The Day Every Man Wishes He Could Undo

“Naked women.” That’s what I was told pornography meant. I was ten or eleven when I first heard the term and I wish I would have left it a mystery. But around age thirteen I got curious what “naked women” looked like.

Dad was gone, I sneaked into the office where the computer was and searched “naked women” on Google. For some reason, the internet protection was off for a bit. I knew it was off, and hoped it had not been turned back on by the time I got there.

It hadn’t been, and scads of images began appearing on the screen. It felt as if scales had fallen from my eyes, like I was seeing something I wasn’t meant to see quite yet. I could not pull my eyes away, and soon a couple of hours had passed. My pants were wet, and my hands were sweaty even though I shivered like I dog in a blizzard.

What I remember most about that day, though, is a pervading sense of darkness that began to follow me wherever I went.

For three days, I returned to my private sanctuary and worshiped the erotic pictures. I spent hours in secret. My joy was gone and I no longer cared about anything else.

Visions of sleek, nude women consumed my thought life whether I was actually looking at them, lying in bed attempting to sleep, or trying to play as most thirteen-year-old boys do. Something had drastically changed in my life, and I did not know how to fix it.

Finally, one afternoon, Dad called me into his office. Mom was there too. He opened the internet browser and clicked on the history.

Every conceivable pornographic website was listed and he asked me if I had been the one who opened them. I knew I was guilty, and I was sure they could see it in me. So, I admitted I had opened the websites.

Dad did not spank me, even though I thought he would. Instead, he knelt beside me and told me how much it grieved him that I had looked at pornography.

I don’t remember what else happened. I am sure I said I was sorry, and I think he put some restrictions in place. All I know is in three days my life went from innocent, sporadic underwear snooper to defiled “naked women” addict.

No spanking could take that away.

I wish I could take back those three days of feasting on pornography. I wish I had never started looking at underwear. Our choices have consequences, and the consequence of the choice to sin is bondage.[bctt tweet=”Our choices have consequences, and the consequence of the choice to sin is bondage.” username=”AsherWitmer”]

A few months after my encounter with “naked women,” Dad took a forty-day fast. I found out later that he fasted partly because of his boys and our exposure to pornography.

Although I did not realize it at the time, I recognized later that over the period of his fast something changed in my heart. The torture of constant imagery in my mind’s eye, and the up and down emotions of climaxing but feeling left empty was exhausting me. It was slowly sucking every ounce of life out of me and I wanted free!

Not every public school allows homeschoolers to participate in their sports program.

But thanks to Jordan Hedlund and his speed and agility as a quarterback, the school district in Northern Minnesota, where I grew up, opened their program to the public—even homeschoolers.

I had played little league for four years before entering eighth grade, so I guess the coaches were familiar with me. When I entered Junior High, they asked if I wanted to play for them. I was ecstatic (my dream that year was to be a professional baseball player).

I remember sitting on the bus as we traveled to Saint Cloud, Minnesota, for a three-day tournament and the rest of my teammates passed around a Sports Illustrated swimsuit magazine. I think they were also passing around a porn magazine. There was one other professing Christian guy on the team, and he was part of the craze.

What do you do when everyone around you is shamelessly doing something you know is wrong? I could have joined right in and probably gotten away with it. Doing so would have helped me fit in with the guys and I wouldn’t have to tell my parents. At least, that’s what went through my mind in the brief moments before I was handed the magazine and forced to decide if I would participate or run the other direction.

Let’s stop the scene there for a moment.

Picture it: me on a bus with twenty other guys, sitting in a window seat about half-way back the bus. Every seat surrounding me is full of guys, and every guy is enjoying this magazine of naked women.

Now, they have just handed it to me. I can’t dash out the door; I’m stuck! At this point in the season, these guys are my friends. Everyone else is okay with what is going on, and no one back home would have to find out what I do.

But let’s add some color to this dilemma.

I had been fighting my own private battle with pornography for about two years, now.

For me to say, “No, I can’t look at that,” and act as if I am above such filth would feel like a lie because the reality was when nobody was looking, I almost always ended up checking out things online that were no better.

