Introduction and Disclosure

Bad lighting, not so great editing and I'm obviously reading. I just wanted to get my story out there so I can get started.

Transcript:
In this video, I hope to introduce myself and let you know who I am on a deeper level. This is not a “kid friendly” vlog, so parental discretion is advised. I won’t be using profanity, but I will be talking about things that are adult in nature. There will be a more in-depth version of this on Locals for people who want to know more details, but I just want to cover my background here.

The purpose of this vlog is to share my story in hopes that it may be helpful to someone with similar struggles. I also hope to expose some lies and myths while encouraging others to seek the truth.

When I was young, I prayed for salvation and in a very unique way, God showed me that He heard my prayer and that He saved me. I remember riding my bicycle and asking God to let me remember that this was the time that I prayed, and He saved me and looking down at the bicycle tire, I saw it as if it had stopped. It was as though time froze and that image was etched in my mind to let me know that God showed me the instant, He saved me.

I’m not sure how old I was, but it was somewhere between six and seven, probably. I spent the night at the home of a friend of the family. The next day, we went to the swimming pool. They had a daughter my age and we were friends. Afterwards, the mother asked if I wanted to change my clothes in the girls’ locker room with her and her daughter or with the son, who was a couple of years older than me, and I didn’t know very well. Of course, I opted to go with my friend. This is where I was exposed to the reality that boys and girls have different anatomy. I was so ashamed that I didn’t remove my wet clothes but pulled on my dry clothes over them.

This began a lifelong history of discovery throughout my life in which I sought in many ways to see these differences between boys and girls. It only intensified in my teenage years with hormones and girls’ bodies changing along with my own. I had gone too far on a couple of occasions with my discovery and got in trouble and further shamed by adults for exposing myself and in one case exposing the girl I was with by pulling her pants down. At one point my dad brought a book home that friends at church recommended to teach me about sex. This, in my mind, meant my parents were talking to people at the church and now everyone knew what I had done, and I was even more ashamed. I became very shy and afraid to talk to girls, knowing I could be in trouble again if I made one wrong move.

After graduating from high school, I joined the Army and was on my own. At this point, I was able to buy porn magazines and look all I wanted without anyone knowing or caring. This had become what was considered normal and something that everyone does.

I started going to a church that categorized itself as non-denominational or un-denominational Holiness Pentacostal. In this church, if you were saved and filled with the Holy Ghost, you wouldn’t sin. The implication was that if you sinned, you were probably not saved, or filled with the Holy Ghost. Therefore, it was best to hide your sin and try to “pray through it” on your own because you definitely didn’t want people to think you weren’t saved. So, I tried many times, with the promise that if you just try hard enough, or if you just get saved, or just get the Holy Ghost, you wouldn’t even want to sin. I pursued this for over fifteen years and never got better. I only got worse until I had wrecked my whole marriage, committed adultery, and even started drinking alcohol to the point I couldn’t quit that.

The list of things this sexual addiction entangled me in included porn, masturbation, adultery, strip clubs, prostitutes, and massage parlors.

I eventually found a group called Revive 40 and started attending. I’ve also started going to AA to get sober from alcohol. As I fight this addiction and having been fired from at least two jobs for looking up pornographic content on my work computer, I am starting this VLOG to share my story and whatever else God lays on my heart, and hopefully, as I see freedom, give hope to others who are also in this fight.