My life story, and current situation

[Trying_Hard]

This is a pretty long post that contains a small bit of my story as a Christian, my struggles, and where I am now.

First things first, my name is Mike; I am almost 21 years old. I was born and raised in a Christian (northern Baptist) family. I’ve gone to church my entire life and have considered myself to be a fairly strong Christian throughout most of my life. I was a student leader in my church’s Youth group and participated in most if not all of their events. To make a LONG story short, I fell in love (with a non Christian) and fell away from God when I was in my junior year in high school. I engaged in premarital sex and convinced myself that it was alright. After breaking up with my first love, I was a broken and lost man, having almost entirely lost my relationship with God over the course of the relationship. I still went to church most Sundays but had little to no contact with God. My youth group had been awesome, but my church has very little interaction with the college-aged group. So there I was still interacting with my old friends from youth group, but having very little real interaction with the church. Then my closest Christian friend, Jeff, (who had graduated high school and immediately started volunteering for the youth group) told me that the youth group was taking their annual missions trip to Haiti again. One of my last events I participated in before my life started to go downhill was the first time the youth group had gone to Haiti. I loved Haiti when I was there, and knew that I wanted to go with the youth group. So I went to my youth pastor (who knew my entire story up to that point) and told him that I wanted to join the youth group trip even though I had been out of high school for two years. He seemed very happy that I had asked and without even considering it told me that he wanted me to go with them.

Prior to going on any missions trip my youth group would have several “training” meetings, where we discussed things like what we would be seeing, and what the culture was like where we were going, as well as organize several fund raisers to pay for the trip. During our first meeting something happened that took me by surprise. I, in a way, re-met a girl I had known all my life. She was like me born into my church, and was a couple years behind me. I had always thought of her as one of the little girls at church, never really seeing her as an equal so to speak. The surprise was that all of the sudden, my view of her had drastically changed, and I noticed that she had grown into a very attractive women. I told Jeff about this after the meeting and he kinda laughed and said, in a discreet way, that he agreed with me. Then he went on to tell me that she was only 16, making fun of me for being attracted to such a young girl. I guess I should have know that she would be that much younger than me because of the girlish filter I had had on her previously, but it still hit me with a great disappointment to find that she was so much younger than I.

Prior to our first major fund raiser, a church wide yard sale, all of the members of the team come together to help organize all of the junk, I mean stuff, that gets donated. During the sorting I managed to hang out with this girl and get to know her a bit better. Unfortunately, it only served to increase my attrition to her, now not only was she beautiful, she was also mentally attractive. It went on like this over the course of the next six months, I slowly got to know this girl and the more I got to know her, the more I fell for her. Oh, yeah, and by this point, most of the guys on the team had found out about my attraction, and were almost constantly making fun of me for it. So it made it awkward, every time I tried to talk to her they would instantly start making jokes to one and other and start laughing hysterically. Somehow I managed to keep the fact that I was falling for this girl a secret from her, even with their constant joking. It did get a little frustrating while we were in Haiti because it was very hard for me to have any real conversations with her because of the constant din of laughter, and even more so because the guy who kept instigating the jokes was actually spending far more time with her than I was.


I'm getting a little ahead of myself, trying to keep this short yet putting in everything tht need to be said. Well, once I realized that this wasn’t just a small school boy crush, I started talking to Jeff about it more seriously, I told him that I was actually falling for her. At this he was a little shocked and very concerned. We talked quite a bit and decided that the best thing for me to do would be wait until she turns 18 to pursue the relationship more.

In Haiti I managed to talk to several of the leaders about this situation and they all reacted in a similar manner, first they were concerned, and then I would explain that I wasn’t planning on presuing the relationship yet, at this, they would start to relax a bit and at that point we were able to have some really good conversations about this situation. The main leader I talked to about it was one of the female leaders called Rebecca, she is a very cool and unique person, and was able to help me organize my thoughts on the situation. During my talks with Rebecca, I realized that one of the things I would need to do if I wanted any hope for a real relationship with this girl, I would need to drastically clean up my own life. This happened at the start of the trip and over the course of the remaining week, I spent a lot of time in prayer asking God to give me the strength to clean up my act as well as give me guidance on what HE wanted me to do. For the first time in almost five years I felt close to God. On one of the last nights there I prayed an earnest prayer asking him to hold me to the decision I made to clean up.

I’ve been stateside for about two months now and I am feeling so much better than I have in such a long time, life is finally starting to make sense again. And keeping to the commitment I made in Haiti and with a lot of help from my father in heaven, I have cleaned myself up in many areas that I have always known I needed work. I started using pornographic images when I was only ten, so needless to say I had a huge problem with it going into this trip. I am proud to say that I have not once looked at any porn since I got back, nor do I really want to, I like being free of the addiction. I have also drastically reduced the number of times I touch regularly. I don’t think going cold turkey on masturbation is quite the best idea; I don’t have that much money to keep buying new bed sheets. I have also learned to touch with little to no mental lusting; it is a purely physical activity.

Thank you for reading all this!
What I’d like to hear from you is
1)Any questions, I’d love to answer them. Comments
2)Do you think that God may have used this girl as an incentive for me to start cleaning up my life?
3) Do you think that a relationship would be possible between an 18 year old and a (almost) 22 year old?

I think that’s it for now.

 

[RobinRedbreast]

2)Do you think that God may have used this girl as an incentive for me to start cleaning up my life?

God is capable of using anything, at any time, to convey any message. But we have to be careful in not over-interpretting things. Could God be "using" this Girl to get to you? Maybe. And maybe not. Truly, none of us will ever be able to tell you for sure.

But how about just incase, you just clean your life up for yourself instead. Making major life changes just because of someone else is never a good idea. Make sure you are cleaning up that life for you, and for God, first and foremost. That way if the relationship fails, at the very least you've made good healthy changes that you know were for your own best interest, and not just for someone else. You have the best bet at not reverting to your old issues that way.

3) Do you think that a relationship would be possible between an 18 year old and a (almost) 22 year old?

My husband is 21. I am 26. I suppose that may answer your question without any further detail.

 

[Leebunnyz]

3) Do you think that a relationship would be possible between an 18 year old and a (almost) 22 year old?

i dont see anything wrong with that.

 

[Veritas21]

1)Any questions, I’d love to answer them. Comments

The most important thing about your story is that you learned from your mistakes and have become a more humble, better person resulting from it. I don't think you really have anything to be ashamed of or upset about. You are an individual that made some decisions that you recognize as wrong, and you are working on fixing them. Well done!

2)Do you think that God may have used this girl as an incentive for me to start cleaning up my life?

I am an athiest so absolutely not. However, I believe that someone can find someone they truly care about and use those feelings to motivate themselves and change themselves for the better. I personally think this is an inner strength you have had all along, you just needed someone to let you see it within yourself.

3) Do you think that a relationship would be possible between an 18 year old and a (almost) 22 year old?

Maturity is not determined by chronological age, but by how people think. I personally feel that 18 would be pushing it. Once this girl has been in college for a little bit she would be considerably more on your level mentally and emotionally. People typically have a few major changes in their lives, and one of them occurs during the early college years. I do not want to suggest that something would not work, but who she is now and who she will be after that point in time could be two completely different people. However, I think you are focusing too mnuch on what you think about her. How does she feel about you? What can you offer her?