freedom

Sorry for the long silence. I was going to post a fun entry about the trip we took to the zoo last weekend, but for now that'll have to wait.

I’m not really sure how to go about writing all this down, but I need to. My past isn’t something I’ve ever really talked about on this blog, but if I’m going to tell you what happened this week, I think I’m going to have to. I’ve prayed a lot about whether or not to share all this, and I’ve realized that it’s nothing I wouldn’t tell anyone I’d meet face to face.

I was addicted to pornography for over eight years.

I’ll give you a moment to get over your shock, to say to yourself, But isn’t she a girl? Girl’s don’t struggle with that! Trust me; it’s nothing I haven’t heard before, and it’s part of the reason it’s often so hard to tell people. When a man confesses to a struggle with pornography, it’s par for the course and you move on. But women are a whole different story, and I’ve been met with reactions ranging from the incredulous to the downright horrified.

The thing is, satan will take whoever he can get his claws into. He doesn’t care if you’re a man or a woman, a hundred and two or just twelve years old; if he can snare you, he will. I was one of those victims, and until I was nearly twenty one I fed myself on a steady diet of lies.

You are worthless. You are not good enough. No one will ever desire you, but that’s the only way you can ever find fulfillment. You are a worthless piece of trash, and you deserve every last scar that you’re carving into your own soul right now.

I might seem well-adjusted and strong, but the truth has always been in those words for me. During the years when I should have been forming a strong identity, I was systematically tearing myself down, dooming myself to a life of emptiness. It seems like I’m overstating the case, I know. But believe me when I tell you how damaging this particular addiction can be for a woman’s soul.

A couple of months before my twenty-first birthday, God broke the addiction’s hold over me. It’s a long story, and one I’m not going to get into right now, but suffice it to say that from one day to the next I was a new person in that area. The problem was the rest of me. I didn’t feel any desire for pornography anymore, but I still felt worthless, like a piece of trash kicked into the gutter. I knew all the Bible verses about how much God loved me and how he forgave my sin, but I still felt irreparably broken, scarred beyond redemption.

I’ve felt that way for seven years, right up until a few days ago.

And here’s what I want to share with you, the reason for all the back story. During this week, God spoke to me. Now, if you’re anything like me, that last sentence got you all skeptical. Yeah right, you’re thinking. Like God actually just talks to people. I wouldn’t have believed it either. In fact, I spent the last however-many years of my life not believing it, because it just wasn’t happening to me. And I can’t explain what it was like, not really. It’s like what people say about being in love; you can’t describe it, but you know it when it hits you full-force.

I was reading in John chapter eight, where Jesus is talking about slaves and sons, and I was trying so hard to believe it, but all I could see was this picture of a slave, adopted out of the fields, but never quite as good as the rest of the kids. Sure, you can sleep in the house, but we all know where you came from; you can’t hide your scars.

I sat there on my bed, and I honestly felt pretty well resigned to that fact. That yes, I’m healed from my former life, but I bear the permanent marks of it. I spent years with my wrists and ankles shackled in heavy, cutting chains, my back bent under the lash of the whip. I can’t hide my scars, and they have always named me as a former slave.

Which is when God spoke: Look at your wrists.

And so I did.

Look at your ankles.

And I did that, too.

Do you see anything there? Do you see even the faintest mark?

I ran my fingers over the smooth skin, forced to admit that they were perfect, unblemished.

Child, He said to me, there is nothing of the slave left in you. You answer to no master save that of Love. Your place in my house can never be taken from you; no one will put you back in those chains.

You are my daughter. The wounds inflicted by the whip? Your wrists and ankles raw from the chains? They have been healed. Every time you look at your own hands, I want you to remember this. And remember that it’s my wrists that are marked with the twisted flesh, never yours. You are perfect, because I have made you so. You never have to hide again, because you have nothing to hide; you are whole again. You always have been, really, it’s just that you can only now see it.

Do you see it? You are not broken.

And so everything is different now. Everything is new.

I knew I was forgiven, but I thought that forgiveness couldn’t touch my scars. That they were an unfortunate and unavoidable side effect of my former life. Yes, I’m ‘healed,’ but I still have this limp. It’s okay; at least I can walk.

Oh, but He doesn’t want me to walk. He wants me dancing in the streets, running fleet-footed in the paths of His commands. He wants me sprinting down the aisle into His arms, wedding dress and all, totally abandoned to my love for Him.

I have been given wings, and this time I will use them to fly.

Because this changes everything.