“and Jesus today I just want to be real…I don’t want any
hypocrisy left in me.”
That was the prayer on my lips as I drove to church this
morning. Also a part of my prayer was, “Lord, speak to my heart today. Convict me.”
I was in a rather pensive mood. At peace, but not joyful.
Not particularly cheerful. Not really in touch with what I was feeling at all,
until that first thing didn’t go well for me as I was trying to quickly run a
few copies for class time. Then I felt heavy and condemned. The voices in my
head telling me I just couldn’t get it together. The pressure to get it
together and keep it together. The self-condemnation as other people waited on
me. Just this heavy cloak of inferiority coming down on me. Even now, as I
think of it, I am tempted again to condemn myself for not being “spiritual”
enough to immediately put a finger on the attack I was under. I am learning
more and more just how completely inadequate and undone I am without Jesus.
I hunger for more of Jesus. Some days I hunger to seek Him
with all my heart. Some days I don’t. I wish it would always be the same, but
it’s not. It takes a conscious effort to stay in communion with Jesus. He never
leaves me or forsakes me, but I forsake Him at times. I marvel at the fact that
He longs for me to spend time with Him. He longs for all of us. We as human
beings would never, could never, have the capacity for such longing. His love
is unfathomable to me. I long to be more like Him. To have so much love and
compassion for someone as He did.
The struggle, the war within me is real. I have felt the
Holy Spirit nudging me to write some really difficult things in the last week,
but I have put it off in fear. What will people think? Does He really want me to share my dirty past
with other people? What about the fact that many people won’t understand. What
of the people that have committed sins far greater than I? Jesus can forgive
them and heal them same as He has forgiven and brought healing to me. He sees
those sins in the same light. There is no room for justification here.
I will write my story, and my prayer is that those who read
it and see it not as a way to condemn me for my past mistakes and addictions,
but as the very real story of redemption it is. That it will help people
understand why I am so passionate about shedding light on what Fifty Shades of
Grey and other works of erotica can do to a person. Somehow I know I am not the only one that has walked the road I have walked.
Although I am only 34 years old I was delivered only 4 years
and 6 months ago from a 20 year addiction that started at 9 years old. At 29
years old I was finally so desperate for freedom that I reached out to a few
trusted friends and asked them for help. My addiction was what I began
labelling as women’s porn 4.5 years ago when Jesus brought me freedom.
Once upon a time, in the rolling hills of Amish Country, a
little girl was born. She was born 10th child. She was born almost 8
years on the heels of the previous child. She was the 8th living child, as
she had stillborn twin sisters that had been born in the middle of the family.
She was spoiled in many ways to be sure, but growing up in a household of what
felt like “old” people, she also knew and experienced much loneliness. She had
cousins and some friends to play with, but she didn’t have what her heart
really longed for: a constant playmate. She loved books and dreaming about what
she would be in the future. She adored anyone that showed her kindness and took
time to talk to her. At 6 years old she started school and quickly learned to
read and write. Reading became a passion, a form of escape from reality for
her. For 3 years it was innocent children’s books, as many as she could get her
hands on. It was wonderful.
As time went on the little girl had her 7th, 8th,
and 9th birthdays. A brother and a sister had both married and left
home. A brother had left home and moved far, far away. When she was 8 years old
her first niece was born, and thus began the next generation. Her siblings that
were still at home were all adults by now, and had youth functions and other
things to do. Her mom and dad spent many Friday and Sunday evenings playing
games with her, but even so the little girl spent many hours alone. One evening
she discovered a book that intrigued her. The cover had a man and a scantily
clad woman on it. Something didn’t feel right about it, but she seemed almost
powerless not to open the book. She started reading, and soon started reading
things in the book that she really didn’t understand, but curiosity kept her
reading. She had always been an inquisitive child, asking many questions that
somewhat annoyed the adults in her life. If she didn’t understand a word, she
went to one of her best friends for answers: the dictionary. Opening that book
changed the course of her childhood in many ways. Her innocence was gone. She
kept reading that book in secret, something deep down knowing it wasn’t right,
but still too young to understand. She finally had something to look forward to
on those long, lonely Friday and Sunday nights at home when all her siblings
were gone.
