Chapter 31: Embracing The Loneliness

WARNING: This post addresses a subject that, until now, I have only mentioned in passing in a couple of my previous posts: pornography addiction. I feel the time has come in my journey to now discuss this honestly and directly, and my reasons for doing so are explained in more detail in section 1. In order to be honest, direct and open about my struggle with this addiction it was necessary for me to give some details of my battle with this sin over the last three years, especially where it relates to my ongoing struggle with homosexuality. My hope in being open and upfront about all of this - especially where it pertains to God's saving grace and ongoing sanctification - is not only to hold myself accountable to all of you who read this and have come with me thus far in my journey, but also to encourage someone else who might be fighting either of these two battles to finally step forward and seek the help they need. But, most of all, the main reason for this post, as well as all the ones preceding it, is to give honor, glory and praise to God, my savior and redeemer, by showing you the breadth and depth of His mercy and love when it comes to the salvation of rotten, wicked sinners like me. Soli Deo Gloria!

Genesis 2:18 “And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.”
 
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        All my English and writing professors in college said that the worst way to begin any story or essay is to start with a quote or a saying. It’s a very tired and clichéd method of writing, and one should always strive for a more original or interesting opening sentence. And, for the most part, they’re right. However, I’ve been sitting here for ten minutes, staring at this blank white screen, trying to come up with a starting point. What keeps rattling around my cluttered, tired brain is the old saying, “One is the loneliest number.” And, as you can see from the title of this log entry, loneliness is the theme of this posting. So I’m going to ignore the writing experts and just start with that saying, cliché or not.
Now, before you start wondering, no, I am not depressed. And no, this piece is not going to be some long, rambling whiny essay about how terrible my life is right now. Quite the opposite, in fact. God has been extremely good to me, as always, and life in general right now is very good. I’m very blessed in all areas, and I have very little to truly gripe about, which would be a waste of time anyway. I should be giving thanks in all things, regardless, so this is not that kind of essay. Rest assured that I am merely using this platform to once again extol God’s grace and goodness in my life, and to update the few of you that have followed my journey from the beginning.
           Yes, it has been almost six months since my last posting. The main reason for that, of course, is because life has been very busy for me. Between work, church ministry, physical fitness regime and personal Bible study, my days are filled to the brim. I’m usually up at 4 every morning (even on Sundays, though my alarm is set for 6) and in bed by 9:30 or 10 every night. November and December were especially hectic for me, as my store and my team continued to excel in all measurable areas. This is where God has been particularly good to me, and I am always humbled by how He rewards the faithfulness of His servants when we make sure to always give Him the honor and glory for our accomplishments.
         I wanted to write my usual New Year’s resolutions post at the end of the year, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. My resolutions for this year are the same as they were for 2023: grow in my walk with the LORD, and, God willing, meet my future wife. So there really wasn’t much to fill an entire blog post. But now, with only two days left in January, I have actually been contemplating a few things, and it’s time once again to put fingers on the keyboard and words on the screen.
            One truly is the loneliest number. Those of you who have been with me on this new adventure are well aware of the desire and calling that God has given me. It’s been almost two years since I first realized that God wanted me to start praying for a wife and family. Ever since then, the road has been both uphill and downhill, with plenty of good days where I’m excited at the prospect of marriage and children, as well as lots of bad days where I’ve had knock-down, drag-out fights with God about His reasons for this particular calling for me. I’ve tried outright rejecting that desire and petulantly demanding that God pick some other direction for me and my life. I’ve tried to ignore it and, like Jonah, I’ve tried to run from it. But, just as He did in the summer of 2020, God won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Through all of my rebellion and temper tantrums, God has demonstrated His patience, kindness, mercy and grace by never raising His voice to me or rebuking with anger. Instead, I have felt only His love, compassion and mercies that are new every morning. Every time I’ve gone to bed physically, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted from a full day of arguing with God I have awakened in the morning feeling utterly refreshed, energized, and remarkably at peace, closer to God than ever before, with a renewed faith and purpose in that singular calling. It still astounds me, and I’ve given up trying to make sense of it, but there ya go. It is what it is.
