Day One

I don't remember if I posted here that about a month ago I decided to go on a one week masturbation fast. I have told of least a couple of people about this but not sure if I posted about it here. Anyways I decided to do this after a time when masturbation was really controlling me. I felt that every time I was excited I had to listen to my body and do what it said. Basically instead of me controlling my body it was controlling me and I was sick of it. So I prayed and told God I was going to fast from masturbation for one week but needed His help. It was the first time in my life I ever even really tried purposefully not to do this. Sure there had been times when I had not done it for a couple of weeks but I was not actively trying to resist the urge when I had it, I just did not do it for whatever reason. Well I will admit that week was very difficult but I made a promise to God and whenever the urge came I prayed for strength and was able to endure it.

Well a surprising thing happened when the week ended I was not ready to stop the fast and decided to try to keep on fasting to see what would happen. One week went by, two weeks went by, three weeks went by then almost a month went by and I still had not masturbated. It was so strange to me and after the first week no where near as hard to resist as I thought it would be. For the first time in my life I felt in control of myself. I did not have to just do what my body wanted I could ignore it and the feeling would go away. Instead of the urges getting stronger like I thought they would they were getting easier to ignore.

Well having said all that I confess that I gave in last night. I was having terrible insomnia and could not sleep. It was hot, I was uncomfortable, and I was tossing and turning. It was around 1:00 AM I was tired and just wanted to go to sleep so I just gave in and was like forget it this always worked and helped me sleep in the past so I did it. And it did help and I slept like a baby...for about 4 hours. Then I woke up and the urge was even stronger then it was before so I did it again. The first time I did it without fantasies or lust because it had been so long. The problem was the second time however I did lust and have fantasies.

Anyways I learned some things from this. First of all even though my body says to me that doing this will be a release and a relief it is not true as my flesh just demands more and more. I mean here I went a whole month not doing this and then after doing it last night 4 hours later my body was demanding me to do it again and the urge was much stronger than before I gave in the first time earlier in the night. So its a lie that just doing it will be a relief. Sure it will be a temporary relief but it seems to me the more I do it the more my body demands I do it again.

Anyways I learned some self control over the last month and will try to use those lessons going forward. Also I learned more about my body and how it really loves attention and when you dont give it the attention it wants it will quiet down eventually but when you do give it attention it will crave even more.

I still am not totally sure masturbation is a sin if one can keep from lusting. Sometimes I am able to do it without lust and fantasies but that is a really difficult thing for me to separate from it. I do see some benefits in the act as in the past I have done it to avoid looking at porn or giving in to other temptations. So I still am not sure where I stand completely on the issue. I do know that its never good for my body to control me though and I know lusting and fantasies are sins. So I feel overall its not wise for me to masturbate often.

So anyways I failed last night but I asked God for forgiveness and I am starting new today. I am very thankful that I feel no guilt at all now that I asked God for forgiveness which is just really great! I just realized that sure I messed up but I am only human and I know God still loves me and forgives me.

Day one begins now!