CASTIMONIA

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Nineteen Months and Counting

by thiswillnotdefineus

Maybe the journey isn’t about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about un-becoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.

Oprah Quote ForgivenessI’ve been trying to compose this post for three days. I type and then delete all the letters with one long press of the backspace button.

I wish I could say that moving forward is always easy and always driven by the right motivations. In the immediate aftermath of D-Day I trusted no one but myself. Self-reliance became my mantra. I began to believe I would give more love to the world than I would ever receive back in return. I felt like a mouse trapped in a maze with endless tunnels and walls and no real escape. There were some days I just sat down at a dead end and stared endlessly at the walls. Other days when I could keep running through the maze regardless of how many walls I hit. I wasn’t going to stop. There were many moments were I felt there was no escape from my new reality. I was stuck in a maze I never wanted to be in and this was my life. Year one was the maze.

Recently I heard a Boston Marathon survivor say that the days, weeks and months following the bombing felt surreal. On the one year anniversary is when they absorbed the reality of what happened. It must be the same for all traumatic events. The first year after D-Day I was not only in that mouse maze but I was in a haze. I wanted to wake up and find out my husband’s affair was just a horrible nightmare. I am not going to lie, if I woke up tomorrow and found out none of this ever happened I would be ecstatic. A year after D-Day is when you realize the nightmare is real life.

So what changes in year two?

I’m a little more than halfway into year two of healing from the affair and I mentioned before that I feel a shift within me. There are elements of the affair that I just don’t care about anymore. I can no longer spend my energy hating Bat Shit. I do hate her (and I always will) but I spend very little time thinking about her. Every time I try to feel sorry for her I don’t. She’s guilty for targeting my husband and feeding him lies to manipulate him. I don’t need to spend my days wishing bad will upon her because I know she invites it in all by herself. When I think about her now I am apathetic.

It took me nineteen months to figure out that my husband didn’t cheat to hurt me or because I was a failing as his wife. He had an affair because it became an option that he didn’t have an answer for at the time. Throughout our marriage we never prepared for infidelity. We never thought it would affect us and that affairs only happen in bad marriages. It bothered me for a long time that he never considered how his affair would affect me. I felt like an afterthought and I probably was an afterthought. Being involved with Bat Shit gave him a high that he didn’t want to admit he needed. I understand what my husband needs now to feel valued, appreciated, adored and desired. I am starting to wonder if just about anyone could become the wayward spouse in the right circumstances. We all have insecurities and desire attention. It feels good to think we are special. It feels good when someone is thinking about you late at night or first thing in the morning. There’s a part of me that understands the appeal my husband felt. He felt important because she needed him and she wrote to him constantly. There’s a part of me that understands. It doesn’t necessarily excuse what happened but it wasn’t about me, it was about him.

I spent so much time grieving for my pre-affair marriage. All the books and therapists told me that my pre-affair marriage was over, accept it and then start new. I went through the grieving process. I blogged about it and I really felt like my marriage had died. After all the pain, tears and struggles I am starting to doubt this theory. My marriage did not end or go on hiatus because of my husband’s affair. Our marriage was not the best it had ever been but it wasn’t terrible either. Obviously, there were cracks in the walls we had built to protect our marriage, but we weren’t in complete ruins. I often look at our lives and wonder how different we were from any other marriage after three children and over ten years.  If you really look at my marriage, it didn’t die or end, it endured.

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The Parables of Pornography

by Arden Compton

A parable is when you liken one thing to another, giving a greater depth of understanding. Jesus Christ often taught in parables. As I have coached people over the years, a number of parables have come to mind that I hope will throw greater light on the problem of pornography.

Parable 1: Pornography is like the Niagara River above the Niagara Falls. As the river approaches the falls, it is powerful and strong. If a you attempt to go canoeing above the falls, you will almost certainly go over the falls; the river is just too strong to navigate safely at that point. Disaster is almost certain. However, when you are standing on solid ground just a few feet away from the edge of the river, it doesn’t matter how strong the river is, it can’t pull you over the falls. The river will always be there, strong and powerful, but why would you play in it? As soon as you begin putting your feet in the water, you are in dangerous territory. There is no need to get in those waters. The further away from the river a you are, the safer it is.

