Hope is a confident expectation of good in the future. We are naturally pessimistic. It’s not always easy to have faith in something we can’t see. When porn or betrayal enters our marriages we have a tough time believing we’ll ever heal. Well, maybe some people don’t feel that way, but I did. I thought I’d never, ever heal. But I have come to a place that I never imagined I’d be. There is hope for you too.
Looking through the Storm Clouds
You will find hope when you decide what your personal definition of “good” is. If we expect our lives to be pleasurable and free from troubles, we will be disappointed. If we expect to heal from betrayal or insecurities without pain involved, we will be disappointed. Sometimes healing is more painful than uncovering the secret. Healing refines us.
Hope is waiting for us beyond the storm clouds, but we have to be willing to see through them and grasp something that may not be what we expect. We need to be okay with a knife aimed at our hearts, because often healing refines and chisels us.
What Is Good?
The dictionary defines good with things like this: morally excellent, of high quality, virtuous, genuine, not spoiled or tainted. Okay. That sounds nice and all, but this doesn’t dig any deeper than porn does. It stays on the surface. We’re trying to define good without going beyond the surface. But we must go beyond the surface and learn to see good as a spiritual treasure, something deeper than this world can define, something we cannot see or touch or put in the dictionary.
True “good” is not something the world will always recognize as good. Sometimes God uses the worst things in life to make the best things. Rain isn’t always pleasant, but it helps beauty flourish. Chisels aren’t painless, but they create a beautiful finished product. Good in the world’s eyes may sometimes be bad, painful, and difficult to endure. Good is spiritual. It is the difference between a nice face and a beautiful heart.
Good lasts for eternity.
Finding Hope
Sometimes we are taken to the worst experience of our lives. In those places of betrayal, dishonesty, and shaken dreams … we will find a door of hope. When we give our most difficult trials to God … then, and only then, will they become a door of hope. When we let go of our failures, our insecurities, our insecurities … we will find hope.
It may not feel like it right now, but God is with you. You may roll your eyes at that statement, you may rejoice at that statement, or … you may feel nothing when you read that statement. But that doesn’t erase the validity of those words. We don’t always feel truth, but that doesn’t change truth. Our perceptions of hope and truth and reality do not always make something true. God is with you. He is with you. He is with you. And this is what will give you hope, knowing that He is your Father. He wants the best for you. He wants you to see this struggle through His eyes, not your own, not your spouse’s, not your best friend’s — His.
Through His eyes you will see beauty in rain and there … you will find hope.
We Will Fail Ourselves
Just like a man trying to rid a porn addiction from his life, a woman who is healing from her husband’s betrayal cannot do this on her own. You will fail yourself. Think of Paul in 2 Corinthians 1:8-10. He said he endured such pressure and hardship that he despaired life. He felt the sentence of death. But, he says, this happened that he might not rely on himself, but on God, who raises the dead. God delivered him from “such a deadly peril” and would deliver him again. Therefore, on HIM Paul set his hope of deliverance.
Paul could not deliver himself. He knew that. He had to rely on God. We cannot rely on our own strength to endeavor trials. We will fail ourselves too. God cannot and will not fail us, though we may often feel like it (because our perception of good is often as tainted as a porn-addicted man’s view of sex). Through our reliance on God we can discover hope.
Sometimes bad things happen to good people so that we realize our dependency is really on things of this world and not God. For me, I relied on George’s opinion of me to feel beautiful. I relied on his faithfulness to desire to be faithful. I relied on so much of him when I should have been relying on Him.
When You Find Hope
I thought I’d never love George the way I did when I first met him. I didn’t think he could possibly love me (or ever truly loved me) since his eyes wanted so many other women. But we finally grasped the hope I’ve been speaking about. We realized our need for God and we allowed the door of hope to open, shedding light on our weaknesses and changing our lives.
What does finding hope practically look like? We can talk about all of this deep stuff, but on the surface … what does it look like to “grasp hope?”
It means letting go of your expectations and ideals, realizing that hope often involves pain, and being fully aware that you may need a change of heart in order to fully walk into the light of hope.
I am so thankful that George’s porn addiction was exposed the way it happened. Yes, it was painful — one of the worst experiences of my life, but through that time I discovered so many weaknesses, false ideals, and insecurities that I had developed and lived for so many years, even before I met George. Through the painful experience of healing after his porn addiction my heart went under construction and had a complete makeover.
But I didn’t get here without hope. I came to a point where I wanted my marriage to work. I didn’t want to play the victim anymore. I wanted to find the beauty after rain. I also came to a point where I let go of my false ideals of marriage, of my husband never noticing attractive people, of being perfect to anyone in this world. I came to a point where I realized marriage and relationships are not solely about me. And with porn, ultimately, I came to a point where I realized it truly isn’t about me. You know … those words everyone likes to tell you when you find out your husband’s been looking at porn. It’s not about you. But it took me awhile to feel the truth of those words.
What really changed my heart was learning about the hearts of porn stars, porn producers, porn addicts, strippers, other wives like me — every person I learned about made me realize that porn is so much bigger than me. It is affecting so many people across the globe. There are hurting porn stars too. It’s not just about me. Not just about my marriage. It’s about all of us. We are all victims of sexual impurity. And we all have a choice … to hope … or to continue to be pessimistic and keep the door to hope closed.
We can love through the eyes of hope, believing that God will bring good from it even when our husband’s have hurt us or continue to be unfaithful. We can look at ourselves through the eyes of hope, realizing that God has a unique plan for our life, our pain, and our trials. We can view porn stars through the eyes of hope, knowing that their hearts aren’t much different than ours.
Through the eyes of hope and the clarity of God’s heart we can love and allow Him to transform our lives and use every painful instance for something good, something so much better than we could ever imagine while we’re suffering.
But there is a door before you right now. A way out of this mess.
Open it.