As the years went on and she turned into a young woman, the
addiction to explicit romance novels continued and grew. She never told anyone
what she was reading. As she began to understand more about right and wrong,
she often became deeply convicted and would cry out to God to deliver her. She
would make promises to God that she would never fall again. She would walk in that
conviction for several weeks, sometimes a month or two before falling into the
trap again. Somehow she was always able to keep herself supplied with books to
feed her addiction. As a child she had come to understand that Jesus came to
save her, but she didn’t understand or know that she could ask for help. She
thought she was alone in her weakness, and so she suffered in silence. She had
no one she could pour her heart out to except her cat, who was always so loving
to her when the girl sobbed her heart out over her latest sins, failures, or
loneliness. The cat and the rock behind the house she often sat on for hours
seemed to be the only things in her life that always understood her.
At 19 years old she finally got baptized in the Amish
church. She thought for sure her baptism would make things easier. That she
would be less likely to stumble. By that time she had also seen plenty of
movies with sex scenes in them. The combination of the books with explicit word
pictures and the movies with the visual pictures only made her addiction more
intense. She never dated anyone as a young girl. One by one her friends started
dating and got married. One of the lies the enemy used on her heart through
that was that, because of her addiction no good Christian boy could ever love
her, so she was destined to be alone. So as her addiction grew, and her reading
material grew more racy, and she needed her daily “fix” she also shut her heart
down to the possibility of marriage. Although she somewhat lived in a fantasy
world, she did not believe the fantasy for herself. She didn’t think she would
ever be good enough. Whenever there were good guys around they always fell for
her friends. There were many other hurts in her life that played into the lies
she was believing as well. She was a born again Christian, but she didn’t
understand spiritual warfare. She didn’t understand that she could put on the
full armor of God and fight the enemy.
10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. 11 Put on the whole armor of God, that you
may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. 12 For we do not wrestle against flesh
and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God,
that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done
all, to stand firm. 14 Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of
truth, and having put on the breastplate of
righteousness, 15 and, as shoes for your feet, having
put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. 16 In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which
you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; 17 and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which
is the word of God, 18 praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and
supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication
for all the saints, (Ephesians 6:10-18)
She
also didn’t fully understand grace. Oh, she knew she was lost had it not been
for Jesus dying for her, but she still thought there were so many things she
had to do to be good enough. She thought she wanted freedom from her addiction,
but deep down she didn’t really. She didn’t know how to live without it. What
would she do when the loneliness came? Wouldn’t life be boring without those
hours of escape to her immoral fantasy world? Although she had taken that first
step to believing in Jesus, she was not sold out completely to Him. She wasn’t
willing to give it all to Him.
This
secret life kept on, and at the age of 23 she left the Amish church. She still
lived at home, but oh the freedom that car brought her! She found new friends.
Some of those friends would be the ones that would be there to help her when
she finally fell flat on her face almost 6 years later. With the new friends it
was also increasingly more difficult keeping the façade intact of being the
“good” little Christian girl because many of them seemed to be far more “godly”
than her. As the years went by she also became more obsessed with proving her
worth to people. She still didn’t understand that she was believing Satan’s
lies and that those lies were the driving force behind her determination. She
had a good job and was good at what she did. Her determination to prove she was
worth something also made her difficult to work with.
At
the age of 25 she had saved up enough to put a down payment on a house of her
own. She bought it and moved out. Living on her own only gave her more freedom
to continue in her addiction. She only made sure to keep her secret fantasy
world hidden in her drawers. That first winter God brought a study group to her
that would be the beginning of what would eventually change her life. It was a
group of girls studying the book Captivating by Stasi Eldridge. In the
beginning the concept of a loving God that was pursuing her was so foreign to
her. In her mind He was a God just waiting for her to mess up again. As she
kept going with the study she finally was able to understand some of the hurts
and pain in her life. She even began to understand her addiction and the things
she loved more than she loved Jesus, but she continued to hide them. She had
come to love and trust the other girls like she had never loved and trusted
anyone before, but she was convinced they could not love her if they really
knew the truth about her. At the end of the book she really strongly felt God
calling her into certain places. Jesus continued to pursue her in her
weaknesses. The patterns of the years continued on for the next 4 years.
