The Unworthy Saint

“It’s much easier to be miserable than vulnerable.” – John Ruben

In some ways I think vulnerable is the new miserable.

Friends, I must confess. I’ve been really anxious about money & job stuff. I have no reason to worry, He has a track record of taking care of me in the past. The fact that is: God is faithful to me even when I’m not faithful to Him.

And that’s why I haven’t been blogging. I’ve been worried and been busy trying to get my resume put back together and things. In all reality, I’ve been so focused on the job stuff that I haven’t been thinking of much else either – even God. But I recognize that. And in the past couple days I feel like God has really been saying “You can let go. I’ve got everything under control. I will take care of you.”

I was laughing tonight with my friend Tim about how God seems to have taken away one of my sins only to reveal another place of sin to me. It struck me as funny how I’ll always have sin I’m working on, but He promises perfection in the end. Even when I think “I’m over this… now maybe I’m righteous,” I’m really never righteous.

Say a prayer for my anxiety. My attempt to trust God (again) begins tonight.

“The idea of ‘being in love’ is the only reason for remaining married really leaves no room for marriage as a contract or promise at all. If love is the whole thing, then the promise can add nothing; and if it adds nothing, then it should not be made. The curious thing is that lovers themselves, while they remain in love, know this better than those who talk about love. As Chesterton pointed out, those who are in love have a natural inclination to bind themselves to promises. Love songs all over the world are full of vows of eternal consistency. The Christian law is not forcing upon the passion of love something which is foreign to that passion’s own nature: it is demanding that lovers should take seriously something which their passion of itself impels them to do.

“And, of course, the promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love. A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He might as well promise never to have a headache or always to feel hungry.”

-CS Lewis, Mere Christianity

One of the scariest phrases for me to hear is “I need a drink.”

Life is not a choose your own adventure, we are called to align ourselves with the biography God has written for us. If we approach it as a choose your own adventure, the story won’t make sense. The less you try to be someone else, the more you align yourself with your own story, the more it will make sense.

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Note to the reader
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I started this blog on the 25th of August, 2004. I started almost two years ago. I’ve been fairly open and fairly closed at the same time. I’ve revealed more aobut myself than I would’ve thought I would. I’ve talked about my addiction to pornography, among other things. This is my 500th post. I wanted to go even deeper, be more true to myself, my life, tell more of my story. The reason I blog is 1) to keep a record of my thoughts and 2) in hopes that someone, other than me, will be impacted by these thoughts and experiences. Telling the truth of my life is important because it is the telling of my own unique perspective; a perspective no one else has, but someone else may experience because it is in writing.

This post scares me to no end. It is revealing beyond revealing and, in some ways it is far beyond my comfort level. I learned much about myself writing it – much that I did not like. If there has ever been a sinner as wretched as me, I do not know him. In scripture when Paul says he is “the worst of sinners,” I am inclined to disagree as I believe myself to be. I should say though that without Christ there would be much more about me to dislike and that I am severely indebted to Him for pulling me up and out of the world you’re about to read about. As it is, this part of my life has miraculously been redeemed beyond my own dreams, in a way that I never thought possible just over the past few months. And I suppose that’s why I have the courage to write about it now. Without that redemption I would still be clouded by the addiction, unable to see the signs and trace the progression.

In some way my story is fully my own, solely. In other ways still my story and my progression is not my own, but a global story that I share with many men. I know this because I have met with, lived with, walked with and talked with these other men. I find I am not so unique in my struggle. And so part of my hope is that I can shed a small amount of light on a subject largely kept in the dark because of the embarrassing nature of it – which is really to say that it isn’t talked about for the sake of saving one’s pride. But pride is rubbish and I hope my story will be read and understood. I hope I can point to the roots of my addiction and, in doing so, perhaps thoughts on the subject will be changed and people can be helped.

All that to say, please read this with grace and love, with a desire to learn and understand, with a knowledge that God has pulled me from this life. Please know I am not my sin, but a righteous being bound for eternity in Heaven because of Christ’s redemption in my life.

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The story
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As far as I can see, as far as I can follow it, this is the progression my perversion took. I, at some point, noticed that girls were cute. I also noticed that I had some sexual appetite. I then noticed that my sexual appetite was for girls and that I took some delight in them.

