187 - Overcoming Brokenness w/ Paul Young

You're listening to the Pure Desire Podcast, your safe place to find hope, healing, and freedom from sexual addiction, betrayal, and relationship issues. What's up, people? I'm your host, Trevor Windsor, and you're listening to episode 187 of the Pure Desire podcast Here joining me as always is my co host, Nick Stumbo. Freedom. I feel like I could be from so many things, but I'm gonna guess it's. You're quoting Braveheart.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm not sure they could take our.

Lives yelled like that. Kind of unique to Braveheart.

So.

Such a great accent, by the way. Did you know this is a little trivia for you?

You just heard the extent of my knowledge of Braveheart. It's not about Braveheart.

It's about Mel Gibson.

Oh, okay.

When I believe Mad Max was one of the first. Mad Max was one of his first movies. And that. I believe he's actually from originally Australia and had an Australian accent. But then, as you can see now, there's no Australian accent. Did you know that?

I did not. I'm always impressed when people who have, like, Australian or British accents are in American films and they sound American. I'm like, I don't know how they could do that because once you have an English accent, it seems so distinct. You know, I hear them interviewed and you're like, really? That's what you sound like.

Wow. I know.

It's amazing.

I would love to have an accent anyways. I do to some people. Yeah. What? He's not Australian. He's not Australian.

Okay.

Anyways, he spent time. Just leave me alone. The producer now is telling me I'm wrong. Anyways, he had an accident when he starred in the first movie. Anyways, okay, so today we had a guest on to talk about overcoming brokenness, and it was really, really powerful. I think there's a lot in there and a lot of people might know who our guest was. Our guest is Paul Young. He is the author of the Shack and has an incredible and really sad story of how trauma entered his life and really what that process looked like of overcoming the brokenness because of it.

Yeah. Yeah. And I'm excited about today's interview because I think Paul just does a good job of bringing out the heart of who God made us to be and making sure that's where we find our value and not something else that's been assigned to us that really isn't true. That we're made in the image of God and that that fundamental goodness of his creation is really what should guard our hearts and our minds. And I know some people take issue with Paul's theology. And I just want to say pure desires theology hasn't changed. If you need to read it, it's on the website. And yet we want to be able to listen and hear from other people that can bring perspective. And so for those that may be bothered by, even in this episode, some theological things that come up that maybe cause you to raise an eyebrow or think differently, you know, you can, you know, take. Take the good and spit that out. And if you're not able to get past that, you know, we get it. But we think Paul has a story to share. And what I am confident of is that he loves Jesus, he loves the God of the Bible, and he wants people to meet that God. And some of the ways he's interpreted it, I think, are actually the very things that are helping move our thinking forward of who are we as people and what does it mean to be aligned with God's opinion of us? So that's what I love about today's episode. And, um, he. He does use some, you know, what we'd call salty language. And in his theology, he's comfortable with some language that some of you might think is great and will love him more, but others of you might be a little bothered by. So we are going to try to navigate some of those language choices because we don't. We don't want his word choices to keep you from hearing what we think are some really valuable points when it comes to our recovery and our woundedness and our brokenness. Because there's. There's a message here I think we need to hear.

Yeah, absolutely. So a few things before we get to our time with Paul. Subscribe to the podcast if you are not. Just do it. Don't wait any longer. You can find us on all the major platforms, including Now Audible. You're welcome, Audible subscribers. If you can give us a review. It also helps other people find the podcast. Follow us on social media. Earedesirepdmi, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We're actually putting all of these episodes now, full episodes up on YouTube. Just search Pure Desire Ministries. And then we really, we just want to continue pushing it. We're excited about it. March five and six, we have the Pure Desire Virtual Groups conference. Nick, why don't you tell the people about it?

Yeah. You know, if you've ever been playing a video game and, like, you unlocked a new level, like, you leveled up and suddenly the game was just a whole better experience, that's like, what we're talking about with the groups conference that if you are in a group or leading a group or looking to start a group, we can help you level up, have a better experience, be a better leader, launch better groups. It's kind of our 201 training. I've gotten to share the content just one time last year and I'm so excited to share it with people all over the country because I think it'll just, it'll take their experience to another level. So sign up. We'd love to see you there. Whether you're online with us, live in the moment or, you know, viewing them in the weeks that follow, I think you'll get a ton out of it.

And we have a chance to enter here to win a free ticket. If you go to PureDesire.org pod survey, fill out the listener survey and we're going to pick two winners for, for a free admission to our groups conference March 5 and 6. All you have to do is and this is for in person. We have a small in person, 50 people. There's only 40 spots that are there. There are only 40 spots that are there. We will give you a free ticket to come and see this event live. You can wear a mask if you'd like. Definitely that will be it. But go to peeredesire.org podsurvey Enter the drawing. We will pick winners on February 9th. That's all we have for you. Here is our time with New York Times best selling author Paul Young. Paul Young, we're super excited to have you on the podcast. Thanks for just taking the time and hanging out with us. We appreciate it.

I'm absolutely honored to be with you. I love these things. It's always a two way street. I tend to learn a lot, which is what I need. Sometimes I even say things I have to learn from. So that's good.

Honestly, I will, I'll just disclose right now. I was the type of person who had never read the Shack and was critical about it and then read it last year and it's one of my favorite books and I just want to tell you that I the scene with the Holy Spirit tending the garden still sits with me today. I love that. Have been a fan of yours since then and then I got to hear your story on a number of different podcasts. One, you spent time with Ian Morgan Cron on the Typology podcast and honestly, if you just want to reach out to Ian and let him know I want to be his friend, that would be so great. But yeah, I just, I was struck by hearing your story. I was struck by how much trauma and how much difficulty you've experienced and had to overcome. And we just wanted to kind of dive in that, into that and hear your story more and really just share what you've learned through your journey with our listeners. And, you know, one of the things, too, just the idea of reducing shame when it comes to trauma and abuse and brokenness, for sure. And how to really give hope to those who are in the midst of struggle, because our listeners are in that season right now. So, yeah, thank you again just for being here.