Throughout all those years she always justified what she was doing by arguing
with the voices in her head that she could read and watch all that garbage, but
when it came right down to it she would know right from wrong. She knew sex
outside of marriage was wrong. She believed it was wrong with all her heart. In
fact, she was very judgmental of people that fell. In her heart she vowed she
would never do that! It had been quite some time ago she had vowed in her heart
never to marry, but really, it was only to protect her heart in the only way
she knew how. Through Captivating Jesus began a work in her heart to tear down
those walls. Through the next few years her hunger for more of Jesus grew and
He continued to bring healing to many areas of her life, and as much as she
wanted to give everything to Him, she felt powerless to do so. She still didn’t
fully understand the grip Satan had on her life. By the time she turned 29
Jesus had brought enough healing into her life that the desire to get married
was back. She learned it had never really been gone. She was just in denial of
the deepest longings of her heart.
That
fateful winter she met a man and the physical attraction was instant. This
would begin a 3 month long distance relationship that would end in much hurt
and regret, but also redemption. She was unable to resist his physical
advances. She had filled her mind with way too many fantasies, and had no idea
how to resist the temptation. Somehow God saved her from giving up her
virginity to this man, but just barely. It was only by the grace of God. It ended
in a crash. It was doomed from the beginning. It felt like her life was over.
She was flooded with shame and guilt. It was there at her lowest point she
finally truly cried out to God for answers. He gave her some very clear ones,
and she was finally willing to give Him everything if He would only show her
how. It was like she could actually hear
Him audibly speak to her. He told her she had a spirit of immorality on her
life. She believed it immediately because it all made sense. The powerlessness
she had always felt to resist the temptation of feeding her addiction. It was
stronger than temptation, it was a draw that rendered her powerless. It finally
made sense to her. It was a spirit. A bondage. For her it required opening her
heart up to some dear friends that could help her walk through it. It was most
of the same group of girls that had been in her first study group 4 years
earlier, that she turned to for help. It took her about a month after God’s
revelation to be honest and ask for help to renounce this spirit from her life.
Awe, it was so sweet! No condemnation! Just unconditional love and acceptance
for where she was at. True compassion. No judgment. As they lead her in a prayer
to renounce this bondage she had been living under for 20 long years she felt a
true peace for the first time in her life. For the first time in her life the
girl felt like she had nothing to hide! She felt like a ton of bricks had been
lifted off of her. It opened up a new hunger and longing to pursue Jesus with
all of her heart. The barriers were gone!
Somehow,
my testimony came out in story form and I choose to leave it as it is. Raw and
just the way the God gave it to me to write. My story does not end there.
Through my own experience God has given me a longing to help other women that
may be struggling in the same way. If my story can touch and change one life it
is worth putting it out there for others to read. Even as I write it the enemy
is telling me people will not look at me the same again. That I really
shouldn’t share it. In the 4.5 years I have been walking in freedom the enemy
continues to try to trip me up with temptation. He knows my weakness. He knows
I am tempted most when I feel lonely. God knows that too and has been faithful
in bringing the kind of friends I need into my life. But the only Person that
can truly keep me from loneliness is Jesus. What I have discovered about myself
is that when I get my focus off of Jesus, when I am not fully relying on Him
for my identity, when I ignore pursuing intimacy with Jesus the loneliness sets
in. When that loneliness sets in I search for ways to fill that ache, but in
the end only Jesus can fill it. I could never experience truly fulfilling and
close relationships with other women until I learned to find my worth in Jesus
alone. In Christ alone all hope is found. I am no longer trying to prove I am
the “good” Christian girl. I am a woman Redeemed, Rescued, and Captivated by
Jesus!
I am Redeemed - Big Daddy Weave
