I didn’t have a bad childhood. We had enough, not always abundant resources, but enough. I grew up in a Christian home, my parents loved science, loved education, loved Jesus, and the only way I can quickly describe my parents is christian hippies who never did drugs.
I was a flamboyant child. I was expressive and loud, and I loved (and still do love) to dance. I was never interested in sports. Martial arts baffled me. I wanted to dance.
And as I got older, I learned from the culture around me that me being so expressive, me using my hands and gesturing so much, I learned: Oh, that made me rather feminine.
I love art, and stories, and I love the different ideas behind art. I love the emotions that each art form tries to express and capture in different ways and and I love understanding the ideas behind each medium of art. And I love what each medium is good at, and appreciating what their limitations are.
(never from my parents) but I learned from my Culture, (it was rarely explicit) Oh, that must mean I’m gay.
After all, someone who likes to sing, dance and be dramatic, is so expressive, is ‘feminine’–as a guy, that must mean I’m gay. That must mean I like other men.
it didn’t help that I had a lot of difficulty relating to other boys. I had a lot of difficulty emotionally and socially connecting to other boys. It was always easier to talk to girls.
I was very fat as a child. I was fat for a good chunk of my adulthood.
When I was little, there was a photograph of me, my father, and my grandfather. As a joke, I put my hand over that photograph to show our stomachs, and I said, “Oh, look, the family resemblance.”
my father was honest with me about mortality.
He told me that there would come a day when he would die and he would no longer be here. He would be in heaven, and that he would and that I would see him again, hopefully, but that there would be a time when he wasn’t here, and then there would be a time when I wasn’t here anymore.
I was very upset, and I remember asking, “then, what’s the point?” what was the point of life, if I was going to die anyway, no matter what I did?!
he told me something that I didn’t understand then, but it did make clear to me my mission,
My dad told me I was an incredible person, and there was someone who thought that I was so incredible that they were willing to die so that that incredible person that I was could be protected and preserved and could live. and that that man was Jesus. Jesus did die, he did come back, but my job was to find who that incredible person that God made me to be was.
That was my job.
Then, when I was a teenager and puberty started to hit with that bomb of hormones,
Without getting too explicit, I’d look at these videos and photos of bedroom activities, and I wouldn’t think of the women (the women didn’t matter to me), but I’d look at the men, and some part of me would think, “I wish I was like that. I want to look like that.” I wanted what those guys had in those moments, I wanted to look like those guys.
and some part of my brain became obsessed with that, I struggled with an inability to connect to other men, to other boys. Talking to girls was easy. I could connect to them. I could relate to them. Men became this, foreign people that I was supposed to be part of, but could never really connect to. I always knew I was a guy. There was never really any question there. I liked being a guy, but I always wished that I looked different. I always wished that I had a better body. I wished I could connect to some group of guys, to have some male friendships. I had male friends growing up, but they weren’t good, like, after mid-elementary school the only reason we spent time together was our mothers had become friends more than us. We tolerated each other.
By my early 20s, unconsciously some part of me decided that I would always be fat, and there was nothing I could do about that. I would never look like that. I’d never be skinny, or have big muscles, or be strong, or fit. I’d never have that kind of body, and maybe it would just be better to touch that kind of body instead of having one.
being able to interact with that kind of attractive male body seemed more interesting, more enticing, more mysterious, and attainable than living in a body like that. For some part of me it seemed more interesting doing bedroom activities with a male body than with a woman.
And that is where,
As a teenager, when I was in bed, something would sit on the bed. And there were times
when I saw something actually sit on the mattress, and I could see the sheets actually go down, as though something were sitting there, or something were laying next to me or rolling over my feet or pressing against my side. I could feel it on the mattress. I could feel that something was there, but there was no physical thing or person there. I wasn’t abused or assaulted as a child. I felt a lot of fear around this. Growing up, the few times I didn’t pray before sleep, my dreams would be disturbing.
It was also at this time, early adolescence, I developed an addiction to pron, and self pleasuring. At the time I thought it was “normal”. I became a hedonist, only seeking pleasure and what felt good.
I knew from a young age, my job was to find the person that God made me to be.
