I wasn’t able to escape the sexual and pornographic chains that held me. They were my comfort net. My way of feeling love when I wasn’t given it. Even after my break up with my ex fiancé the temptation to look at porn and violate myself haunted me like a little worm in my ear.
Why does all this matter? It’s because hurting myself has left my heart broken and without God even after I had taken the steps to dedicate my life to him. I had this thought that if I accepted him, got baptized and was as positive as possible, everything would work in my favor. Oh how wrong I was. Its more than that. Yes, daily we will sin, but the point of being saved by the unending hope is that Christ. What I’ve learned in my 20 years of life from different religions, different people, and my own struggles is. God. Yea God. He is the key to everything. Jesus is his way of reaching us. I went to Catholic school for middle school and high school where I was told the priest forgives your sins, Mary and Saints go to God for you. But in reality, Jesus says “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man shall come to the Father except by me.” I was sucked into porn where people give each other constant rounds of physical contact that is supposed to be enjoyed in the amazing gift of marriage. And it’s like huh?
So from my story if I could offer you any advice, it’d be these things:
· Don’t suffer abuse. Self-inflicted or inflicted by others
· Don’t be a person who says they’re a Christian but don’t act as if they are daily. Fully commit to God’s glory. It’ll be work but it’s worth it. I’m working on it now.
· Lust is not love. It’s not what you’re meant for. You’re meant for a love that’s greater than any bed time fun or image on a screen can give you.
· Love yourself. Because for so many years I hadn’t. I’m just now starting to fully love myself as a child of God.
· You can conquer anything with God in your corner. So give yourself to him and no one else.