I didn’t want to hurt us

While traveling, I asked a girl I’d known for a very short time to come over to the apartment where I was staying.  I was planning on spending a nice evening talking with her and getting to know her better. But what happened that night shook me to the core.

Shortly before she was to arrive, I felt this overwhelming sense of lust.  All I wanted to do was go to bed with her.  This was very disturbing to me.  I didn’t want to have premarital sex because I knew from experience it would be harmful to both of us.

With this battle raging in my mind, I turned whole heartily to God in prayer — even though part of me was saying, “No! Don’t pray!”  I felt like the man in the Bible who says, “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.” (Romans 7:19)

After I’d been fighting these feelings for a while and was getting nowhere, I fell to my knees in tears and pleaded with God to stop this young woman from coming to the apartment.  It took everything I had to pray that, to sincerely desire that.

She never came.  Even though that wasn’t the end of my struggles, it was my answer for that evening.  And it made me feel closer to God.

Originally published in The Herald of Christian Science – special issue for teens, 1999.