        But there’s another component to this whole situation that, until now, I have only mentioned in a few previous posts. I’ve talked about my struggle with sin and temptation, and I did put a name to my addiction in one of my posts a couple years ago. But I’ve never gone into a lot of detail, and, until now, only my pastor, my family and a few brothers in Christ know all the details of my battle with pornography addiction. However, I feel it necessary to now address this head on for two reasons. 1) This addiction has been the primary obstacle in my spiritual battle and my efforts to grow in faith and mature in my walk with God. 2) The original purpose for writing this travel log was to be a help and a spiritual encouragement for others like me who might also be struggling with either same sex attraction or pornography. If I can be honest and open about this on a public platform, maybe that will also inspire someone reading this to get the help they need or the strength to keep up their fight.
 
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         I’ve been saved for a little over three years, and one of the first things I did only a few days after I surrendered to Christ in September 2020 was to delete every single pornographic website, photo and document from all my computers and other electronic devices. That was actually the easy step. The real fight came a mere two weeks after that. I had a particularly stressful day at work, and I needed to relax and unwind as soon as I got home, except that now I couldn’t do it in my usual method which was to watch some porn and do you-know-what. In the three years since that first major battle with the old man, this struggle has been filled with many peaks and valleys. I’ve had really good streaks of four or five weeks with no porn or masturbation, and I’ve also had some pretty terrible relapses. For the first year after getting saved, I struggled and fought alone. The cycle was no different than that of the children of Israel in the Old Testament. I obeyed, I was strong in the Lord, and I went many days with no temptation. Then I stumbled, I gave in, and I immediately regretted it. I came to God in sorrow, confessed my sin, sought His forgiveness and then all was good again. But the good streak never lasted more than a week or two, and the vicious, depressing cycle would repeat.
         In January of 2022 I finally sought help from my pastor, and I’ve talked about that in previous posts so I won’t go into detail again here. This time I did get stronger in my battle with pornography, and the good streaks finally started lasting longer and longer. I was also growing in my daily walk with God due to prayer, Bible study and consistent church attendance. But even with all the other successes in all the other areas of my life, my fight to stay away from pornography and lust never totally disappeared. The same sex attraction, too, never completely went away, despite all my desperate, pleading prayers to God to change my perverted desire.
        In March of 2022, when I finally realized the calling that God had for me, I was both relieved yet terrified; excited, yet wary. It seemed utterly impossible from my point of view. The deck was – and still is – stacked against me in every conceivable way. Marriage and a family seemed absolutely absurd, almost laughable. In my whole 45 ½ years on this earth, I have amassed a good deal of knowledge on a wide array of topics and other stuff, but there are three things I still know absolutely nothing about: women, relationships, and fatherhood. That is not an exaggeration. I’ve never in my life had a date, let alone a girlfriend, nor have I ever had the desire to be a parent. Yet here was God pointing clearly in that exact direction while also gently prodding me in the back to start walking.
        I refused at first. I dragged my feet, complained, balked, argued, and tried to head in the opposite direction. In the meantime, I relapsed almost monthly with my porn addiction. I swung from one extreme to the other: excited one day at the prospect of being a husband and father, then terrified the next, throwing up every excuse in the book as to why it would never work. I eagerly embraced the desire by creating a profile on every major dating app, then deleted it a month later in frustration and anger at not getting even a single response to the one or two greetings I sent to potential matches. Throughout the rest of 2022 and for most of last year, I was on a spiritual roller coaster, and I’m still suffering nausea and exhaustion from that ride even as I write this.
         In March of last year I reached out to my friend Scotty (not his real name). He’s a brother in Christ whom I met through the online group Young Heretics. We had first begun to text one another in July 2022, and we’d become pretty good friends, bonding over a mutual love of western literature as well as Biblical scholarship and study. Along the way, Scotty mentioned that he was a professional counselor, specializing in various addictions, including pornography. I texted him in March, and I asked him how much he charged for a typical one hour session. His price was more than reasonable, and I began receiving weekly counseling from him via Zoom.
