Honestly, I was prepared to lie until I was dead.
If there was a sexual thing that you could pay for, I bought it.
Normal people don't get triggered
to do immoral things 20 different times
on a five-mile trip to work.
That's not normal, but that's my life.
The one thing from the age of six
that I swore I was never going to do was ruin my marriage,
and yet here I was doing it.
And I knew that if I told the truth,
that I would lose my marriage because the truth was
going to wreck my marriage.
It was going to hurt my children in ways that I would never be
able to make restitution for.
I was unfaithful to my wife and to my church
and to my children.
When my son turned seven, I realized,
"He's going to need to be baptized at eight,"
and that was something that I knew I couldn't do.
And so I made this stupid deal with myself
that if I stopped acting out for a year,
that somehow that would be OK, that it would be all right
for me to baptize my son.
I could just skip the confession part of the repentance process,
and it would be OK.
So that year I did better, mostly because I
was self-medicating with lighter forms of pornography
to avoid actually engaging in sexual activity
with other people.
Some people think that sex addiction isn't real.
And I ran my life into the ground because I couldn't stop.
I was in the shower listening to a song,
and I wasn't really thinking about anything in particular.
But I was singing along to the lyrics,
and it said, "Lights will guide you home and ignite your bones,
and I will try to fix you."
And the Spirit just hit me, that all these years
in my addiction I had felt like if I could just
be honest, that I could maybe get some help
and be able to change.
But as long as I was lying, I was on my own
and I could not stop.
And it was like the Lord was saying, "If you can do this,
I can make you a better man.
I can change you."
So I called my bishop and I said,
"I've been unfaithful to my wife for several years,
and I need your help."
This was devastating to my wife.
Instead of filing for divorce the next day,
she just had me leave.
Step one is to admit that you of yourself
are powerless to overcome your addictions
and that your life has become unmanageable.
As an addict, you think that "If I admit defeat,
then what's left?"
In recovery, that's the first step.
Once I started being honest--once I admitted that I
really was powerless over my addiction and that my life was
unmanageable, that I couldn't manage it anymore--hope came
pouring into my life.
She would have me come home from work long enough
to put the kids to bed every day.
My marriage was hanging by the finest of threads,
and the fact that there was a thread at all
was a huge miracle.
There's a sentence in the addiction recovery manual.
It says that "because of the love and grace of the Savior,
you do not have to be what you have been."
I'm here because the Lord has rescued me in a way
that I don't even have the words to describe.
Each one of us is made of the same stuff.
And we have a Father in Heaven who loves us,
and He wants to make us into the people that we can become.
And if we will turn our lives over to Him,
we can draw on all the powers of heaven to change.
And that's my testimony.