Teens Meet Outreach

It’s a very great privilege for me to tell my story to other teenagers like myself on this platform. I appreciate this opportunity. It gives me the chance to look back at how “far” I had gone and how God’s love and grace shined on me and brought me close to himself again. It’s really wonderful. As I go further in telling my story, I’m going to be putting a lot of interruptions in form of some facts about myself and a few lessons I want others to learn from, so please bear with me. It’s probably stuffs you’ve heard before, the only difference is that it’s going to be from my perspective and experience.

This puberty something that we all learnt in secondary school hit me kind of later in life, in terms of changes in physical qualities, compared to my mates but it came quite early for me in terms of thought patterns and mental abilities. I began to have unhealthy attraction to the opposite sex rather early in life, too early, if you ask me. Signs of puberty, right? But it came too early for me, in my own opinion. In my junior secondary school days, I had a friend, a male friend. We were what you could call plain, I mean, really plain, platonic friends, no extra feelings attached. He was the only one I was really close to then. Now one lesson I would like to point out here is that friends form a very important part of your life. The quality of friends you have determine the quality of your life and future. They are participants in shaping your destiny. So my sincere and plain advice is that you should choose your friends in respect to how you want your destiny and future to be.

Now back to my friend. He loved to draw, and most of the stuffs he drew then were portraits of girls (with more emphasis on their curves), princesses, and of two people getting married and “living happily ever after”. He did this a lot; during classes, break times, study periods, every time. He was my seat partner all three years so I saw a lot of these things. These created a lot of unhealthy images in my head about sex and the opposite gender, early in life. We can’t blame the poor guy, right? He was only expressing his passion but it was unknowingly and unconsciously killing me softly. I didn’t discover all these things until recently though. This brings us to another lesson; watch what you watch. I was a poor, innocent, little girl then and to me I was just feeding my eyes and appreciating my friend’s art works but I was unknowingly feeding myself with pictures that were unhealthy to my mental mind. Not all pictures, videos and movies are good for you. It’s even worse now that these things are right inside our pockets and purses and handbags. The sites we visit, the magazines we flip through, the books we read, all these things unconsciously affect us one way or the other. Every single action we take starts from the mind, we should be careful what we feed it with. I guess we should go back to the story now, right? Sure. I’ll like to introduce a particular guy at this point but he won’t become relevant until later in the story, so please just take note. Let’s continue.

When I was in JSS 2, second term to be precise, I and my family had to move to another apartment. Due to circumstances beyond our control, the environment was not a conducive one. It was in one of the rural parts of Lagos where diverse vices abound. But we had no choice, we had to manage. I have to point out at this point that I come from a very religious, no, spiritual family. I was that person you would see and easily refer to as “SU”. This brings me to another point. Wherever you find yourself, please, differentiate yourself. Let people know you for who you are and what you stand for. Set yourself apart from the crowd. Stand out, and know and defend your identity. It is very important to reduce temptation to the minimal, and even when it comes, you’ll be strong enough to resist it, with God’s help, of course.

So it wasn’t too long that we moved to this apartment that a guy started pestering me for a relationship. I knew it was wrong so I always gave a direct ‘no’ for an answer, although I was enjoying it because it was the very first one. Another guy moved to that same house and that one also started pestering me. Now two guys at the same time, double wahala. Now I’ll love to point out that I was a very secretive person, I still am, but it has reduced drastically. No one knew about this then, not even my mum. I was afraid she was going to dislike or spank me and see me as a bad girl because guys were asking me out. I saw it as something very bad and it was my fault that guys were asking me out, so I decided to keep it all to myself. Too bad. You can make a good guess that I’m about to point out another lesson here. Speak out. Talk to someone about whatever you’re going through when it seems you can’t handle it. Even when you feel you can handle it, still talk to someone with knowledge and experience, you never know how much more you can gain.

So let’s go back a bit. You remember that my artist friend in school, right? We were in JSS 3 already, same class, still seat partners. He started telling me of a girl in his neighborhood. He said tales of how he liked her (her physical qualities inclusive) and how he would love to date her. That was all I needed. I thought within myself, we were age mates na, he already has a girlfriend and he doesn’t have two heads. What was I waiting for? I agreed to date both guys at home almost at the same time range. Let’s not go into the dating details for now. Please don’t forget that I was just in JSS3 then, you can actually guess my age. Don’t also forget that I was an “SU”. My dad was (still is) a minister and I think I had already joined the choir then, with my mum. My life was another confirmation that the salvation of your parents can’t save you and church attendance does not equal to salvation. They are not even close.

In the midst of all this, God had better plan for my life than all the mess I was in. My parents were praying for me. I guess they knew, somehow, and I could feel their prayers in my life. A crusade was held in my school and I gave my life to Christ. I broke up with those guys and stopped whatever alliance I had with them. But then, that wasn’t all, I still had a lot of mental battles to fight and different thoughts and habits to conquer. I actually did but it wasn’t easy. I think I’ll like to tell you about that too. But not yet, or at least not in this particular story, it will come in an entirely new episode. Remember the guy I told you to watch out for earlier? Yeah, this is where he becomes relevant and it’s another interesting part of my life I want you to know. So kindly sit back and watch out.

Till then, keep basking in God’s grace and love and never think less of yourself. You are far better and bigger than who you are now. Don’t let your present environment pull you down.
Thanks for reading!
I love you!

The owner of this story has chosen to leave it anonymous. 

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