Amanda’s Testimony: Baby Steps to Freedom

I was in eighth grade when I accidentally stumbled upon an inappropriate video on YouTube. Something happened instantly. I was overcome with this exhilarating feeling. I was young. I didn’t know how to process what I saw. It excited me and scared me all at the same time. It planted a seed in my mind that would quickly grow into an addiction.

I started looking up more YouTube videos of people kissing, but this time it was more intentional. The videos started getting more inappropriate, but I quickly became desensitized to them. It was as if I were watching casual television shows. I got bored. So I decided to do something I never thought my innocent, Christian self would do. I Googled the word “porn.”

I had heard of pornography before, mostly from boys in middle school. It was always whispered, and I never quite comprehended what it was. Yet here I was, reaching into a part of this world that I never imagined, and even still can’t comprehend, reaching in to.

I clicked on the first link, nervous with excitement, but also fear that my mother would walk in. I was a young girl seeing things that my mind and heart weren’t ready for, and it only got worse from there.

I visited these websites every single day, sometimes multiple times a day. When I realized that my mom could go on my computer and see my search history, I erased it and began using my brother’s account on the family computer when no one was home. That way, if she saw that someone was looking up porn, she would think it was my brother. It would be more “normal,” because I had always heard of teenage guys watching porn, but never girls. It was never a girl problem.

About a year went by, and I was still watching these videos. When I wasn’t watching them, I was thinking of the things I had seen. I idolized these videos. I put them before others, before God, and before the person I wanted to be.

One day, about a year after I found pornography, I woke up. I realized I had been in a trance, almost like the subconscious state of a person I never wanted to be. Instead of feeling exhilarated, excited, and nervous to watch pornography, I felt trapped by it. I couldn’t stop. I kept returning to the websites, and the videos got increasingly more vile, aggressive, and even abusive. I knew I needed to stop.

I told my mom that I accidentally clicked on a virus that opened up a bunch of pornographic websites on my computer so she would block them without finding out the truth. She blocked all the websites, and things got better, at least for a little while.

Then I got an iPod Touch for Christmas: A.K.A., easy access to pornography. The obsession began once again, except this time it was different. This time the enjoyment was only temporary, followed by tears, desperate pleas to God, and feelings of immense regret and shame.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to escape. I didn’t know just how much God would release me from these chains.

Fast forward to my freshman year of college. I attended a campus-wide worship night. At the end of the night, I knew that God was calling me to confess, and it was the first time I actually had peace about it. I texted my best friend a novel of a text message telling her everything and that I hoped she wouldn’t look at me differently. Later I received a text from her that read: “I can’t believe this. I have tears in my eyes because I am literally in the exact same situation.”

I had genuinely, 100% believed that I was the only girl in the entire world to struggle with pornography. Yet here was my best friend telling me she had been in the exact same situation the entire time I knew her.  

From that moment on, God walked hand in hand with me as I took baby steps to freedom. It was far from an immediate change. I constantly stumbled. It took me several more years to grow comfortable with confession. But over time, God blessed me with incredible friends, mentors, and small groups who met me with so much grace and understanding. I discovered new ways of accountability, grew closer to Jesus Christ, and found an incredible Facebook community of other Christian girls and women on their journey to overcoming sexual sin (Join the community!). 

I am still learning how to forgive myself and accept the grace of Jesus. I still feel tempted every single day to return to my old self. It is still a battle, but I trust God as my Warrior. He has already won the victory.