[NOTE: I’ve been thinking a lot about the resurrection lately, about how Jesus triumphed over death itself, about how that leads to our own resurrection if we let it. I’ve reflected a lot on my own story of resurrection, one I’ve never told here. I share it now in the hopes that some of you struggling with this particular bit of death will let Jesus roll away the stone, drag this stinking sin out of you, and bring you new life. Please be careful; this is my heart. –Adam] I had a wonderful, carefree childhood. Most of my memories of the time are centered on the typical things: playing with my friends, jumping my bike off curbs, learning to ride a wheelie, and watching far, far too much television.
And sure, there are a few memories I’d like to forget. Like the time in fifth grade when I was goofing around in the cafeteria and splashed bright-red slushie on the school bully, who promptly informed me he’d be “waiting outside” (he was, and he popped me in the jaw for the principle of the thing). Or the time in seventh grade when a pretty girl with a now-comical Arkansas accent forgot she’d promised to dance with me during the closing-night formal at band camp.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about one memory in particular, though. When I was about seven years old, I spent the night at my friend Ben’s house; the following morning, at Ben’s suggestion, we went into the woods behind his house to play. Ben said that adults often went there at night, and they usually left cool stuff behind. It would be like a treasure hunt of sorts.
So Ben and I set out. It was a crisp day, though the grass and trees were brown and dead. We wandered around a bit and found a clearing that had obviously hosted a party the night before. Beer cans were strewn, and a few bottles. I distinctly remember a small tuft of wiry brown grass covered with cigarette butts and spent pull tabs from aluminum cans.
But even more distinctly, I remember the pages, torn from a magazine. The breeze rustling them, causing them to flap, and wave hello.
Pages with pictures.
You know where this is going.
I had no real concept of pornography yet. I knew it was wrong for me to be naked in front of other people, and that it was wrong for me to see other people naked. I don’t know how I knew this—I don’t remember my parents ever talking to me about it, though I do have a dim recollection of some freak-out amongst one of my folks for some nakedness-related reason.
Standing in that clearing, grasping those glossy pages, I didn’t even know the word “pornography,” but I
did know what seeing those pictures did inside me. How they generated a seething, roiling, complex tumult of lust, shame, excitement, and guilt.
I knew I shouldn’t be seeing this, and that I also wanted to see more.
I was a seven-year-old boy, and without asking for it, I’d just gotten addicted to porn.
I don’t remember much after that. I can’t be sure, but I think I folded up a couple of those pages and snuck them home in my pillowcase, and I think my mom found them. If there was fallout from that, or some teachable moment that my parents seized, I don’t remember it at all. I think that must’ve happened though, because I never saw those magazine pages again.
Fast-forward to sixth grade. We’d moved from Texas to Oklahoma, and I had a whole new set of friends. Growing up in a semi-rural town in the buckle of the Bible Belt, I had no shortage of churchgoing friends and classmates, and most of the kids I ran with were pretty good kids. You know how most people have those few people in their childhood who constantly offered temptation to do something you shouldn’t do? I didn’t have those kids.
But I did have feelings I couldn’t explain or understand. I would periodically be overwhelmed with an urgent desire to see a naked woman. Often I’d dig up a National Geographic magazine from the school library and root through it in search of native nudity. Once, I spent about three days craving something to slake my thirst for porn; I got it on a class trip to a pottery manufacturer where I saw a small ceramic statue of a nude woman. I’m sure it was very artistic, but my sense of God’s sublime, creative act in designing the female figure had been warped and now it was just something to consume. Something to feed my hunger.
Adolescence and puberty brought increased awareness of what I was dealing with (though I still had no concept of the far-reaching ramifications), as well as the physical outlet of masturbation, but opportunities to see porn were few and far between. This was the mid-1980s, so there was obviously no internet yet; porn had to make the rounds in magazines and scrambled pay-per-view cable channels. I had access to only one of those, so when my parents were gone, I would click the TV all the way up to the 50s and gawk at whatever I could make out through all the wavy lines and photo-negative colors.
Then there was the time when someone—an acquaintance, not a friend—brought a magazine to school in the eighth grade. After school, a handful of other boys and I gathered in an alcove outside to marvel at this treasure while we waited for our buses to come pick us up. But being there, using pornography with other people, outdoors, at school… it was too uncomfortable to me, so I stepped away. Which is why I didn’t get in trouble when the door suddenly popped open and the shop teacher came outside to confiscate the magazine.
Now that I’m writing this, I’ve just remembered another time. Ninth grade. Band trip. Embassy Suites in Chicago. One of the upperclassmen found a magazine in his hotel room, and word spread like wildfire. It wasn’t long before we were all in that room, taking turns with it. There was a movie on the hotel TV that night, too. I think every male in concert band watched it, because it became an in-joke amongst most of us. This is the first—and last—time I ever used pornography around someone else.
All these instances were followed by deep shame and inward rage. I’d let God down, I’d let myself down, I’d let my future wife down. Pornography intertwined itself with my naturally depressive personality to teach me very early on how to feel inadequate and how to pile on myself for missing the mark. I marked all the passages in my Bible about sexual sin and did my best to work hard and not fall anymore.
It kinda worked. By diving into schoolwork, friendships, and the standard pining-after-girls stuff, I was able to derail my urges and they began to flare up less frequently. I made it through high school and my first couple of years of college, fully embracing an emerging musical side and journeying through a couple of bands. By this time I had cable TV in my bedroom and discovered that Showtime came in pretty well, but I wound up being fairly restrained about how I’d watch it. Yes, I’d mess with their late-night lineup on occasion, but these times were rare.
