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No, Singleness is Not a Punishment
I think this is why I’m still single. I don’t think God will ever allow me to get married. Not after what I’ve done. Before you run away, this is not another post on how “singleness is a gift” and how marriage will happen if you “are just content” or “just trust God enough.” I saw my share of those posts as a single woman and they just aren’t helpful. Singleness can be hard. Very hard and I’m not here to discredit that or ignore the fact that sometimes it feels like torture to watch all of your college roommates get married, or to be a bridesmaid in 20 different…
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Does God Hate Me for Struggling with Porn?
As part of this Does God series, I really wanted to address a question I get quite often, “Does God hate me for struggling?” It’s not always so direct. Sometimes the woman has already answered it in her heart and mind: I’ve stopped praying because I’m such a hypocrite. I know God must be sick of me. There’s no way God could keep loving me. I open my Bible and feel like such a failure. This is a topic and angle of this struggle that is near and dear to my heart. The shame that so many women face in their struggle with pornography does great damage. It drives a…
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Does God Care If I Watch Pornography?
This blog is written for a Christian audience, for Christian women specifically. It’s more than just a blog about women who struggle with porn. It is about helping women restore a relationship with God. The hope is that women reading this experience grace. What we believe God believes about our struggles is an important piece of that experience. If God doesn’t care about what I’m doing, I don’t need to stop. If God thinks I’m worthless because of my struggle, then I have no access to hope. The original question that raised the doubt that changed the course of history is a question of what God really said and meant.…
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What Does Accountability Look Like in Marriage?
Is your marriage a safe place to struggle? Lately, I’ve been writing a lot about accountability. It’s perhaps one of the most important and yet misunderstood aspects of a freedom journey. If you write me about your struggle with pornography and ask what you should do, the very first thing I will tell you is you need to share your story with someone (other than me). That’s not because you need a babysitter or because you need shamed. It’s because that’s the first step in tearing down shame and reestablishing community. Pornography, by its nature, is isolating. Shame, by its nature, isolates even more and shrouds in lies. So, sharing…
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Christian Women Watch Porn? Consider This Your Wake Up Call
“Dad, most of the girls I know watch porn.” – a teenage son to his father “I don’t know what the big deal is, every girl watches porn.” – a 12 year old girl in a Texas church “Please help! We did an anonymous survey of our youth group and 100% of our 9th and 10th grade girls indicated they struggled with porn.” – a youth leader from a church in Tennessee There’s a storm coming, and the sirens are sounding. The warning system that tells you to get ready and seek cover. A person much wiser than I once said that it just takes four generations for something to…
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The Mistakes We Make With Accountability
Ask any group helping people overcome a struggle with porn and you’ll probably hear them talk about the importance of accountability. Even Christian organizations will emphasize this important step. But, did you know, accountability as we define it is actually nowhere in the Bible? There are Biblical principles of confession and honesty in community, but there is no chapter and verse that tells you to tell a friend/stranger about your struggle and ask them to check in on you daily. Accountability is a tool that many of us have found useful in our own journeys and in the journeys of those we help. However, based on emails I have received…
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Sharing Your Story with Family: Thoughts on Shame, Grace, and Loss
It’s a question so many women have: How am I supposed to tell my family? My husband? My kids? My parents? Perhaps you didn’t know this. Maybe you did. But my family doesn’t talk about what I do. It’s a complicated dynamic. Along with fierce loyalty and love, there’s some toxic shame and legalism and blame that likes to creep in to the fibers of our family. Some conversations just feel like they aren’t worth the fall out. So, I just kept my book out of the conversation, and my family did too- at least to my face. Then my husband-to-be read it. Since that’s literally how he and I…
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Letting Go of the Shame and Regret of Sexual Sin
Today, I am happy to feature a guest post written by Christian author and speaker, Shelley Hitz. Shelley has co-authored a book on Christian women and pornography addiction. I have read through the book and I will say that it could be a valuable resource to so many of you who contact me asking what to do next. I think we are often hardest on ourselves. Don’t you agree? And it usually surfaces in our thoughts, what I call stinkin’ thinkin’, where we beat ourselves up for the regrets and mistakes of our past. I understand this very well. You see, as a married Christian woman I struggled with pornography…