        2023 was also my most successful year to date. In 2022 God prompted me to start taking on more leadership roles, both at work and at church. I accepted my pastor’s offer to be game leader for Master Club in the fall of that year, and I was also promoted to branch manager at work, taking on the responsibility of an entire store in September. As I began 2023, I was excited to think that this might be the year that I would finally meet my future spouse. Through my counseling sessions with Scotty, I really started to dig in and unpack the root of my struggle with pornography while also gaining some valuable insight into myself through traditional therapy but from a Christian and God-centered perspective. I also asked him to hold me accountable by texting him daily to let him know how many days in a row I had successfully resisted temptation and lust. (I call this my purity counter.) Since then our friendship has deepened to the point that we now chat every week for a couple hours about anything: life, physical fitness, Bible study, books, work, etc.
         The counseling did help, and in May of last year Scotty and I also started being each other’s accountability coach for physical fitness. Both of us wanted to get in better shape and lose a few pounds. I started a strict diet of high protein, low fat, low carb and no sugar, as well as increasing my exercise routines from every other day to daily. That meant a huge change to my daily eating habits and my wake-up time every morning, which only added another layer of stress to my already full plate. But I was also growing and maturing in all areas of my life, and last summer was very successful for me. By the end of August I had shed 20 pounds, my store was exceeding all expectations in all measurable areas, my boss and the company owners were continually praising me for my hard work, and in September my pastor asked me to take on the role as head of Master Club for the new year. Even though I had still not met my future wife, I ended 2023 on a high note: spiritually, professionally, physically, and mentally. God truly showered me with many blessings last year, but there is still a single, major area of my personal life which is currently empty and waiting for one more blessing from God.
         That’s the reason I’m finally sitting down to write this log entry.
 
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        That verse I posted at the top of this entry has puzzled and intrigued me for a long time now. About five months ago I finished my 3rd round of reading my Bible cover to cover. For this fourth round I decided to start writing my own notes and commentary, and I created a new section of my website where I have been posting those. My desire this time around was to take my time with each chapter and verse, diving in deeper to God’s word through a combination of word study, exegetical study, cross referencing verses, and consulting multiple other commentaries. When I was reading Genesis 2 six months ago, I paused at verse 18, and something struck me that had never stood out to me before.
            God created Adam first and placed him in a beautiful garden filled with all manner of fruit trees and herb bearing plants. Eden was a true paradise, and everything Adam wanted or needed was right there in the garden. But the most glorious thing about Adam’s life there was his ability to walk and talk with God face to face. He communed directly with God in a way that none of us will ever experience until Jesus comes again to rapture us out of this world. Life for Adam was perfect in every conceivable way.
         In chapter 2 of Genesis, Moses describes the lush and beautiful garden and the river that flows out of it. He spends a few verses describing God’s creation of Adam and how God placed Adam in the garden to dress it and to keep it. His first command to Adam is that he may eat freely of all the trees in the garden except the one at the center, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For an unknown number of days, Adam spends his time worshiping and talking daily with God while also tending to the garden, though that is not at all the laborious type of work we must do today in our fallen and broken world.
              And then we arrive at verse 18. “And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.”
               Have you really thought about this verse in the context of all the other verses that have come before it? God had created a perfect world and a perfect garden for Adam. Adam had everything he needed or wanted at his fingertips. There was plenty to eat, and because there was no sin Adam didn’t suffer from the elements or need to build himself a shelter to keep out the cold so that he wouldn’t get sick. The weather was tropical, always just the right temperature, and there was no danger from any animals as the beasts of the field and the birds of the air had not been created yet. And, best of all, Adam could talk directly with God! Think about that for a minute. Verse 18 says specifically, “It is not good that the man should be alone.” If God was with Adam face to face, how could Adam be alone???
