Monday, November 12, 2012

A year without Kisses...

Last night I got the joy of hearing Miss Mo Isom speak to my beautiful Calvary girls. I know they needed to hear a lot of what she had to say. But One thing she talked about stopped me in my tracks.

SHE had a year long intimacy fast. WOW! like Wow, God just spoke to me there and said Ashley this is what I want for you for the next year. I didn't say anything to anyone as I packed my things and drove home with my best friend who had been with me on the trip.

I should explain: 
 The past two years have been rough emotionally. You can see previous post. I have had a roller coaster of emotions that have left a path of destruction in its wake. At the end of my relationship with Mitch I had started down a really dangerous path. A path that isn't easy for me to talk about, But I am coming clean, I had started viewing pornagraphic materials and reading erotic novels. It was a crazy road of conversations that happened between two people who where planning on getting married. Though now I know that those conversations should have never happened. When he broke up that relationship it let a whole in me. A whole I was trying to fill with just about anything. The addiction deepened. 
Then almost exactly a month later I went to visit my sister. A friend not really thinking about what he was saying said something to the effect of I bet you couldn't get "___ _____" to go out with you a 5th time. My brain went all "challenge accepted" and by the time I got back to Amory I had been texting ___ ____ for awhile. I sent many text and had a lot of phone calls to the guy and most nights the conversations sounded more like the books I had been reading than a conversations that a Children Director at a church should be having. We planned to meet to go to a football game. The game would be a middle ground, THEN he suggested that we get a motel room and Then my this is not who I am alarm went off and I ended up lying to him and telling him I was sick...(I was not sick and I still went to the game) There were many other times that we ALMOST meet up between then and January. We still were texting and my addiction to porn was getting stronger. 
In Feb. of 2011 I moved back to Hattiesburg, I was deep into the addiction at that point and NO ONE knew about it. Sometime in March I started talking to my friend Brittni Clark about my addiction. She was a great help she pointed me to a great filter and put in on my computer and keep the password for herself. 
BUT I had another way to have my "fix" I entered into a very unhealthy relationship with a guy I should have Never dated. It was all physical, it was more physical than I ever wanted to go. To say that  I am still a virgin after that relationship is spliting hairs. I pushed every boundary. I was so broken,  I had a need to feel wanted by a man, and even though at that time I was not watching porn I was in deeper than I had ever imagined. I ended that relationship at the beginning of May. But within a week I had contacted "___ ____" and bought a new computer. I needed the computer. But I was not smart. I did not protect my computer. It took me almost 6 months before I would protect my computer. That summer I also got an iPhone so I had two devices that I could watch porn at anytime I wanted. That summer my addiction deepened even more. I was becoming more and more broken. That fall I began as I started getting more and more under conviction about my addiction I started telling my best friends and my sister about my addiction. It still had a hold on my life. I even looked at personal ads and on two occasions almost met up with random guys from the internet. I have had amazing friends who have done their best keep me accountable even when I would hide my actions from them. They have literally taken my smart phone and iPad out of my hands and blocked all questionable websites. They have "grounded" me for going to see "___ ____" But the desire is still in my heart.

I feel like I need to take a fast from guys from the persuit of their attention and from the relationships with them that feed the desires of my addiction. IT will be hard but with God I can do anything.