The TrueManhood Podcast Episode 7 – My Confession

In the 7th episode of The TrueManhood Podcast, Dave makes his confession. Whether you’ve confessed recently or not, get there and do it! If you’re not Catholic and want to know more, contact Dave@TrueManhood.com.

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From Her Perspective

The following is a poem written by a woman – a wife, a mother – that was devastated by her husbands addiction to pornography.  I don’t know the name of the poet, but I’ve spoken with many women who share her feelings.  Please take a few minutes and read this powerful poem.

“I Looked For Love in Your Eyes.”

I saved my best for you.
Other girls may have given themselves away,
But I believed in the dream.
A husband, a wife, united as one forever.

Nervous, first time, needing assurance of your love,
I looked for it in your eyes
Mere inches from mine.
But what I saw made my soul run and hide.

Gone was the tenderness I’d come to know
I saw a stranger, cold and hard
Distant, evil, revolting.
I looked for love in your eyes
And my soul wept.

Who am I that you cannot make intimate love to me?
Why do I feel as if I’m not even here?
I don’t matter.
I’m a sexual prop in a filthy play.
Not an object of tender devotion.

Where are you?

Years pass
But the hardness in your eyes does not.
You think I’m cold
But how can I warm to eyes that are making “mental sex” to someone else
Instead of making love to me?

I know where you are.
I’ve seen the pictures.
I know now what it takes to turn you on.
Women…someone’s young daughter like I once was

Women …. But artificially enhanced, acting, used and then discarded.
Images burned into your brain.
How could you think they would not show in your eyes?
Because souls don’t matter, only female bodies do
To men who consume them.

Did you ever imagine,
The first time you picked up a dirty picture
That you were dooming all intimacy between us
Shipwrecking your marriage
Breaking the heart of a wife you wouldn’t meet for many years?

If it stopped here, I could bear it.
But you brought the evil into our home
And our little boys found it.
Six and eight years old.
I heard them laughing, I found them ogling, their innocence now gone.

Little boys
My little boys
Laughing and ogling the sexual body
Of a woman, a woman like me.
Someone like me!

An image burned into their brains.

Will their wives’ souls have to run and hide like mine does?
When does it end?

I can tell you this. It has not ended in your soul.
It has eaten you up. It is cancer.
Do you think you can feed on a diet of distorted fantasies
And come out of your locked room to love?

You say the words, but love has no meaning in your mouth
When self-centeredness rules in your heart.
Your addiction has eaten up every vestige of the man
I thought I was marrying.
Did you ever dream it would so consume you
That your wife and children would live in fear of your hidden problem?

That is what you have become
Feeding your soul on poison.

I’ve never used porn.
But it has devastated my marriage, my family, my world.

Was it worth it?

If you are a woman dealing with your husband’s addiction to pornography, or any man’s addiction to pornography, you are not alone.  There are numerous resources available.  I’m an open door and welcome your emails or phone calls anytime.  Email me at Dave(at)TrueManhood(dot)com or call our offices at (412) 475-TRUE.

Men – it is time to stop thinking that your pornography use doesn’t effect anyone else.  It effects every part of your life, every relationship and every future relationship.  If you need help with your addiction, please contact me for a list of resources.

If any women are reading this who are addicted (studies say that 1 out of every 5 women is addicted to pornography), there are great resources for you as well.

TrueMan up!

GUEST POST – from The Catholic Hack – “The Gift of Healing”

The Gift of Healing!

I have often prayed for the gift of healing… on my knees asking the Holy Spirit for the charism to heal those most suffering around me.  To lay hands on the sick, the dying and to see God heal them… what could be better?  How proud I was of myself to have the desire to heal however, I was not being sincere with myself.  If I dig deep down, and am honest, I will have to admit that I want that gift, to heal by a miracle act of God’s will, because I have NOT embraced the Cross of Christ.

