To the Bride Who Struggles with Porn
/CARISSA PLUTA
First, I need you to read this next line carefully (aloud, if you can): “Arise, my friend, my beautiful one, and come!...Let me see your face, let me hear your voice, For your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely.”
PHOTOGRAPHY: AN ENDLESS PURSUIT
The voice of the lover in the Song of Songs is the voice of Christ, and He is calling out to you. You are His Beloved, and He wants to help you catch the little foxes that threaten the life within your blooming vineyard.
Entering into the vocation of marriage with wounds inflicted by the sins of pornography and masturbation can fill the heart of a young bride with anxiety and uncertainty.
Whether or not you are actively fighting for freedom in this area or can sense it lurking, waiting for an unsuspecting glimpse at the newest television show or one wrong page of a romance novel, one question remains:
Will I ever be free?
And because pornography and masturbation are often only talked about as a problem faced by young men, many women struggling for freedom feel trapped and helpless by the pervasive feelings of shame and self-loathing.
Personally, as a woman who struggles with this area of chastity, I began to see myself as less of a woman. As less beautiful, as less lovable.
But remember the words above from the Lover of your soul. You, my dear friend, are not disgusting. You are not an abomination. You are not alone.
You are not any less worthy of being called a Bride.
Whenever I thought about getting married, I told myself that I could keep this sin hidden, that I’d never have to share that area of my life, my deepest brokenness, with my husband.
Who could ever love that part of me? The question cried out in the darkest corners of my heart. Besides, I’d justify, wouldn’t the problem just go away when I married and sex was no longer “off limits?” (It doesn’t, in case you were wondering).
The devil thrives in darkness and secrets; he wants to keep you imprisoned behind the bars of fear and make you feel like you can never break free. The shame that accompanies these sins keeps you in this prison; only by bringing them to the light can healing be found.
Soon after I started dating my now husband, I knew I couldn’t keep my little secret forever. If I was going to marry this man, I didn’t want to hold anything back from him. I couldn’t.
If I was going to truly make myself a gift to my husband, I needed to give him all of me.
Let your beloved hear your voice. Let him see your face.
So, I went to confession and brought Jesus everything that I had held back from Him. I asked Him to untangle this knot in my life and to help me to see myself as a gift worth giving. I could feel my bonds loosening as I spoke my shame.
Then I poured my bruised heart into a letter and gave it to my then-boyfriend on my way to work so I wouldn’t have to watch our relationship crumble as fast as the mask I’d worn for far too long.
But it didn’t. He was still there when I got back, and before he said anything, he embraced me and for the first time, I knew he was seeing and embracing all of me.
Bringing this deep woundedness into the light was not the undoing of our relationship but rather, set the foundation for a marriage on Truth and Beauty, forgiveness and grace.
If you are a bride or wife that struggles with pornography and masturbation, know that these sins, like the serpent in the Garden, directly attacks our feminine hearts and desire to love and to be loved, but they do not have to define our marriages or our role in this beautiful vocation.
Healing is not only possible, but will give you a strength you didn’t know you could possess. God’s glory can shine from those wounds and illuminate your life and your marriage, helping you to make a full gift of yourself to both your husband and to God.
Arise, my friend, my beautiful one, and come.
