Hey everyone! It is me again and I am going to tell you about my Junior year experience at Pequea Valley High School.

   I am praying that God will guide me with writing this because I am so scared to tell you my decisions in High School. Lord, I need your help to get me through this. I pray that as people read this, they will not see me for who I was, but instead see the powerful transformation that can only come through God.

   We all know that we make mistakes and learned from that. I made plenty of mistakes in my life. I regret these mistakes, but I know God uses our past to impact others’ future. This is not easy, but vulnerability never is. This is very hard for me, but I know God is on my side through it all. I also know that some people reading this will be able to relate to my experiences. If that is you, please let this be a reminder that you are not alone in your struggles. There are plenty of people, more than you may realize, struggling with the same thing you’re struggling with, and there are plenty of people who are more than happy to help you if you need it.

   When I was 14 I fell into the same trap as a lot of teenagers. I got sucked into the world of pornography. I started watching these videos because they made me feel good, and it just seemed like the thing for teenagers to do. When I was about 17, I started to watch Pornography more. It was so easy for me to go on to that because my communication device is always right in front of me, even when I go to bed. My parents would put me to bed and set up my communication device so I could continue to have conversations with friends and scroll through Facebook. Once they left my room and went upstairs to bed, though, I would open a new tab and look up these videos.

   It was fun for me; I enjoyed watching people having sex. At the end of the night, I would always erase my history because I didn’t want anyone to catch me. When I was in bed, I was scared that I might get caught, so when I heard footsteps, I would put my device on sleep mode and pretended to sleep. By doing this, I was hurting God so bad, but I didn’t know any better so I kept doing it over and over again, night after night. This went on for four years.

   When I was 16, my parents talked to me and my siblings, telling us not to watch any sexual things because it is a sin and God is watching you. Guys, I didn’t know better because I was just 16. Do you listen to your parents when you were 16? I would say no because we are just teenagers and teenagers know best. Not parents, duh.

   In my personal life, I didn’t tell people that I watched porn. I mean, who would? No ones want others to know that deep, dark secret we hide. People would judge me and they would try and tell me to stop because it’s bad, but I didn’t want to stop. I didn’t think it was bad. All I knew was that it was fun for me, so I kept doing it.

   I am just being open to you because it is time to tell my story to impact others and I think God wants me to share my testimony. In my heart, I knew it was bad but I didn’t care.

   In October of 2017, in my senior year of high school, my favorite cousin Brooke asked me if I wanted to go to The Living Room at Worship Center. In that moment when she asked me, she was looking at me and of course I didn’t want to disappoint her so I said “Yes.” I wasn’t sure what I was expecting; I was expecting it to be just another church service.

   I remember the first night I bad, but if it was yesterday. I sat in the back shaking. Shannon, the pastor was literally talking about pornography. At the end of the service, he declared “GET RID OF PORNOGRAPHY IN JESUS NAME PORNOGRAPHY GO!” I knew right there that the message was for me. It was my first time coming and somehow he knew exactly what I needed to hear. After that night I knew that I need to let go of porn. It was hard at first but I kept saying “NO MORE PORN. LEAVE THE DARKNESS!!!” To this day I am freed from the strongholds of pornography, and I am so happy. 

I will be posting episode 2 soon…