Danka's World

Okay. Not stormy. But it is dark. It’s 2:45 in the morning as I sit down to begin typing. This is going to be one of those posts. One of those posts that verges on, and probably crosses all kinds of boundaries of tactfulness. A real TMI post. For me, it’s a little bit about accountability because decisions made in the night still need to be lived out in the light of day. Spilling my beans here will help propel me to action in the morning when the busy-ness sets in and the excuses pop up.

I am going to start a support group / addiction recovery program for women who are addicted to pornography.

I am a pornography addict.

My heart pounds like a drum to stand up in my little corner of the internet and say that out loud.

It’s embarrassing. And I’m pretty sure that there are a lot of you that understand that embarrassment because I know that it is a common struggle. Men. Women. Christian, atheist, other. It’s one of those pervasive things of our times. Fortunately, there are more and more resources out there every day to help us deal with it and bring it out into conversation and into light to be dealt with and wiped out. Unfortunately, it is embarrassing, and it’s deeply personal and that makes it hard, really really hard, for individuals to come forward for help.

I am addicted to pornography, and with God’s help I have been sober for years, with the occasional slip up. Stupid internet. Being a widely read individual, I actually know quite a bit about the basic principles used in all kinds of addictions recovery programs, and have been able to apply some of those principles to my life and sort of patchwork-quilt my own version of coping. God has led me down the path of recovery. There is no way I could have done it without God. God has been bringing me through a process of healing, healing from so many different hurts – self caused, others caused – and I here I find myself in a position where I am whole enough to reach out to other broken ones. And so I will.

I am strong. The reason why I am strong is because I have made myself weak. I have allowed God to strip away the hardness of my heart and make myself vulnerable again. My God is a strong God, and by fully relying on Him, I know that I don’t have to rely on myself. That is the most freeing truth there is.

So there you have it. That is what I will be doing. I don’t know what step #1 is yet. I will deal with that on Monday. For now, I blog. Please pray if you’re the praying type.

Maybe I’ll tell you a bit about how this came about in my life. Since I’m awake. It is now ten after three. I have not slept yet at all. I tossed and turned since 11 and finally got up to read the scriptures and pray at about 1:30. It was so beautiful. I sat on the couch and opened my Bible on my lap. I had no specific destination but I found myself looking down at the first page of the book of Jeremiah and my eyes landed on a familiar verse, one that I hadn’t seen in a while and had sort of forgotten about. It was so very reassuring.

“Before I shaped you in the womb, I knew all about you. Before you saw the light of day, I had holy plans for you: a prophet to the nations – that’s what I had in mind for you.” Jeremiah 1:5

This is God speaking to Jeremiah, calling him out to step into the role of prophet that God had in mind for him all along. I kept reading through Jeremiah. Jeremiah is a difficult book for me to read. It is not encouraging. God’s people have turned away from him and he uses Jeremiah as a mouth piece to let them know that they’re wrong, very wrong. It lists all the blatant problems with their society – ones that mirror major problems in our own. Having it all spelled out like that makes it difficult to whitewash. I tend to whitewash. Jeremiah is called out by God as his prophet. Jeremiah obeys. Jeremiah suffers a lot for his obedience. I know from ten years of experience in my walk with God that stepping out to do what he wants me to do is always worth it. But there have been times when I have hurt because of it. And now I feel I am being asked to put my heart out there again. I know that it will be vulnerable to more hurt. And it’s hard to do. But I have found that with God, obedience always pays off. Any hurt will be minor in compared to the goodness God will bring from a faithful act.

But I kept reading through Jeremiah also because I knew what else I would eventually find. That reminds me of the Christian walk. Sometimes we have to walk through unpleasant stuff. But you just keep hope in your heart because you know what lies ahead is good. In this case, I knew that if I kept reading, I would eventually come across a verse that is very special to me.

