After almost two years of peace, I found myself haunted once again by my phone. Or, rather, what was on my phone. I thought this part of me had faded away. I thought I had grown out of this, I remember saying to myself.

The confusion, disappointment, and deep shame were tangible that night as my family packed away our two decades of life together into four-cube boxes. It was time for my brothers and I, my sister, and my parents to move our separate ways. 

The joys of my childhood made me who I am today. But the parts of my childhood that weren’t joyful—even just in little ways—sowed seeds of fear in my heart, with one taking the deepest hold: the fear of not having enough. Somewhere between three and five, in my earliest memories, I remember this fear beginning to express itself in disordered ways (to use Catechism language). I had never told anybody about the things I wanted, and nobody had ever told me that there was anything wrong with them; but still, deep down, I felt something broken inside me. Something that I knew would never really leave me alone, but I also knew could never really be satisfied. 

Porn began in late elementary school, the rarely-occurring expression of the brokenness that began in my heart long before that. Thanks to God, and my dad’s knack for internet security, I was never exposed to (or able to find) the sorts of content that causes functional addictions. After first acknowledging the problem I had in eleventh grade, and opening up to my family, it only took me a year or so of developing ‘discipline’ before the compulsion faded into the back of my mind. 

Two years later, my understanding of myself, God, and the world were challenged when I seemingly randomly slipped back into the habit again. And to make matters worse, this time I wasn’t a teenager with few responsibilities —I was a man, planning to propose to his girlfriend. The sudden lack of self-control made me question our future, or at least the timeline we had decided on. After all, as I had heard as a kid sometimes, girls don’t want to date guys with the struggles I had. 

But while my then-girlfriend had no easy time, she was as tireless in her love and acceptance of me as I was in my attempts to force my heart into submission. I thought that if I could just get rid of my porn habit, I could finally be happy. I missed that it was about being close to Jesus.

I was worshipping right behaviour, rather than worshiping the God it leads to.

In fact, through this new struggle, my lifelong belief in the Gospel of Sin Management (the version where Jesus dies purely to help us sin less) grew so much stronger that I was sinking endless hours into writing a new ministry project, dedicated to helping people ‘get rid of the hypocrisy in their lives’. 

Jesus spoke of dust and logs; I had a giant redwood in each eye.

It was through seeing the emptiness of this approach to ministry and to my whole spiritual life, that I began to move towards healing. During an impromptu moment of prayer on the Expo Line, early in the morning on my way to work one forgotten day in the spring of 2023, I realized that my fatal flaw wasn’t a lack of discipline—it was a lack of trust.

 One after another, I stumbled into books and podcasts that showed me what I had been missing my whole life—C.S. Lewis, John Eldredge, Jake Khym, Dr. Bob Schuchts, and Dr. Peter Malinowski, among many others. I realized that throughout my life, I had been missing most of my heart. 

Every child learning to eat, drink or use the bathroom learns about ‘listening to their body’. As a Catholic, I learned about listening in plenty of other ways as well— listening to my conscience, listening to God, et cetera. As a student, I learned about listening to teachers, and listening to my own understanding of a topic to tell if I needed to ask a question. 

But the one thing I never learned to do was listening deeply to my heart—to tell the difference between the desire to play, to adventure, to see beauty, to rest, to be part of a community, or to engage in a meaningful relationship with someone.

After finding my tired soul refreshed by a better understanding of God, and more devoted relationship with Him, I realized that the wounding in my early life was comparable to a child who never learns to tell when he’s hungry, and as a result, never really intentionally eats; or a student who never learns to tell when he’s behind in his homework and seek out what he’s missing. But unlike the stomach and the brain, the heart is the powerhouse within each human that was designed to drive them relentlessly toward God, overcoming any obstacle. 

And so my uninformed, unheard heart was driving me relentlessly toward the closest thing to God it knew of, the most intense thing a teenager can find that gives them a fleeting sense of play, adventure, beauty, rest, belonging and intimacy: porn. By not learning to listen to my heart as a kid, I unknowingly guaranteed that I would one day find myself ruled by it. The loving-but-still-raw experience of my family all moving away brought my fears and wounds back up to the surface of my subconscious, and my heart responded by seeking God in the best way it knew how. 

My fiancee and I recently celebrated the day marking one year before our wedding, and considering how much I grew up last year, I have nothing but hope for us on our wedding day. Every day, I wake up more and more the man she deserves, and more important the man God is calling me to be—a man of passionate self-mastery, who operates out of the fullness of who he truly is, rather than just dedicating himself to living a good life or ‘not breaking God’s rules’. 

And most importantly, my God-image, the understanding of who He that I operate from on a daily basis, has shifted from Him being an employer ready to fire me to Him loving me the way I love my fiancée. Spending time with Him has become more healing and joyful than my child self ever imagined.  

With this change in how I see myself and God, I’m learning to listen to my heart’s true desires for the heavenly things it was made for, and to respond to them in healthy ways—with hikes with my brothers, camping with the best friends I’ve known, basic self-care, loving my fiance, and above everything else, prayer. There is no depth of intimacy and holiness that Jesus won’t call me to if I let him, and no depth of love He won’t call me to in marriage as a result. And as I once felt compelled to spread the spiritual desert that was my faith, I am now working to share the healing, glorious, self-knowing and self-giving love that God has shown me - with my family, friends, parish, and hopefully soon, with anyone and everyone who will listen.

Here are some resources that helped me: