My wife had risen early to work out at the local health club. I was still asleep.
Since my car was parked behind hers in the driveway, she decided to drive mine. The windshield was frosted, so she began rummaging in my car for an ice scraper. When she reached under the seat, she pulled out a video—a porn video.
Not knowing what it was—though she knew by the title it wasn’t work-related-she came into the house and shoved it into the vcr. Minutes later she ran into our bedroom. I awoke to her sobbing, “What is this!?”
My secret was out.
Before that memorable morning, I had been renting hard-core porno movies for a year and a half. The downward spiral began in college; I began regularly thumbing through magazines like Playboy and Penthouse. Marriage didn’t help. In fact, it provided more opportunities to be alone, when I was on the road or when my wife was at work. At the depth of my fatal attraction, I would wait until my wife went to work to perform my ritual.
In one sense, though, I felt strange relief at my wife’s discovery. I had wanted to be rid of my sin for so long. But I also was scared. Now my sin was my wife’s burden. I worried about our future.
At the time, ironically, I was reading Neil Anderson’s The Bondage Breaker, so I knew I needed someone beside my wife to help me; I needed a confessor. I called my pastor and, spiritually, threw myself at his feet. He suggested we read Anderson’s book together and begin meeting once a week.
Throughout our time together, my pastor never implied that he struggled with pornography. Ours wasn’t a “Hey, I’ve been there, too” relationship; yet there was no condemnation. He asked most of the questions, and I answered them. For example, each week, he would ask, “How has it gone this week? Have you given in to masturbation? How have you dealt with temptation?” Then we discussed the spiritual principles from the book.
We met for about four months at 8:30 a.m. every Thursday morning, and that stretch was the most victorious time in my Christian life since my ninth-grade conversion. Before my wife’s discovery, I could recite many of the scriptural principles from memory. Now I began to internalize them.
My pastor also directed me to a Christian counselor, whom I also saw once a week for four months. The counselor helped me understand many of the underlying issues driving me to pornography and gave help for our marriage.
Today I still occasionally struggle, but I’m no longer in pornography’s grip. My wife and I look back on those days three years ago as a turning point in our marriage. God has faithfully drawn us together and to himself.
I thank God for a pastor who took the time to hold me accountable. My struggle was not his struggle, yet he embraced me and my ugly sin. He truly incarnated Martin Luther’s theology of the Christian life: “I must even take to myself the sins of others as Christ took mine to himself. Thus we see that the Christian man lives not to himself but to Christ and his neighbor through love.”
Anonymous
1996 by Christianity Today/LEADERSHIP journal
Last Updated: September 17, 1996
