(This is the fifth in a series of posts detailing my testimony as I trace the faithfulness of God from my birth until the present day)
“Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.” – 1 Corinthians 6:18
My last week of high school, though the end of a truly transformational period of my life, was actually the beginning of something even better. This was the week of the first court hearing over custody of my daughter. Though the court was a little harsh on my motivations as a father (in what I came to realize was the typical posture of courts to be more lenient towards moms than dads) I still left the courthouse that day with an equal share in all rights as they pertained to my little girl.
This was wonderful. Working, preparing for college in the fall, I now had the legal standing to spend time with and care for my daughter equally alongside (and unfortunately, often times opposed to) her mother. I began being able to spend days at a time with her, getting to know her, raise her, and incorporate her into all of my life. By God’s wonderful grace I was now in a situation where I had the support of my family to help me in making sure my daughter had the best possible life. And, further by God’s grace, I was able to have a majority of the time that summer with her, while in the other home her mother slipped farther and farther down a road of elicit behaviors. At this point she was pregnant with the child of another man who had started to live with her.
In the fall I began college, and to my surprise, I loved it. Immediately I was hooked into the academic atmosphere of college life. The ability to take whatever classes I wanted, to learn whatever interested me. It was amazing. The apathy towards school which I had cultivated during high school was gone and I had become completely sold out to my scholastic pursuits. This truly was a testament to God, who through his providence had brought me here, when I was prepared to make a decision which would have sent me the total opposite direction.
However, my love for school and my acknowledgment of God’s bringing me there, as well as his wonderful guidance in the situation with my daughter, still did not keep me from pursuing certain sinful activities. At this time I was completely overcome with lust. Between my uncontrollably flirtatious behavior towards the girls at school and at work, my continuing physical relationship with my girlfriend, and my constant succumbing to the temptations of pornography, my life was certainly not adhering to the cry of Paul to “flee from sexual immorality.” As well I was dealing with continual temptations towards greed and materialism, as for the first time in my life I found my self with a sufficient amount of money to spend on most anything I wanted. Though I always saw myself as being far removed from the actions of a few years prior, this was still a dark period of spiritual famine in my life.
Back in the custody hearings, things had started to work my way, though it was not always a very comfortable thing to endure. Through a series of missteps and neglects, including seeing my ex-girlfriend have her second child taken away by the State and the constant fear of what might happen to my daughter while being in that house, the Lord answered my prayer. From the beginning I had prayed that God would either see to it that my ex-girlfriend played a beneficial role in our daughter’s life in cooperation with me or that she would be taken completely out of the picture. And, though it was aided by her deepened depravity, of which to this day I don’t know that I have ever been broken about in the manner I should be, the Lord answered by making it so my little girl’s mother was removed permanently from her life. This result was as a great burden being lifted from my life, giving me the freedom now to raise my daughter without the fear of losing control of her to someone else.
As the next fall rolled around I found myself in a position which I had not been in for two and a half years: I was single. Once again, accompanying this singleness I found myself being recommitted to following Christ deeper than I had been before. This time it was through my getting involved with the college group at my church. God was truly at work in this group, specifically as can be evidenced now through the number of people there who he has called out into full-time vocational ministry. Here I began to really deepen my relationship with God for the first time, being challenged by the people around me to study and evangelize in a way that I had never experienced. They also provided something which I had missed in churches prior, that being a total acceptance of my daughter. She became just as much a part of the group as I was, both of us going out to eat with everybody each Sunday and Wednesday night following church. It would be inconceivable for me to underestimate the impact that this period has had on my life (as will become apparent later).
This was also a time of great chaos in my life. I was all over the place. Not in a bad way, just in a way that I was constantly on the go, taking more and more on, trying to feed the intense appetites I had at the time. I was in the stride of my college career, taking 20+ hours each semester, heading quickly towards my eventual end of graduating in three years with two degrees and 150 hours of accumulated credit. Plus, most every night, with my daughter asleep and my grandmother at home with her, I would go out. Either to the bookstore or to a movie or just to hang out with friends. Of course, though things were much better on the sexual immorality front, I still had a strong desire for flirting and female companionship, and because of this I found myself bouncing around, going out on dates with about any girl who would show interest. After a total of almost 4 years spent between two relationships, I was ready to just date without making any serious attachments. This worked well as it kept me away from the temptations of doing things physically which I knew were contrary God’s design (promiscuity was never an issue for me), but it also garnered for me a reputation of “chasing any thing with a skirt” (as my wife so poignantly reminds me). Because of this I had trouble getting any of the girls at church, the ones I should have been trying to date, to actually give me a chance, and so most of the ladies I went out with were not girls that I should have even been wasting my time on. Nevertheless, following my testosterone driven desires outside of what I knew I should be pursuing, I continued serial dating throughout my second year of college.
Then, as that year drew to an end, a girl at church caught my eye. I don’t recall why, as she never really showed any particular interest in me herself outside of just being my friend, but whatever it was that started it, I was quickly going under in my desire to date her. Little did I know at the time that that desire would lead me to things much further than I had yet experienced and would completely change the course of my life.