I went through college,I thought I had found who that person was. I thought that God made me gay. I thought that I was a very artistic person. I thought I was very feminine. I got very involved in my local LGBTQ community in college. I started to develop a drag persona. I’d always tried to date with those in the LGBTQ community who were part of the church, trying to stay obedient to God the best I knew how, which mostly went nowhere. The few times I didn’t, it ended very badly.
Finally, over the course of 2021-2022, I finally actually dated someone outside of the church. I hadn’t actually been attending a church for over 10 years at that point, though each night I did read a little bit of my bible. I felt desperate, lonely, afraid, isolated, and so I tried to fix that by finding a guy to date. A mutual friend introduced us, and we started dating. We dated for about 7 months, which was my longest relationship at the time. I’d had some girlfriends, and I’d dated another guy before.
But in the process of dating this guy, I became much more sexually active in a way that was completely ungodly.
At this time I was starting doing a lot of worldly sexual things, with an increased number of partners with my boyfriend’s blessing. I began to wonder if I wasn’t just gay, interested in men, I began to question other things too, about my interests. I knew I preferred kinky stuff, but as I actively began to explore, I began to wonder how kinky? Because of my boyfriend and the things he asked me to do for him, I began to wonder if I might enjoy things with younger people than myself. I never harmed anyone, I never watched anything illegal, but the idea started to blossom, me interacting in perverted ways with minors.
I also began to experience with much more intensity, something that had been going on since my early teenage years. The things, spirits, that interacted with me when I went to bed, that experience also got WAY worse. My addiction got actively, progressively steadily worse, beginning to interfere with my life.
After I accepted the breakup, I remember praying to God, just grieving, and being so upset, and lonely. I felt so torn up inside. I had been so hurt, so may seeds and thoughts of confusion, doubt, self hatred, self disgust. Also so much lust and sexual perversion (not getting more explicit than that.) While grieving the loss of this relationship with this boyfriend, I was still praying to God, talking to him, just pouring my heart out. I was crying during this. I was weeping, very sad. Holding myself on the floor. And during this, I was listening to and for God. I gave God time and room to speak to me. And God had a response. I wouldn’t have said it this way before, but God showed me a vision.
He showed me flashes of where I would go, he showed me the life that I would lead, if I continued on the path I was on. different points in my life that were coming forward, like some of these things were, five years, 10 years down the line, and I could see just glimpses, little snapshots of what they would be
If I continued like I was:
There are all the sexual partners I wanted,
there was money,
there was influence and power.
there was me having something like a body that I wanted.
Me walking into large mansions for parties that I looked forward to and enjoyed
But there was also abuse,
There was me being the abuser,
me being a manipulator.
Me having slaves, (probably willing, the kink community being what it is)
Me having an entire network of people who wanted similar things to me.
Me torturing, hurting men of fun.
Me being physically hurt for my own enjoyment.
Me getting notoriety, maybe a little fame.
And there was the tiniest glimpse– just the smallest hint– of me hurting small boys.
and sex, a lot of sex.
Because at that time, sex was my God. I wouldn’t have said that at the time, but it’s true. That was what I worshiped. that physical action and the emotions and the spiritual impact that it could have. Sex was my god.
After God showed me this vision, he said, “but I won’t go with you”. Record scratch,
And I just mentally stopped. he said, I will, but I will not go with you. And everything just stopped in my brain. I stopped crying, stopped weeping, stopped moving, maybe stopped breathing, I don’t know.
Jesus had been with me every step of everything I had done and everything I had been through. And I know for a fact I’d done some very stupid stuff, some very offensive stuff to him, things that he was very not pleased with me about.
and yet, here he was showing me a path that was giving me everything I had ostensibly wanted, everything that my actions dictated that I wanted, everything that my thoughts circled around and that I secretly desired,
but he would not Be with me. I couldn’t go down that path. I couldn’t go down a life without Jesus. I just I couldn’t.
He was offering me everything that I thought I wanted, but it wouldn’t have him– but he wouldn’t be there. And I just couldn’t. One of the problems that I knew about the life that I was pursuing is just how everything started to feel empty.
It was just empty. It was a few moments, maybe in like just a few hours. But there was no deep knowledge. There was no appreciation for the who I am on every level, everything was so shallow and so empty.
That was the turning point when I knew things had to change. I didn’t know how, but I knew I couldn’t go down that path.