The whole thing started in middle school if I remember correctly. I think the first pornographic experience for me was in the form of a yearbook and a fantasy. Innocently looking through the JCPenny catalog soon turned into looking at the lingerie section of that same catalog – and in turn looking at the weekly ads for women’s underwear from K-Mart, Wal-Mart and the like. Around the same time I found Baywatch on tv and various shows on MTV. Soon after I discovered the fuzzy porn that was channel 55 or 56, if I recall correctly. Somewhere in there I also discovered some risque comic book drawings that I would later practice drawing and tracing.

In high school I fell into internet pornography. At first it was mostly trying to find the people I was on tv, but undressed. That turned into trying to find anyone undressed, which turned into trying to find “real” people undressed through chat rooms and whatnot. Sometime in high school, before I was 18, I used my digital camera to trade pictures with a “girl” on the internet (I say “girl” because now I have no idea whether it was a girl or not, though I believed it at the time).

It wasn’t until college or a little bit after that I actually rented a pornographic movie from a video store. I always, for some reason, felt dirty renting from the video store so I only did it a couple times. I always had some amount of guilt or conviction about my sin – which is partly why it was so private for me. As John Ruben says, “It’s much easier to be miserable than vulnerable.” Inside I was miserable. And so lonely.

God managed to keep me out of live pornography, aside from my relationships. I visited a strip club once. I was part of a bachelor party. I just kinda went along for the ride. I didn’t know the groom, but I was the date of one of the bridesmaids, and I was in a city that was not my own, without my own car. Don’t get me wrong, I went willingly, but it was also a kind of situational decision – I think I wouldn’t have gone if it would’ve been in Dallas where I was living at the time. I remember thinking when I got there, exactly what I’ve thought the whole time afterward – the strip club was dripping with sin. It was an uncomfortable place for me. I enjoyed myself, but I knew I didn’t belong there. As I said about the video rental, I didn’t like my sin being out in public. I had too much guilt and shame over my sin, I was far too shy to feel ok in a strip club, renting a video in a store, or even eating at places like Hooters.

I lived near a pool for a while – as in, I opened my window shade and I could see the pool, see the girls laying out. That served as a catalyst for my sexual sin – it drove me to the internet. I don’t remember many times where I was overtaken by the sight of the pool sirens, no by then I needed hardcore pornography to satisfy – but they still served as a catalyst to propel me to the internet pornography. And that’s how most anything was at that time – joggers in tight clothing, actresses in movies, skirts at restaurants, low cut shirts a the grocery store, these all just drove me to my computer, because for the most part they didn’t satisfy on their own.

I remember even one time creating, as a freelance job, a softcore porn web site. It just didn’t feel right. I think I felt more guilt and conviction over that than I did for most of my habitual sexual sin. And rightfully so I think – I cringe at the thought that I contributed to 1) someone selling their body for money and 2) someone else’s addiction.

I remember creating a custom web application that would load up certain people’s web cams and I would sit for hours hoping for a glimpse at something “real” – something certainly more real than any still image or any professionally produced porno movie. I remember finding an application that would grab the last 100 uploaded images to a certain blog site and put them on one page. I remember sitting for hours, refreshing that page, waiting for an image of a “regular girl” naked.

And it’s funny, in a very sick way, to me that I started out fantasizing over “real” girls from my school, progressed through the “fake” girls of the advertising industry, through the porno models and actresses, and in a way back to “real” girls. And I don’t think I’m alone in this. It’s like people start out real, go fake and take that as far as you can go, then come back to real, and take real as far as you can go. Fortunately, I stopped before I took things “too far” in the realm of reality – I never raped anyone, I didn’t frequent the strip clubs, and was never that promiscuous.

Over the years I had sex with a few girls, only kissed a few of girls, and ended up “messing around” with most of the girls I dated. And while I desire to tell my story, I respect the people in the past enough to not bring up specifics. I will say that I believe a good bit of my lust and desire for sexual experience in my relationships had to to with my addiction to pornography and my waning view of women as a result. I also noticed that my desire to indulge in pornography would take a back seat to my relationships. Years later a friend pointed out that this was just my making my relationships live pornography through messing around – thus I didn’t feel I needed my computer as much. What I thought was me trying to be true to the girl was merely just a transference on my addiction from the internet to the girl.

