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I’ve been wanting another pair of converse for a while now. Found out today was tax free shopping! And drove by a shoe store advertising converse on sale. You can guess what happened. The shoes were marked down $5, used some of that discount to purchase and replace the laces with neon green ones. Also got Rebecca some captain america + wonder woman socks. That plus getting to spend time with all of our spiritual family at church, its been a good day.

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Trigger / Content Warning This post contains stories concerning my 15+ year battle with pornography addiction, if you do not want to read about such things / my personal story, I do not recommend clicking the “keep reading” link.

So, over the past 3+ months I have been attending a support group and learning about how to successfully battle my porn addiction. It has only been over the past year that I have even begun to acknowledge / realize that I have a problem as opposed to a bad habit that I just have been unable to break. One of the things that has opened my eyes to the fact is just how many times I have tried to stop and been unable to get away from it, countless times I have said “never again” only to be right back at it a week later. I wanted to relate to you the pain that it is to have lost control and been unable to stop yourself regardless of how bad you want to.

I had been introduced to porn by a not-so-good friend in between 8th and 9th grade. I am not sure if he knew what he was doing, what he was getting into, or if he was just as clueless as I was. I was socially awkward, had trouble making friends, didn’t have a clue how to relate to women or any idea of what a healthy sexuality was. Pornography (or an anime variation of it, Hentai) became my sexual educator. It was a horrible educator. I grew up thinking that women were highly sensitive / sexual, that you could have your way with their breasts and cause them to moan like it was the best sex of their life. Sex was supposed to be wild and uncontrolled; it was all about the sensations, pleasure, sounds, and the erupting orgasm. It was ultimately about me, my experience. . . me getting off to a woman.

As I consumed more and more porn it took more and more to excite me. I began to look to the wild world of hentai rape scenes. Women who are portrayed as an ordinary, perfectly normal female, who somehow despite the fact that they had sex forced upon them found the physical interaction so pleasurable that they were overwhelmed and couldn’t help but enjoy the experience. Women who had something happen to them that they did not want, who fought against it, yet could not prevail. They were portrayed as losing control of their bodies and gave in to the sexual ecstasy. It was filled with guilt and shame mixed with pleasure and desire. I found the idea attractive, a pleasure so strong that it could not be resisted; I mean after all, pleasure was a good thing, right? I never did connect the dots that I was watching rape until much later in life . . .

Fast forward to things I am going through today. Around 2010-2011 I had an encounter with Jesus Christ where I made a decision to take seriously my commitment to follow him and obey his commandments. Yet through years of pornography use, often multiple times a day, I have conditioned my brain to respond to women who fit a certain profile and have reshaped the gray matter. I have alarms go off in my mind telling me that the thoughts I have are wrong, yet I cannot control my brain and the arousal response going through me. I want nothing more than to be able to control when I am and when I am not aroused. I have begun to see things in a new light especially as I get older. I am 28 now, yet there are times when I see a 14 year old girl walking around in a push up bra that is probably doubling the size of her bust and a choker which I see as strongly associated with BDSM (though it is in the eyes of most people just something pretty and possibly sexy. . I’m not in other people’s minds all that often) and I find myself getting aroused. . alarms start going off in my mind, I realize “This is wrong! I am double her age and she is a minor! I refuse to be aroused by this girl!” I realize I have a problem. I realize I have to take action to correct my brain. I fully acknowledge my responsibility and the control I do have; I did this to myself, and I do have control over things like my legs and arms and can simply leave a situation if I must in order to break the internal conflict and reinforce to my brain that this is unacceptable.

Some days are better than others. Some days I can be surrounded by attractive women at work and ignore them busying myself with my job. Some days I can walk through Walmart without having an episode where I am aroused simply by sight. . . This makes me think of times with a friend where he made a comment about how a girl working at the register of a store was cute, and he meant no ill will. Yet I reacted to the comment by more or less saying that was inappropriate to talk about, because for me talking about a woman’s appearance was automatically sexualized and I couldn’t have that conversation without thinking about things like her breasts and sex appeal. It was the way that I had trained my brain. It was strange to him, and I never could explain it and how it seemed so inappropriate to me, and now I know why. So I go through my days trying to run away from situations where I am unable to control my body’s response to the women around me (arousal, not talking about wanting to assault them) in an effort to learn self-control, and other days I am blessed with stress free self control. I don’t want to write all of this to say in any way arousal is evil and must be avoided at any cost, but to have lost control of whether or not you are aroused? Take that as a warning sign.