Parable 2: Pornography is like a mirage in the desert. It looks appealing, you think you are going to get what you want, but in the end you get nothing. If a person is dieing of thirst in the desert, they longer they stay in the mirage the more they miss the opportunity to find real water. Water may be just over the next sand dune, but the illusion of the mirage keeps them from partaking of the real joys in life; the joys that come from healthy relationships, meaningful activities, service to others, living a purposeful life.

Parable 3: Pornography is like buying a bag of potato chips that you think is full, but upon opening the bag you find it only has a few crumbs in the bottom of the bag. It looked like there would be some chips, when you open the bag it smells like chips, and the crumbs do taste like chips, so somehow you think you got something. But since you are still hungry you buy another bag of chips, and it also turns out to be empty! But it sure smells good, and it really seems like you are getting something. But somehow you are still hungry so you buy another empty bag of chips. Somehow you don’t realize that in this store they only sell empty bags of chips, and you are always hungry looking for something to fill that need, and you keep thinking the next bag of chips is going to be the real thing. But it never is, never has been, never will be. Not in the porn store.  All they sell there are lies, broken promises, disappointment, shame. You come in hungry, you leave worse than that.

Parable 4: Pornography is like a tiger trap. In the old movie “Swiss Family Robinson” the Robinson family finds themselves stranded on an island. There is a tiger living on the island, which makes the island unsafe. So, they devise a tiger trap. They dig a deep pit and cover it with palm branches, and from a rope they hang a large piece of meat. When the tiger comes along, he sees the meat, he smells the meat, and he attempts to get the meat. But just when he thinks he has it, he fall into a pit so deep he cannot get out.
Pornography is just like that. It seems appealing, and just when you think you are going to get what you were hoping for, you find yourself stuck in a pit! You are trapped and it is so hard to get out. When you finally do get out, it isn’t too long before you are lured in by another image, and you find yourself stuck in another pit. We live in a world where the tiger trap lures are all around us. They are so enticing! They promise to be so good! So fulfilling, so exciting, so rewarding; something you can’t possibly turn down. But how many times are you going to fall in one of those pits before you realize you are never going to get that piece of meat hanging there, and you are always going to end up in the pit? You don’t need try one more time. You may think, “This time I will be careful, maybe I can avoid the pit and get it this time” Don’t even try it, haven’t you already landed in the pit countless time? Now you know that when you see an opportunity for porn, it is the bait. They use those women like a piece of hanging meat luring you in. Now you know to turn and run the other direction. No matter how appealing they make it, don’t believe their false promises, run the other way!

Parable 5: Trying to break free from pornography addiction is like wrestling a grizzly bear. As long as you wrestle with him, he beats you every time. You can dodge him for a while, but it is just a matter of time before he has you pinned and is taking a bite out of you. But you don’t have to wrestle the grizzle bear. You and the bear are in a barred cage, and there are a few places where the bars are wide enough for you to get through, but not the bear. God is outside the cage, extending his hand to help you. With his help you can get out of that cage, God can heal you,  and you can walk free! You don’t have to keep wrestling with this!

Hopefully these parables will help you see the truth about pornography. If you have any other parables or insights feel free to share.  If you are stuck in one those cages, or pits, or mirages, or rivers, or potato chip stores, there is hope! With the right tools and God’s help, you can be free. I see it happen all the time. God bless you!

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Exposing Adult Entertainment Industry PR Tactics: A Heads Up for Parents

by Kristen Jenson

Porn is harmful, can cause an uncontrollable addiction, loss of employment, and may destroy a child’s ability to enjoy future loving, long-term relationships.

Study after study shows this is true. But you might not think so if you believe the media. That’s because the PR machine of the porn industry is hard at work.

Recently I and my team attended the Utah Coalition Against Pornography’s annual conference. Keynote speaker Dr. Donald L. Hilton, Jr., MD, a neurosurgeon and expert on pornography addiction, described four ways the porn industry is working to make over its bad image.

Porn Industry Tactics You Need to Know About

Tactic # 1: Pay for junk science that “proves” porn is good or at least not harmful. Companies with lots of money can hire PhD’s to conduct “studies” whose results conveniently help promote the corporations’ products and are used as ammunition against their critics. (Years ago the dairy industry got caught doing this when they touted a “study” which said that eating dairy helped people lose weight. They got sued and had to retract.)

For example, people are waking up to the fact that using pornography can become an addiction, so the porn industry comes out with a “study” that says that porn is not addictive—there are just people out there with “high sex needs” who use it. According to Dr. Hilton, the press publicizes these junk science studies and ignores other valid studies that show how pornography damages brains, lives and relationships.

