Freed and Restored

I discovered porn when I was about 15 years old. It maintained a steady presence in my life for the next 30 years. Some years were really bad, and I acted out multiple times a day, sometimes even at work. Some years were better, and I was not troubled with it too much. But I knew I would always go back. I loved the cheap, plastic thrill of it too much to ever really quit.

I did try to quit. I knew it wasn’t good for me. When I got married, I knew it wasn’t good for that, either. When I had kids, I again renewed my efforts to stop, so I could be a better example to my sons. All my attempts to quit ended in failure. It was just too hard.

When I turned 40, I was working from home full-time. I was leading a double life. On one side of the office door was the addict, spending sometimes hours a day viewing porn, and on the other side was the respected family man, deceiving the world as to who he truly was. The duplicity of it began to eat away at me. I tried once again to quit, committing myself to do whatever was required. This was going to be the time.

But I couldn’t. I did my best, I gave it my most intense effort, and found that no matter what I did, I could not resist the call of porn when it came knocking. I had always deceived myself that I could quit any time I really wanted to. (The first and greatest lie we tell in addiction is to ourselves.) I felt well and truly trapped for the first time.

That was when I got desperate and became willing to pay any price to get free. I knew I needed to get away from computers and smartphones. In my IT work, I was on these devices constantly, and the ease of access to porn was more than I could cope with. The only way I could get free is if I got away from the source of my drug. In one of the hardest decisions of my life, I quit my IT career after about 20 years and started over at the bottom in a new field. I got as far away from a desk as I could and became a plumbing apprentice, taking a 60% pay cut.

I lied to my wife, family, and friends about why I was making the change. I was supporting a family of four, and I could not face the humiliation of revealing how weak I was. At the same time, I knew that if I did not follow through on my decision, I would remain stuck in porn for the rest of my life. Eventually, it would destroy my marriage, my family, my friendships. It would likely cost me my career if it was ever discovered how much time I wasted on porn during work hours, effectively stealing from my employers. So quitting my job was a hard, good thing, but I did it without honesty or nobility; just one more example of how ruined and weak I had become due to the plague of porn in my life.

That was eight years ago. These past years have been difficult and very, very rewarding. I am now over two years free of porn and lust. My relationship with my wife is the best it has ever been. (I’ve been honest with her about everything. Terrifying! But she has been very gracious and forgiving.) I am finally able to be a model and a help to my sons in this area, especially important now that they are in their teen years. Even my health (mental and physical) has improved! Porn took a lot from me over the 30 years I was enslaved to it, but I am seeing those things begin to heal and grow back again. It is amazing to experience.

This past fall I had an opportunity to take on some additional responsibility at work. As I ran the numbers, I realized this role would mean working far more than full-time hours each week. I had to smile at that: The one who once wasted many hours each week with porn was now being offered the chance to work essentially every waking hour, six days a week. Poetic justice, eh?

But I also realized that this promotion would put me just above my income level when I left my IT career eight years ago. I immediately recalled the Scripture: “So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten…” (Joel 2:25a). In a little less than a decade, God had restored my family to its previous income while also orchestrating the improvement in my own life of just about every other metric you could imagine.

I am just a regular guy. I finally got to the end of my rope with porn and committed to do whatever it took to get free and stay free. It is a commitment — it takes time, focus, and energy each and every day to stay vigilant to safeguard myself against my tendency to do the wrong thing. I have fallen before, and I very well may fall again. However, I am convinced that if I honor my daily commitment to sobriety in this area, I will find myself on a firm foundation, able to remain out of the swamp of porn, and possibly of some use in helping others to do the same.

May God continue to show mercy to all of us as we seek out the new kind of Life he has said is possible and available to us, even right now (2 Corinthians 5:17). May we find ourselves moving from “glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18) as we travel further up and further into the Kingdom of Heaven. May we never grow weary in doing good (Galatians 6:9). If we stay on the Way that leads to Life (John 14:6), our lives can be good today, better tomorrow, and unimaginably wonderful in the future.

Onward!