But I didn’t want to live that way. By that point in my struggle, I knew moral compromise always left me feeling empty. I wanted free. I was frustrated that I couldn’t find freedom. I would have seasons of victory. But then, almost like clockwork, every other month or so I would fall right back into porn again. I was on a crazy cycle, feeling as if I was going to spin out of control.

Here is what really confused me though: I was a Christian. A pastor’s son.

Christians are supposed to walk in freedom, right? I knew what scripture had to say about lust and immorality. I had prayed bondage breaking prayers and attended seminars on overcoming sexual sin.

In spite all of that, I could not live victoriously. I couldn’t walk in freedom. Was I even a Christian? Most people in church seemed to be living free. At least, I didn’t really hear anyone else talking about their struggles. Why was I so messed up? Why couldn’t I find the same freedom?

I didn’t look at the magazine that day on the bus.

By God’s grace, I had the strength to stand alone, even though I still lived in private failure. For five years, I desperately sought victory, and experienced certain levels of it.

At one conference, I learned how to renounce my act as a thirteen-year old boy. The speaker led us in a prayer asking God’s Spirit to walk through the “halls of our minds” and burn the images off their walls. As we prayed, I found I was no longer tormented by those early images. In fact, I went several months without failing morally at all. It felt like victory.

But then I stumbled across something and opened myself up again and everything—masturbation and fantasies—came right back.

I continued to struggle. Not as much with porn, but with masturbation and fantasies. They had consumed my private life—going a year without such fantasies did not keep them from tempting me again.

I remember coming home from Bible school when I was twenty struggling intensely with these. I felt so frustrated and confused. I had been “on fire for God” at Bible school. I experienced tremendous victory and healing in other areas of my life, why was I still weak morally?

One night I got in my car and went for a drive.

I didn’t know what to do. No matter how hard I tried and no matter how honest I was with others, I could not find victory and felt like giving up completely. If I could not live vibrantly for Christ, why pretend to live for Him at all?

Nothing in particular happened that night. Dad called and wondered if I was okay, so we talked a bit. But nothing profound. No new revelations of why I was experiencing this failure. Not even a promise from God that He would take away the struggle.

But for some reason, I felt the strong sense that I was not to beat myself up again. It wasn’t audible, as if He was speaking to me; it was more of an impression. I sensed God was saying, “I forgive you. And I still love you.”

I don’t even remember apologizing or asking if He still loved me. To be honest, I didn’t think it was worth doing. I saw myself as a hoax. A never has been. A man striving to act like a good Christian but not having the qualities it took to be a good Christian.

Yet, here God was telling me that being a good Christian didn’t really matter when it came to His love.

He still accepted me and was not giving up on me.

On the drive home, things began to click. What I had learned previous years about finding moral purity began taking on new light. I found freedom that night, not because I never again struggled, but because I knew that Who I wanted to please was on my side. He was going to do the work in me, I just needed to rest in Him.

It has been six years since that night in Malibu. I have been on a journey of finding increasingly deeper freedom and cleansing. Pornography and masturbation no longer run my life, as they did years ago.

There have been times of failure—even since getting married (five years at the time of this writing). But the bondage isn’t there. The cycle is gone. Lust no longer hangs over me as a constant reminder of my brokenness.

There is no one thing I can look to and say, “This is the secret to victory!”

But as I look back, I see a few crucial phases in my journey to freedom. Without having traveled through these phases, I would not be where I am today. Together, they are “the secret to my victory.”

Here is the irony, though. If we think of each of these phases as numbers in a Sudoku puzzle, you may already have some of those numbers filled-in the boxes. Perhaps there are just three numbers in each larger box you still need to figure out.

So, what I tell you about my journey to freedom may not entirely give you your missing numbers. But I tell my story because I am confident through it you will discover one or two of those numbers you are still missing. Don’t look at what I share as the once-for-all solution to your struggle. Rather, see it as another number for your boxes, another piece to the puzzle.

I don’t say this to discourage you, but to help set your frame of mind for evaluating what I share throughout my articles. Living free is not so much about a one-time act, but about piecing together the puzzle of victory.

Do you struggle with looking at porn? Have you ever told anyone? Find someone you trust and start telling your story. And if you’d like to say anything here, you can share in the comments below.