After I left the porn industry, I was a broken man. Then God spoke to me.
This is something that really happened to me not long after I left the porn industry. At the time, not only was I losing everything I owned - which I had expected - but I had also lost a relationship with a girl I’d been dating for six years, and to whom I had been engaged to two years.
My entire world as I knew it was crashing down around me. I was going through a period that seemed almost like a detox, of sorts: I wasn’t able to sleep, but would instead cry so hard that I’d eventually vomit, then finally fall asleep from sheer exhaustion, only to wake up a few hours later, when the process would repeat itself over and over again.
This went on for a period of several months. I was hardly functional at night, and barely functional during daylight hours. Nevertheless, what I’m about to tell you isn’t a dream or a hallucination. While some might roll their eyes and scratch their heads, I can only share what I experienced.
On a handful of occasions, God has literally whispered into my ear. The last time he did so was in May of 2014. Prior to that, I heard His whisper in October of 2012. But the time I want to tell you about was in the early months of 2007, a few months after leaving porn. His voice was audible. Had anyone been standing beside me, I don’t think they would have heard it, but for me, it sounded the exact same way it would sound if you were to lean over and whisper directly into my ear.
From early 2007:
I am walking along the Sacramento River Trail in Redding, California. I’m on the south side of the river, in an area where the path leads through a wooded section that presses in from both sides. This makes the path seem narrow, and there is nobody else around. I walk this path bundled in a thick, green raincoat, the hood of which is large enough to hide my face should I see any other person, which is good because tears are streaming down my face. It is raining pretty heavily, and although it’s morning, the rain clouds block out most of the light, making it dusky on this path. I’m in mental and emotional pain unlike any I’ve ever experienced, but I am also at peace because I feel God walking beside me. He is there and so is the presence of the Holy Spirit. It feels as if Jesus is on one side, God on the other, and the Holy Spirit surrounds all of us like a force field, circular in shape, and extending a few feet in each direction around me.
I’ve never felt so much heartbreak. I’ve never felt so much peace. I’ve never felt the tangible presence of God so strongly. He whispers to me, words of peace. Words that I can no longer articulate, because it wasn’t those words that mattered, but rather the peace they brought to me. I’d felt abandoned and afraid, but here he was, walking with me on the trail. Here he was, providing comfort. Here he was, telling me it is okay to mourn. He addressed my present circumstances, but also brought healings to wounds that reached back into childhood, answering painful questions I’d carried with me for nearly all of my life.
Through this walk with God, and through discussions it inspired with a person who is very dear to me, I learned that there is no reason to be afraid of emotional pain. For some reason, humans always try to make tears stop. Emotional pain is something that frightens us. But I learned instead to embrace it. I learned instead to celebrate it. I learned to feel it deeply, and let those feelings flow, because they are beautiful.
We mourn because that which we’ve lost had value to us. We mourn because that which we no longer have meant something deeply personal to us. The value of what we’ve lost isn’t dependent on whether or not any other person assigns the same value to that which we have lost. If, for instance, what we’ve lost is a romantic relationship, it doesn’t matter if the other person moves on too quickly, nor does it matter if they act as if we’d never loved at all. What matters is what the relationship meant to me. Not to anyone else… to ME. I valued it. I lost something that I treasured. I mourn my loss. That’s part of the way God wired us: for mourning to bring healing. So I learned to let the tears flow and cease from trying to stop them. Let my nose run. Let my face contort. Let my heart release all the pain within it. Pain only leads to healing, and deep healing cannot be rushed. I embrace the emotional pain.
Don’t be afraid of the pain.
I often miss that pain now that it’s gone. I sometimes wish it was still present, because I felt things so strongly during that time of mourning, and I was so broken that I leaned on God more than I’d ever leaned on him before or since. And after my “walk along the river trail,” I was more aware than ever that God was there with me, embracing me, walking alongside of me, hugging me as I’d hug my own son if he was in emotional torment.
Sometimes being broken is beautiful.
