I was in the midst of a calm season of life.
I was carrying our second child and staying home due to some odd health risks with the pregnancy. I had a lot of time to myself and started spending much of my days alone at home with The Lord. I remembered reading about and hearing about story after story where He was speaking clearly to others, but I did not feel I heard that same voice in my life. I simply prayed and asked Him to start speaking clearly into my life to help guide my path.
Austin and I started listening to sermons together about the spiritual realm of God that we had never heard taught in church before, but I had family members that had definitely had similar experiences in their lives.
I vividly remember him looking over at me in disbelief like they were speaking of aliens. He was not quite sold on the Holy Spirit or demons or anything of the supernatural quite yet. Over these few weeks though we grew together and my prayers of hearing the Holy Spirit speak were answered. He told me one afternoon plain as day that I was to spend my time leading my family to Him so that I am needed less and less in their lives over the years because they are so fulfilled by Him.
A few weeks after that revelation, I left town to travel for a family member's wedding.
I took our daughter and Austin was coming down the next evening after work to be with us. Austin and I have rarely spent nights apart since we have been together, so it always is hard on us to be apart and he was nervous to send his pregnant wife and two year-old on a road trip alone. Throughout the first few hours of the trip, we were in communication back and forth by phone, and I called to let him know that we had been stuck at a stand-still behind a wreck. During that time I was waiting, I got an alert on my phone that the front door had opened, so I knew he was home from work. I tried calling him to let him know that the traffic had finally started moving, but he oddly didn't answer his phone. When we can't reach the other person and they are home, we usually talk through our cameras in our house, so I opened the app to do try and figure out which room he was in.
What I heard stopped me straight in my tracks. With my phone held to my ear, I heard the voice of another woman speaking about sex with another man that was not the voice of my husband and realized exactly why he hadn't been answering his phone. He was busy watching porn. I remember so clearly that it felt like the wind had been knocked out of me, but before I could even inhale again, He gently whispered to me, "This is not about you...it is about him."
I can promise you those words were not mine, because a typical Lauren reaction in that moment would have undoubtedly been rejection followed my fifty shades of psycho. I'm glad Lauren wasn't in control at that moment considering my two year old daughter was in the car and my grandmother who had offered to ride along to help keep her happy while I drove. In those simple words though, the Lord reminded me that it was not that I was a huge and ugly 8 month pregnant woman in His eyes or my husband's. It was not that I wasn't good enough, but that He had something to heal in my husband that was broken. I called my husband again and he answered and pretended he was in the shower. I calmly told him, "I know you weren't in the shower. I tried calling you and I heard what was happening, but I love you and I forgive you and we will talk later when I am able to." I'm sure in those moments he felt humiliation and shame...AND wondered who had abducted his wife and put a reasonable and calm woman with her voice on the phone.
That night in the hotel room after I got my daughter to sleep, I cried and I researched.
And yes, I did feel sorry for myself. If we are being super transparent, we had been intimate less than twenty-four hours before his porn use. That really hit me straight in the pregnant gut. I felt disgusting. In fact, for nearly an entire week later I refused to look at myself in the mirror, so my makeup application & hair were probably interesting. Had I not been eight months pregnant, I could have seen myself taking drastic measures such as an eating disorder or plastic surgery to fix what I thought I should about myself so he would want me instead of these other women he was obviously drawn to. When I would calm down a little, those words replayed in my mind. "It wasn't about me." I was His design so he would NOT want me to hate His creation that He treasures. He would NOT want me to use superficial fixes to feel "whole" instead of turning to Him for that reassurance.
One article I had read about the issue truly stuck with me.
A woman was giving advice to wives whose husbands had porn addictions and explained that although it is natural to feel hurt and anger, imagine your husband being a younger child in elementary being exposed to pornographic images. Would you have those same reactions or would you feel heartbroken for him? She explained that many of the men who battle were exposed at a very young age and their innocence was stolen. Their parents might not have possibly even yet had some awkward, "don't do it" or, "use protection" spill yet, but there they were watching others engaging in make-believe sex. It wasn't intimacy shared by a husband and wife in the covenant of marriage under their Savior, but it was raw, animalistic, and loveless sex with men objectifying women.
Considering the circumstances, without telling me, Austin took off work and got a flight to rush to be with me during this time of struggle. I sat with him on towels of a hotel bathroom floor while our toddler napped and sobbed with him. He looked at me with truly deep pain and shame in his eyes and the words I had read of that woman came to life. I asked him when it started for him and just as that woman said, it was elementary. Then and there this innocent eleven-year-old child that would later be my husband, had his heart and mind deceived by the world and pervert a beautiful design created by God that was meant to bond a husband and a wife and create new life of future Christ-followers.
The part of the story that still brings tears to my eyes is what he revealed occurred to me the night I found out and he was home alone. In an attempt to self-soothe he majorly over-ate. He sat in our room and prayed out loud on his knees for the first time in our life. He sobbed to the Lord and asked Him to help him be who He had designed and not who he currently was. My husband who weeks ago thought supernatural experiences were made-up said the Lord told him he was clean and to go and be "new." He said he did not instantly feel better. In fact, while trying to go to sleep he felt that there were evil spirits in our house in our bedroom (where hours before he was viewing porn.)
He locked our bedroom door and pulled out his shotgun, though he knew his fears were not at all of flesh. For hours that night he vomited and dry-heaved in the bathroom.
Although we took appropriate steps in our marriage by seeing our therapist about the issue and downloading an app on devices in our home to help keep him accountable, he will tell you to this day that he believes that spirit was rebuked that night on the floor because he (so far in sixteen months of sobriety) has not had any relapses or urges to use porn to alleviate stress. It really wasn't about me, but it was about him. It was about a situation coming to the light where my husband knew his old way wasn't working and he wasn't able to conquer it alone. He knew in that desperation that he needed the help of the one that created him. My husband was baptized a little less than a month later and has never been the same man since that experience.
The truly sad part to us now is that in the midst of that season, he didn't know who to talk to about it because the men he felt comfortable going to at that time were all viewing porn too.
It is "normal" for guys. It's "not cheating". Our intimacy is still a work in progress after the years it robbed my husband and our marriage of truly enjoyable and God-designed sex. It sounds so cliché and "churchy" to tell people that they can't overcome something without Jesus, but it's 100% truth. He created us so that we could choose to turn away from sin and rely on His love to change ourselves and the world. Our marriage is changed because of the grace he showed us during that time and we feel much more "whole" now because of what HE restored, not what we attempted to "fix" by our willpower or actions.
"He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!" Then he said, "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true." Revelation 21:5
