"I'm crying out come rescue me with love. Like a child needs a night-light in the dark. Lord light me up I'm lovesick for just one touch. Your all I need but you never seem to be enough"
Tenth Avenue North
Lovesick
Hey all sorry for not posting lately. You may remember a month or two back I posted how I thought I finally had my masturbation struggles sort of under control. Well those days are long gone and I struggle with it often now. I also want to confess that I gave into looking at porn for the first time in awhile last week. That of course made me feel like crap for a little while too. But I prayed and asked for forgiveness and told my accountability partner and thankfully got over the guilt and shame I was feeling. Psalm 130 is a passage that really encouraged me.
I dont know I am realizing that its when I am feeling lonely that I am the weakest. The problem is I am lonely most of the time. I just cant seem to get the close relationships with others that I want. Sometimes I feel like my only purpose in life is to be an example of a lonely person to make other Christians grateful for their families and close friends. I know thats wrong but at times I think it anyways. I just cant get over my fears of opening up and letting myself be vulnerable to others. I am afraid of being rejected and judged. The thing is I want to be vulnerable but just dont know how to start.
This past weekend was good though but made me realize all I miss out on. We had a family reunion and there were lots of hugs and physical contact and stuff. It just made me realize how much I crave human touch. I dont get it often at all since I dont have many close friends. When I am craving it I find I end up trying to fulfill my cravings myself by masturbating and/or looking at porn. Dont really know what to do to fulfill this human need of touch. A handshake is not enough I want hugs and real intimate contact like rubbing each others back, and resting my head on their shoulders and stuff like that. I dont know I am just pathetic at making close friends where we would be comfortable doing this I guess.
Ya I know God should be enough much like it says in this song. He should be enough but as humans we are weak and seem to need more. But God made humans this way to crave touch. He probably did that for a reason since He knew we will need to comfort and be close to eachother to get through this hard life. I have been pretending I am not human and dont need these close relationships for so long its hard to transition out of it and be human and vulnerable to others. I so want to. But its hard.
So anyways please pray for me that I can resist trying to fulfill my need for close relationships and human touch with other things like porn and masturbation.
You can do it! I still clearly remember the first time I talked to a guy I wanted to be closer friends with about the fact that I struggled with pornography addiction. I'd been wanting to talk to somebody and worrying about it for months. Finally, I decided that waiting for the perfect moment wouldn't work. I prayed about it, decided I would tell one guy I knew, and wrote him an e-mail telling him I had a prayer request and was wondering if we could go for a walk. We ended up walking and talking for hours.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't easy, and it didn't fix everything immediately. In fact, I'd say I felt much more intensely my yearning for intimacy, touch, and vulnerability once I had had a taste of what true human connection felt like. In the short term, that conversation majorly destabilized me emotionally, because it opened up a lot of pain and loneliness that I had been suppressing in myself. For months afterward, I would periodically be hit by waves of yearning for more touch and vulnerability. However, as I continued to develop close relationships, those emotional holes began to heal. Love and touch and openness became more normal. And the intensity of my longings began to dissipate.
And we should never feel guilty for having needs for touch, sleep, human love, etc. God created us with bodies, and he wants us to meet the needs of our bodies. To deny our bodies physicality is a gnostic, not a Christian, notion.
Thanks Tim! Always appreciate reading your experiences about how you let yourself become more human and vulnerable. I pray someday I am able to as well and things go half as well for me. Anyways thanks!
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