             “I will make him an help meet for him.” This verse gets to the heart of the issue that I’ve been grappling with since March of 2022. In all of my Bible study and prayer and my long talks with my friend Jon and my pastor, and my counseling with Scotty, as well as my observation of the married people in my life right now, I still don’t grasp the fundamental concept of the need for a romantic relationship and marriage. It’s an absolute mystery to me, and what I’ve finally come to understand in the last few weeks is that the source of that mystery is there in Genesis 2:18.
            One of the most common pieces of advice that I have seen and heard from multiple sources over the last couple years – primarily from websites and social media – goes something like this: “The Christian single doesn’t need a romantic relationship with another man or woman. He/she needs to find his/her completeness in a closer relationship with God. God should be all that one needs. Put your focus on Jesus Christ, and allow Him to fill that void within you that is longing for a spouse.” On the surface, that’s not bad advice. All of us as Christians, whether married or single, should be putting God first above all else, even our spouses and children. We should also be growing daily in our walk with God through Bible study and prayer. But the more I pondered that counsel, the more it seemed just slightly off target. And now, after contemplating Genesis 2:18, I see why there’s a false note in that advice.
         What verse 18 makes clear is that God had created within Adam a specific need that was not fulfilled by God Himself! Think about that for a minute! This really astounded me when I first considered it, and maybe I’m late to the game. Maybe this is nothing new to you, and you might be wondering why I’m making such a big deal of it. But that’s probably because you’re already married and so this is old news to you. If so, just bear with me.
           In my struggle to break free of the pornography addiction, I keep seeing this piece of advice from various online sources and social media: “Find the root of your addiction. Why do you turn to porn? Find the emotional pain that causes the addiction, and you’ll be one step closer to conquering this habit and ending it for good.” Something about that has always puzzled me. I’m not in any kind of pain. I started using porn in college because I enjoyed it, and I saw no problem with it. It was harmless, I wasn’t breaking the law, and everybody uses it, whether or not they want to admit it. Back then I was overweight and not especially good looking and so it was a lot harder to find a boyfriend or even just a one-time hookup, so pornography was the best alternative to satisfy my physical desire for sex. I was a normal, healthy, young adult male with a basic biological need, so I didn’t see the big deal about pornography and masturbation. In fact, for all of my adult life until I was saved three years ago, I was perfectly content to remain single and avoid any kind of romantic relationship whatsoever. I had absolutely no desire for a husband or a family. I was happy and fulfilled in and of myself, and I didn’t need a spouse to feel complete.
          The grievous and dangerous flaws in that mindset are obvious to me now, and the reason I know God exists and that He has the power to change a person’s nature is because that way of thinking was immediately reversed upon my salvation. It wasn’t just the fact that pornography itself is wicked and depraved. It wasn’t just the knowledge that sex was created by God as something holy to be shared only between one man and one woman within the boundary of marriage. (And yes, by the way, that also rules out masturbation if you’re single.) As necessary as it was to recognize those things, they still weren’t the root cause of my addiction. No, the root cause of my problem was the pain of loneliness. It’s a specific spiritual and emotional need that God created within me at my birth, same as He did within Adam. It is a need that God designed to be fulfilled only through marriage by His gift of a “help meet”.
          Until Genesis 2:18, God had declared the rest of His creation as “good”. (Genesis 1:4, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31) At the end of the sixth day, after creating Adam and Eve, God looked at all He had made and declared it “very good”. (v.31) Yet, at the beginning of the sixth day, after He created Adam, God said that it was “not good” that Adam was alone. Only after Eve was created did God then declare His creation as “very good”. God does not create anything that is not good. He is perfect and, therefore, everything that He does and everything that He creates is also perfect. Therefore, if Adam was alone, and if God said it was “not good”, then God’s perfect design from the very beginning was for none of us to go through life alone. He created us as relational beings. We need Him first and foremost, but then we also need a husband or wife. That’s the way God designed us, plain and simple.
          Now that’s not to say that sometimes God’s specific plan for some of his children’s lives isn’t singleness. God still reserves the right to direct each of us according to His particular purpose and overall plan for each of our lives. The Apostle Paul is a great example of this. God never intended for him to marry. (1 Corinthians 7:8) And, in those cases, I believe God gives one not only the spiritual strength he/she needs to flee temptation – just as He does for all of us – but will also repress one’s normal sexual desire. For me, however, marriage and a family is what God is calling me towards. That much has been clear to me for the last two years.
