I imagine being able to travel back in time, find my 12-year-old self, and have a long chat with him. I was a skinny, unathletic, introverted kid with very little (if any) self confidence. I suppose I would explain to myself the following:
I know you’re struggling with some things that you don’t really want to talk about with anybody. But I’m going to talk about that stuff right now, because I know what you’re feeling and thinking, and I wish somebody told me these things at your age.
If you remember nothing else from our chat, please remember this: Any thoughts that come into your mind that are contrary to your spiritual nature obviously come from Satan.
Please remember this and do everything you can to learn to fight it off. As you pay closer attention to this, you’ll become quicker at recognizing and defeating it.
Don’t be afraid of Satan.
He already lost the war in Heaven and he will eventually lose the spiritual war he’s waging here, too. Since you can’t physically fight off Satan, the best way to beat him is to do something good, productive, and uplifting every time he tempts you to sin.
That way you show him he really doesn’t have power over you.
I know you have a lot of self doubt and feel very awkward around your peers, especially at school.
You’re always looking down at the ground and rarely look anybody in the eye. You’re especially shy around pretty girls.
You’ve been bullied for a while and things just got a lot worse at junior high school. Those kids are relentless and seem to really get a kick out of watching you struggle.
Well, it’s time to learn to fight back in a way that I know you can win!
You don’t have to allow them to determine how you feel, or how your day is going. You can stand up to them.
Look at those punks in the eye and show them you’re not afraid.
I bet that, if you stand up to them, they’ll back off. They’re cowards.
Even if they came back at you and started throwing punches, you could rough them up just as much.
I know it sounds a little scary now, but taking a hit in the face really isn’t that bad. The bruises and bloody lip will heal, and they’ll see that they can’t push you around anymore. You might get in a little trouble, but that will pass.
You’re not a bad kid.
You’re kind and it’s not in your nature to be aggressive. But sometimes you need to become a warrior and defend yourself.
You’ll need to find that inner warrior, because you will need him when you have a family of your own. You will need to fight to the death to protect your wife and kids from anything Satan throws at you.
And you will be victorious if you stay close to God. ALWAYS stay close to God.
Since the sixth grade, you’ve been discovering some things about sexual arousal and pleasure. I know, this is a really awkward conversation and you really don’t want to hear it.
When you feel these things, you have a bit of a conflict in you because you like the feelings, but you also believe it’s “bad” to feel them.
Let me tell you something. Those feelings do not make you bad.
Satan puts those thoughts in your head to make you think you are bad so that you feel too ashamed to talk to anybody about it.
In reality, those feelings are a normal part of life. You just need to learn to control them. You can learn to not let those feelings control you. You are the master of your body.
One of Satan’s favorite tools to use against you will be to influence you to turn to those sexual feelings to make you feel better while you experience rejection, bullying, low self-esteem, stress, and even boredom. He will continuously try to convince you to misuse your body to experience pleasure in an inappropriate way, which will feel good while doing it, but will always leave you feeling worse afterwards.
Then Satan will quickly flip things, whisper more ideas of how “bad” you are to stir up more shame within you, which will make you feel even worse. He knows exactly how to mess with your emotions and entice you to get caught up into self-destructive habits.
Satan is really good at messing with people, because he’s been doing it for thousands of years.
He’s the ultimate bully.
You just started your battle, so it’s going to feel a bit overwhelming or scary at times. But you’re a child of the almighty God! You’re a threat to Satan’s efforts to bring us all down. That’s why he won’t leave you alone.
If you weren’t a threat, he wouldn’t waste his time on you.
While learning to manage your physical self, maybe you can think of it this way. You know how you always dream of driving a car?
You will do it and you’re going to love it!
Imagine being behind the wheel of a car full of the people you love more than anybody on the planet, racing down the highway on the greatest road trip of a lifetime.
You will be making choices in how you operate the vehicle, how quickly you take turns, whether you follow traffic laws, and how you treat the vehicle to ensure it continues to run smoothly.
You’ll need to know the limits and capabilities of the car so that you can drive it safely along with all the other cars on the road.
You’d be a fool to let go of the steering wheel and just let the car go wherever it’ll go, right?
You wouldn’t floor it when you have obstacles ahead of you.
If you learn to use it properly, you will get a lot of joy out of what you can accomplish with it. That’s more or less how your body is.