I was never physically abusive in my relationships. The closest I came to that was a mixup with my first girlfriend and it scared me so much that I’ve never done anything similar since. However, I believe I was very abusive sexually in the fact that I was using the girls to feed my addiction. And that’s not to say that I didn’t care about the girls I dated because that would be a lie. But most of my relationships were much more physically invested than emotionally. Many times all I really wanted to do was mess around. It’s like if you’re addicted to cigarettes and someone is waving them around in front of you while they’re talking – you won’t really be concentrating on what they’re saying, you’ll be more interested in the cigarettes that they’re waving around in front of you. It seems like much of the time the end goal, though i wouldn’t have admitted it, of many dates was just to mess around with the girl I was with. That’s just evidence of my addiction.

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Thoughts on the progression
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As I think back, it’s scary to me to think how things that used to satisfy, didn’t satisfy any more. And it took longer times and more explicit images for me to be satisfied. Five minutes with an advertisement for lingerie, or even just my thoughts soon turned into an hour or two chasing pleasure on the internet. This partly had to do with the thrill I found in the chase, and partly had to do with the fact that I’d become numb to much of anything less than what I had experienced the previous time.

Thinking back, looking at the progression, I see my acceleration towards death. All sin, all addiction leads to death. This is something that Ted Bundy attested to just before he was executed. He said in an interview with Dr. James Dobson that he started with pornography and that addiction kept growing more perverse and more perverse until one point he realized that he would one day kill someone. He realized pornography was a gateway drug to murder and a few years after he realized that, he killed his first victim.

I thank God it never came to that for me. I thank God that he broke me down before that point. I think Him that He started healing me before things got that out of hand – but I really don’t think I was that far away. For pornography I have experienced most everything, with few exceptions. I can honestly say that aside from my minor days, I was never really interested in minors in a pornographic way. I also never got into snuff films, beastiality, pedophilia. I can honestly say that though I was walking in blatant sin, God was protecting me. I think if I would’ve gone down that road just a little further, Ted’s story could’ve been my own. But I didn’t. And my story is different.

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The Problem is not Pornography
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Honestly, there wasn’t much that could’ve been done. My parent’s could’ve avoided cable, not had the internet, and I still would’ve struggled with lust and some form pornography. My mind was very visual from the start – like I said, I think it started with girls at school and a yearbook for me. My imagination only needed a small amount of food, and it could take me anywhere I wanted to go. I don’t think people realize the power a child’s, teenager’s, or artist’s imagination has. I don’t think they understand how much they remember visuals and how easy it is to tie things together (faces with bodies, etc).

For me there was also something to the chase – something addicting in the search for first celebrities nude, then “real people” nude. It seems like I was as much addicted to the rush that came with the search, as I was to the sexual act itself. Like, I would try everything. Everything from signing in as a “girl” in a chatroom so I could visit the lesbian chatrooms, to finding new ways to search, new search engines to find pictures, to finding back ways into web sites so I could access the pictures. It all sickens me to think of it now; my thinking was so distorted, my thoughts totally dictated by my addiction.

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The Breaking and the Redemption
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It was June or July, I do not now remember which. There are many things I don’t remember about that time in my life. I don’t remember the heat of the Texas summer. But I do remember how cold and lifeless I felt inside. I remember bit of my apartment, a bit of my time, my life at that time.

The apartment I lived in was small. Four hundred square feet on the first floor of a two story apartment building. One bathroom. One kitchen. One large closet. One coat closet. One bigger room that was a living room, bedroom, and workspace. Canvases were propped up against the walls, some larger and some smaller. I had a desk near the middle. I had a station for music with a keyboard, microphone, guitar, computer and speakers. I either had a mattress on the ground, or no mattress at all – I cannot remember which. My tv sat on the breakfast nook. Dishes sat in the kitchen sink. Clothes sat on the ground in my closet.

I went to work every weekday morning around 8:30. I returned home around 5 or 5:30. Sometimes I came home for lunch. I do not remember what I did most Saturdays. Sundays I usually went to church in the morning, then went to lunch with my friends which often turned into an afternoon of fun.

Most days I looked at pornography on the internet. Most days I indulged my addiction more than once a day, often for hours on end. Some days I resisted the temptation but those were few and far between.

With my indulgence came a constant feeling of guilt and shame. That horrid feeling almost never left me, though I could be distracted for a spell. It weighed me down, drove me deeper. Trent Reznor chose to name one of his albums “The Downward Spiral”; I knew what he meant. I was always embarassed of my sin, always plagued by my knowledge of right and wrong. I was haunted by the thought that I countinually chose to disobey what I knew to be right. I almost never spoke of my addiction and if I did it was only in passing. Sometimes I tried to kick my addiction with promises to God “I won’t give in again.” Foolishness. An addict will say anything and mean it for a time, but his word always falls away under the pressure of his drug of choice. I was no different.

