The Path to Victory

Written: 5/5/11


I am only a man. I am not a hero, I am not famous; I do not desire to be. I have fought this fight for as long as I can remember, and I am tired. I am a real man (Although I think the term “Man” here is giving me too much credit) looking for real answers in a world of fake people and fake answers. I have real struggles, I have real problems, I live a real life, I feel real pain. I am one man, doing my best to live for God, giving it everything I have and yet, somehow, I still fall far short.

I have heard it said that there is always hope, and I desperately want to believe that. But at this point in life I don’t know if I do. I guess to truly understand why this is so difficult you need to know where I come from and how I got here.

I know many stories that start well and end tragically, and many that start tragically and end well; some that start well and end well, and some that start in tragedy and end there too. I know not at this time where my story falls because it is not yet over. For that I am thankful. I started in tragedy. I was born to a drug addict and raised in a world of drugs, violence, and sex. I had no father figure, my parents split when I was only six months of age.

My formative years were spent being told that impurity, violence, anger, betrayal, selfishness, malice, greed, and lust were acceptable, even commendable. God was only mentioned in curses, Jesus only mentioned as figure of speech, not of freedom or salvation. I was introduced to pornography at the age of 5 and remember it like it happened only moments ago. As of today, I can still see the video playing, I can still smell the musky room and the stale smell of old couches. I can still hear the actors and actresses. To this day it haunts me and drives me to do things that I am ashamed of, things that I hate and hate myself for doing.

A year later I was molested for the first time, an experience I didn’t, at the time, understand. I was lead to believe that it was normal. It went on for years, and I can remember each time vividly. I remember the pain, the confusion, the bitterness, and even the disgust I had with myself afterwards. I was powerless to say no, and I had no one to trust, I had no safety from it, for even my family was involved.

And as bad as that was to me, I know there are many out there that have been through worse; that are currently in worse. I weep for them; I mourn for those whose only understanding of life is violence, sex, and drugs. I used to say to God all the time, “If you’re there, why am I here?” Through tears and through sobs, I cried, I begged God to make it stop, and it felt as if it never would.

That is where I am from, that is what I deal with. Though God has walked me though the process of forgiveness and healing, I still see the world through eyes that have seen abuse. As much as God has shown me that there is hope, I still doubt. I don’t claim to have answers for the “Why’s”, nor do I claim to have any special knowledge. As for God, as much as I see Him around me and feel him working in my life, sometimes I am uncertain. Sometimes I outright don’t believe. I know I am not that strong, I have come to terms with that. But it doesn’t mean that I don’t pretend to be.
I want to be free from this addiction. I don’t want to taste victory, I want to have it; but as much as I fight and as hard as I try, I have yet to have more than a sample.

So what is victory? Is it the top of Everest? Is it the surface of the moon? Maybe in those types of achievements, the victory lies at the end. I am thinking that victory in this area of my life may not be the day when porn no longer bothers me or the thought to masturbate never again enters my mind, rather, victory is me living by God’s strength and not my own and me throwing myself at His mercy every time I mess up and every time I sin. Maybe God is less concerned about that summit and more concerned about the path I take, the thousands of steps I take that bring me that much closer to freedom and that much closer to victory.

Who says victory is on the scoreboard? What if the victory is in the heart of the man who lost the battle but learned a great lesson about how weak he is and how great his God is? Wouldn’t such a revelation lead to him winning the war? And how could he have learned that lesson if he had not first failed? Thomas Edison tried over a thousand ways to make a light bulb before he figured it out, and when asked about how he dealt with his failure he responded with “I have not failed. I've just found a thousand ways that won't work.” Every failure led him to a different combination which got him closer and closer to something that works.

Maybe, then, my failures are not total failures, but rather, stepping stones that lead me to total victory. Maybe the only failure is the failure to learn from your mistakes. I’m not sure if I will ever “arrive” but that won’t stop me from starting the journey. I’m not sure if victory is complete abstinence from porn and masturbation or complete dependence on God. Although I think it would be the latter over the former, just because the simple reasoning that I cannot, in my own will and own power, achieve this. For, even where the strength is in my body, it is never in my will power. For wherever the desire to do good and be pure is, my sinful nature rears its head and overpowers my will, making so that I would rather not do that which I really desire to do.

I am constantly finding myself fighting a battle that I know I need to win but that I really don’t care to or want to win, because truth be told, I don’t really want victory. And that is why I am here, because I am standing at a cross roads between two things that I want and can’t have at the same time. To one side is to continue in apathy, content to watch life happen to me and cry and whine when things don’t go my way; to the other, the path that God has for me, the one of freedom, of fellowship, of life more abundantly. While life more abundantly sounds so good, it is so much work, work that I can’t do on my own. I can’t even want to do it on my own.

So this is where I am. Questioning that which is real, trying to find myself in this thing we call life. Trying to find the place God has for me in this world. Trying to be free and pure, trying to follow God; wanting nothing more than something genuine and real, something that is not borrowed or copied, but something that is mine that no one can take away. And as much as I want to stay where I am, I want even more to become that which I am not: real.