             When I surrendered to God 3 ½ years ago, the first thing I told Him was that I was His completely and wholly, and that whatever He asked me to do, whatever plan He had for my life, I would do. No question, no resistance, all He had to do was point me in the right direction, and I would drop everything and start walking. The problem is, I assumed I would be in some sort of ministry here in Las Vegas in Bible Baptist Church, or maybe a missionary on the other side of the world. Marriage and family never even crossed my mind back then because, again, I had always been happy and content by myself. I didn’t need a wife and a family, and besides, I was struggling with same sex attraction, I was fast approaching my mid-forties, and I had never been in any kind of serious, romantic relationship in my entire life. As I said earlier, the deck was – and still is – stacked against me in every conceivable way. Therefore, it never occurred to me, even for a second, that God would ask of me something as ordinary is being a husband and a father.
          The way I see it, marriage and family are what everyone does. It’s a given, even for the unsaved of the world. You grow up, find a boyfriend/girlfriend, get married and have kids. That’s the standard course of adulthood for almost everyone since Adam and Eve gave birth to Cain and Abel. I was expecting God to call me to something greater than that, such as a missionary to a foreign country or maybe the pastor of a church here in Las Vegas, or maybe some other ministry with my revived music skills. And all of that is still a possibility, but I had never looked at marriage and family in that same category until the fall of 2022 when pastor mentioned in one of his sermons how to recognize when God is calling us to a specific ministry. That wasn’t even the point of his message, it was just a side note. But the short list of symptoms that he named coincided perfectly with what I had been thinking about regarding my desire for a wife and a family. God used that sermon to wake me up to the fact that He was calling me to be a husband and father.
But knowing that and embracing it are two different things.
 
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        A little over two months ago, the week of Thanksgiving, I plunged into a very bad relapse. There’s a website called Double List whose primary purpose is to connect people who are looking for sex. It’s a site I had used many years ago when I first moved to Vegas, and while the main section is for anonymous hookups, there is another section that is used for ordinary dating or friendship personals. I had posted a friendship ad there last fall in the hopes of finding a local Christian lady. Yes, I knew it was a longshot, and yes, I knew I had no business being on that site at all since its primary users are homosexuals. Sure enough, Jose (not his real name) responded to my ad the first week of November. We chatted and texted for a couple weeks, and I made it clear to him that I was not gay and that I was a Christian. I was looking for friendship only. He agreed, and he came over to my place on Tuesday the week of Thanksgiving. You can easily guess where I’m going with this, and yes, my resistance to temptation crumbled about two seconds after meeting him. I won’t go into the details, but we made it to second base, as the kids used to say back in the good old days.
            I was determined to sin, and I was determined to enjoy it. I didn’t care what was right, I didn’t care what God’s plan was for me and my life, I was tired of waiting, and I had an itch that needed to be scratched. But wouldn’t you know, try as hard as I might, I just couldn’t enjoy my sin the way I used to. In fact, I was downright disgusted with myself and with my actions in that moment, and that just pissed me off even more. I tried to shut down the Holy Spirit and just keep going, but right then Jose ended things. He said he had to get up early for work the next day, and he needed to go. I was both angry and immensely relieved. We said goodbye, and he left.
            I felt deeply ashamed of what I had done, and I was genuinely sorry for my sin, but I was also still angry and upset. I immediately went to bed, skipping my customary nightly prayer. Over the next few days I processed and analyzed what had happened, and I did eventually confess my sin and ask for forgiveness. After the anger and frustration faded, I realized that the whole experience had taught me two things. 1) I am most definitely saved. If there was ever a question of whether or not the Holy Spirit lives within me, that solved it. The homosexual lifestyle that had once given me so much pleasure now made me feel disgusted, revolted and ashamed. It was wrong, and I knew it. 2) God really does speak to His children, even in the midst of their sin. In the middle of my experience with Jose, a distinct thought abruptly crossed my mind: There’s something better than this coming for you. That was not my thought, but it repeated itself twice during that encounter.