It was June or July when I decided to fast. I remember wanting to do it for God. I think it probably had something to do with kicking my addiction. I remember wanting to also do it for health reasons – to cleanse my body. And some part of me also wanted to know how my body would behave without food.

With my fast I started on the right foot I guess, but somewhat unbalanced still. Fasting for multiple reasons isn’t the greatest idea, and still God blessed it. Praise be to Him. I fasted and I prayed. I don’t remember my prayers that afternoon. I do remember getting up and going to Movie Trading Company. I remember picking up The Last Samurai. I remember watching it.

Somewhere toward the middle of the movie something started stiring in my heart. The samurai lived with such a diligence, and intentionality. They lived with such discipline, when they did anything they did it with their all. This way of living was such a stark contrast to my life. My life then was mostly consisted of laziness at work and a chasing of women, an indulgence in my addiction, when I was at home.

As the movie ended God had pierced my heart with a message. The message simply read “I have more for you than this.” I colapsed on the floor, a weeping mess of a boy who knew he wasn’t right, but didn’t much know what to do about it. All I knew to do was sing and pray. All I knew to do was worship. I do not remember my prayers, but they were desperate. And few. I sang most. I sang and cried out “In the Light” by Charlie Peacock.

I am the king of excuses
I’ve got one for every selfish thing I do…

and

What’s going on inside me?
I despise my own behavior
This only serves to confirm my suspicions
That I’m still a man in need of a savior…

and

The desease of self runs through my blood
It’s a cancer fatal to my soul
Every attempt on my behalf has failed
To bring this sickness under control…

and

I wanna be in the light as you are in the light
I wanna shine like the stars in the Heavens
Oh Lord be my light and be my salvation
Cause all I want is to be in the light
All I want is to be in the light…

I sang until I couldn’t sing any longer. I wept till I had no more tears. For hours I lay there in the floor, on my back, crippled by my life, my sin and my conviction. God put in me that night a will to change, and an understanding that He had something much better for me.

In some ways I wish I could say that He took away my addiction immediately, but He did not. I still struggled. The difference was that I was more open about my struggle, I wanted some kind of help. I knew as long as I let my addiction go I would be held back. But God didn’t take it. Not yet. For almost two years I battled with my sin and lost. The only difference was that I knew there was something better – I had hope finally.

Fast forward to April 2006. Within a few weeks I made a public testimony of my addiction on myspace and in person in front of a group from my church. In those testimonies I stated that I still struggled with pornography, but that I was fighting. I figured it was like any other time before, that I was having some sucess avoiding the physical manifestation of my addiction, but that it would soon return. It is August and it has not.

This is the most important part of the this story, so please listen: God took away my addiction. It was nothing I did. Sure I prayed off and on for years that my addiction would go away. Sure I was doing some kind of accountability. I had even tried going to Celebrate Recovery around that time. But it was none of those things. God took something from me in April. He didn’t take everything, I still have trouble with my eyes wandering and my mind lusting – but there’s been no pornography of the traditional sort. And there’s been no masturbation (sorry if this is offensive to anyone but I feel it is important). Since my early teenage years I’ve not gone long without one of those two things and now they’re almost completely gone. I am amazed at the way God moves. Praise the Lord.

So that’s basically how my addiction was broken. After eight or more years, one third of my life, spent struggling (poorly) with this sexual addiction, God broke it. And He broke it at a time when I could blame it on nothing else but Him. And so I boast in nothing else – not myself, not recovery, not accountability – only Jesus. He redeemed me. He saved me.

An inability or difficulty in recognizing familiar faces; it may be congenital or result from injury or disease of the brain.

Bored but convicted. Restless. Burdened. Don’t know where to start, so I don’t. Nothing else to do.

Everywhere is a trigger
My mind is a gun
Shoot myself in the foot
No way I can run

Bleeding beneath me
Self-inflicted wound
I stagger along
Alone and confused

This battle is mine
The enemies my own
My heart the casualty
When I leave God to be alone…

I’m afraid I’ve lost my head
It was up in the clouds
It just took off like a balloon in the wind
I suppose I didn’t think to stop it before it was too late
Now what am I to do?
I’m feeling a bit light-headed
I feel like my mind is somewhere else
But what a view this