Let's go for it.

Yeah. So, Paul, a lot of our listeners may know you as the author of the Shack, or maybe they connected with you as you shared your story on the Heart of Man film. And that's some of what we want to get into today. But we may have a lot of listeners that don't know much about you. The person Paul Young. So could you just maybe share with our listeners a snapshot of your life, your background, and who is Paul Young?

You know what? We all grow up in a town called Normal. Yeah, we think our first experiences are pretty normal. So mine was, I was born Canadian in Grand Prairie, Alberta, and I was 10 months old and my parents firstborn. So my parents and I moved across the planet to the other side, to the highlands of New guinea, where I grew up. Grew up in a. In a valley that was nicknamed Cannibal Valley, you know, and not because it was a cool name, it was actually a descriptor. And but I didn't know, you know, and so I thought everybody grew up around Cannibals. And the tribe was huge. It was 20 to 40,000 members, over 100 square miles. And New guinea has over 800 unrelated language groups.

Right. Wow.

And nobody outside of the that tribal culture had ever heard their language. And so I was the first. I was the informant for Wycliffe when they translated it when I was five years old because I could speak it fluently, including some linguistic peculiarities that had never been heard in any language before. And so that was my world. And at 6, I was sent out to boarding school. At 10, my parents only packed up in the middle of a year and we moved back to Canada, and my dad became an itinerant pastor. And I went to 13 schools before I graduated high school. I went to Canadian Bible College in Central Canada and then finished, well, did three years of theology there, finished an undergraduate degree in religion in Portland, Oregon, went to seminary in Portland. But in Portland, Gresham Oregon actually I met Kim and thank God I married her. Thank you God. I married her. She saved my life. And you know, that's sort of the big landscape. Inside of that is the sexual abuse that was part of the tribal culture that continued when I was sent to boarding school at 6 and Christian missionary boarding school. The sexual abuse and a very difficult relationship with my dad. He, he was an abusive disciplinarian and so he just terrified me from the moment that I ever met him. And I just, I wanted little to do with him except, you know, for those of us who have an absent or missing or angry father, we, we still are looking for everything that father means. And that followed, that followed me for years. Very, very grew up in western evangelical holiness fundamentalism, very performance driven relationship with God. And you know, the way that I dealt with my own sense of shame was that I became a performance addict. So that worked pretty well. And so I, you know, it was a survival skill. But I actually thought because I had such a low view of myself that.

I.

Didn'T know how to do anything else, even though along the way I did all kinds of stuff, you know, but when you, when you begin with the underlying belief that you're a piece of, to start with, it's hard to see any value in anything you do. Everything feels like you're a fake.

Right.

And plus I had post theology, right. Piece of theology which I got from Martin Luther and the Reformation. Yeah, like human beings are snow covered dung. Well, what kind of theology is that? You're totally depraved. You have a sin nature and hard to build a constructive, authentic life, you know, on, on that kind of theology. So not only did my dad communicate that to me that I was worthless and sexual abuse communicated that in an entirely different and absolutely destructive way. But, but God felt that way too. And God loved me. God the Father loved me. Jesus actually loved me. God the father put up with me because he didn't know I was there, you know, Jesus, Jesus covered me over with his own righteousness so that, so that I, he could sneak a piece into heaven with, you know, and God would be going like, do you smell that? Smells like crap.

You know, find it though.

Jesus is, you know, doing his little bottle of redemption and propitiation and atonement and all that kind of stuff, you know. Yeah, but, yeah, so, you know, by the time I was 12, two years back into Canada, trying to figure out how to survive in a culture I didn't understand, even though I look like I should, and with the kind of history I had, which my parents didn't have a clue about what I had experienced. Nothing. They weren't safe to talk to when I was growing up. Nobody was actually.

Yeah.

And so by 12, I'm pretty much addicted to porn. Like just owned me and I hated it. It was. It was absolute proof that God and my dad and everybody else was right. Yeah. You know?

Yep.

Yeah. Reinforcing those messages.

Yep.

Yep. So. So guilt is that I have done something wrong and I did things wrong, but shame is I am something wrong.

Yep.

And. And wholeness with same root as holiness. But wholeness is when the way of your being matches or is an expression of the truth of your being. That's when wholeness is when you're integrated. So that how you live your life is an actual expression of your ontology, the truth of who you are.

That's good.

And. But if you think that you're a piece of piece of crap to begin with, that's the truth of who you are.

Yeah.

Good luck, you know, because. Because all your religious performance you will know at the back of your mind you're just a fake and you're just waiting for somebody to expose you.

Yep.

And exposure becomes the big terror, you know, so. So I didn't run away from relationships when. When my facade start to crumble. I just heard God call me somewhere else.

Yeah, right.

Like any anywhere else would call me.

Well, okay. So Paul, you and you're talking a lot about trauma that entered your life at a really young age. And we talk about this a lot here, that it's not just the big T trauma of the abuse, but it's also maybe the neglect from your dad or those lacks that you have in life. The culture, the messages that you learned, those being traumatic really over time so those things don't go away, which would be so great if they just did.

They went away once.

Okay.

I got hit by a car. I was a pedestrian and it knocked me a half a block. And they said I never lost consciousness, but I was stuck in a cerebral loop. So I was saying what happened? And then they said, well, Paul, you were almost killed. You were hit. This is at the scene. You were hit by a 16 year old high risk driver doing 50 miles an hour in the center turning lane. Oh, and. And we're going to take you to the hospital. Oh, so what happened anyway? For about 24 hours.