If you don’t use your body’s capabilities wisely, you’ll cause lots of damage, and not just to yourself.
Depending on some of the decisions you make with how you treat yourself and others, you may cause a lot of damage and pain to those you love most.
This may not be making sense to you yet, so I’ll be more blunt. Those sexual feelings you have need to be controlled by you; do not let those feelings drive your life. You are the driver.
You need to know that you will marry a beautiful woman someday. She will love you and you will love her. She will not care about your skinny, awkward-looking body. She will love you for the person you are.
After you’re married, you’ll be able to enjoy a great sex life with her. The two of you will have a lot of fun figuring things out together. It will be something very special between the two of you; nobody else’s business.
However, if you keep looking around at other girls and wondering what they might look like naked, or what it might feel like to have sex with them, you will drive the woman you love away from you.
You will inflict seriously deep wounds on her heart, mind, and soul.
She will lose confidence in herself, and will no longer be able to trust you.
If you don’t learn how to bridle your passions, you will not be able to maintain a happy relationship with anybody.
And worse, you will end up completely shattering the heart of the only woman you’ll ever truly fall in love with.
You need to know that you have been given some gifts and talents that will enable you to make a difference in people’s lives.
You’re not going to be super athletic or musically talented (although you’ll enjoy watching and listening to those who have those talents).
But you will be able to bring the spirit of the Lord into people’s hearts and minds as you teach and testify of gospel truths.
It is so important to strive for worthiness through constant repentance so that you can always have the Spirit with you.
When you mess up, don’t retreat into a shell of shame and denial.
Learn to look back at the thoughts, feelings and circumstances that led up to the specific sin so that you can learn how to avoid it or beat it next time.
This way you will learn to successfully resist temptations to engage in sexual behaviors that chase the spirit away.
As you improve and become stronger, you’ll be able to more effectively use God’s priesthood power to bless the lives of others, especially your own family. They will need you.
Yes, you, the bony little kid who keeps getting pushed around by bullies. You will be able to make serious impacts on the lives of others for good.
Something that will help you fight back temptation is to remember that every girl you see in your life is a daughter of God.
As you train your mind to see this truth more clearly, it will help you push out the lustful thoughts. You’ll know you’re on the right track if you would not be embarrassed or ashamed to express your thoughts out loud to them.
Respect, defend, and protect womanhood.
Womanhood is sacred, and you are not the type of guy that desecrates sacred things. That is not who you are. That is not in your nature.
Remember, any thoughts that come into your mind that are contrary to your spiritual nature obviously come from Satan.
Don’t be afraid of Satan.
Just like those punk bullies at school, Satan is a spiritual bully who creates a lot of noise to scare us away from the light that Heavenly Father is ready to give.
Remember how Satan scared Moses as Moses was trying to talk to God?
Moses was ultimately able to see past the noise and call upon Heavenly Father, who answered in a big way. Satan threw a temper tantrum and ran like a coward.
And I’m not just warning you about the sexual stuff. You have it in you to muster the confidence to face challenging things.
You don’t need to run away.
Some chores and homework are unpleasant, but you’ve been able to just get it done right away and, when you’ve had the right attitude, you even learned valuable things in the process, like responsibility and self discipline.
Sometimes you have to face new responsibilities that seem intimidating at first, such as leadership in the Deacon’s Quorum.
Don’t be afraid to speak up and make decisions. It’s ok if you get things wrong here and there.
This is the time for you to learn from your parents, teachers, and leaders. They don’t expect perfection, but they do want you to keep trying so that you learn.
It’s not the end of the world when you make a mistake. Remember, every person on this planet is just a person; same as you.
We’re all a bunch of fumbling fools trying to figure things out. Those who appear to be confident do not necessarily know more than you and are not always more capable than you. Some of them are better than you at some things, and that’s totally ok.
We all have different gifts and talents. Focus less on comparing yourself to others, and more on comparing yourself to who you were yesterday. You are capable of doing great things in your life.
Stay humble, but have a healthy portion of confidence. Not cocky. I think meekness is the word I’m searching for, and would be worthwhile studying to understand more.
I know you really value your privacy. You enjoy being by yourself a lot of the time.
Although it is not necessarily a bad thing, anything done excessively can lead to bad things.
It will do you some good to spend more time with good people. You have a wonderful family and some really great friends.
Your parents absolutely love you. Spend more time with them. Please know that you can trust them.
