It all first started when as a really young child, I was allowed to watch the same shows as grown ups. I watched men frisking women up their skirts, raping them, adults making out. I actually thought it was nice to get “raped” cause it looked so sexy on tv. Those images never really leave a young impressionable mind.

And then there were all these magazines that glamorized sex, sex toys and vibrators. 10 ways to spice up your sex life. 10 ways to do this and do that. Everything in today’s culture tells you that sex is like a 10 course dinner in a restaurant that anyone could have a part of, WITH anyone.

Couple this with a religious/angry most of the time parent who was a “pastor” in a church who never really explained to me the beauty of that intimate UNION, but rather made sex seem of “the world” and a dirty word. All the rules about not closing the doors when my boyfriends were over would not have been able to stop all the messages that I had already been flooded with the whatsapp chat of my heart, soul and mind.

When the internet came about, (among the then friends I hung out with), watching porn seemed so normal and even something to laugh and joke about. Magazines even talked about how watching it together as a couple could enhance or “inspire” one’s bedlife.

Despite having been happily married for the past 11 years, a lot of my adulthood and first few years of marriage were chained with what I’ve come to realize as a very common lie and attack of the intimacy that God meant for us as a GIFT between the one you were meant to be intimate/ in UNION with.

It’s so common to think that only guys are the ones with porn issues and sexual addictions, but I don’t think it’s as talked about that women could be under the same attack of intimacy.

When popular culture and peers talk about intimacy as a watermelon with many seeds, hard on the outside, soft on the inside, to be eaten with and shared by many and at the same time, you get a pretty rude shock when you find that it’s a strawberry – to be eaten by One and it tastes completely different. That leaves you disappointed, empty, confused, alone, unsatisfied, and in comparison. It made me think that it should have tasted a certain way when it really didn’t.

Over the years, through the word and many many many dreams, God healed me. He healed US. He brought our union back to the beginning and I remember having felt like I had never had this fruit before. It was simple, it was pure, it was strawberries.

I’ve known that I was to share this one day- but the words never came till today. How does one talk about something so private, and possibly shameful in the eyes of most?

The words never came, but then they did.

My friend, if you’re struggling with sexual assault in your mind and heart – I mean sexual dreams, feeling like you are so “horny” and can’t get sexual images out of your mind or feeling the need to watch porn and not being “satisfied” in your marriage, know that this too can end. God is so real and he loves you so much even in this pool of lust that you seem to be trapped in. It is a trap, a real one that he can set you free from ❤️