I’m walking with the Lord, and He is teaching me freedom and what it feels like to walk in that with him. This blog is going to be hard. Hard for me to write and harder for me to post. I’m going to share my testimony and not just the good parts but the ugly parts too. The really ugly parts that I swore I’d never tell anyone. This is a very very vulnerable post, and I’m just trusting that this is what the Lord is calling me into.
Heres some background. I have two parents and their names are Chris and Edie. My whole life they have taught me about Jesus and what faith was. Sometimes it really got on my nerves, but I’m so grateful for that now. They are so loving and supportive of me and I’m continually grateful to have them as my parents. I have two older brothers that I love the heck out of, even though we like to fight and argue I know they always have my back.
Now you know the basics, I’ll move on.
When I was younger I had this older friend who used to make me do sexual things with her. I remember not liking it, and I knew it was bad but doing it anyways because I was afraid. Afraid that she would get mad at me or that she wouldn’t want to be my friend. Afraid that if I told anyone I would get in trouble. This carried on for several years.
I was about 8 years old when it stopped. I stayed friends with this person, but we never talked about anything that happened. Because I experienced this at such a young age, I struggled with lust and self worth while growing up.
Middle school was tough because That’s when I started to compare myself to others. When someone didn’t like me I just thought even less of myself. I thought maybe I was too annoying or not pretty enough I even considered my clothes being a reason. I started to pick at every piece of myself to find all my flaws and I had a lot. At least I did in my eyes
By the time I got to high school my self worth was shot. I was so insecure looking to others for their opinions on me. If they liked me then it didn’t matter what I thought of myself. I let what people said about me take over and I began to view myself through their eyes. But In their eyes I wasn’t enough and I never would be.
People were mean, and I know that people say words don’t hurt but they do. They really do. I had so many mean words said to me throughout high school. People would always let me know that I wasn’t good enough, pretty enough, or that something about me was always worth changing. Even if I didn’t know it they made sure to point it out to me. I get that some people might have been “joking” but their jokes actually hurt me. It made me believe that I wasn’t good enough for anyone.
I compared myself to what the world called beautiful and I fell short every time.
Throughout high school I learned to laugh with people, so that they didn’t know that what they were saying was hurting me. I wasn’t going to let people see my hurt because then they would know they had won. That their jokes had actually got to me. It would show them that I was weak enough to let someone like them get to me.
I built walls up so protect myself I started being rude to others, making someone else the center of the joke so that people wouldn’t try to do that to me. I made people hurt so I wouldn’t.
I ended up self harming Freshman year because I thought it might take away some of the pain I was feeling. This was also the year a friend of mine introduced me to porn, and I struggled with that addiction for a long time. It even carried over into college.
About Sophomore year I started living a double life. One where I would drink with my friends on Saturday, and then on Sunday I was back in Church as if I had my life all together.
At first I was drinking to get people to accept me. Then I realized I didn’t feel pain when I was drunk, so I kept drinking to forget everything. If I was drunk then the pain, my past, and my current struggles weren’t there.
At the end of my sophomore year I smoked weed for the first time with some friends and got caught by my parents. LOL They grounded me, and started watching me more closely so I decided smoking was not really worth it at the time. Then junior year started and these thoughts of not being good enough continued. I thought if I changed this or that about myself people would like me. That never worked and I felt as if nobody could ever love me. I continued drinking, and I ended up experimenting with different drugs because I thought it would make me cool, and at this point I did anything for attention.
Every summer I went to church camp where I would decide to “turn my life around for God” and stop being dumb, but every year I failed and returned to my old habits.
Then summer before my senior year I finally broke down to my parents about how much I was hating life, and I didn’t want to be here anymore. I went to a doctor and got diagnosed with depression and anxiety. They put me on medication, and I finally started to get my life together. I decided I was actually going to follow God. I wasn’t going to drink or party anymore, and it was a good year. I still lived a double life, but this time it was a different type of double life. Even though I was following God I still didn’t want to let people hurt me. Those walls I had built up so long ago weren’t coming down and I continued to act like nothing could hurt me even if that meant I had to act like a “bitch”. I was still done being put down and I wasn’t secure enough with how God viewed me to let their words not hurt me.