I’d had mental snapshots like this before, and I followed it, into this life worldly life of that celebrated sex without relationship, without God. Without Jesus, — and I despised myself, I felt disgusting. Finding a partner for sex that made me feel like only a piece of meat was an improvement in how I saw myself.
This was now in early-ish 2022, I was going to church regularly by this time. At the time, a friend from work had recently gotten me on Tiktok, and I started posting a little bit of some of my dance experience.
I was scrolling through tiktok one day And I remember seeing a post that said something like, ‘Oh, this is about to be your time. God is about to send you flying. You’re about to start soaring.’ And I don’t know if I said it aloud or just in prayer, but I remember telling God, “wow. I don’t know if this is from you, but I hope it’s true.”
For the next Two weeks! I continued scrolling Tiktok for multiple hours a day,sometimes two, sometimes up to four or five hours a day. And every. single. message! was the same of encouragement.
that I am blessed,
that God loves me,
that I am chosen, that
that my time is almost here,
that I’m about to start soaring,
that the blessings are about to start coming.
I started to feel hopeful, and encouraged. I began to feel like there might actually be hope in my life again, a small glimmer of light. For 2 weeks straight, and I started to believe, maybe this is from God.
And in one of these videos from one of these creators, in the comments I actually mentioned this issue with the things interacting with me in my bed, and that it had been going on for Years at that point. And she said, Oh, it sounds like you need a deliverance ministry. She gave a bit more detail, but that’s what I needed.
I had never heard that in my church experience before. I grew up in the church, but not really ever addressing spiritual warfare. And I finally knew what to look up. I finally knew what to look for in my area, and I found it. I contacted them, but the soonest we could meet was several weeks away!
It was getting so bad, I felt so desperate. I felt like I couldn’t wait. I needed something NOW! So I went to a psychic that a friend recommended in the meantime. For me going to the psychic was always a stop gap measure for the things around my bed. I was terrified to sleep, my addiction was beginning to get out of control. Everything was spiraling.
At the time, it felt like the psychic was helpful. But all it did was create different kinds of problems for me. (like trying to milk more and more money from me.) Also, planting suggestions that only caused conflict and division between me and the person God planned for me.
For me going to the psychic was always a stop gap measure for the things around my bed.
But because I wanted lasting help, I came to the family. I came to my family, which is the church. always has been, always will be. As I told my last boyfriend the first night he slept in my bed- after I prayed, both for me, and him, he said something sorta mocking, or disparaging- and I said, “I know who owns me.” Those were my words. I belonged to the Most High God, I did then and I still do now.
it was a sozu ministry that I went to, and for me it was so helpful. It completely redirected my life. It helped me get in tune with actually hearing the Holy Spirit, and I got very passionate.
after the sozu ministry, like a day or two afterward, God and I had a sit down talk, like a “sit down, we need to talk.” Which I did initiate, but— the whole Trinity showed up, and we had a conversation where, for the first time, I actually got very vulnerable and very blunt, sexually honestly about what I wanted—or what I thought I wanted at the time.
At the time I thought I was gay, I’d identified myself that way, as a gay Christian , for more than a decade. and I finally actually spoke to God about what I wanted. And I heard His response to me.
It wasn’t in words, but a very strong emotional response; it was like a download and emotional impression of extreme vehemence. The only translation I have for that response to me, in the language that I had at the time, the nearest approximation I can make, is “I will not share you with another dick.”
I was shocked. So surprised. Like, I knew all the justification and rationale behind being LGBTQ Christians. I’d been a gay christian for over a decade! That shook me.
It wasn’t until later I realized that sex had been my god (the highest purpose, greatest good, and largest pursuit of and in my life at that time), and I was talking to God about how I wanted to worship a different god. (I didn’t think of it that way at the time.) Considering that, His response was very restrained, also dealing with me exactly where *I* was at that moment. Also, that response was incredibly considerate.
When the King of the Universe tells you “NO” you accept it and move on. I got very honest with God, possibly for one of the first times in my life, about where I was emotionally, about what I was looking for, what I needed. At that time, I was working a legal, non sexual job, that involved a lot of touching people, without getting touched by them. That is not a natural condition for human beings. I do not recommend that for a single person, it does very wonky things to the brain chemistry. I was seeking connection, but needed regular touch, hugs and pats on the arm fully qualify. Strangely, physical intimacy was easier to find.