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Reason #1 you should marry a waiter/waitress They know how to take orders

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So, believe it or not, Waffle House actually has decent benefits for an entry level job. (and by entry level job I mean something a teenager in high school could get, no training / experience required, etc.) For example, every 6 months you get a vacation check worth about a weeks pay (assuming you work at least 26 hours a week). If you work the grill you get a grill operator bonus based upon how much money your shift does in sales. Once you are with the company a year you can buy stock. Also at that year mark you get a $100 Christmas bonus every year. Its little things that add up until you can develop a career and a decent place to work while in college as they are flexible with your schedule.

Down side? They never close. Ever. Mandatory that you work on Christmas. People don’t show up to work on a fairly regular basis, which means possibly more hours for you, which you may or may not want. Its also fairly difficult to maintain 30 hours or more a week, its possible the store will get overstaffed and everyone will get reduced hours, etc. (that is going to happen to my store with people going on maternity leave, new hires to replace them, then they come back and we have too many employees for our available hours). One last interesting note. . . For most people, Waffle House is an option because they don’t drug test. I have heard of that being used as a selling point to others by employees. If our store got drug tested, Lord knows how many people we would have left.

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A person will never accomplish something by mere will power, by a declaration of intent devoid of meaningful action. If a person wishes to break an addiction they can not simply decide to remove it from their life and continue as if everything were normal. The declaration must be acted upon, something must be done to advance their purpose and will. Things must be thrown away, influences removed, at times outside help and support must be sought, plans must be established and carried out. Steadfastness and consistency is required. It is hard, it is work, setbacks happen, but the difficult things in life are often those worthy of our attention. I write this in relationship to my own struggles and thoughts this morning. The outside help that I need from God and other brothers and sisters in Christ. The team effort that me and my wife contribute to accomplishing God’s purposes for our lives and the benefits we reap from it.

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That time you have a dream about a magical pizza shop where they have you mix your own soda syrup out of dawn dish detergent bottles (and other various household products), the employees perfectly place your toppings with a cake shovel, and rectangular pizzas are folded over themselves into a Stromboli / calzone hybrid that is then wrapped in rich velvet. It was a weird dream.. but I really want to try and make a special kind of rectangle pizza that has perforations / joints that enable it to be folded on top of itself post baking.

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This is our refurbished thrift store bookshelf. I am kind of proud of it. This is after the second coat of polystain. This is also in our office which we are redoing with this here bookshelf as well as purchasing a used “executive desk” from same thrift store. Also, happy I married an awesome wife who came with a really cool desk lamp.

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So this queued post should reach your feed sometime on Sunday! Here is the Sunday edition of Tofius blog, the blog that is an ever changing work in progress. So many of the self-identified Christians in my area stress heaven so much when they go about trying to share the gospel and see souls come to saving faith in Christ.. The problem I run into is that the impression being left behind seems to be that the whole goal of the Christian faith is to get to heaven, which many people have a mistaken idea that heaven is some paradise where there is endless pleasures, no pain, no sadness, etc. Let me be clear, the goal of the Christian faith is not to get to heaven, the goal of the Christian faith is to know God, the person, and be reconciled to a right relationship with him. The purpose of heaven is to be with God forever. According to the Bible even the heaven that we know of now will pass away and be renewed, there will be a “new heaven” and “new earth” found in the book of Revelation. The only thing that remains the same is the triune God. What we get is not endless self-centered and personalized pleasures that can be jeopardized based upon someone else obtaining their idea of paradise, we get the eternal and infinite God, and he gets us. We get to know God and be known by God, to love the God who loved us first and experience the most intimate relationship possible, a creature relating to their creator who knows them inside and out. Loves them so much that he adopted them into his very family. Not based upon our own efforts, being good enough, or trying harder, but based upon his grace and mercy.

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Well everyone, I forgot to take before and after pictures but did a project today. Bought a used bookshelf for 12 dollars at a thrift store, its pretty beat up. Me, my dad, and Rebecca all had a helping hand in restoring this old bookshelf. Replaced the backing, the top board, sanded and in the process of staining it. Tried to give it a little TLC with some wood filler and wood glue. We spent close to $40 to restore it. . Seems kind of counter productive, but whatever, its a bookshelf with a story now! And the stain we are using is called “Espresso.” It couldn’t get better than this.

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One thing I have learned while working at Waffle House: If you ever try to sit down and eat something, or stop to clean something significant (such as shutting down and cleaning the grill and other various end of shift duties) while there is no one in the restaurant, 9 times out of 10 someone will magically appear to frustrate your efforts. And I don’t handle the stress of trying to cook someones order and be in the middle of scrubbing floors very well.

