Open Text: Don’t let the name scare you. Everyone can divide up their life story into multiple threads. This is just one thread of many in my young story. Enjoy
–@NicksEdwards.
There is still a small room in my heart occupied by that animal that longs to be desired. Before I knew Jesus that animal made claim to a larger plot of land. This animal was a self-proclaimed ruler, and in many rights he was. If ruler-ship is defined by a measure of land, then by golly, this animal was who he said he was. The ruler of my heart. And this animal loved its position and would do what ever was necessary to keep it and to use it.
It was in 5th grade when I built my first computer with my father. It was our Dad and son project. I like to say I had a big hand in building it and my father would tell you that I DID, though we could all guess the reality of who actually put it together. The learning curve from Legos to graphic cards and motherboards is exponentially bigger than a 5th grader could ever imagine. Thanks to my father and his ability to translate computer engineering into Sunday school flannel graphs, we built the computer in no time.
In 6th grade I was introduced to the world of pornography. Though I had never seen a naked woman before, and no one had told me it was wrong, something churned in my belly. It was the same type of churning I felt when my parents had punished me for something wrong I had done. But in my desperate desire to be accepted by the other boys, and the animals desperate desire to keep his position, I had no problem packaging those feelings and putting them somewhere I would forget.
It didn’t take my 11 year old mind long before I figured out the computer I had built could connect to the internet and enter into a world of fantasy. It also didn’t take long for me to go from G.I. JOES to an addiction to pornography. The feeling of acceptance I had from my classmates at school was now found in the flickering pixels of my monitor. The animal was happy, and his territory grew.
Fantasy. The Final Frontier. For the next two years that animal ruled with an iron fist and I was on a strict regiment of video games and porn. My parents had strict time limits for all electronics, but this renegade and his animal ruler had mastered the art of illusion. Study, draw, read, clean were all code names for video games and porn.
Middle school sex ed class taught me and the boys two things: A humorous new vocabulary concerning the male body, and, a valuable lie, giving into our hormonal desires was a completely normal thing. Those two years of porn and video games had nothing to do with my human anatomy, but had everything to my human disposition to be desired. And I would do what it took to have the feeling of being desired.
Two years later, I found myself laying in a bed at an “all boys boarding school” in Alberta, Canada. If I have ever known loneliness more, it would have been at Saint John’s School of Alberta. As I lay in my bed, the desire to be desired raging in side me, I talked to God for the first time. Sure, I talked to God when I was 5. That’s when I became a Christian, right? But for the first authentic time I talked to God. In Gods fairness, it wasn’t really a talk. I kept it short and was the only one who did the talking, “God, I don’t really get it; this God thing, or what you are about. But if you are there. I need something. I don’t even know what… but I need something.”
I said goodbye to Saint John’s within that month. The “under the radar organized fighting,” porn and drug trade I told my parents about was enough for them to bring me back home. I am slowly working on a script for a coming-of-age movie. The movie intros with a bunch of young boys getting their heads shaved, and then pans to the main actor being forced to fight under the hands of the betting upperclassmen. I would then begin the fictional part of the story that would continue as if I had stayed there.
The first month I was home I was tricked into going to some Rock n’ Roll concert. Had I known it was a full-fledged Christian gathering I probably would have passed. And since I was only 14 driving was not an option. I’d have to wait till 9:30pm when my mom would swing by to pick me up. Unbeknownst to me, the animal within, the one who helped destroy my life in the pursuit of being desired, was writhing.
As I stood awkwardly disjointed in the back of the auditorium, anticipating my mom’s arrival, a song played. I don’t even remember what song it was but I began to weep. A man on stage started to give, what we Christians refer to as “an alter call”, a message. While I didn’t catch most of what he said, I did hear his offer to come to the front if we wanted God.
It was that night when I shared my addiction to pornography, my loneliness, my desire to be desired, with a guy I didn’t really know at the time. And it was that night when Truth bought some property in my heart. As soon as the deal was sealed, Truth began to take ground. Truth began to reclaim territory that was already his and, as I’ll write in my next post, completely changed the course of my life.
Though all of my heart is purchased property of Another, the animal occupies an ever-shrinking plot. Some times that plot looks like the size of a home, other times it looks like a college dorm room. How ever big the animals plot is, it’s shrinking, and my desire is for it to continue that way. And Truths desire for me is that I would abide in him, and walk his land.