            God very clearly told me in a still, small voice that He had something better planned for me. My sin with Jose was not part of His plan for my life. I belonged to Him now, and what I was doing was wrong. Although Jose and I continued to text back and forth for another couple weeks, we never got together after that. I eventually ghosted him completely. I felt very bad for doing it, and I still pray that my encounter with him did not leave him with a negative view of Christianity or other Christians. But I had to sever all contact with him for my own sake. There was no other choice.
            In the weeks following that encounter, as I reset my purity counter back to day 1, I noticed something different in my spiritual life. There has been a subtle shift in my relationship with God and the calling He has chosen for me. The certainty that there is a godly woman out there somewhere, chosen specifically by God for me, has been stronger than ever. My daily walk with God has also been closer than ever before. My faith has been the strongest it’s ever been since that night I first cried out to God in September of 2020. That’s the weird thing about backsliding. I expected God’s anger and I wanted to beat myself up over this, but instead what I felt was God’s love, patience and mercy when I tearfully confessed my sin and promised to never do something like that again. Just as all the other times when I had relapsed with pornography and had a wrestling match with God, I walked away from this recent experience feeling spiritually renewed and refreshed and closer to my LORD and savior than ever before. I still don’t fully understand why that works the way it does, but I do know this: I will never, ever do something like that again. That door is closed forever.
            But I also knew that I needed to take one more step to ensure that I could never open that door again. On January 3rd I downloaded and installed the Covenant Eyes monitoring software on my computers, iPhone and iPad. Covenant Eyes is a website founded by Christian men specifically for the purpose of helping other men like me conquer their addiction to pornography. The software continually scans and monitors all activity on all my electronic devices, as well as specifically blocking access to known websites of pornography or sites such as Double List. It also periodically sends screenshots of my daily activity to a feed that can be accessed at any time by Scotty. He was the natural choice to be my ally, and he readily agreed. There was a couple times last year where I relapsed but I wasn’t honest with Scotty about the number of days on my purity counter. I did eventually confess the truth to him, but after my encounter with Jose, and as my purity counter hit the 30 day mark at the start of 2024, I didn’t trust myself to fall back into the old pattern and not be truthful with Scotty about it.
            That was almost thirty days ago, and so far it’s been worth the extra $17 monthly expense. My purity counter is now at 58 days. That’s the longest I’ve ever gone in the last three years, and yes, the stress of the addiction withdrawal has been very intense these last couple weeks. Until now, my longest streak was 55 days back in March/April of last year. Had I not installed CE, I would have definitely given in to the dopamine craving a couple weeks ago during a particularly stressful work week. But now, the fact that I can’t hide my online activity from my ally has done exactly what I had hoped, in spite of myself.
        Unfortunately, though, no other healthy, godly activity has provided the same physical pleasure that porn and masturbation once gave me. That’s another thing about all that online advice for men in my predicament. The experts say that physical exercise, or a hobby such as meditating, reading, painting, learning a musical instrument or woodworking can rewire the neural pathways in the brain that have been damaged by pornography use. Some of those activities can even supposedly cause the release of smaller doses of dopamine or other neurochemicals that were once generated by the porn addiction. But, for me, none of those activities, especially physical fitness, have done that. I have a very strong suspicion that I will have to wait until I can experience physical intimacy with my future spouse to satisfy this particular craving, and that’s the way it should be. That’s one of the reasons God created and ordained the institution of marriage in the first place.
            And that brings me back to the title of this piece: learning to embrace the loneliness.