Oh, there you go. Okay.

Except. Except they had to do surgery without anesthetics because of the head injuries and all this stuff. And so, so A couple days later, I come to conscious awareness and I'm laying there in the hospital bed and. And it's like I don't recognize anything. I know what a bed is. I know what tables are and food is and.

And.

But I don't know what country I'm in, and I don't know what year it is.

Right. I.

And I don't know one person who walks in the door and Kim. Actually, we weren't married. This is before we were married. But we were friends. And she walks in and just bursts into tears because I'm pretty wrecked. And she leaves. And I'm laying there thinking like, huh, Wonder who she is. She's cute. In my mangled state, you know. Right.

Probably not the ideal way to deal with trauma.

No. No. But here's what's the crazy thing. I entered for a few weeks, for a few days especially into one of the most peaceful times I had ever experienced. I had no baggage. I had no addictions.

Interesting.

Yeah.

I had. I had no memories of loss. I had no. I had nothing. You know, I only knew I had this one relationship. Jesus. That's all I knew.

Wow.

And Jesus was with me. It was going to be okay, but I had no baggage. And then as my memories started to chunk back in, you know, same with the baggage and, you know, so much for peace. You know, so.

Right.

But that was the only time up until.

Got it.

I really dealt with all my crap that.

Yeah.

That I had that sense of peace.

So you mentioned, though, that pornography was an issue. How else did you see. Because trauma becoming brokenness, you know, and that's the fruit of it. When it's undealt with. In our life. So how else did you see that trauma play out in your life?

Oh, disassociative. You know. I could compartmentalize unbelievably.

Right.

So. And I learned that first from my dad when he would. When we. He would come to take his. Take the wrath of God out on me. You know, I learned how to disappear, how to not be present.

Right.

And so that affected me well into my marriage where. Where if Kim was angry about something, I just disappear.

Yeah.

And I would like freeze inside, you know. And I also had. I didn't have a capacity to be angry, which was really interesting. I was angry. There's no question about the fact that I was angry. Right. And. And. But I. I had. It was too dangerous. I was a real. I was an inveterate liar. That is to me. I've come to realize that almost all Lying is a survival skill, right? And it points back to trauma of one source or another. So people don't lie to deceive you, they lie to stay safe. Yeah, so. So, you know, some lying is totally intended to deceive, but even that is, you know, woven into survival skills of one sort or another related to trauma.

Right.

And you know, the two things that I tried with my dad to stop him, one was to lie, right. If I could convince him that I wasn't guilty of whatever it was that he was punishing me for, or that I wasn't as guilty as he thought, maybe I could reduce, you know, the punishment. And the other thing I tried was to yell at him over and over and over, I'll be good. Those three words, I'll be good. I'll be good. I'll be good. And for, you know, a five year old and a six year old and a seven year old and an eight year old and a nine year old to yell I'll be good. And try to make that promise again, right. Just reinforces the reverse statement. Yeah, I know I'm bad. I know I'm bad. I know I'm bad. Yeah. And, and so anytime that my facade started to slip, and that's probably other, the other big piece of this is I, I built, I built a facade. And that's where the shack imagery comes from. It comes from we all have a house on the inside that people have helped us build and God has been involved with creating. And a lot of us, we didn't get good help, you know, and so that's the house on the inside that we store our addictions and we hide our secrets there. And we never invite anybody in there because we're just terrified that once exposed, whatever shreds of kindness and affection will evaporate. And so I drug out timbers from my inside house far enough away that I could build a facade that is, you know, like in the movies. It's a quarter inch piece of plywood, but it looks like a building, you know, and, and so I could. The thing about a facade is you can take that plywood and, and paint it as fast as you can, pick up people's expectations. And you learn to live from the outside in, not from the inside out, because you got nothing on the inside that's worth living out from. So you're constantly trying to create an identity based on people's. So if you're a performance addict, then all of a sudden performing is really critical and the responses to your performance dictates to you. How you feel about yourself at any given moment, right? So you're always at risk. Hyper vigilance. You're constantly. I mean, you spend a huge amount of energy keeping track of what's going on out here. You know, somebody has said that liars have to have good memories, you know, so you're. You have to remember everything you've said to who and when you've said it. And then, you know, if somebody starts punching a hole down through your little thin layer of perfectionist performance that covers up the ocean of shame, up comes the shame. And you have to then try to. Try to shade their view of what happened or who said what or whatever in order to justify yourself. And it's perfectionist performance that's the problem, right? And, and that's the power of secrets. You know, you keep all kinds of secrets. And, and the secrets. I mean, you are as sick as the secrets you keep. That's. That's the absolute truth. And the unexposed is the unhealed. And, and, and that's the last thing you want, like, to be exposed. I mean, that's like hell. And, and so you live a life hidden. You know, I didn't build a facade to try to deceive people. I built the facade because I thought that's what God wanted. I thought God wanted me to look like that. And I thought if I could just look like that perfectly, then I could win the approval and the love and the affection of other people. And so I was hoping that if I could just play the part perfectly, that maybe I could. The facade could become the house on the inside. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

And part of the problem is that secrets, and here's how this all works. We have these secrets, right? And they reinforce the idea that you're just a piece of shit. So you've got that as your underlying truth about yourself. And you're trying to act out here different than what you believe about yourself, because God's telling you that that's what he wants you to do. To be like. And the church is telling you. And, and, and so, and, and there's something in you that actually wants to be authentic and wants to be good and all this. And you don't. You don't tell anybody your secrets. I didn't tell anybody my secrets, man. I just. I just didn't go there. And so I am needing, you know, because if I tell you my secrets, then the little bits of light that you give me, you know, those moments of affirmation and kindness and the Nice things that you say and all that.

