When I Read "The Shack" 3 Years Ago...

For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God." - Colossians 3:3

"And everyone who thus hopes in Him purifies himself as He is pure." - 1 John 3:3

Hi friends!

I have a story for you! It might sound like a bad one or a scary one, but it's actually one of the greatest stories of God's victory in my own life. The movie adaptation of "The Shack" came out this year, but three years ago today I read the book for the first time and it was a tool God used to bring freedom and redemption into my life. I've had a desire to tell this story for a few months, but I realized last night that God's timing lined up for today to be the day I needed to post this.

I am a victor over an addiction to pornography, by the grace of Jesus Christ. It's high time I tell the story of God's goodness and power in my life because I don't deserve to hide it all inside away from prying eyes; I can't help but shout from the rooftops just how powerful and amazing my Savior Jesus is.

Here's how "The Shack" plays into this story. Let's rewind to January of 2014. I'd been hiding an addiction to pornography for a year and a half at this point and desperately wanted out, however, I also wanted no one to ever know. I challenged myself to go 100 days without reading or looking at explicit content. I was hoping for freedom, but I didn't know if I could ever have it - after all, other Christian homeschooled girls definitely didn't struggle with this kind of sin. No one ever talked about it, so obviously it wasn't present... right?

Fast forward to March 7th, 2014. I'd gone back to the internet a few times during this 100 day "clean" challenge and I felt like I had failed, but I was still fighting hard. A week or two prior, a good friend had lent me a book called "The Shack" and I decided I should read it so I could return it to her. I had no clue what lay in those pages, but as I read through the book in a single afternoon, God used the story of grace more powerful than any sin someone could commit to break these chains of addiction in my own life. 

And I felt free. Free to love Jesus more than myself and my desires. Free to say that I am forgiven and redeemed. and free to choose to walk away from the lie of goodness and escape from the world that pornography tried to offer.

I can tell you from experience - you will never, ever, ever find lasting joy in anything other than Jesus Christ. I tried.

I was free from the bonds of this addiction, and it has been a hard battle to continually say no to temptation - because it's always there. I had to and have to choose to love Jesus more. After this exploration of freedom began, so also a new fight began in my heart: The fight for honesty. This fight would be much harder because it was a battle of my own will. God was teaching me in this time that I was not going to be "found out" because it would not help me learn the lesson that He needed me to learn - I had a choice to obey what God called me to, and I needed to take it.

Through the next year and a half, I still struggled sometimes with going back to read explicit content but the constant feeling that haunted me was that I'd have to tell someone what I'd done; what I'd hidden behind a happy persona for years.

Fast forward again to October of 2015. I went to a worship night at school and God was really convicting me that I needed to open up. That night a girl I didn't even know prayed over my for healing of jaw pain and TMJ issues that I'd been having for over two years. God chose to heal my pain, even though I tried to use it to make a deal with God that I'd open up only if He gave me what I asked for. Yet His love knew no barriers and that night I was able to share with my mom that God had healed my pain and that I'd struggled with lust for several years. I was so close to telling the whole truth, but something in my feared still that I was too dirty, too unworthy to be known and loved.

The breaking point came a month later as I sat frozen to the floor in a friend's basement where two of the people closest to my heart tried to get me to even speak. I couldn't feel anything but how cold it was and that this fear would eat me alive. It was not easy to say out loud the thing I thought was the worst of my humanity. But finally I said the words, "I'm a recovering porn addict" and my friends rejoiced at my confession. The healing had begun.

Over the last year as I grew further and further from the shame of my past and the temptation to let it own me yet again, I've opened up to a few people close to me and told them at least parts of this story. Even in the last several months, I've been attempting to bring it up in less "super-spiritual" or intense conversation because I know the Lord has called me to make known that He's freed me. And putting this now in writing is one of the keys to that calling.

God laid in on my heart about three months ago to write this story out as a testimony to what He's done in my life. Since confessing with my mouth the sin I've committed, I've become able to see that I also can confess with my mouth the grace and love the Father has lavished on me, that I should be adopted as a child of God. I'm loved no matter what I've done and no matter what I will do.

Today it's been three years since I first read "The Shack" and though I haven't seen the movie yet, I plan to and I'm sure it will be an emotional moment for me to remember the work God began in my heart as I read that story for the first time. Whatever you take away from reading this, I hope you see clearly that these words do not convey defeat. My story is not one to be hidden away and not one to be discussed with hushed words any longer. It is a story that there is a God with a love so deep, so far-reaching, that he could reach even me, a prodigal who ran as far as she could and a broken girl who thought she would never be lovable again.

I know and believe I am loved, I am forgiven, and I am free. My story is that Jesus loves me.

Thank you all for reading! You all have a special place in my heart, even if I don't know you very well or haven't seen you in a long time. If you need prayer or a listening ear, let me know, I'd love to be there for you!
-M.