A Testimony Like No Other

A positive benefit of having eternal life is that God has given me a second chance in life; I have made many mistakes in my past, most of which I can't take even if I tried. But God still offered his forgiveness to me, giving me faith to face my past in a new light if and when they arise again to bring me down, the strength to keep on moving forward and never fall back, and I always remind myself that God is with me no matter what.

I grew up Catholic, but as I got older, I was being led astray; while I would go to church, I wan't listening to the message that was being brought. I even fell into some of the world's traps, and the worst one I fell for was of the sinful nature of lust. When I was a kid, I was molested by my biological father. Later in seventh grade, my boyfriend at the time wanted to do things with me. Mainly heavy petting and to teach me how to have sex. Luckily I managed to talk him out of the "sex" part, but I still agreed to the heavy petting because I was afraid of losing him. He was my first and only one at the time, and I didn't want to lose him. Yet the days we did those things, was the last time I hung out with him. After I completed seventh grade, we stopped communicating altogether. It seemed like I was finally free from it, but in reality, I began fantasizing about having a man doing those things to me, making me feel like I was loved and needed. I didn't do any heavy petting upon myself in the beginning, just moved my body in the way that it seemed like a man was loving on me. The heavy petting on myself started in 2015. While I still had a Twitter account, there was an ad for an app called Meowchat where I could meet different guys. One of the guys I was chatting with had me going further than talking about our fantasies, I was actually sending him pictures of my private parts as well as videos of me touching them and of myself orgasming. I got worried that my family would hear what I was doing, so I would put a movie on in the hopes that it would overpower my own voice. Seemed to have worked because they haven't questioned me of any suspicious activities from my room. On March 27th of that year, I met my boyfriend of now six years at a college dance. We didn't officially started to date until June 5th of that year, but even after we did I was still on the app. I no longer liked having it while I was dating someone in real life. So along with removing the app completely, I came to forward to him about it. After that moment, I saw that he was the one and that things were getting better. Or so I thought; as he and I got closer, the urges to feel his touch were getting stronger. I tried fighting it, but in the end I gave in. It started with having my shirt off in front of him and he'd see my bra, then slowly but surely he had his hands and his lips all over me. For a long time, I had him blindfolded so he wouldn't see my need body and I kept my eyes closed so I didn't see his, but in November of 2020 we couldn't help but see each other. After that, we kept going more, almost going all the way. Yes, he could have been the one to end it, but as I was in middle school, I'm the first girl he's ever dated so he was unsure and maybe scared about stopping it. Anytime we were doing this at my house, we had something on the t.v. to drown out our noises, like I did when I had that phone app. Now, we did try to stop a number of times, but it wouldn't last long. That is until Tuesday June 14th of this year. Along with some of the girls from my church's college ministry, I joined a Bible study called R Group. We're going over a book call "You're Not Enough (And That's Okay)" and while reading the first chapter I read how a website said that it was okay to have open relationships with multiple partners because everyone will know about it and that it'll be fine. I thought t myself, "No, it's not fine. Either date one person at a time or not at all! Because what if the other wants to make their relationship with you more serious?" Thinking that, I immediately thought about what my boyfriend and I were doing. One of my main reason that I kept telling myself and him as to why we should keep doing it was because we thought about getting married a long time ago. The fact that my reasoning was very similar to that article, I felt more disgusted than I ever felt. Later that night when we were asked to write a private prayer, I asked God to free me from the sin I kept putting myself and my boyfriend in. The next day when I hug out with him, the urges were more controllable for us. We decided to make boundaries for ourselves so we don't cross anymore lines, and if we feel like we are groing to, we'll try to do other things in its place - like reading Scriptures, maybe going for a walk or even playing video games. But as long as we do it together, and with the help from God, nothing is impossible and nothing stays broken forever.

While I'm still human, vulnerable to temptation, and have absolutely no control over what's going on in my life. Still, I know that God always with me, giving me his grace even though I don't deserve it at all, providing me with some of His strength to push forward and to catch me if I fall back, and also to continue providing me His wisdom.