 
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            One last side effect of my encounter with Jose was that I took some time at the end of 2023 to look back and take stock of my overall progress: spiritual, professional and physical. To my amazement, as difficult as last year was for me in all those areas, there has actually been quite a lot of measurable progress in all three of those quadrants. Even going back to the beginning of this new adventure, it’s easy to see how far I’ve come in just over three years. The most notable change has been in my faith and my trust in God. As I said earlier, my daily walk with Him is closer than ever. The truth of James 1 has been proven to me, and I now understand fully why God doesn’t simply snap his fingers and magically transform us the moment we’re saved. I’ve actually stopped asking God to take away my same sex attraction. Instead I simply ask him to increase my faith. And, for the last year or so, I have added to the end of my nightly prayer list a request for God to watch over and bless my future wife. That was weird at first. I have no idea what she looks like, what her name is, how old she is, or if she even currently lives here in Las Vegas. For all I know, the one God has chosen for me is on the other side of the world right now, maybe not even yet saved. But I pray for her anyway, asking God to guide her, bless her, watch over her and have His will and way in her life. I close with a request that God allow us to meet soon, if that’s His will. (P.S., LORD, please don't give me a Star Wars fan. I know you have a sense of humor, but that's going too far.)
            In the meantime, I have been forced to finally accept the truth of Genesis 2:18. I’ve stopped trying to fully understand why God didn’t just create more Adams. It was well within His power to form more men from the dust of the ground, as many as He wanted, and He could have left out of our basic nature any sexual desire whatsoever. God could have taken over completely the responsibility of creating the human race instead of designing procreation to be done the way it is now. But God, in His infinite wisdom, decided that the best way for His creation to reproduce is that Adam needed Eve, and that a triangular relationship model is the ideal for us and Him. The husband/wife relationship forms the horizontal line of the triangle, while the two sides and the upper point are formed by their individual relationships to God. God designed each of us with two specific spiritual needs, one of which only God can satisfy. The other can only be met through the emotional and physical bonding with a spouse in the bounds of holy matrimony.
            I suppose that my loneliness was always there from the start of adolescence. I just never consciously realized it when I was lost. Only after salvation, as God transformed me into the new creature that Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 5:17, did I become aware of this other need. It’s all part of the sanctification process, and it’s not my place to try to understand it or analyze it. That’s the whole point of faith. I must simply trust in my Lord and savior that He knows what’s best, and this is the path He’s chosen for me. Yes, it still scares me. The whole enterprise of relationship and marriage is terrifying to me, filled with more “what-ifs” and unknowns than I can even count. There are times when I still wonder what in the world God is thinking. He must be crazy. This seems utterly impossible to me right now.
            Exodus 14:13-14 says, “And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will shew to you to day: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no more for ever. The LORD shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.” Why is it so easy for me to accept that God parted a massive sea for His chosen people, yet when I am faced with that same sea in my own life, I balk and claim that it’s just too impossible, even for God? But, again, that’s the whole point. Yes, the odds are against me in every conceivable way, but that’s the substance of faith: God does the impossible every day. How else will I be able to stand at the altar someday, my bride next to me, my family and friends around me, and say, “What hath God wrought!”
            The hardest part of all this, however, is patience. It’s the simplest – yet most difficult – lesson for the believer, and I am no exception to the rule. Now that I’ve properly diagnosed the healthy, God-given need that I was trying to fill with unhealthy, manmade sin, I’ve leveled up to a new stage of this fight. I don’t know yet what this will be like. What I do know is that I’ve been ignoring the loneliness and the longing for a partner by filling my days with work, physical fitness, church, and all kinds of other things as a way to distract from the pain. Yes, it is painful. I really, really hate coming home to an empty house. That’s why I work almost 60 hours a week. If I wanted to, I could easily keep myself to 4o hours, but what’s the point? There’s no one waiting for me at home except my cats. All I do most nights is play video games or watch TV because I’m too exhausted from my workday to really do anything truly productive. And even if I cut back on my hours now I would still just come home and veg in front of the TV. So until there’s a good reason to leave work at a decent hour, I might as well make extra money. (I can always put it into a savings account for an engagement ring, I guess.)
