#so acting like its so strange for adults to enjoy having stuffed animals is brain dead

[plushie-lovey]

Just wanted to warn you that there’s a really triggering agere hating blog currently around, the name is waddlingstufful

Nooo why do they have to have stufful in their url, not my baby 😭😭

Tysm for the warning, nonny. I tried to look into the blog to see what was up, and couldn't find it. Although I did find posts about this person to be able to conclude that you were in fact right about them

However it seems they might still be on the loose under a different url now. If anybody happens to figure out what they changed it to, please let me know!!

[trashyswitch]

Picani's Therapy House

Virgil feels like he might need some specialized therapy to help with being touch-starved and anxious about asking for love. Fortunately, there is a Therapy House nearby that just might help him...

There, he meets Dr. Picani and his special assistant: Şüräle!

Şüräle is a mythological character that I revamped and turned into an OC. Here's the link to the character:

https://trashyswitch.tumblr.com/post/625922793756917760/%C5%9F%C3%BCr%C3%A4le-added-drawings

In this fanfic though, Şüräle is a cute little grey stuffed mouse. This is what they look like: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/uOEAAOSwlixfJJgE/s-l1600.jpg

Hope you enjoy! And thanks @agarus-fallen-lershal for the adorable suggestion!

Chapter 1: A Welcoming Environment

Virgil walked into the open door and looked around the room for a second. The waiting room was childish-looking, but also homely. The room was painted a light purply blue color and covered with vines filled with little multi-colored flowers on them. The waiting room chairs were comfy-looking dorm chairs that were littered with cuddly blankets and fluffy faux fur pillows. There were side tables with sequined stuffies and those squishie toys, and even a pop up bin filled with pillow pets! Lastly: in the middle of the room was a kids table and chairs filled with interactive books and coloring pages with crayons.

Virgil smiled at the cute atmosphere, and walked towards the secretary. The secretary was wearing a light blue collared shirt with glasses, and had a big genuine smile on his face.

“Welcome to the Special Therapy House! I’m Patton. Are you here for an appointment?” The person at the desk asked.

Virgil was immediately caught off guard by the loud voice, but felt somewhat comforted by the heartwarming personality. “Y-...Yes.” Virgil replied.

Suddenly, someone else walked into the room. He had a black jacket on, a white shirt underneath and a pair of sunglasses on despite the man being inside a building. “Hey Pat: tone down the excitement a little bit. You’re scaring the poor little anxious man.” The stranger warned.

Patton sighed and turned to face him. “I can act how I want. And I want to make the new person feel welcome.” Patton explained.

“Well, guess what? You’re making the new person feel like running away. You wanna make them feel comfortable and safe. Not overwhelmed and anxious.” Remy explained.

“I’m...actually okay with how Pat introduced the therapy house. It...made me feel better about the type of therapy I’m here for.” Virgil explained a little quietly, but loud enough for the guy to see.

The guy with the sunglasses narrowed his eyes, but soon softened his expression. “Okay. A little warning though, I’m the only one that calls him Pat. Alright?” The guy warned.

Virgil put his hands up in surrender. “Okay.” Virgil replied.

When the sunglasses guy left the room, Patton waved him off. “It’s alright. I like the nickname. I couldn’t care less.” Patton explained to him. Which therapist are you looking to see?” Patton asked.

Virgil started to wrack his brain for a minute. What was his name again? Quickly though, Virgil remembered at least one of the names.

“Picani?” Virgil guessed.

Patton smiled. “Emile Picani! He’s a great therapist. You’re gonna like him!” Patton reacted. “You can go cuddle yourself in a seat over there, and he’ll be ready to see you shortly.” Patton directed.

“Thank you.” Virgil said with a smile before heading over to one of the seats. Virgil picked up one of the fur pillows, and immediately hugged it. Upon seeing an orange pillow on his chair, Virgil grabbed it and wrapped it around himself eagerly. He felt comfy, but it wasn’t enough. Virgil started looking around the room and came across an open chest filled with multi-colored blankets that were each made out of different materials. Happily, Virgil walked up to the chest with his orange blanket and started putting all the blankets on his head and shoulders. Sky blue, pink, brown, red, many different colors of blankets were now piled on top of Virgil. With his body now ready to marshmallow tackle someone, Virgil closed the chest and slumped into the waiting room chair with confidence.

“Uuuuuh...Hello?” Patton muttered, looking at the walking pile of blankets.