Right.

I actually need those to exist. But here's the problem. When you are affirming and you are kind, even though I can suck some life out of it, I really know. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because if they knew my secrets. Right.

Yep. It's a discounted version of value. Yeah.

I'm absolutely trapped by my secrets. And then you got a verse, like, on that day, I. You know, I. Whatever you've done in secret, I will shout from the rooftops. And you're going like, well, that's. That's the. That's the threat of humiliation.

Right.

And really, it is the cry of redemption. That is. That is the invitation to healing. Because the unexposed is the unhealed.

Yeah.

You know, the Holy Spirit has come to convict. The word convict is the word to expose. And it's like.

And what I'm hearing, too, Paul, is like, what's funny? Because to use your own language, when there comes that threat of exposure, I know in my story, that's when to God, I'm like, I'll be good. I'll be good. I'll be good. Right.

Or to my wife or to whoever the other person is, my boss, whatever. Give me another chance. I will do it perfectly next time.

Right.

So, Paul, one of the challenges we often find here at Pure Desire is that as people come in, there's a behavior in their life that they want to change or it's wrecking their marriage. But so many of them have a very difficult time seeing their trauma, because we've often been taught in our church background or Christianity that we forget the past, we move on. And so we have people all the.

Time saying, well, old things have passed away. Old things have become new.

They'll say, well, I didn't really experience much trauma growing up. Or, yeah, it wasn't that big of a deal. And they're just focused on fixing the problem. So it's like helping them connect. No, these things in your life mattered, and they created patterns and false beliefs, and we have to address them. And so as you think about that, how have you become comfortable in connecting, you know, your trauma and your past and being aware of the impact on your life and being able to bring it into your faith so that God can really bring about that healing and redemption. Because I'm guessing we have a lot of listeners that that's maybe still a part of their story. Like, I don't have that much trauma. And yet they do.

So how do we compare with other people's trauma? Yes.

Yeah.

All the time we go like, well, at least I didn't go through that, you know. And the thing about abuse and trauma is that you can put 10 children in front of the exact same abuse and you will have 10 lives go 10 completely different ways.

Yeah.

There will some that will just curl up and die. There will some that will just absolutely blanket out as if it doesn't exist and that impacts them too down the road. You know, for a longest time I didn't think I was actually sexually abused because I'm, I'm the piece of crap. I'm the boy.

Right.

And yeah, girls are sexually abused, but boys aren't sexually abused.

Yeah.

And so I had a disconnect there. I remember when Chad was six and he's our firstborn of six kids. And when he was, the day he turned six, I was. And I remember this clear as a bell. I'm sitting on the couch and he's got one foot up on, on the, the hearth of the fireplace and I'm looking at him and this thought comes through and it's. He's only six. How could it have been his fault? Right. And I'm, I'm absolutely projecting myself on him. But I, I don't even allow that thought to linger because it's just. But it did blindside me. So. So it's not about us getting to the place where then now God can help us. It's about the fact that God is involved in the movement of our wholeness right from the get go. This is a God who doesn't leave or forsake. And yet God is not going to heal you apart from your participation.

Yeah, exactly.

This element of personal agency is absolutely essential because God has too high a view of you to heal you without your participation. And sometimes I see my life at that time like a wall of locks. You know, they're all linked to little doors, but they're all intertwined. And I don't know that by working on one of the locks over on this side that when it frees itself, it's going to click a whole bunch of things over to this other side and open up a door that. And I don't know how these things. Only God who knows how you're wired and built and how you've been damaged, knows how to unwind that in a way that doesn't hurt you more. And that's going to take time. We would love, you know, Extreme Soul Makeover.

Right. Yeah. Get her done in a day.

Send me to Disney World and fix me by the time I get back, you know, or isn't there a red or a blue pill?

Right? Oh, gosh, yes.

And it's like, no, you're, you're too incredibly crafted for quick fixes. Yeah, it's not how it works. And you're not going to be healed. Apart from relationship. It's not going to happen. You are a fundamentally relational being and wholeness is going to be relational in nature.

Right?

Yeah. Yeah. I love your story about, you know, seeing your six year old and realizing the innocence of it. What it means to be a child. And what I've tried to share with people is to say, too often we project back our adult brain into our childhood memories. And the truth is, you know, when you're, when your parents got divorced at 7, you didn't have your adult brain to make sense of what was happening. You had a seven year old brain that maybe felt abandoned and lost and alone. And maybe it makes sense to you now, but I guarantee when you were seven it didn't make sense and your brain figured out a way to survive. And maybe that was become a liar or become, you know, whatever the many pathways that leads to. And if we can just recapture that of, oh yeah, I was a child and that was traumatic and because of what happened then it's still impacting me. And that's where I think some Christians can get over their churchiness and just go, oh, if it's still impacting me today, then it's really not in my past. It's still in the present because it's something that's not yet redeemed. It's not a part of where God has brought about wholeness and peace and joy and love. And so I need to be able to see that and acknowledge it so that my present, just like the illustration of the lock, so that my present can become a place of freedom and of peace.

Yeah. Or if I can reframe my damage to make it, you know, part of my ministry, you know, so that my workaholism now I can do it to serve God because I am so driven to perform. And so we can make it look really good, but it's just masking over the same old damage.

Well, and Paul, what you're talking about, I think runs up into this next question that a lot of us grow up with this spiritual paradigm that I think in so many ways limits our ability to what you're describing, that idea of wholeness, stepping into that wholeness where who we are and who we believe ourselves to be manifests in wholeness. Like, I know for me, I ran into a lot of paradigms that limited my ability to step into that. So for you and your experience, what were those paradigms or those Christian or church perspectives that you felt like limited your ability to step out of that brokenness and into wholeness?

Yeah. I not only had to go through a process in which my addictions like porn and the ugly ones, you know, porn is a. Porn is the imagination of a relationship without the risk of a real one.

Yeah.

And when you've isolated yourself, the heart still longs for intimacy and connection and contact, and porn's an awful substitute.

Yeah.

But what's the alternative for.

Right.

For those of us who are trapped inside of aloneness, you know, so not only did I have to deal with the issue of porn, I had to deal with my gold chained addictions, I call them, you know, like doing something great for God.

Right.

Now there's a gold chained addiction. Right. Because I'm a firstborn missionary kid, preachers kid, and, you know, I had hands laid on me and cursed when I was a little boy. And it took fully until I was 50 years old to be free from that. Wow.

Right.

And to not have to live under the jurisdiction of that kind of addiction. So there's a lot of things that happen within a religious context that are damaging. There's just no question about it. I mean, I love the community of faith. I do. And I'm not wild about institutional religious structures, you know, and, but the whole, you know, why in the name of authenticity, is it so difficult for people to actually live authentic lives? You know, Brad Jurczak and Bradley Jurczak and I just finished a novella called the A Crisis just to try to explore some of these issues of trauma and pain. Right. And, and, and the big question for us in that in writing the novella was is there anybody that's irredeemable and is there anybody that's unforgivable? Is there anybody that is so broken they're past the point of the potential for healing? And the answer is no. The answer is no. And, and so. But it's set up for performance. It's set up to hide your damage when somebody is exposed. We don't relate to them like family. We relate to them like an imposition to the vision.

Wow.

Right. And so every healthy family moves at the speed of the slowest. And family is the best model if you even want to have a model for communities of faith. Every healthy family moves at the speed of the slowest. So if you've got a family and a child is born into it who is autistic. That family will grind to a halt. And the resources that family and the relationships around that family will circle to heal the loss, to heal the hurt, to be present to it, to engage with it. Every institution moves at the speed of the vision and the mission and the leadership. And the slowest get shunted off because they're not productive.

Hmm.

Let's kind of turn the page into that for you. Like, how have you started to find. How did you find healing and redemption from that brokenness? Like, what did it look like for you to enter into the wholeness of who God really says you are?

A lot of layers to that. I had to deal with bad theology, including that God was against me because I was a sinner.

Right?

So the. So the. I believe in the fiery fury of God. I do. I believe that that fury is redemptive love. And that is opposed to anything in me that is not of love's kind. To quote George MacDonald. Right. This is not a God who will stand idly by while anything that is in you that is not of love's kind remains. Right. He is out to destroy that which is in you that is not of love's kind. Why? Because he loves you. He wants you to be fully human and fully alive. That's a big deal. Because a lot of us, we see retributive punitive judgment in God and it's not. There is. There is none of that in God. There is Him.

Can I step in real quick on this, Paul? I just read a book recently by a guy named Dane Ortland. It's a new book called Gentle and Lowly. And this for me was the paradigm shift in understanding how God views me. When I repent, I've done something wrong, I come to God, I repent. I want to change. I want to step more into that wholeness or that health. And his argument looking at a lot of the Puritans was actually, that's where God is at his best. God doesn't just frequent my brokenness like a hotel. He actually lives there all the time. And for me, I, man alive, I struggle with this all the time where I do something wrong and I feel like God's got his like to you, and you talked about it earlier, that I'm only able to step in front of you, Lord, because of Jesus, this guy over here who did something for me. And I always assume God has his arms crossed and it's just like, well, it's about time you Showed up, you know, when in reality, well, how long.

Is this going to last?

Right, right. But in reality, he is like, yes, you're here. Let's do this. Like, he actually, the language that Dane uses in that book is. It's literally what gets God up in the morning, so to speak, is just meeting you in the brokenness, extending forgiveness and love. And I feel like, for me, that was something that I don't think was intentionally communicated to me from a young age in order to damage me. I believe that it was. It was working to try to communicate what is believed to be true. But in reality, that kept me from ever wanting to bring any brokenness to the Lord, because why would I want to go to the grumpy guy in the sky with his arms crossed who's just going to scowl at me and send me back, do better next time? And so I just want to. So ashamed. I just want to enter that in that God, really. And this is what I'm experiencing personally, that God is excited to meet me in my brokenness. He's not excited that brokenness exists, but he's excited to meet me, his creation, his child, in that moment.

Let's clarify a little bit. It's not at the point of repentance.

Hmm.

It's at the point of union, which has been there from the beginning.

Right.

So he's excited about you, period. And he meets you in your brokenness because that's where you're at.

And the reason that you're bringing. Even bringing this up right now is because I have a hard time personally even saying that. That apart from my performance or apart from my. We're really getting into my theology here, but like my performance, my ability, my quickness to repent, my ability to. To change on a dime, whatever it may be. I very often attribute my value or God's attitude or tone toward me based on that completely. Which I think is what you're hearing.

Right.

Which makes you the Lord of the universe. Right. Because you can dictate to God God's emotional response, and it's exhausting on your performance. Yeah. Good luck with that. Let me know how it works for you. I can already tell you. Yeah, it sucks. Right. And. And the beauty of God's face is that it is always turned toward you. We're the ones that turn our face away. Have you seen Brad Jurczak's on YouTube? It's called the Two Chairs? Oh, my gosh. Take a look at that. Because he describes the one view of how, you know, when I turn Away, God turns away. And that's how the two chairs work, right? When I turn away, God turns away. And so I have to come back and repent. And then God turns towards me and when I sin, I turn, I turn away. And he turns away, right. But then he says, there's a whole different way of looking at this. I turn away, God moves over in front of me. I turn away, God moves over in front of me, right. And he just lays this out in a dramatic fashion and walks through the scriptures in terms of like, here's the story of Adam, here's the story of Moses, here's. Right. And it's all this. As opposed to this.

