My Testimony

Something I've been struggling with for a while is my past, my testimony. After much prayer and after talking with Elaina (@1C3N4Given), I have decided that I must make war with the devil, for HE is who is causing me to be ashamed of something I have been through that must be shared with others to prevent them from doing the same!
I've grown up in the church. My family has always gone to church. Until kindergarten I went to the same church my parents were married in and that my grandparents attended. Then, that church closed and I have been going to the church I currently attend ever since. My story really starts, however, in seventh grade.

Seventh Grade: 
Seventh grade is the first year students at my church can attend youth group. That winter we went to Winter Jam, a weekend-long United Methodist youth conference. That is when I first learned that we must accept God into our lives. We can go to church, but going to church doesn't make us a Christian. I decided that God needed to take over and let him into my heart. It was then that I began living for him!

Eighth Grade:
Eighth grade is the year everything started going down the tubes. I still attended church and youth group every week and loved every moment of it. However, I stumbled upon a website, MeetMe (formerly MyYearbook) and started talking to people. It was on this website I met my first "boyfriend." My parents found out and I never talked to him again, but I kept going on this website, desperate for someone to fill the void, someone to love me. My friends had started getting boyfriends, and I wanted one as well. I wanted that happiness! One of the guys I talked to started sexting me and, although I knew it was wrong, I wanted to feel wanted so badly. I kept going along with it. I eventually left him in the dust as well. Guys came and went through my life for a long time, through my freshman year. I was insecure, and I wanted someone to give me that security I needed.

Freshman Year:
My first year in high school I continued to talk to random guys online, and one of them led me to pornography and masturbation. I soon became addicted.  I loved talking to these guys, doing these things, because they made me feel good. I feel deep into sexual sin.
That Christmas my grandmother passed away after her battle with brain cancer. I was angry with God for taking her from me. She was the person who supported me the most, who I revolved my life around after her diagnosis. After church on Sundays we would take her home with us and have lunch, I would go to youth group, I'd come home and we'd have dinner. After dinner, we took her back to my aunt's house where she stayed the rest of the week. She became my life, the person I spent all of my days making proud. Losing her was probably one of the hardest times in my life, and I still struggle with that loss to this day. Although it was hard I knew she was no longer suffering. I dived into more things at church. I was committed to it more than ever, but I still was not living a life worthy of the Lord, stuck in sexual sin.
A guy from my school was on this website and we started talking. We exchanged phone numbers and talked a bit at school. We went on a date, texted often, but that was it. He had told me he liked me, but then after our date he told me that I was "a sweet girl that [he] didn't want to hurt." I was crushed. Finally someone who went to my school had liked me, but I didn't have a chance with him.

Summer 2010:
The summer after my freshman year I went on a mission trip with my church to Gary, WV. Another church joined us on this amazing experience, and the trip is something I will forever remember. One of the guys from the other church liked me, and, as I was still insecure, I loved the attention. After knowing him for less than a week, he asked me out and I said yes. My first REAL boyfriend. I was so excited, so happy. When we got back home, I didn't see him much - he lived an hour away. He was a bad influence, always disobeying his parents, always getting in trouble. Two months later he broke up with me through his sister in a text message.

Sophomore Year:
The very beginning of my sophomore year I went back to the guy from my school who I had met online.  We hung out a few times and he gave me my first kiss. We went down a path in the woods off the bike path and he tried to get up my shirt. Being naive, I let him. I wanted to feel wanted, and I thought that was the way to get him to like me. However, I felt uncomfortable and knew it was wrong. I told him no and walked away. However, I hung out with him two more times. Both times, he tried the same stuff. Things with him eventually ended and we haven't talked since, although I later found out he had a girlfriend at the time!
Around Christmastime I started having a crush on this guy from my church. That February we started dating, and it was a good Christian relationship.
I still loved church and even was helping in the preschool Sunday School room. I loved youth group and all the younger students looked up to me. Nobody knew my private struggle with sexual sin. Nobody really knows now about it, either.

Junior Year:
The beginning of my junior year, my boyfriend and I were still together and things were going great. Then, he left for college. Within the first month he had cheated on me, but I forgave him and we continued our relationship. I loved him, but I loved the idea of a relationship more. I should have left him then, but I didn't. I just wanted someone to love me, and he did. I let him talk me into seeing that we could be together forever. I thought that we would be for the longest time.
The summer before my junior year my church got a new pastor. His daughter is a year younger than me and we really started to connect. She is absolutely amazing and continuously tells me how amazing I am. I hope she realizes that she, too, is amazing! I have built so many relationships since this change, and I love it. I started singing on the praise team at the new contemporary service, I taught Sunday School, and was chosen by my peers at youth group to be on the youth leadership team. I started to grow in my relationship with God even more, but I still lived in sin.
When my boyfriend came home for Thanksgiving, we feel into having sex. We thought we were forever going to be together, and having sex was the ultimate promise of that for us at that time. We couldn't get engaged, everyone would think we were crazy. I loved him. He loved me.
We continued to have sex almost every time he came home. I knew it was wrong. I asked God for forgiveness after every night together. I knew we were a temptation to each other, especially when we were together alone. For him, it became something our relationship needed. I kept trying on getting him to change his views, but he wouldn't budge. At one point, my period was late and we were afraid I had gotten pregnant. I praise God that I was late only because of stress! There were also many arguments during the last six months of our relationship. For the last three months of our relationship several of my friends, including my pastor's daughter, continuously told me I needed to end the relationship. They could tell that I was not happy, even though I tried to cover it up. I kept telling myself that we had made a promise to each other that we would be together forever. I kept telling myself that we loved each other and that in time things would get better. He always said our promise was not only to ourselves, but to God. We were a Christian couple who had taken each other into sexual sin.