            What really hurts is being surrounded every week at church with young married couples that just celebrated their one-year-old’s birthday, or seeing some young couple’s engagement announcement in my social media feed at least once a month, or seeing yet another online testimonial about a couple that met on eHarmony, or Match.com or Plenty of Fish or some other stupid dating app. (For the record, as far as I’m concerned, dating apps are absolute scams. They’re an utter waste of time and money, especially the “Christian” ones.) It honestly feels like God is granting everyone in my church family or my circle of friends a boyfriend/girlfriend or a husband/wife or a second or third baby except me. And all I can think is, LORD, when’s it my turn??? Two years, LORD, two years and I’m still waiting! Meanwhile, everybody else finds their soul mate on Instagram with no more effort than it takes to sneeze. Instagram isn’t even a dating app, for crying out loud!
            Now, don’t get me wrong, I am genuinely happy for all my friends that are engaged or expanding their family. I love ‘em to death, and I refuse to give in to the easy path of jealousy and bitterness. I don’t want to go that route. But sometimes it is hard to ignore that brief, piercing pang that stabs me right there in the middle of my chest when I see yet another photo in my Facebook feed of some young, smiling couple. It does hurt just a little, and I always wonder what it’s like to experience that kind of joy and fulfillment. It must be wonderful. And then I keep scrolling and just shove the pain away while I try to focus on something else.
            That’s why I don’t post a lot online about my desire for a wife, nor do I really talk about it a lot outside my family and my close circle of Christian brothers. This posting is probably the most I’ve ever publicly said about this, mainly because I don’t want to be that guy. You know who I’m talking about. The guy that’s always posting something on Twitter or Facebook about how he’s still single at 35, or how that movie would be an ideal first date, or this restaurant is where he’s taking his future wife for an anniversary dinner, or how he can’t wait to make his future girlfriend his momma’s best meatloaf recipe. I actually follow some Christian dude on Twitter (I refuse to call it “X”) that is constantly posting stuff like that literally every other day. It’s kinda sad and pathetic, I think. I mean, c’mon dude, man up and stop being so whiny. If it’s God’s will for you to be married, you just gotta be patient and wait for His timing, and, in the meantime, talk about something else.
           So yeah, this whole struggle with waiting on God while, at the same time, embracing the loneliness caused by the waiting, and also not giving into the sin of lust and pornography is going to still be just as difficult as always, but things are getting better. I refuse to give up. Like Matthew, I was minding my own business, lost in my sin, living only for myself, when Jesus passed by, turned to me, and said, “Follow me.” I didn’t go quite as immediately and willingly as Matthew, but I came around soon enough. And, like Abraham, God promised me a new destination along with a new life and a new purpose, and He was right. Even on the darkest days of my struggle, when the battle with my flesh seems overwhelming and God seems light years away, I still wouldn’t trade this new adventure for anything in this world. And even if God, for whatever reason, doesn’t give me a wife and family, this journey will still be worth it. I’ve come too far to give up now, and I love the new man in the mirror. I couldn’t turn around and trek back to the City of Destruction now, even if I wanted to – which I don’t, praise God! Progress is still being made in all areas of my life, and I have been especially blessed with a close circle of brothers in Christ that daily encourage me, challenge me, hold me accountable, and pick me up when I’ve stumbled. LORD willing, they’ll all be present on my wedding day.
 
                                                             ( 6 )
            In closing, if you’re reading this, and you’re battling this same addiction, you already know what I’m going to say. So rather than tell you what you already know, and instead of listing all the recovery steps and advice that you’ve already read a hundred times online, I’m going to just say this: please reach out to me. Let’s talk.
            For the rest of you that have been with me on this journey, and especially those of you praying every day for God to bring me that special someone, thank you! Please keep praying. The only reason I’m where I am today is because God heard your pleas all those years ago for Him to save me, and He honored your persistence. I long for the day when I can finally send out that text message that joyfully declares this particular prayer request has been answered. (Assuming, of course, cell phones as we know them now are still around in 2060 and I’m not too senile to type the words myself; or Christ hasn’t already come back. Whichever comes first.) Okay, just kidding. (It’ll probably be 2055.)
            That’s all for now. Thanks for reading, and have a blessed day!
            Soli Deo Gloria!