I really hurt my wife. I caused Sonia a lot of pain, and at the time I didn’t realize just how much I was hurting her. In my mind, I wasn’t really hurting anyone, except myself.
I was dealing with a lot of hurt in my own life. There were wounds in me that I didn’t even know were there. I didn’t recognize the hurt I was carrying or understand how those things were affecting my life. All I knew was that I was constantly trying to make myself feel better. I wanted to feel better about myself, about who I was and about what I was doing.
For a long time, religion helped me do that. It made me feel good about myself while allowing me to keep things hidden that desperately needed to be brought into the light.
Religion Became My Cover
For me, what I was hiding was pornography and sexual lust. I was full of it. But that wasn’t all that was inside of me. I was also full of anger, bitterness and unforgiveness. There were things in my heart that I didn’t even realize were there, and I allowed religion to cover them all up.
I let pornography rule my life. I let sexual lust rule my life. As long as nobody was asking me about it or confronting me about it, I could continue convincing myself that everything was fine.
But everything wasn’t fine.
Lust ruled me, and religion covered it up. Religion became my cover, and lust became my drug. Pornography was my drug. I was bound and addicted to it, yet I didn’t understand how much all of this was hurting my wife.
I think that’s one of the lies we can tell ourselves when we’re living with something hidden. We convince ourselves that what we’re doing is personal, that it’s our struggle, and that we’re the only ones being affected by it. That’s what I believed. I thought this was something happening inside of me, but the reality was that it was affecting the people closest to me.
I Didn’t Realize How Much I Was Hurting God
There was something even greater that I hadn’t understood. I didn’t realize how much I was hurting the Lord.
When that realization finally came to me, it blew my mind. I began to see my sin differently. This wasn’t simply a private struggle that I needed to get under control. I was hurting the Lord whom I claimed to love and serve.
And when I began to understand how much I was hurting Him, I suddenly began to understand how much I was hurting my wife. I began to see the hurt I had caused my family and my children. I also began to see what I had done to myself and to my own relationship with God.
I fell to my knees and cried out to Him:
“Lord, forgive me for what I’ve done. Forgive me for how much I’ve hurt You, how much I’ve hurt my wife, how much I’ve hurt my family and how much I’ve hurt my children. Forgive me for how much I’ve even hurt myself and my relationship with You. Lord God, please forgive me and heal me.”
That was a very different prayer from simply wanting God to make me feel better. I needed Him to forgive me. I needed Him to heal me. I needed Him to change me.
He Has Been Changing Me
And He has been doing that. God has been healing me and changing me. He has been doing things in my life that I never thought were possible.
For so long, I had covered what was happening inside of me with religion. But religion couldn’t heal what was broken in me. It couldn’t free me from the things that had me bound. I needed Jesus Christ, and I needed the things that had remained hidden for so long to finally be brought into the light.
This became part of the journey Sonia and I walked through in our marriage. There was pain, there were consequences, and there were things that had to be faced. I can’t tell my story without acknowledging the pain my choices caused my wife and my family.
But I also can’t tell my story without telling you what Jesus Christ has done in my life. This is why I agreed to the writing of our book, Teach Me To War. I was hesitant, but when my wife and I talked about it, I knew I had to expose this enemy that was trying to destroy me, my marriage, and our home.
If you’re struggling with pornography, lust or something else that you’ve kept hidden, you may believe what I once believed: I’m not hurting anybody else. This is my struggle. This is something I’m dealing with.
I learned differently.
What I kept hidden affected my wife, my children, my family, my relationship with God and ultimately myself. It wasn’t until God began bringing those things into the light that I began to understand the damage they had caused. But being brought into the light wasn’t the end of my story. It became the place where God began changing me.
There is freedom in Jesus Christ. There is forgiveness. There is healing. I know because He has been doing that work in me.
~ Derek
Watch More of Our Story
You can watch more of our testimonies, teachings and messages on our Media page.