Tactic #2: Make up a nicer word. In the academic world, pornography is now “visual sexual stimulation”—a much nicer, sanitized euphemism that helps to cosmetically improve the dark underworld image of porn–the one associated with sex trafficking, prostitution, addiction and child abuse.

Tactic # 3: Sue the psychologist! According to Hilton, some clients in California are encouraged to report their psychologist if they are diagnosed and then treated for a porn addiction—a condition that isn’t recognized in the psychologist’s bible, the DSM, as an actual addiction. WHAT???

Tactic # 4: Watch it so you don’t need it! The porn industry wants us to believe that watching porn provides a “safety valve” for people with “high sex needs” so they don’t go out and commit rape on innocent victims. As long as potential perpetrators are satiated by watching porn, we’re all a lot safer, they reason.

Hmmmm….let’s extend this logic to the real world. As long as your kids simply watch commercials portraying tempting visuals of hamburgers, fries, and sodas, they won’t actually want to eat the potentially harmful fast food. That works, right?

I don’t think so. It’s a well-known fact that virtually all sexual predators have a history of porn use. Co-author Dr. Gail Poyner of Good Pictures Bad Pictures counseled sex addicts in prison and never met one that wasn’t also heavily involved in pornography. The infamous serial killer Ted Bundy admitted in a final interview that pornography was a huge contributing factor to perpetrating his violent sexual fantasies, something he had in common with other serial killers.

And there’s this troubling news from the UK:

A new report in the United Kingdom revealed a startling trend of young boys being charged with rape or other sexual crimes, with authorities claiming online pornography is leading to the increase.

So what’s the takeaway?

Your kids will “hear” these and many more pro-porn arguments as they grow up. Begin young to teach your kids the truth about pornography. Teach them your values before popular culture teaches them something completely false. For example, older children can understand:

  1. Not everything we hear or read in the media is true. Scientific studies must be designed and interpreted with great care, and some studies that get reported in the press are poorly done or purposefully misinterpreted.
  2. Pornography is harmful to the brain and psyche no matter what you call it.
  3. Pornography can become an actual physical and chemical addiction.
  4. Viewing pornography can lead to acting out physically in inappropriate ways. In other words, watching porn can instigate people to commit crimes.

Have you noticed “pro-porn” news stories or media? How do you push back against these influences on your kids?

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Set Free Summit – April 4 – 7, 2016 – Greensboro, NC

http://setfreesummit.org/

Set Free Conference

 

 

About the Set Free Summit

Pornography is pervasive in our culture—in TV shows and movies, on your neighbor’s magazine cover on the airplane, and especially on the Internet. Even Christian men and women can get caught up in this addictive behavior, and yet most church leaders don’t have a clue about how to broach the subject at all, let alone break free.

On April 4-7, 2016, Josh McDowell Ministry and Covenant Eyes are hosting the Set Free Summit, a global summit to equip church leaders with the facts and emotional realities of porn’s impact on families, the church, and culture at large. This event, held in Greensboro, NC, will feature the presentation of a brand new study by the Barna Group, as well as three full days of information presented by Christian leaders from across the country.

Fast Facts About the Event

  • April 4-7, 2016
  • 1,000 tickets available
  • Features all-new research about pornography across various denominations from the Barna Group
  • Nearly 30 speakers scheduled to give 23 talks

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Take Your Feelings As They Are

Feelings are an important part of you. In order to live fully and effectively, you need many sources of information (e.g., your senses, your thoughts, your perceptions) to guide you, motivate you, and help you make sense of things. Your emotions provide one such source. Often, there is a strong relationship between the events in your life and your feelings–for example, to feel sadness in response to loss, or to feel happiness in response to something desirable. Feelings may also be related to past events or even to expectations of the future. For example, sorrow about a recent loss may evoke sadness from past losses. These feelings can be an important source of information as well. Rather than ignore or exaggerate your feelings, it is helpful to be able to take your feelings as they are, accept them, think about them, and learn from them. When you are feeling something consider asking yourself the following kinds of questions:

What is this feeling?
What is this feeling telling me about this situation?
Why has this feeling come up right now?

http://www.counselingcenter.illinois.edu/self-help-brochures/self-awarenessself-care/experiencing-and-expressing-emotions/

Raise your words, not voice.
It is rain that grows
flowers not thunder.
Rumi