When I was dating her son, my future mother in law gave me a Bible. It wasn’t my first Bible – my Nana and Papa had given me a little pink King James version when I was a small girl, and I had read bits and pieces of it over the years. But when Jan gave me this NIV women’s devotional Bible one day when we met for coffee, she had written a verse in the front that I had to look up for myself. It was Jeremiah 29:11

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Now, I know that that is a popular verse to give to noobs. But this was before I really knew God. I was thinking about God a lot, and had been to church a few times, but I didn’t know him yet. And it was probably still a year or so before I met him (I realize that for some of you that might seem like an odd thing to say). But my experience with this verse was one of the first ways I ever felt God communicating with me (I remember how novel the concept was at the time – that God would communicate with me!) A little while after Jan gave me this Bible I had a very special week. First of all, I went to a prayer-meeting thing that was outside of regular church services. There was a lady there, a speaker and prophet. At the end, I went up for prayer. Jan was with me. And this lady was praying for me and she said she thought God had a word for me. Out of her mouth came that same verse. I was stunned because I already knew that verse. I had memorized it. She didn’t know me from a hole in the ground. She didn’t know it was special to me, but that was the word she gave me. She told me where I could find it in the Bible. She moved on to pray for someone else. Within a week I had two other ladies, strangers, approach me with the same word. It was amazing. It was supernatural. And that was the beginnings of my having a concept that God was a real person who wanted to communicate with me and have some sort of relationship with me.

So anyways, that verse and the surrounding scriptures have always had a special place in my heart. Sometimes a good while passes before I actually go find them and read them, but they’re permanently etched inside of my eyelids.

“I know what I’m doing. I have it all planned out – plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for.

When you call on me, when you come and pray to me, I’ll listen.

When you come looking for me, you’ll find me.

Yes, when you get serious about finding me and want it more than anything else, I’ll make sure you won’t be disappointed.” God’s Decree.” Jeremiah 29:11-14, Message version.

And after I slugged it through Jeremiah tonight, and found that special verse again, that was the moment I made the decision to do this. You see, it has been on my heart for a very long time to do this or something like this. And I’ve been scared. And I’ve felt ill-equipped. And I have stepped out to take those first steps once before and came up against barriers and given up. But I made the decision tonight to try again.

I am a pornography addict.

I was exposed to porn for the first time when I was a pre-school aged child. It was in my parent’s house. It was in the houses of most of my relatives. It was on store shelves. Just like cigarettes and alcohol, children couldn’t but it, but it was there and it was available, and it seemed like a normal part of the adult world. I grew up thinking porn was normal. Many people grow up thinking that.

I feel the need to stop here and say if it is in your home your children will find it. If it is in your computer, your tech-savvy children will find it. If you think you can keep it hidden you are wrong. Children know every nook and cranny of their parent’s houses. If you want to protect your kids, you need to physically purge it from your possession. If you are an addict, you can then move on to deal with your addiction. But please, protect your kids while you can.

I didn’t really think that there was anything wrong with it until I was married. And all of my baggage, including my addiction, began to affect my marriage. And then I sought God’s help. And it’s been a battle. There were many, many layers to my issues. It was a process. And I’m thankful for every measure of it.

One of the big things for me during my battle is that I felt really alone. I have searched high and low for resources to help me. And they all took some adjusting because all of the resources out there are for men. Don’t get me wrong. That’s awesome. It gives me so much hope that there are men out there who are wrangling this thing to the ground. But because this thing is of sexual nature and being a married lady, it was just not appropriate to get into that conversation with a group of guys. So I dealt with it on my own. I had not heard one single woman confess an addiction to pornography out loud or even in writing until a week ago. I found a girl, a young brave girl who decided to face her addiction and start an online ministry DirtyGirls.com. Somehow, knowing that there is at least one other woman out there who deals with this has helped me feel so much less like a freak. God has been talking to me about this more frequently lately. And tonight at church, he brought to light my fear of failure in the face of the fact that I already tried and failed once. And he challenged me to try again. So I will. I have no idea what that’s going to look like. But God knows. And I know that there are other women, here in Kamloops, whose hearts are feeling isolated and crying out for help.

There is so much more I could say. I could go on forever. But it’s after 4 am now, and I’m finally getting a little sleepy. I’m going to see if I can get to sleep.

It’s funny. It’s the middle of the night for me. I feel like this is intimate and quiet and private. But I know that you are going to be reading it in the middle of a bright busy day. Please pray. If you need someone to talk to, and are a girl, please contact me through this blog or through e-mail danicagrunert@yahoo.ca. If you are a guy and you want help, I encourage you to call a pastor or a local recovery group or even a friend.