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Life Update

So, since I was last trying to be active on this here blog a lot has happened. Job wise? I am now an employee of Waffle House. I can do any of the (two) jobs that Waffle House has, apart from being a manager. So that is to say I am a Grill Operator and I have experience waiting tables, I do whatever they need me to do. I am going for my Master of Arts in Christian Studies starting this fall. Getting involved in a local church, for once one that I look forward to going to! I have also come to grips with many things, for example that I am a recovering pornography addict. I have a support group and am moving forward in life. Things may have been hard over this past year but it has definitely been a year of life changes. I am growing in my faith and learning how to live life without an addiction to cope with / medicate my pains / hurts / depression / stress. So this is the first post about life that I hope to making one a week at least (hopefully 2-3.. I still don’t want to flood peoples ages).

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So, once upon a time I was trying to use this blog to become a freelance writer. Was going to use it as a source of income, work for myself, it was going to be great. It was also a really crazy time in my life. Unstable. Wrote some short stories, was going to use Tumblr as a platform of sorts. Now its been a solid year since I have used said blog. A lot has changed in me life. About to use this blog just to post random life related things. See you out there internet!

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I had just done something that I could not bear. The only thing that seemed to be able to motivate me and do those things that I knew I should be doing was guilt, possibly self-hatred, wanting to wash away the stain, to get away from it forever, wanting to not be the person I know myself to be. So I am washing dishes and cleaning the house. Alone.

“Can we be uncomfortably honest for a minute?” I said to no one in particular.

“Sometimes I can’t live with myself. Sometimes I wish I could just die, literally. I want to go home. I want to go home and be in heaven. I want to be with Jesus, I want to be free from sin forever, to be rid of those things that hurt me and hurt others. Sin which hurts the ones that i love. Sin which makes me question if I really love them, because if I really loved them I wouldn’t have done it.” I wandered off to grab more dishes from the living room and fill the sink again.

“I really do think that one thing that drives men to suicide, not the only thing but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a leading cause, is that they can’t live with themselves. These men appear successful at times. They might have a job, enough money to get by, even to splurge and get ahead. Perhaps they have a wife, children, or pets. One thing they don’t have? Integrity. They do things when no one is around that they can’t live with, and they certainly can’t tell others. Or maybe it bothers them that they can live with it, that it doesn’t bother them like it used to. And they are isolated, all of this trapped inside, unable to tell another soul. I harden myself cold so that no one will notice, so that I don’t have to feel it and won’t hurt anyone around me. Yet there is one person I can never escape, that is always present even when no one else is around. This is the one person that I can count upon, yet this is the one person that I have hurt the most! And that person is God.”

I’m picking up dirty clothes, folding blankets, putting away boxes of clean clothes that have been sitting around for a week folded and just waiting on me. “But no one talks about this. That is why the internet is full of it. We don’t trust each other, or maybe it really is that we can’t face it, or no one just cares enough. So we tell uncounted numbers of unknown faces through pixels of light and data streaming for thousands of miles. We have to get it out somehow. The one place that you would think would be a safe haven, where people can talk and find healing. . . well, it is just as cold as me. Yes, I’m talking about church. Unless its a health concern that you are asking for prayer for everyone keeps their traps shut. No one talks about Jesus apart from sanctioned events where it is expected, like Sunday School or from the pulpit. No one really talks about their pain, or even the good things that they see God doing. No one really talks, we are just moving mouths.”

“So, frankly, I am tempted to go to those who are most referred to as weird, strange, or crazy. Yes, those Pentecostals. Why? Its not actually them that I want, I know I probably won’t stick around. No, its God that I am seeking. I at least know that they will pray for me, they are known to pray for what I hope are hours at just one sitting, or at least ten minutes.” By now I’m picking up and tidying the living room. “I’ve driven past a Pentecostal church many a Sunday and they seem to stick around that church building for hours after us Baptists have left. I have often wondered what they are doing. I hope it is more than just speaking in tongues, because I don’t know who is faking it and who is for real. Honestly, I just hope that they are praying.”

I am going to have to leave soon to pick up my wife from work, need to get up and change into pants and a polo to try and get a second job. “I hope that they are praying, because God is the only one that can change me. I think God might be the only one who really cares. I know I’m being a little harsh, I know that there are others who care, but God really is the only one who has the power and authority to change my heart. God is the only one who can make me holy. God is the only one who can help me live with myself, let alone truly live with others. Really talk to them. It scares me though. Its sad that talking to people is more terrifying than talking to God, I am worried about their reaction more than I am about God’s. I trust God to not leave me, I think they would leave me. Yet God is described as an all consuming fire, His glory is like the sun. I can’t handle the sun, I’ve tried looking at it, it’s too much for me. Yet, God is so much greater, so why should I think that I could walk into His presence and ask for help? Ask to be changed? Seriously, I would be consumed in an instant and be no more. I know the answer to that though, its the blood of Jesus that makes it possible. The blood of Jesus that makes me clean and has granted me entrance into His throne room.”