It’s totally ok to share with them the things you’ve been feeling guilty about. They won’t throw a fit or hate you.
They will help you, support you, and love you.
They’ll be able to provide the guidance you need at this phase in your life. You can be accountable to them as long as you live with them. Confide in them and trust them.
Also keep this in mind for your future self: when you eventually get married, you will regret it if you do not spend as much time as possible with your wife and kids.
So, it is best for you to learn how to step outside yourself and be there for others now, while you’re young.
As you get older, find ways to be engaged in good things, productive things. Having fun is perfectly ok, but must not be the focus of your life.
Don’t waste too much time on video games.
You don’t have to see every movie that people talk about. You know which movies are garbage; you know exactly what to avoid. Don’t fill your mind with garbage in the form of “entertainment”.
I know it will often sound very appealing to you. But, trust me, you will not miss anything by not watching that crap.
Instead, fill your mind with useful things. For example, you can learn how to do some woodwork, fix up a car, or build things.
Your dad is talented in some of those things. I know he comes off as a little impatient and prefers to do that stuff alone.
But have a chat with him and express your desire to learn to do that stuff. I think he will come around when he sees your sincerity.
If you keep at it, you two will be able to have a great time building and working together. Then you’ll know how to do that stuff when you’re older, which will be very useful.
Music is going to be a big part of your life.
There is a lot of great music out there. Make sure the stuff you buy and listen to doesn’t put bad ideas into your brain.
I don’t care how cool the song sounds, the lyrics will have an impact. If you feel you need to turn down the volume or skip a certain song because of the lyrics when your mom is within earshot, throw that out of your music collection. It’s not worth keeping around.
Again, there’s plenty of great music out there that will give you a lot of joy. Choose wisely.
Even though adulthood and marriage sound so far away, they will happen.
Starting your journey towards self mastery now is vital to your preparation for the rest of your life. You will have so many opportunities to grow and develop; don’t let stupid things like sexual fantasies or porn rob you and your future family of those opportunities.
As you work towards self mastery, you will have greater strength and confidence to face all challenges in your life.
And, as you do so, you will be able to add more and more value to everybody you care about, especially your future wife and kids.
Be ready to sacrifice the lesser things (much of the entertainment that will distract you) so that you can obtain the greater things (spiritual and intellectual growth and, most importantly, a unified, loving family).
When you make mistakes (which all of us do), you must remember to immediately repent.
When you repent, be as thorough as you can without sweeping things under the rug. If the sin requires confession to others (like your bishop or parents), confess them fully.
It will be difficult to bring yourself to do this, because Satan will be right by your ear trying to fill your heart and mind with feelings of shame and anxiety.
Satan will also be putting thoughts in your head to convince you that nobody will love you if they know you did those things. Satan is full of lies; that’s why he’s called the Father of Lies.
As you strive to stay close to God, you will become better at seeing and rejecting Satan’s lies and you’ll muster up some spiritual courage to fully confess every single thing, even if you’re not sure it needs confession.
Satan will probably try to emphasize the pain you might have to go through when repenting of more serious sins.
But please remember that the pain you experience in this process will be nothing compared to what you will feel if you try to keep those things a secret for years and years. Believe me, EVERYTHING will be revealed eventually.
Every little secret. I’m not telling you this to scare you or intimidate you. I just want to save you lots of grief and pain.
The scriptures that teach us to not procrastinate the day of our repentance are inspired by God’s deep love for you and the rest of His children.
One more thing. You will get a patriarchal blessing. Read it often and remember to repent daily to keep your life clean and worthy of the promises that are in that blessing. Those promises are pretty amazing.
You’re not perfect and never will be in this life; however, you have a lifetime to work towards perfection. When you fall, pick yourself up, fully repent, and keep moving forward. Again, don’t attempt to cover or hide your sins.
We all have sins, including prophets like Nephi. Look at the struggles he had with sin and sorrow in 2 Nephi 4, and see what he said to get himself out of his slump.
You don’t need to “droop in sin”; instead, you can let your heart rejoice in your Redeemer.
The greatest blessings you will ever have in life will be the relationships you establish with your wife, kids, parents, siblings, friends, and, most importantly, your Father in Heaven and your Savior, Jesus Christ.
Those relationships can endure forever, while everything else in this life will eventually fade away.
Set your priorities according to that truth, and you’ll be alright.
Article written by guest Wallace G.
