A helium balloon floats a large stone. Layers of paper and a woman's eye in the background

“I think I need to go to the hospital. Right now.”

My wife dropped me off. She couldn’t get me out of the car fast enough. I was on my own, and that’s what we both needed. But to understand how a 9-millimeter kidney stone was the sudden end of a decades-long porn addiction, we’ve got to go back to the start.

My first exposure to pornography came at a friend’s house. Her dad had a huge stash of mags in an outbuilding on their property. I was 6, maybe 7. The hook was set. Years later, when I was a preteen, a neighbor had practically filled up an old car with smut. I would ride my motorbike across the field, sneak some mags from the rustbucket and find a lonely place to look at them and hide them. My teens were as you’d expect. The resultant distortion of normal sexuality and desire, and believing the lie that I couldn’t trust a good God to keep me safe in my brokenness, propelled me into a fireball of lust. My girlfriends along the way bore the brunt of that dishonor. But I didn’t realize that underneath all that, I was scared. My religious tradition was to only speak of sexuality in the context of putting a ring on it. So I had no real understanding of what was happening with my own body, no grid whatsoever for the crucial difference between a passing thought and lust, and no courage to behold beauty without consuming it.

I was a family man when the internet became a thing for the general public. As soon as I figured out what was online, I embarked on a journey of hidden porn use with masturbation that ultimately doubled me over in shame and hung on me like a wet blanket all the time. I told myself I was just relieving stress, but I was also using women. Full stop. And pornography used me, too, to lie to me about what passion, desire, and normal bodies look like. I got hooked on the dopamine rush in the release. My sexuality was already in the dark and shame just slammed the door shut. All of this was the backdrop to me raising kids, working, leading worship, and being in a marriage. I learned how to compartmentalize. I could convince myself after the latest episode that it was over, and go on with my life, but it would only be a matter of time—short time—before I fell hard. No resistance at all.

“My pornography use was the background sin while every other hard thing happened in our family. It was, in a very sick way, like an anchor.”

My pornography use was the background sin while every other hard thing happened in our family. It was, in a very sick way, like an anchor. A marriage ended. Another began. More kids. My second (and forever) wife asked me a couple times if I ever struggled with pornography and of course I said no. Then she would dream that I was using it, and I would throw it back in her face. How could you!? I would white knuckle it here and there, trying to stop. In all my adult life, I might have gone a month at most and then I’d give in. I could not stop. I believed I needed and deserved it.

Over the years, the compartmentalization stopped working. I was desperate to be wholehearted. But I was fragmented, putting different parts of my life in different boxes and keeping them separate. I would often pray in anguish, God I am confessing this to you. Please take it from me!! Every time, I would hear an answer that freedom would come, but not until I openly confessed in humility and surrender to another human being, namely, my wife. When I attended Boot Camp and John Eldredge spoke about the need to kill the poser standing between me and my true heart, I was utterly convicted. But not ready to yield.

I was filled with cowardice. I couldn’t do it.

Until August 29, 2020.

In my increasingly anxious conversations with Him (God, take this, please! It’s just between us!), the Father was moving me toward that surrender by refusing to bail me out in secret. Oh, how kind I now know that was! Quietly, something was shifting in me. It’s hard to explain, but I was a wreck and had been for months. Burdened and so unhappy. My wife had become increasingly unsettled, too. The day before, Aug. 28, I had told her a couple of unrelated things in my life she didn’t know about. Not big sins. Just doodads. But in my own way I was teasing the door open on being honest to see what would happen. Still in such fear of exposure, fear of my wife’s pain, fear of my raw humanity on display. I knew myself to be a long time liar, not much more, and that’s certainly the medicine shame was making me drink every day. The afternoon of the 29th, it came up. She said something to the effect of: I know you’re not being honest about this. Every time I ask you, you say no. What’s the truth?

It was a moment I dared not let pass. I admitted it before I could talk myself out of it. It was then or never. No more hiding. I told her it had been with me as long as she’d known me and years longer than that. Things got quiet. Her immediate response was relief that I had confessed it. So things were silent. And tense. Unsure of what to do next.

That very hour, the worst pain of my life came out of nowhere. The kidney stone. I lay on the floor, not sure what was happening but very sure I was in big trouble. I needed a hospital. I was there for two nights, during which time I had surgery to exorcize the purification stone.

Abstract image of a stone wrapped in clippings of magazines. A woman's mouth is visible in the bottom corner

There is no doubt that my body was mirroring what was happening in my soul. It released the toxic stone as I let go of my toxic secret. And it had to come out my penis. All in all, a blessing. Unbelievably painful at the time, but my body was obeying my spirit.

In surrender, I renounced the sin and shame, the behavior, the ugliness, the patterns, and I asked God to take it. Forever.

He did.

More than two years down the road, I am free. The urge to self soothe in that way is completely gone. Merciful God did something I honestly didn’t believe was possible that August afternoon: He grabbed my sin by the roots and flung it into nevermore. In an instant. I don’t know how else to describe that but as a miracle. Just … gone. Must I guard my heart and my thoughts the way that I hadn’t before? Absolutely. No one can do that work for me. Has there been counseling? Yes. Building new trust and writing a new story with my wife is a process. There is fallout from these things. How can she trust that I am not undressing a beautiful woman in my mind? How could she ever compete with the bodies I’d used online? Who have I lusted after in her circle of friends? How will she ever feel safe again with me having internet access? These are real questions we’ve addressed. So, while my deliverance was immediate, the relational consequences of the sin absolutely still happened and there is turbulence as we go along. It’s a heartache amid the joy.

I beg you: Do not hear me saying I prayed a prayer and now I’m a better person. Never. Hear me saying the Healer told me that when I got honest and humbled myself and faced my fear, He would deliver me. This story is about the goodness of God, not of me. I don’t walk in shame, for this or other hard choices I’ve made, though I could. I just can’t afford it. I’m never going back into the dark. Shame doesn’t comport with the utter gratitude I have toward God, who I can now say is good. I didn’t know that before. It didn’t matter one bit that I was a “born again” Christian. I did not know my Maker.

I lived decades as a Christ follower—in name, anyway—while refusing to trust my sexuality to his care. Refusing to tell Him of my brokenness. I wouldn’t ask Him to rewire me. I had confessed before in my first marriage. A few times. But confession and repentance are not the same thing.

I am in awe of Love so powerful that it can stop addiction in an instant. It can bring permanent, life-altering, sin-shattering change to someone who decides to let go. Yet I despise and regret the years stolen from me, the sin and betrayal I chose, the unnamed people I used, and the way I hurt the ones dearest to me.

Statistically speaking, most of you reading this are struggling with the same thing. My story is not a template. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen when you decide you’ve had enough. But if I could sit with you right now and look you in the eye, I would tell you that you have what it takes to lay an addiction at the feet of Jesus. I’d tell you that you are more than this. That you are a beloved son worth fighting for. That a crack of light obliterates the power of darkness. If you’re coming apart and want freedom, pray for an encounter with El Roi— the God Who Sees. Nothing comes close to the power of His gaze.

Editor’s Note: The author wrote anonymously because his marriage is in a quiet place of recovery and renewal. He suggests The Sexually Healthy Man (Andrew J. Bauman), Worthy of Her Trust (Stephen Arterburn, Jason Martinkus) and the Truple screenshot accountability app as resources.