“Maybe I should just spend hours in prayer alone. Maybe I should go to a Pentecostal service and see just what they are doing. Whatever it takes, I need to have a real, supernatural encounter with God that is going to change me. My efforts have proven that they aren’t enough, and these 30 second prayers aren’t working.”

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So over the weekend I have been out of town visiting family due to various happenings and some family needed to be visited as I haven’t seen them in 8+ months. In other news I have been talking with some friends about novel writing and my desire to write a dystopian novel! Been doing a little brainstorming about that. I know I want to do a Christian take on a dystopian novel, and I know I want to do it very well. The first dystopian novel I ever read was 1984 by George Orwell and I was hooked. I know that dystopia has been handled in various was and has a multitude of possible endings, but I want to stay true to the pattern that I felt Orwell used (could be totally wrong) but generally speaking I felt that his was a novel that started bad and ended bad in order to attempt to crush every ounce of hope you had of things turning around in the novel in order to make a point. In the spirit of dystopia, I was looking for some feedback as to some of your favorite novels and just why you liked them so much?

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Doctrine Tuesday v1

Today I am focusing on the doctrine of the indwelling Holy Spirit. You see, the Bible teaches that once a person has surrendered their life to Christ and been forgiven of their sins the third person of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit, comes to literally dwell in our bodies and be our constant helper (among other things). I want to focus on what the Bible has to say about this and touch on how God has chosen to make his presence (and himself!) known in the world in which we live (God is not simply hiding himself and condemning people for not believing in what they did not know).

Jesus speaks of sending the Holy Spirit to believers in this manner,

“If you love Me, you will keep My commands. And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever. He is the Spirit of truth. The world is unable to receive Him because it doesn’t see Him or know Him. But you do know Him, because He remains with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I am coming to you. ... If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word. My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. The one who doesn’t love Me will not keep My words.” John 14:11-18, 23-24a

In the same conversation with Judas (not Iscariot, there were two men named Judas among the 12 apostles) Jesus describes sending the Holy Spirit to be with believers forever. Describes the Holy Spirit as dwelling in the believer, and also says that the one who loves Jesus will also be joined by Jesus and His Father. You get one, you get all three, the fullness of the Godhead, all of God. The believer who has the Holy Spirit has the presence of God with them at all times, dwelling in their very body. Why? What is the point?

The Holy Spirit is at work in believers and in this world for many reasons. He comes to convict the world about sin, about righteousness (that it does exist, is possible), and judgment. That we are sinners, committed wrong. We have fallen below the standard of righteousness, and there will be consequences or judgment for our actions. The Holy Spirit comes to lead believers into truth, to receive instruction directly from God. This is all found in John 16:5-15, teaching directly from Jesus.

There are many more reasons, but only one more that I am going to cover here. So much has been in said in the book of 2nd Corinthians, if you want to learn more I would recommend reading it, I will be pulling a few tidbits out of it to make my case. 2 Cor 2:15 says that believers are the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. This tangible presence of God among believers and non-believers. Chapters 3 and 4 speak of the work of the Holy Spirit transforming lives through the message of the gospel, speaking of this power as a treasure, a treasure in clay jars. The jars is a reference to the believer’s body, and we just clarified the treasure in the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, certain that God is appealing through us. We plead on Christ’s behalf, “Be reconciled to God.” He made the One who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 2 Corinthians 5:20-21

What is the big deal about the Holy Spirit dwelling in man? Well, other than the fact that supernatural deity is inhabiting people, God is making himself known to the world. Believers are called to be the tangible presence of God in a suffering world, for God is with them and in them and empowering them. God, through believer’s lives, work, and proclamation of the gospel in order to redeem the world. Take what has been corrupted, twisted, dirtied, harmed in the most despicable kinds of way, and restore it to a glorious state of perfection. As a Christian I, and so many others, miss the mark. We lose the fact that we have a calling to make God known to the world, that thanks to his mercy and gift to us we have been made new, we have his presence with us at all times, and we need to go make him known. We need to do his work. We need to be moved by compassion, unable and unwilling to stand by and do nothing in the face of evil and suffering. There are a lot of people out there who call themselves Christians and are anything but, who do not have God walking with them day by day, and are a mockery to the faith. There are also many believers out there who have been caught in a trap, by their own choice(s), and need to get real with God, repent, and do the work they were created for.