You see, if I’m honest,  I want those around me to be healed because their suffering makes me feel so uncomfortable and I don’t want to feel uncomfortable. I want to take away their pain so that I can feel ok again!  How cowardly of me!   When Pilot proclaimed “Ecce Homo” to the crowed gathered before him, they looked on with ghastly amazement at the sight of a brutalized victim held up before them.  We have all seen “The Passion of The Christ” and therefore we can conjure up an image, in our mind’s eye, of what our Lord might have looked like.  Beaten, flesh torn and hanging from his body, the blood soaked purple robe, the crown of thorns penetrating his skull… “Behold the Man”! How many in the crowd, who yelled out “Let his blood be upon us and upon our children” (a strikingly similar statement to the one found in Ex. 24 when Moses sprinkled the blood from the 12 Priests, on 12 alters, upon the people of Israel) also wanted to snap their fingers and have his pain taken away so that they might not feel so uncomfortable?

When St. Peter drew his sword to fend off the attack of the mob come to arrest his Lord in the garden… what did Jesus say… “shall I NOT drink from the cup that my Father has given me to drink?”  To dislike the pain and discomfort of suffering is natural… to embrace it… is divine!  Manly even!

When you think of the men who inspired you the most; what do they look like? How do they act? What moral character do theypossess?  For me… it’s the William Wallaces (the movie… not so much the real man), and the John Waynes of the world, but mostly… it’s Jesus Christ, and my patron saint, St. Peter.  The men who always do the right thing no matter what… even when faced with ultimate adversity.  Men of extreme integrity.  They inspire me the most…. but you say “why St. Peter?; did he not deny our Lord three times?” Why yes he did…. so how can he be included in this list? Because I can relate to him!  He was always the one who rushed head long into the wind without thinking first…. and then, when tested, was found weak.  I’m weak… I have lots of faults… I always want to the do the right thing and often act before thinking.  Yes, I wish I had the kind of courage to step out of the boat!  Do you?

Our Lord didn’t toss out St. Peter when he committed so grievous a crime and He does not toss us out either!  Another great lesson I learned from St. Peter was humility and the courage it takes to do the right thing even after you have monumentally screwed up.  If I had a dollar for every time I have monumentally screwed up I would be a wealthy man… thank God for His mercy and for His sacrament which I can seek and find Reconciliation!

St. Paul said in  Colossians 1:24 “I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of His body, that is, the church.”

Do you embrace your sufferings? How about the sufferings around you? I know I want to be the man Jesus is… to take up my cross daily and follow Him. Jesus marched on Calvary Hill like a King before his army… and when faced with extreme adversity, in a garden, He didn’t hide in a bush but rather starred it in the eye and said “I AM”… come and get me.  I don’t know about you but I’m sick and tired of being a coward… I want to be like Christ!  I want to see past earthly suffering and behold heaven.

This week has been tough, a good friend lost her five-year battle with cancer. Her husband had divorced her, and she has two small boys who will now be taken to the Philippines to live with their dad.  Her struggle both inspired me and made me feel extreme uneasiness… I prayed continually for God to heal her so that I would not have to feel this way.  Yet, unlike what I would do,  Kelley, actually offered up all her pain, and even her death, to God as a sacrifice so that her family might be reconciled and converted, and her boys to grow in faith.   Kelley has taught me how to be a better man… to embrace suffering as an opportunity to “fill up that which is lacking in the sufferings of Christ”… namely me and my will to emulate our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now… my father-in-law, John, is also facing the last months of his life on earth in a battle with cancer.  I pray for him and fight my urge to be so selfish as to only think of myself in this process.  Instead I pray to embrace this suffering, for his sake, that through pain there is the gain of Heaven… the way our Lord laid down for us all.  I want the courage to be a saint and to stare adversity in the eye and proclaim that I WILL drink the cup my Father has given me to drink!

Pray for me!  God Bless You and I will see you on the Hill!

Sincerely,
The Donkey Jesus Rides today!
Joe McClane

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