I grew up in a Christian home, went to church every Sunday, said the salvation prayer and was home schooled. That should say enough for you shouldn’t it!?
However, even though I grew up in an environment that would seemingly force you into a life honoring to God, that wasn’t exactly the case. I still had choices and decisions to make. I still had to make the decision for myself to fall in love with Jesus and experience an intimate relationship with Him. And no one could make it for me. Just a prayer wasn’t going to make that relationship happen either.
As a preteen, I began to experience bodily changes that I didn’t fully understand. Even though my mom had talked to me about adolescence and explained to me what would happen, I didn’t fully understand until I was going through it. I began having a strong desire to be held, touched, caressed, and aroused sexually. I mostly felt this way during the night when I couldn’t sleep or while I was in the shower. I wanted this longing to be fulfilled. In order to fulfill this yearning, I would make up sexual scenes in my mind. Touching myself while keeping the fantasy alive, I would manipulate my body until I had an orgasm. It felt good. I thought it fulfilled me…until it was over. Then, guilt flooded me… every time.
Finally, I confessed to my mom. But expressing it didn’t seem to relieve the guilt, shame, and the feeling of being stuck. I continued to struggle. I continued to battle all the way through high school. I didn’t know what it was called to do what I was doing until I was reading a book titled, Lies Young Women Believe And The Truth That Sets Them Free by Nancy Leigh DeMoss. She began talking about“masturbation.” Confused by the term, I actually looked it up in a dictionary.
Nancy DeMoss says, “It is important to understand that our inner longings are not necessarily sinful in and of themselves. What’s wrong is demanding that those longings be fulfilled here and now. God created the sexual drive. It is not wrong to fulfill that drive, as long as it is fulfilled in God’s timing and in God’s way –within the marriage covenant. However, the world tells us that if we have a drive for sexual intimacy, we have every right to fulfill it –regardless of how, when, where, or with whom.”
Around the same time I was reading this book, the person I had looked up to all my life, the person I wanted to be like, fell off the pedestal I had placed them on. When this happened, I realized I hadn’t been making Jesus the person to reflect my life upon. I hadn’t been giving Him all of me and I certainly hadn’t made much of an effort to get to know Him on a personal level either. I knew all the right biblical answers, but head knowledge wasn’t going to do any good. This was when I finally decided to give my life to the Lord and live completely sold out for Him.
Did life become a bed of roses from then on out? NO! I stilled struggled now and then with masturbation and other sins, but through Christ and the Word of God I have overcome it time after time. Jesus has become my best friend. My Savior. My Helper. My Healer. My Lover. My Everything. It’s because of Him I am able to love others and have compassion on them. And it’s only because of Him I am where I am today. Growth is everyday life.