On the evenings and weekends I would go to growth groups and church where I would get to put my guard down. I was surrounded with people who encouraged my walk with God and who loved me for me not who they wanted me to be. I got to be completely myself no judgment. I’m so so so thankful for those people to this day.
After I graduated I went to college and quickly fell back into my old life. I was going to get to start fresh and make a new reputation for myself. It was college and I still wanted to be liked. I thought nobody here knows me and so I get a chance to be someone new, someone they’d all like. I thought partying was the answer.
For a while I tried to maintain the “Christian” lifestyle by just going to the party’s and not drinking so at least I was there. Then I started going to them and would only have a couple drinks because I didn’t want people to start questioning why I never drank. Soon I threw not drinking and drinking a little out the window and started getting drunk all of the time because I thought might as well put my all into it. Anytime there was a party I was there, and I always drank too much.
This led to me living my double life again. I would lie straight to peoples faces and tell them I was just fine. When really I wasn’t.
Honestly I knew what I was doing was not making me happy and I knew I should not have been going down that path but I couldn’t give up the chance to be wanted.
Throughout college the amount I drank just escalated to a point where I got drunk every night I could. I was getting attention for it too just not the attention I needed. At that point any kind of attention good or bad was still something. The more I fell into this party scene the more I hated myself.
I was surrounded with people but I felt a so alone but being surrounded by people was better than actually being alone. I fought with myself constantly knowing I wasn’t really happy with what I was doing and knowing I should change but I was so insecure. I wanted to be that person that everybody loves and everybody wanted to be friends with. I thought if I don’t continue this nobody will want me.
I could always feel God trying to pull me back to Him, but I never gave in. Because that would mean I’d have to give up this “reputation” I had built for myself.
I wound up doing a lot of stupid things and I ended up smoking a lot of weed. Last January I was at an all time low. My life felt as if it had fallen apart. The only place I could turn to was God, so I went after that. I realized the only time I had ever truly been happy was when I was giving Him my all. It was hard at first, and I messed up a lot with wanting to continue the way I had been. When I stopped partying people stopped wanting me to hang out and I almost thought that wasn’t worth giving up.
However, God introduced me to some really amazing friends who encouraged me to pursue my relationship with the Father. I started going to the BCM (a ministry group on my campus) every Thursday. These people made me strive to be a better person and they also accepted me for me. I didn’t have to be anybody else around them. And I didn’t have to do anything stupid to make them like me. Then around May, God told me “you’re going to go on the World Race,” and I thought it would be easy.
I definitely never thought I’d have to talk about this addiction to porn I had that I was literally going to take to my grave or all the drunk nights full of shame and regret. I wanted people to only see the good in me and I thought I could just ignore everything in my past. Month 2 of the race God put it on my heart to tell one of our ministry hosts about my struggle with porn. Once I did that I felt a weight lifted off my shoulders and I felt as if God wanted me to share with my team, and I did and more weight was lifted.
The devil had a huge foothold in my life for a really long time. I thought I could hide from my past but I couldn’t he kept bringing it back up and using it against me.
I realized true freedom with the Father is getting all the secrets out. No matter how dark or scary it might be. He tells us to confess our sins to one another so they can help you walk through it. Once you do satan can’t use it against you.
I am free
I’m done hiding from the shame of my past, I’m getting this opportunity to share my story in hopes that it glorifies God in every way while also shedding light on things that a lot of people struggle with but don’t talk about for example porn. Since sharing my story God has used it helped encourage other men and women to share theirs. People who went through the same thing I did. Something we shouldn’t have been ashamed to talk about in the first place.
We are all human Christian or not we make mistakes just the same.
I’ve learned my true identity doesn’t come from what others think or say about me It comes from the Father. The one who made me. Who molded me with his hands and called me perfect. His is the only opinion I care about.
I keep asking myself why would I put more weight on the words of others than the words of the Father?
I am walking out freedom from shame and being vulnerable letting people see the real me. I can openly tell you that God has saved me from some of the hardest things I ever struggled with. But it doesn’t stop there, He continues to walk with me through these hard times and tell me how much He values and loves me, and He continues to show me how He’s going to turn it all to good.
So ya that’s my story thanks for reading:)
