A New Life

Several things happened in the first year after Maria discovered me looking at internet porn.

I was able to go back to my previous job almost immediately. I felt God's mercy, love and timing. Just a month earlier my job wasn't available. It was a down time but the company had just lost a couple of people doing work I was familiar with. They needed someone to fill in the gap right as I needed work. With all our other stress, God spared us any financial stress.

Through counseling I became more comfortable with who I was and discussing my sexual issues. I became familiar with the idea of sexual addiction and treated myself as an addict. I joined a group of men who also struggled in this area. I was in counseling for several years and in a group of one sort or another for many more years.

After a few months of counseling and group I felt I had deceived people with the last newsletter we sent. I know we shouldn't just tell everyone about our sins. However, Maria sent letters to people interested in us serving as missionaries. When we stopped, we said it was due to finances and sent out a letter saying this. I saw that too often in Christianity (and elsewhere) we gloss over the truth. I felt that if I was more honest I could encourage others to be honest and deal with their problems. After all, a huge part of my problem was how isolated I was and how much I hid what I was doing.

We sent out another news letter telling people we had quit because I got involved in looking at pornography. For the most part we got positive feedback -- people complimented us on being honest and wanted the best for us. I did get some negative feedback from one person in my family. He was concerned I was just airing my dirty laundry in front of the whole world. The other negative feedback came from a close friend and staunch supporter of us. He was very disappointed. Like Maria, he had trouble dealing with what I'd done. (After a while, Maria and I had gone to see the movie "Titanic." I had debated it, and thought I could do OK. It was a big decision -- I purposely avoided looking at the naked Kate Winslet and felt being able to see the movie without getting off on it was a big victory. I told my friend about it, and all he could say was "Why would you see a movie like that?" Our friendship has suffered since then.)

We joined a new church shortly after everything happened. They were (and are, we're still in that church) a lot more accepting of us than any church we'd been in before. They believe very strongly in the Bible but think freely enough to question a lot of what Christians say. They see the need to treat our relationship with God as a relationship, not a set of rules. They treat people as people, not converts or prizes to be won or lost. Despite the leaders knowing about my problems, I was asked to teach at their school of theology. This was something I've always wanted to do. I thought I'd lost that opportunity. It's a small school and a volunteer position and I never have many students, but just knowing that they accepted me with my faults meant more to me than I can describe.

Later I even had some opportunities to preach at my church. I was able to be pretty honest about my struggles and that helped some. I got more comments about my sexual honesty than any of the wonderful points I was making. Hmmm ....

During that first year we went to a Christian camp that we went to every summer. The leaders of the camp do a lot of work with couples and relationships. They became involved with restoring fallen Christian leaders. I wasn't exactly a huge leader, but the principles were the same. On their advice we formed a committee of a few friends to help us recover from my failings.

The committee went well and was encouraging. I was already getting a lot of help and the committee mostly just monitored that. I think it helped Maria more than me -- it helped her accept that fact that I was making some progress. After some months it disbanded -- the members didn't feel like it was needed. I think all along a couple of them felt like we were making too big a deal out of the whole thing.

It felt like we were making progress. Life seemed to be going in the right direction.