Hi friends!

Last month, something straight up miraculous happened.

Like, when I told my aunt the story, she said,

“I believe you! I do! I know you! But you have to admit, that’s pretty hard to believe.”

I agree!

And yet…

Here’s the story 🙂

It begins with a conversation about marriage.

More specifically, it begins when I expressed that just the thought of marriage was enough to make me low-key panic.

Think eels in stomach, heart palpitations, convulsive swallowing, etc.

Not because I thought marriage was bad!

Not at all!

In fact, I thought and think that marriage is a wonderful thing, but a month ago, I wasn’t sure it would be (in fact I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be) good for me.

My sister recently got me to read Thomas Hardy’s Far From The Madding Crowd (she rec’d the Carey Mulligan movie, and after viewing, I had to read the source material), and early on, there’s a proposal scene where the heroine, Bathsheba Everdene, turns down the first of what will be three suitors, saying,

“Well, what I mean is that I shouldn’t mind being a bride at a wedding, if I could be one without having a husband.”

And I was like, mood.

Except, it wasn’t even the thought of a husband that I objected to!

It was the thought of the honeymoon.

Friends, a fair few people over the last few years have heard me say that post-I Dos and retirement to a rose petal-strewn hotel room, I would do a full on ROADRUNNER to get away from the groom.

It’d be like that scene in Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone after Harry sets a massive snake on his cousin Dudley at the zoo and his uncle interrogates him as to what the heck happened:

My poor husband would be like,

“One minute Sarah was there and then she was gone! It was like magic!”

Abraca-abstinence!

I’m not even joking, friends.

And if you’ve been here for a bit, you’ll know the reason why is that from the ages of 5-20, I was a porn addict.

I’ve written about it here.

I’ve spoken about it here.

But suffice to say pornography did a number on me, not only with respect to what to expect when it came to sex, but also with respect to how I saw myself, which was as an object–something to be degraded and abused.

A real, live blow-up doll.

And the thought of any person, especially my husband, viewing me like that was enough to incite an actual panic attack if I thought too long about it.

Which is why I’d just sort of drawn a veil over the whole marriage question.

UNTIL THIS CONVERSATION.

Because on the heel of me expressing a much less succinct version of the above, my interlocutor said that while they understood why my past with pornography would make me sex-reticent in the short term, they weren’t sure they understood why it was that, over five years porn-free, I was still so viscerally averse to physical intimacy.

And asked me to explain it.

No one had ever asked me to do that.

And for several moments, I was a bit dumbfounded.

I honestly wasn’t sure how to explain it, but finally I said,

“It’s like… it’s like there was a monster living in my house since I was five years old. This huge monster that dominated my life and made me always feel afraid and ashamed and like I was trapped and disgusting. And when God slayed the monster five years ago, I took its carcass and shoved it in a back bedroom and plastered over the doorway. But the monster’s still there, and whenever I see something that reminds me of it or I walk by the room, those feelings of fear and shame and captivity and self-disgust echo through the plaster.”

They thought about that for a bit and then said,

“When I was little, I had a dream that I was curled up on the floor with a monster standing over me. I had my head down, eyes shut, hands over my ears. I was really scared. But then, one day, I took my hands off my ears, raised my head up, and opened my eyes, and I saw that what I thought was a monster was really a gnat.”

Friends, it was like a lightning rod went through my head.

Because Romans 16:20 says, “The God of Peace will soon CRUSH satan under your feet!”

And, listen, I’ve had that bit of Scripture memorized for years, but on April 25th, 2024, in the span of seconds, it just clicked.

That after five years spent growing in wisdom and stature and favor in the Lord, I wasn’t that scared, ashamed, captive, disgusted, degraded little girl anymore.

And relative to me, porn (which, make no mistake, is fully demonic) and even satan himself, far from being monstrous Jabberwockies, were freaking gnats.

And I could just swat them or stomp them into the pavement.

It was a total paradigm shift.

And I left that conversation feeling both buoyant and discombobulated.

Because it was like fifteen (arguably twenty) years of my life had been overwritten.

The monster was a gnat. The monster was a gnat.

And if, for instance, King Kong was reduced to the size of a grain of rice, the movies kind of wouldn’t make sense.

So, suffice to say, my mind movie was reeling, but as I went to bed, I was like

“Lord, I don’t exactly know what just happened, but I know You. And I trust You will make it make sense.”

Oh! And I also made a next day appointment with an optometrist.

(This is relevant, I promise :))

See, pre-monster->gnat conversation, I’d been walking around Stanford with my sister and gotten something in my eye.

For reasons not relevant to this discussion, my eyes aren’t great at tear production, so when something gets in them, it can be pretty irksome.