Yeah.

And so, so often in our language, even in this conversation, as, and I appreciate the authenticity of your response and that is that we, we think that we are so deserving of that judgment, we can't imagine that we are loved apart from our performance, you know, and, and it's, it's just like, how can, how. And God's like, look, I am out to destroy everything that has attached itself to you, that has covered over the diamond that you are. Yes, you are not a piece of. But you are so full of, you know, and, and so we're going to deal with that. But I know the truth about you. And that doesn't change. If God is ever disappointed in you, it means that God doesn't know you. Right. It is impossible for God to be disappointed in you because then God cannot be God. He would be stuck to expectations like human beings are. Expectations are just disappointments waiting to happen.

Yeah.

God doesn't have any expectations. He knows you. He doesn't dwell stuck inside of time wondering how this is all going to work out. If you can just get your act together.

Right.

That's not the character and nature of God. So again, you know, so to answer, to go back to your question, the one that you asked to change the page, which we haven't really done very well.

It's a good conversation.

Yeah. I had to make some decisions. I had to decide not to kill myself. Right. Because suicide for me was the last way to run away before hitting the bottom. Right. And people think suicide's hitting the bottom. It's not, you know, facing your craps, hitting the bottom, I mean, really facing it where you own the choices that you've done.

Right.

And you own the damage that you've done. I remember when you know, and you know my story, so you know that Kim caught me in a three month affair with one of her best friends and And I had to make a decision whether to face her or kill myself. And to face her was to hit the bottom in this situation. And the reason I know I hit the bottom is one is I never pointed a finger at her. I didn't make her part ownership in, you know, like, blame shifting. I was done with that. In fact, I was so exhausted from trying to hold the universe together and stay hidden. And we didn't make my adultery the new secret. That's another thing. We did not create a new secret out of the exposure. And so the first person that I had to tell was Kim's dad, who lived with us. And he lived with us for 17 years. He died on his 84th birthday in 2002. And this is 1994, January 4th. And that evening, I have to go and tell this man. And Kim's got five sisters and two brothers, so huge connected in interrelated family. And I have to go and sit with this man. And I wanted him to beat the hell out of me because I have defenses for that, you know, But I have no defenses for kindness or broken hearts or forgiveness. I don't. And he never, not once in all the years did he ever raise his voice against me. But I saw my words break his heart and leak out his eyes and down his face. And his name's Willard. We all called him Willie. So the Willy in the shack is Kim's dad. And. And so then I had to tell, you know, two of our kids went through it. The two oldest went through it with us at that time. And then over the years, I told the others, and that was always something that I needed to do. And. And. And I told Kim's family. I went and talked to face to face Kim's family and talked face to face to my family and talked face to face to friends. And all of it put one foot in front of the other. Another thing that I did not because Kim asked me to, because she wasn't asking me to do anything. She was just furious. And. And she was intensely furious for the first two years. And then it took a total of 11 years for Kim and I to heal. Wow. And that means to reconcile. That means so that she could trust me and she knew she could trust me.

Right.

11 years for that. But I reached and pulled the Yellow Pages off the shelf and looked up counselors and started with the A's and found my way to Agape Youth and Family Services and Milwaukee, Oregon, and. And made appointment with total strangers out of the Yellow Pages and went there and said, can you help me. It's the first time in my life I'd ever said that to a human being. Wow. Because, you know, part of the perfectionist Persona is that you don't need help.

Yeah, exactly.

That's a weakness. You know? And. And so. And then to give myself over to a therapist, I. I was so alone in my. In the story. I told myself that I had to pay somebody to be trustworthy.

Right.

And it was worth every. Scott became. Scott became.

For a lot of us.

Oh, my God. Scott became my therapist and then my friend. And we worked. I worked hard. I worked hard. And, you know, meanwhile, I'm putting one foot in front of the other. I'm. I'm working, doing my job. I'm. You know, every time I'm with Scott, I call Kim, and she just. So what? Whatever.

I don't care.

Which is totally okay. One of the things. One of the things I had to let go of was the idea that I could heal anybody else, let alone myself.

Yeah.

You know, my. My view was that if God's requiring me to act perfectly and righteously, there has got to be a way that I can heal myself without anybody else finding out about it.

Right.

You know?

Right.

And, I mean, it's too. Too humiliating, actually. It's humbling to be human.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

And. And to acknowledge the dust that we're made out of. And. And so it involved that. It involved then over the next years, deconstructing and rebuilding. You know, some of us. Some of us need to deconstruct because of our fragility. We need somebody like an art restoration expert who will come to the. The beautiful old stained wedding dress and begin to meticulously remove the stains from that dress. Some of us need bulldozers and wrecking balls. And I was the latter, you know.

Yeah.

And my journey was a lot of bulldozers and wrecking balls. But in the midst of it, there was an emergence of the sense of the kindness, even if very intermittently at first.

Right.

You know? Right. Because the turmoil was so intense.

Yeah.

I mean, it was really awful. I. I would never want to go through that journey again ever in my life. But I am grateful every day for it.

Yeah.

So Kim and I are the best we've ever been. And I haven't had a. I am. I have no porn addiction. I haven't for, what, over 20 some years. Wow. Nothing.

That's a couple things. Number one, thank you just for sharing all that. I know that's a lot. And I mean, from what I'VE heard from you. You're a pretty open book when it comes to it. But it's still not easy to enter that space again. So we appreciate that for sure. And I guess, you know, just consider the people that are listening. They're on the recovery and the healing journey. We have both people who are struggling with porn and sex addiction. We've also got betrayed spouses who are listening. What would you share to them? Are the. Maybe the two or three big things you learned in the healing process, that really difficult, tough process?

