Where do I begin?

I’ll start where I hear most men start in recovery stories. I was 12 years old and found myself addicted to numbing behaviors like masturbation. It consumed my life that was filled with transition to a new place to live, new school and basically new everything.

As I grew older, I began attaching porn to my numbing behavior and it didn’t take long for it to have my full attention. Everything I did as a teenager was around when I was going to act out again.

I became completely dependent upon the addiction to deal with emotion, stress and change. Porn addiction was my best friend, it was the thing that kept me going into adulthood. Porn was what got me up in the morning when I was too depressed to move.

Porn saved my life.

So, now an adult, hooked on P and M like never before, but there was one problem. I was engaged to my high school sweetheart and she had no clue. I bought into the lie that almost every young christian guy believes, “I will stop looking at porn once I am married, it’s only because we aren't having sex that I am addicted.”

As you are reading this, I am sure you are laughing with me and realizing how silly this is. But I believed it.

Fast forward. My wife and are I married and soooo in love. She has been everything to me and I would soon find out how much she looked and sounded like Jesus.

One day, about 6 years into our marriage, I was leaving for work and had enough. I told her that we needed to talk when I got home. (I worked at a church. Did I not mention that I was a pastor and hiding my sexual sin and living a double life? yeah. )

That night we sat on our bed and I spilled my guts. I was so tired of living a lie and being on the addiction roller-coaster everyday. She was devastated. I broke her heart. The heart that I was meant to protect and nurture. I was supposed to be better to her than her dad was. I was supposed to be the man that gave her a better life and not add to her trauma. Nope. I screwed up.

The next years were filled with lots of therapy and recovery. I wish I could say that the story stops here and I was clean and back on track, but it doesn’t. I would go years after this, into my 30’s once again on the addition cycle and lies. I wasn’t communicating any slips or reporting binges. I was back in the darkness of isolation.

It would take another big moment in my life to really seek change. This came with our move to Arizona in 2020.

We had just gotten back from living in Sydney for two years and was so full of life and motivation. I resumed ministry work and found myself in the most darkest time of my life. Depression, anxiety, panic attacks, it was terrible. Once again, my double life and lies had caught up with me and I was experiencing stress and in-congruence like never before.

My wife and I decided that we needed a change to get healthy. So why not move to the west coast and figure life out. Sure.

This is where we would find the healing and grace of God.

There is too much to type to explain how God carved out this space in our lives to receive his healing and make huge progress.

I remember sitting at my kitchen table in our Tempe, AZ apartment. We had been living here for a year and I was struggling to understand why God would bring us here. I was having a moment of lament for sure. I sat and continued to read a book I had just started by T.D. Jakes, The Crushing. Sweet Jesus. God spoke to me in a phrase that author, T.D. Jakes writes when he says, “This field isn’t your cemetery.” This hit me so hard. I began to cry and I immediately knew what God was speaking to me. I felt like I had moved to the desert just to die. I felt as though my life was just in a waiting pattern of ineffectiveness, struggle, no purpose and depression. When God spoke this to me, I immediately felt life.

God did not bring me here to die. He brought me hear to heal. T.D. Jakes expands this statement by saying :

“ The Father hasn’t transplanted you and invested all the time and energy into growing you only to turn around and abandon you. He has placed you in the field that is uniquely equipped with the sunlight, rain, and even dung you need to become a vine capable of bearing fruit. This field isn’t your cemetery. It’s the controlled environment the Master is using to cultivate you.”

Wow. It still hits me today.

God had carved out space in my life because He loved me. He could have left me in ministry, doing “His” work, but he cared more about who I was becoming rather than what I was accomplishing. How gracious of our God to place such value on my life. I am truly grateful.

As the few years went on living in Arizona, life was still very challenging. I found a recovery program for sex addicts and began real therapy and rehabilitation. I learned so much about the roots of my addiction, how to feel emotion, identify my needs and be self - compassionate.

Today, as I write this, I am 18 months sober. I haven’t looked at porn or masturbated since Decemember 26th 2022. I have grown and learned how to be confident in myself and accept the things that I cannot change but embrace God’s grace and empowerment to live a godly life.

My marriage is growing in intimacy as I continue to build her trust, provide safety and protection. We will be celebrating 19 years on marriage in August of this year. Our boys are all teenagers and I can’t believe our oldest is a Senior this year. My family was and is a huge motivation for me to keep moving forward.

I started The Coaching Table LLC in order to bring other men to the table to experience the hope and belonging I found here. I am very thankful that God was not finished with me. That he didn’t give up on me or set me aside as unusable. The brokenness that I have experienced, allows His light to shine through me as a candle shines through broken pottery.

So, I continue on, relying on God, using the tools that I have learned and focusing on helping guys experience peace and freedom.

If you would like to hear more about why it’s called the Coaching Table, click on the blog link below.