And after a full day of trying and failing to blink/pray the speck away, I was like,

“I really don’t want to spend my visit doing eyeball contortions. To the optometrist!”

Lil sista accompanied me because she knows I’m kind of a wuss when it comes to eye doctors.

And it wasn’t exactly pleasant (although, the doctor himself was EXCELLENT–competent, comprehensive, and compassionate. Seriously, God bless him!).

He did the whole kit and kaboodle: inverted the eyelid, put dye in, irrigation, and q-tip.

And finally he said,

“So… there’s nothing in your eye.”

At my incredulous expression, he added,

“Oh, it’s definitely irritated. My guess is that something was in your eye, and it caused a corneal abrasion. That’s what’s causing the foreign body sensation every time you blink. The abrasion on your cornea.”

On one hand, I was glad I didn’t have something lodged in my eyeball.

But on the other, I’d been hoping for a quick fix–just take the speck out and no more irritation–but the doc’s prescription for resolving the foreign body sensation was more or less patience and

“Try not to get anything else in your eyes.”

Which is very sound advice, and the next stop we made was to CVS where lil sis helped me get the most goggle-esque sunglasses on the premises.

I pretty much wore them the rest of the trip 🙂

But the miracle’s completion actually happened as we were leaving the doctor’s office.

See, little sis had a bodacious bruise on her leg (it’d been there for a few days), and as we walked out, she looked down and said,

“I kind of like bruises.”

And just like the night before, a lightning rod went through my brain.

Because as my corneal abrasioned eye went to her bruised leg, the thought–and I know it was airdropped by God–came,

“Bruises are evidence that there was once an acute source of pain. It’s gone, but the bruise will need more time and tending to fade.”

Just like the doctor had just told me.

“There WAS something in your eye. It’s gone, but the abrasion will need time to go away.”

And just as I had that thought, another lightning rod came:

“Porn was the acute source of pain. It’s gone, but you plastered over its carcass, leaving it to fester and go rank, instead of letting the abrasion heal all the way.”

Friends, I think I let out an audible gasp because now the lightning rods were coming in FAST.

Because as I had that thought, a conversation I’d had with my sister MONTHS prior slammed into my head.

It was after one of her friends had been badly scraped in a biking accident and had to go to Stanford medical.

The doctors told her friend that instead of putting bandages on the abrasions, they recommended medical grade honey (for moisture and antibacterial purposes) and gauze (to keep the wounds well ventilated).

Lil sis had thought I’d be interested in that prescription because I’m a big fan of holistic/natural medicine (like using manuka honey instead of neosporin), and would you look at that, Stanford (Stanford!!) doctors were providing vindication!

Lil sis had also said,

“They told her, contrary to popular opinion, it’s actually bad to let wounds scab because a scab is just a bunch of dead, dried up cells that acts like a cork over the injury, keeping it from healing fully.”

Friends, in that moment, it was like scales fell from my eyes.

Or, more specifically, like a giant, five-year-long scab had fallen off my life.

Because I realized for the first time that I’d allowed the wound porn had wrought for fifteen years to scab.

And that for a further five years after the monster was dead, I’d plastered over the wound with deadened flesh instead of allowing the sweetness of Christ and the fresh wind of the Holy Spirit to come in and form new skin.

I turned to my lil sis and basically word vomited all those realizations, and as I did, I felt–felt–the sweetness of Christ and the fresh wind of the Holy Spirit come in and the wound just… vanished.

It was like magic 🙂

And here’s a funny thing which is just further confirmation that God is Lord of time and there are no accidents.

Porn hurt me for 15 years.

God healed me in 15 hours.

Legit, the monster->gnat conversation was at 10pm Thursday, April 25th, and I was walking out of the optometrist with my lil sis at 3pm Friday, April 26th.

Pretty fantastic 🙂

FURTHERMORE!

Hebrews 13:8 tells us that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

He has an unchanging plan and character, and He’s not only a great physician, He’s a monster slayer.

So if YOU have wounds that need tending or monsters that need slaying, I urge you to turn to Him.

It’s been over five years since I did, and He has made (and continues to make!!!) all the difference <3

Look up and lift your eyes
The future’s open wide
I have great plans for you,
Your past is dead and gone
Your healing has begun
I’m making all things new,
I’m reaching out, I’ll chase you down
I dare you to believe how much I love you now
Don’t be afraid, I am your strength
We’ll be walking on the water, dancing on the waves

Fun fact: Lil sis was listening to the above song the AM after the monster->gnat conversation and before the optometrist appointment. I’d never heard it before, but it definitely caught my attention. And let’s just say, it’s been prophetic 🙂