That's a great question. Porn was broken for me when I began to trust that the truth of my being was that I was pure of heart. And because I. When you're depraved and a total piece of you, you know, the last thing you think is that you're pure of heart. But I made in the image of God. I mean, I'm. I am made and crafted in the image. That's the truth of my being. The truth of my being is the image of God. Now, you know, it's not my. It's not my devastation. It's not my losses. It's not, you know, and. And so, you know, I have. I am pure of heart and I have a sound mind, you know, and so to begin to believe that, look, I am gentle by nature. You know, I'm patient by nature. And for me to say that I'm impatient is to just talk about the way of my being when I don't remember who I am in the truth of my being.

Right.

And so there were things like that, as one is, you've got to bring people into your world. I mean, you just have to. You can't. You know, Kim walked every day with her friend Mary Kay. Every day for the first two years. Sometimes twice a day, sometimes three times a day, but at least once a day. And she would. Kim would yell and cuss and, you know, get it out so she didn't kill me. God, yeah. And I've watched, you know, and different people are going to work through these things differently. But one of them was I blew up the marriage. Whatever our relationship was going to be, however our marriage, if it stayed intact was going to be, was going to have to be something different than what it was, you know, and. And so it was like, okay, so let's. Let's rebuild in terms of relationship and not, you know, not the other kind of baggage that comes all with the expectations of what that all means for the betrayed, who are usually the women, you know, not always, but almost Always be angry, you know.

Yeah. Feel.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

You know, And. And that's really important. That's part of God's furious fire.

Right.

But. But distinguish between forgiveness and reconciliation. Gosh, yes, it's a big deal.

Yes.

Forgiveness is for the sake of the victim. Right. Reconciliation is for the sake of the perpetrator. Forgiveness is for the sake of the victim in that if you don't let go of the pain in the person and the event and all of that, you will continue to carry. In fact, you will even begin to manufacture an identity as a victim, and you will poison your other relationships, because this will begin to define you. And Jesus, Peter says, you know, how many times do I have to forgive? Like seven.

Right.

And he's quoting Genesis.

Yeah, Right.

And Jesus quoting Genesis, says, no, 70 times 7. And Peter goes like, that's impossible. And Jesus says, you know, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain of unforgiveness, that's the context in one of the synoptic gospels of that passage. It's like, you have the power. You can say, I forgive you. Now, it may take like, 100 times or a thousand times the first day, you know.

Yeah.

Because you've got to deal with it just coming back up and coming back up.

And.

And in hard conversations about the ripple effects of the choices that were made, you are going to have to continue to let it go and let it go and let it go. Reconciliation is the rebuilding of trust. That is a journey. And, you know, and when it happens, it's a miracle, man. It's like, great. It's. It's bigger than raising the dead. And because raising the dead, the person's going to die anyway. It's just temporary. But this stuff's eternal and another way, another thing to define reconciliation, it is the rebuilding of trust. Right. And that means that the perpetrator has to own what they've done.

Yep.

That's called confession. Tell the truth. Just tell the truth.

Right.

And how many. I can hear the women going, like, yeah, if they'd only just tell the truth.

Right.

And. And so it's like, no, you confess and you tell it specifically. Kim wanted to know every detail about everything, and I told her. Wow. And it was devastating. Right. Because all of her stuff's going to come up. And, you know, so many times I'm in these conversations, and especially with women who've been betrayed and everything in their hurt is going to tell them that this is about them. There's no justification for adultery. There just isn't. Right. And, yeah, you may have to deal with some of your stuff and how it comes up and all of that, but that's not why this happened.

Right.

You didn't drive your husband to commit adultery. You know, it's. That's not how this works. And. And so me, as the person who's the perpetrator, I have to own everything that's a part of that, and I have to own the ripple effects and relationships that are hurt and. And. And have to step into it. I have to face the wind every day.

Right.

And so confess. Own it. Ask for forgiveness. It's like, will you forgive me? For what?

Right.

And it's like, no, name it.

Right.

I mean, and. And then as other things come up, name it again. And then the fourth thing is change over time. It takes time. And so, you know, a lot of confusion happens because, say, the woman who is betrayed thinks that forgiving means that she has to trust her husband. No, you don't. Right. You don't have to trust your husband. That has to be proven over time. And for me, I didn't go to counseling to fix Kim. I didn't go to counseling to fix our marriage. I went to counseling to say, is there any help for me? Right.

Yeah. Start with us.

Oh, my gosh. And every step I took, Kim wouldn't believe it. And I thought, wow, she's not going to believe anything that ever changes. And then I think, why should she?

Yeah.

You know, and so. And then I. It's like, I've got to do this for me. I can't do this for anybody else.

Yeah.

I can't continue to live like this.

Yeah, that's a good word. Really good. Gosh, Paul, there's so much good stuff. I mean, I. I think this talk all day. I know.

I know it like, we're just scratching the surface.

We really are. And this is, in all honesty, this is the type of conversation we have all the time. I mean, this is, you know, living into that wholeness, being honest about our story, being honest about our struggles, living authentically and vulnerably. And it's something that I've seen now and, you know, in the past, listening to your story that you model, and we just appreciate that, allowing people to see in, if you will, to what has gone on in your life. So you mentioned, Paul, this new novella, which, by the way, I read and I loved. I thought it was great. I listen to the audiobook for any of you.

Oh, isn't the Audiobook, Great.

I know. And those reading Nazis out there who like that doesn't count as reading. It's like, well, yes it does. I have two young kids. But other than this book, I mean, you can talk about it a little bit too if you'd like. But what do you have going on in your life? Anything that you want people to keep up with?

Oh, no, I don't really care about any of that stuff. All right. And you know, I'm working on other books and stuff, but I could be dead by tomorrow, so.

Sure.