May 2012:
The first weekend of the month my youth group took a trip to Pittsburgh for Acquire the Fire. This event changed my life. One of the speakers talked about relationships. I believe it was comedian John Gray. It felt like God was speaking directly to me through him! He told us that as girls we are daughters of the King. We shouldn't date peasants. We need to wait for a prince to come to us. He told us that our boyfriends, or girlfriends, shouldn't be pressuring us to do ANYTHING, and that if they are, we need to get out! On the drive home I told my boyfriend that I no longer wanted to have sex as a part of our relationship. He became extremely angry. This conference became a turning point for our relationship, and for my life.
When he came home from college, things were different. My mom was talking to his grandma last month, and even she said he had changed. And she didn't like his changes! That Friday was my junior prom, and we were supposed to meet at my house at 5:00 for pictures and then meet at my friend's house at 5:45 for more pictures. His mother called around 5:05 stating that they were ready, but my boyfriend was not. He showed up at 5:30, the time we had to leave to get across town for pictures with my friends. In the car to my friend's house, we got into a fight. He told me that it shouldn't matter that he was late, and that if these people were really my friends it shouldn't matter that they have to wait for us. He told me that if I couldn't get over it that he just wouldn't go. That was the last straw.
The Wednesday after prom we got in yet another argument. He didn't want me to hang out with my friends without him because, to him, that meant that I didn't want to spend time with him. He accused me of cheating on him with a guy friend I had went to the movies with, as friends, with no other intentions, over Spring Break. At that point, I was done. It was clear that we were not happy together. The friend I had went to the movies with was nothing more than a friend, the closest person I had to a brother. He was my go-to for advice, and all-together an amazing friend. He told me that I had to put my happiness before my boyfriend's happiness. So I decided to end the relationship then and there. 
That night he texted me asking if I was sure I made the right decision, if this was what I really wanted. I said yes. 
My youth pastor told me that God would honor my decision. And that He has done!
I asked God to forgive me for having sex with him. I asked God to forgive me for not listening to his subtle hints. If we confess, He's faithful (1 John 1:9)
Although I had asked God to forgive me for those sins, I still was falling every so often to masturbation. I wanted to feel good. I wanted to rid the lonliness.


Summer 2012:
For a while it was hard dealing with being single. I returned to using MeetMe to talk to guys. I met a guy in my area and we started hanging out. I asked him if he believed in God, that was the only way he'd have a chance with me. He didn't go to church so I asked him if he'd go to my church with me. He hadn't gone to church since his step-father had passed away, but agreed to go. We spent almost the whole summer hanging out when we weren't working, and things were going well. Then we started to disagree on small things, and I feared if we started a relationship things would end up like the one I just got out of. If anything, I brought him back to the Lord.
In July I started up my anon account, and it has since brought me closer to the Lord. I had gone months without masturbation, but at times have fallen. Knowing that I follow people on Twitter that can lead me in the right direction is amazing. I love knowing that I am God's voice, and God's example to the world.

Now:
I have fallen at times, but I now ask God for forgiveness. His love is long, deep, tall, and wide (Ephesians 3:18). His love never fails, and I wish for everyone to know his love. I am surrounded by great people of God. I quit praise team in January to focus on school, but have returned. I continue to teach my preschool Sunday School class. I am also still proudly leading the youth group. Recently, I have added serving dinner at the free community weekly dinner to my weekly activities. 
A few weeks ago I tuned into a PurityOverLust conference call in which Elaina shared her story. It made me feel so much better to know that I'm not alone. That both she and Eric have fallen to sexual sin, just as I have. But they are both now made clean and amazing warriors of God. That was just about my final push. I said, enough is enough. I got rid of all temptation. I prayed to God so that He would take over in my life again. But then I fell again. So, I sent Elaina a message on Twitter, telling her my situation, how I am afraid to share my story with others even though I wanted to so badly. She told me that by exposing the things of the dark we are able to live in the light, that there should be no shame if I am forgiven. I need to share what God has done in my life. So, now I am at war with the devil. I hope to lead girls, and guys, into the light. I hope to be an example for others. I want everyone to know that you CAN turn away from sin, of any kind. You CAN become pure again in God's name. I am pure healed because of his never dying love and forgiveness.