A bit of context: my best friend who I’d known for 13 years at that time, (she was the person I trusted enough to be the first person I told that I thought I was gay), the last woman (besides my mother,) whom I kissed more than a decade prior. A year before this conversation with God, I had offered her, my best friend, to move in with me. She’d have her own bedroom. I’d have my bedroom. She said, No. That year where we were not together was a very bad year for both of us.
God told me that this woman, my best friend, was my partner for life.
My response was, “what?!”, a few weeks later, when I told her this, her response was, “what?!”
When I told my mother this, her response was, “what?!” In the cosmic replay on Judgment Day, I assume that’s probably going to be an interesting splice a bit of comedy, because I’m pretty sure we all said it in exactly the same tone.
But she was to be my partner for life. The day after God and I had this heart to heart, due to some very unusual circumstances, she quit her job, which resulted in her getting kicked out of her apartment in about a month and a half, which meant that she had to move in with me. Which meant I wasn’t alone.
This beautiful woman is my best friend, and has been now for a decade and a half. And to me, she’s my wife. When God tells you “love her like Christ loves the church”, those are instructions to husbands. We are not yet married before God, and I do not have a marriage bed. I am not living in sin. We live under the same roof. We take care of the same dog. We deal with the same household chores. We’ve handling finances. There is no marriage bed.
And you might say, “oh, living with your best friend, that must be so easy.” – Ask newly weds what it’s like when the honeymoon phase is over– except I never got no honeymoon!
for someone who once worshiped all the bedroom activities, and is now with someone who is entirely uninterested in the action at all,
I did not handle it well initially, but I also knew I didn’t want to do such activities outside of marriage. I had played with that fire, and learned many of the different ways it can burn, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, without the commitment and communication.
It was challenging at first, really difficult. But I’ve come to appreciate God’s wisdom in this amazing woman He’s allowed to be in my life.
After we’d been sharing a house for a year and a half (living together tends to mean something different), she gave me her grandmother’s wedding ring, saying, “Martin, if we ever get married, this is the ring you’re going to use to propose to me.”
Mentally, I was screaming for joy!– that is, after I stored that ring in a very secure place. I still have that ring, which I will say certainly takes the pressure off.
I’m not gay,
I’m not straight.
I am a child of God.
My identity, who and what I am, does not have to do with what reproductive organs I most desire to play and interact with. Which, when you think about it, is exactly what sexual identity is.
After a lot of prayer and reflection, I view that identification as a product of the world. My identity doesn’t come from me, it comes from who God says I am, what God says I am. That’s something no one can ever remove from me.
I don’t condemn or judge someone if they identify as gay or bisexual or asexual or anywhere on the LGBTQ spectrum. Ok, that’s not my job. My job is to love you, and pray for you. What I do, what you do about it matters.
For most of my adolescence and all of my 20s, I was addicted to pron and self pleasure. I had a lot of emotional baggage to unpack, and I’m still unpacking, regarding male friendships, my father, physical fitness, allowing myself to express and feel my own emotions, understanding my own emotions.
but God has graced me with a partner for my life, who is my best friend and has been for more than a decade. God pointed me in the direction of people who are helping me build the body that I want and that I can achieve. He gave me the tools and pointed me in the direction to help with my addiction, to cure my addiction, to get down to the reasons why I used that as a way to medicate and numb my pain. And yes, there is True freedom from that addiction, that lust. True healing is possible.
I remember when I was in middle school that there was a, what I now know was an Dart of the enemy. This picture a vision that came to me. it just appeared in my head, out of nowhere, with no context about a father, and uncles, and a child, a boy, that man’s son. They were going camping, and then I didn’t know exactly what happened, but in this scene that popped into my head, it was like the picture goes black and all I knew was the boy screaming in pain, and I knew that sexual things were happening and the boy was begging for his dad to stop. And to be clear, this didn’t happen to me or to anyone I know.
for years, that’s stuck in the back of my mind. For years I wondered what kind of pervert would have that story just pop into their brain. What kind of disgusting pervert was I that would think up something like that. And during the peak of dating this last boyfriend, I started to wonder and think, maybe I’m not just gay, maybe I’m attracted to minors. But that’s a lie. It is a filthy, disgusting, perverted lie, and it is not true. But again, that is the path I was on. I know where it was going. I know the person I would have become. And Jesus saved me from that. He completely changed the course of my life. Taught me who he made me to be.