The big thing for me and here for both the perpetrator and the victim, here is the best thing that I can tell you. Do the work of staying present. That is refuse to be a future tripper. And future tripping is a phrase that I've coined about how we create imaginations that are not present tense.

Right.

This is fear based stuff that pushes us out of the present. Right. Because all of a sudden you're going to start imagining what would life be like if I'm not married? What will life be like? How am I going to tell my kids? What am I going to say to them? What am I going to say to this person? What if they find out at work? What if you know.

Yeah.

And, and for the victim, it's like, what is life going to be like without them? What if you know, same things is all future tripping. And here are the words of Jesus. Fear not, I am with you. Take no thought for tomorrow. It's got enough issues of its own. Sufficient to the day is the grace thereof. You don't get grace today for things that don't exist. And by not staying present, you're attaching all kinds of things that don't exist to you.

Yes.

And the work is to stay present. That and that means you're able to respond to that which is actually in front of you. Not the imagination of what will they think and how will they react? And what am I going to say? And we're going to end up broke and living under Burnside Bridge in a cardboard box. And this is, you know, how are we going to divide up the house? And if those decisions are not needing to be made today, don't go there.

Stay present.

Yes, stay present. In the presence is where joy lives.

Right.

Because this is where God lives. God doesn't live in imagination. And a lot of our prayers are desperate pleas for grace for things that don't exist.

Yeah, right.

And it's like put one foot sometimes it's the grace of the minute. Sometimes it's the grace of the hour, but never the second. You're the second. But never more than one day.

Yeah.

The question you can ask yourself is, do I have enough today? And if you hear no, you're alone, call somebody. That's the point where you got. Yes, that's because the lie is you're alone. The lie is there's not enough. The lie is this is never going to work out. The lie is you're a piece of crap. The lie is you know all of these things. That's not the truth of who, who you are. Yes, you may have acted in really crappy ways. Yes, you made some really stupid, destructive decisions. Yeah, that's true. But the truth of who you are is you're this incredible creation that is made in the image and likeness of God. And that is how God relates to you. Not blind eyed. Yeah, but like, yeah, I know you're hurt. I know you've been hurt and in ways that you don't even know. And I know you've been figuring out how to survive in a world with the kinds of equipment that was given to you. And a lot of it doesn't work.

Yeah, right.

And so it's like, but the thing about it is if you don't stay present, the imagination will destroy you. That's porn. Porn is the imagination of something not present.

Yeah, that's so good, Paul, because I get guys all the time that'll say, you know that angst of like, I don't know if I can get free of this. I don't know if I can be free forever. And like it's going to come back.

And they're future tripping their process. Right.

And I'll ask that question, say, well, what about today? Today, can you be free of it? And like, well, well, yeah, I can do that. Like, okay, then do that today and tomorrow when you get up, meet God tomorrow and take through another day and don't worry about two years from now, like work with God today. And I think that advice of just being present in this current moment with the Lord and the strength he provides, like, we've lost that I think in so many ways. And so to come back to just, let's just be here together with the Lord and in community today and let tomorrow take care of tomorrow.

And don't. Yeah, don't future trip other people's processes either.

Right? Yeah.

Right. Yeah. So if you're the victim, don't future trip the perpetrators process. You know, don't try to figure out how long Is this going to take. And if you're the perpetrator, don't you dare future trip the victim's process.

Yeah.

Why are you still mad at me?

Right. It's been three weeks.

What do you mean?

Yeah, but it's so easy to fall into that because I think we have this expectation of ourselves that change should happen like that and just, boom, there we go. When in reality we want to get.

We want to get out from under the pain of it.

Absolutely.

We don't want to suffer.

Yep.

It's true.

Yep.

And so, you know, at some point, if we start blame shifting and. And doing that.

Yeah.

It's all because we've left the presence. It's. It's here and now that God whispers to you, I love you.

Yeah.

You're my child. That's why, fear not, I am with you. Right. Yeah, that's about. Now, my verse for 2020 is Hebrews 3:13. First time I ever got a verse in decades. I think God knows I get triggered by scripture, so they don't give me a verse.

I have a word for you.

Oh, no. Exactly. Thanks. Here we go. Yeah. So, but my verse is this. It goes like this. Encourage or enlarge the heart of one another as long as it is about today. So that you are not swept away by the deceitfulness of brokenness. Right.

Yeah.

And today is in all caps in the new American standard, because in the Greek it's emphatic. Right. Today only encourage one another as long as it's about today. Now I have a calendar. I hold it very loosely. It took a little virus to absolutely destroy it in 2020. And that's the beauty. You know, my calendar is not my identity. And my identity comes from this relationship that I have inside the grace of just this day. Only this day. This is how children live until they have to develop survival skills.

Yeah.

They're experts in living in today.

Good word.

Yeah, it's a good word, Paul. Just this time together, I mean, some of the things. I just want to summarize that trauma and brokenness is around in our life. It is something that we have to face if we really do want to step into wholeness. And again, we talk about this all the time. That our health or unhealth always impacts other people, whether we know it or not. And so there's so much at stake. And I love the language that you use, Paul, where it's not rock bottom is turning and facing those things. And so that's really what we want to encourage, is that those difficult areas, those things in your life that you know are unwanted, those are the things we have to turn and face and trust that God is going to meet us in that moment. So, Paul, thank you so much. Honestly, it was an honor to be able to meet you, spend some time with you. And just thanks for being on the.

Podcast and with you too, two Way Street. Love you guys. Thank you.

And wherever you're at on your journey, Pure Desire is here to help create a roadmap for your healing. If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual brokenness, go to PureDesire.org and let's start the healing journey today. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. Each week we put out new content to help you on the road to freedom and the effects of sexual brokenness. And lastly, never stop being healthy.