So I thought I had a handle on it and, like so many times before, my desire for pornography faded into the background of my life. I met a wonderful girl who became my new best friend, we got married, we started having kids, and our dreams of doing music together were put on hold while I soldiered through corporate America for a little while.
It was around 2000, 2001 when, searching the internet for a trivial piece of information for a script I was writing, I clicked a harmless-looking link that had cropped up in my search results. Windows began popping up all over my screen, each one featuring salacious images, each one enticing me to click for more. My computer monitor turned into a rapid-fire shooting gallery as I closed each pop-up advertisement as fast as they came up until there were no more.
But it was too late. I was hooked again.
It was the same thing all over, but this time, I wasn’t a little boy in the woods with a scrap of magazine in my hand. This time, I was a responsible adult with the power of the internet just a click away.
And that began a two-year descent into full-blown addiction, with an alarmingly regular cycle of binging and purging. I would use every day for a week, then come to my senses, kick myself, feel like crap, promise never to do it again, then spend the next three weeks reading my Bible more and praying “harder.” Always hiding, always covering my tracks. Always worried I’d be found out, that Michelle would wake up or come home early. Always convincing myself I’d be okay with that well-worn phrase that comes straight from the devil’s lips: “No one has to know.”
Two years. Two long years.
The whole time I always convinced myself that I could do better, that I could
fix this on my own. Of course, that was two years of constant frustration and failure, peppered with occasional bouts of thinking I had a handle on my addiction, or even the additional hubris of convincing myself I’d beaten it.
But time and again, I would go back to the poison well. Fall, fail, repeat.
And then came the day. I don’t know how I landed on it—in retrospect, it had to have been the Lord guiding my steps—but I found an unorthodox website, billed as "The #1 Christian Porn Site," called
XXXchurch.com.
Just as I’d stumbled into my addiction, I stumbled into the lifeline that would help pull me out of it.
At the time, XXXchurch.com didn’t have a whole lot of features, but it had enough. There were astounding stats about the reach of pornography into our culture, and while those had a major impact on me, what really broke my heart and put my feet on the road to recovery was something called “The Prayer Wall.” It was nothing more than a message board where people could request prayer to overcome their addiction. I read pages and pages, post after post after post, and the realization literally made me weep:
I was not alone.I thought I had been the only one with this struggle, the only person this wretched, the only man this subservient to his own lust. I certainly didn’t know anyone else who had dealt with it, or who was currently dealing with it. Pornography was—and still is—the dirty little secret that no one wants to talk about, but that many people—more than you know—fight against on a daily (or hourly, or minute-by-minute) basis.
So that began my turnaround. I say “began” because, concerned more with my image than with my heart, I didn’t tell anyone about it. I found a sort-of treatment plan through XXXchurch and embarked on it, convinced that I was now taking
real steps to clear this up, remove it from my life, and move forward.
And no one would have to know.
Thank God that attitude lasted less than a week. The longer I worked at sobriety, the more I knew I would have to tell Michelle eventually. I waited for what seemed the best time (by the way, there’s really no
great time to confess your porn addiction to your spouse, so
now becomes your best option), sat Michelle down on the couch, and told her everything.
For me, this is the most painful part of the story. Our story. Raw honesty is often painful, but the truth will always set you free, though it may take its time doing it. I’m not going to write down the exact emotional content of those moments on the couch and the days that followed them, but I will charitably call them “difficult” and let you extrapolate.
Of course, I married up, and Michelle’s side of this story is hers to tell, and maybe she will one day. But we worked through this—and in some ways are
still working through it—and have come out on the other side more deeply in love and stronger in our marriage.
I’d like to say that, since that evening confession just before Valentine’s Day in 2003, I’ve had nothing but continuous victory over my addiction, but that isn’t true. I still struggle from time to time, though not nearly as much as I used to. I learned early on that claiming total defeat over pornography
usually leads to a spell of use, so let’s just say that it’s been a while since I looked at porn, and I hope to keep it that way. Still, I’m taking it one day at a time and trusting that God’s grace is sufficient.
And I’m trusting that the resurrection is true. That the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead does indeed dwell in me, continually restoring me and bringing me new life.
I was dead in the sin of pornography; Jesus resurrected me.
I had dead ideas as a result of my lust; Jesus resurrected me.
My hopes of living free were dead; Jesus resurrected me.
My dreams for my life and for my family were dead; Jesus resurrected me.
My heart was dead; Jesus resurrected me.
I was dead.
Jesus resurrected me.
That’s my story of resurrection.
What’s yours?
[NOTE: Because the message boards at XXXchurch were so helpful to me, we've decided to open the comments for this post. If you struggle with addiction to pornography, please know you are not alone. Men—and women—of all ages have been affected by the insidious influence of porn, both those who use and those who make it. Whether you are an end-user or you’re involved in the industry, please visit XXXchurch and make full use of the resources there. Or talk to a trusted friend or pastor about it (and if they laugh or tell you it’s no big deal, get a new trusted friend or pastor). Or send me an email through the address at the top of this page and let me know. Or, if you'd like, leave a comment below. Just don’t keep it to yourself. Find the freedom that comes with exposing your sin to the light. Roll the stone away and let Jesus resurrect you.]