He’s still teaching me who he made me to be. I have occasionally, for small glimpses of time, met that man that I was made to be. There were a few months where I knew him, and I was shocked. I loved that man that God made me to be.
There was a period of 4 months when God completely removed my addiction, and I finally got to meet the man God made me to be. I am creative. I’m flamboyant, I am passionate, I am curious and eager, and I have so much vitality and life and passion. And so much more drive to do things than I ever dared imagine. I did not renew my mind. I wasn’t doing anything with my addiction anymore, but I still thought the same. I still read the same things, listened to the same music, same youtube channels, played the same games. but during that time, I was able to produce enough poetry that I was writing three blogs for four months, most of which were getting a post out three times a week. 3 posts a week, across 3 different blogs for 4 months straight, and I still had extra. Nothing got edited, but the sheer volume of creative output boggled my brain. God completely rekindled and ignited to a roaring fire the creative passion that I had when I was younger, And that I had just almost entirely let die, God renewed me and brought me back. Brought me back. He resurrected me. He renewed me. I am not that same man. That man is dead. The man that I was is dead.
And to be clear, I didn’t burn out at the pace I was going, I didn’t do the work to change my thinking, to address the lies I believed.
One of the things I used to do was spend an inordinate amount of time regarding the kinky stuff, was how to reshape someone’s mind and reshape a person’s thinking, regardless of if they were doing or experiencing that reshaping voluntarily. (That version of me was not a kind person.) and destruction is far easier than rebuilding. But I spent way too much time thinking about how to rebuild someone into a very sexual thing. Destruction is far easier than building things.
But one of the things that I’ve learned is that the enemy can only lie and trick. He can only take what you allow him to take. When you’re in Christ, and stand on the Word of God, he cannot take anything. Part of what God is teaching me currently is how to take every thought captive and make it agree and then reflect the image of Christ. Because that is a skill. It’s not just an instant thing that happens. It takes persistence. It takes consistency. It takes practice to do. I’m getting better at it, though I’m not perfect at it.
I’m beginning to realize that building people up is part of my call, my purpose, that is part of what I’m put here to do. And the enemy tried to twist it, tried to twist that desire into something deeply disgusting and dark. And that’s part of what the enemy does, if he can’t destroy it or take it, he’ll twist it.
God is teaching me how to do that through and with him, how to build people up. Partially in how He’s building me up. Sometimes that requires first pointing out and knocking down the falsehoods. when a bone is broken, but it doesn’t get ‘set’ or positioned correctly, Sometimes the only way, when you finally get that bone to an actual doctor, even if it’s already started to knit together, or it’s been years, sometimes that bone has to be re-broken in order For it to be set, and then heal, correctly.
That’s not fun, but it’s so much better. But you have to be willing to actually go through with it.
God, through a miracle healed and reset all my emotional pains, but I didn’t do the work to make sure they were all set correctly. Meaning I didn’t renew my mind at that time. I didn’t understand what that meant. When Jesus called Lazarus from the tomb, Jesus is the one who resurrected him, but Jesus then told others to unwrap Lazerus from all the burial cloth.
That’s when God pointed me towards an addiction program, a very intense one. It felt like going to the gym for your emotions.
But, I finally got to meet him. I got to meet the man God made me to be. He got recovered up with sin, and lies, but now I know he’s there, it’s not just something I hope. I work, with Christ, to bring him back to the surface, and it’s only because that guy is here, I’m becoming that man, that I’m able to do this at all.
Hello.
I’m starting to meet this version of me more regularly now. I’m a funny, creative guy. At least I think I’m funny. I still struggle with a lot of anxiety around people. I used to think I was really introverted. I’m realizing I’m way more social and extroverted than I ever thought, which I’m still not entirely comfortable with. I’m getting there. But God alone knows what the future holds, and I don’t know the ride he’s going to take me on, but I know it’ll be a fun Safari. It’ll Be a fantastic adventure.
God bless you.
Martin Write 