Virgil looked up at Patton with insane eyes and a mix of excitement. “I’m a blanket monster…” Virgil whispered in awe.

Patton giggled from the desk. It looked like Virgil was going to destroy the world with his blanket powers. What those powers would really be, Patton couldn’t tell you.

“Mr. San-...oh.” Someone said. Virgil looked up at the door, and gulped when he realized who it was. The man was wearing a white-collared shirt with a pink tie, and a beige sweater overtop. What really told him it was him though, was the name tag that said ‘Dr. Emile Picani, Psychologist and Therapist’.

“.........Hiiiiiiii Mr. Picani…” Virgil said awkwardly, still covered in tons of blankets.

Picani just bursted out laughing and whipped out his phone so he could take a picture. “Oh my gosh! Who knew I’d come across a blanket monster!” Picani joked as he took pictures.

Despite the cute reaction from Dr. Picani, Virgil’s embarrassment struggled to leave him and began to manifest into somewhat awkward laughter. With Picani’s help, Virgil put the blankets back and walked into the therapy room.

The therapy room had the same homely feeling put into it. There was chairs to sit on, a table to draw at if you wanted, a box of stuff in the corner, and a sheeted bed added to the side of the room. Atop the bed, was a little stuffed animal shaped like a mouse.

...Wait...Was the stuffy moving?

“Welcome to my love-atory! It’s a laboratory for those who are lacking different types of love and affection. One of my favorite psychologists to quote, is Neil R. Carlson. After a while of studying kids with little reactions to touch, Carlson said ‘When the enriched kids returned to the typical conditions that involved little touching, the physical and behavioral advantage they had obtained faded. Although the enriched group showed a better response to stress as long as eighteen months later, they still were socially withdrawn and failed to respond normally to other children and adults’.” Dr. Picani explained.

Virgil looked at him.

“Basically what that means, is even though touch-deprived kids are able to handle stress better, they are still lacking the ability to accept touch and affection.” Picani told him. “Have the people in your family been hugging you and giving you lots of love?” Picani asked.

Virgil sat down onto the bed. “Well, I have been getting lots of hugs from one specific caretaker. But everyone else has either grown up quickly, or grown to hate hugs.” Virgil explained.

Picani frowned hurtfully. “Really?” Picani reacted.

“I mean, I do get hugs and love. But I would probably get more love and affection if I could work up the courage to ask.” Virgil explained further, growing awkward from the idea of asking.

“Sounds like you’re a shy man!” another voice spoke. It sounded like the voice was coming from beside him. Virgil looked to the right side of him and reacknowledged the mouse stuffy that was there. He noticed it moving slightly before, but this time…

It was waving at him!

“Hi there!” It spoke suddenly.

Virgil’s eyes widened with surprise as he scooted away from the stuffy. He pointed at it. “Do-Does this stuffy have an automatic talking sensor or something?!” Virgil asked.

“Well yes, but actually no. He does have an automatic sensor...but by sensor, I mean ‘he’s alive’. This is Şüräle! My plushy assistant!” Picani introduced.

Virgil gulped nervously and looked at the little mouse stuffed animal. It was grey, had flat paws and even had a long, peach-colored tail! It looked somewhat realistic, but also cartoony. It had black eyes and no specific nose piece at the end, as well as no visible mouth.

“Nice to meet you! Do you have a name?” The mouse greeted.

Virgil kept in mind the moving black line that outlined the mouse’s mouth. It was...kinda cute! “V-...Virgil. My name is Virgil.” He replied, before holding out a hand. The mouse took one look at the hand, and immediately grew curious and eager for love. So, Şüräle placed his forehead onto Virgil’s hand and started rubbing its face on it. Virgil, surprised by the strange reply to his handshake, started giving Şüräle little pets and scratches. Şüräle practically melted like a puddle from the scratches and laid itself down on its back onto the bed so it could get some belly scratches as well.

“Good to see you two are getting along!” Picani reacted eagerly.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” Virgil asked.

“A boy. A manly, macho boy!” Şüräle replied, showing off its muscles and claws.

Virgil laughed at this and gave Şüräle some belly squeezes and scratches. “About as manly as a toddler.” Virgil teased.

Şüräle guffawed in surprise and started kicking, squirming and giggling. “Hehehehey! Thahahat tihihihicklehes! Hohohow dihid yohohou knohohohohow?!” Şüräle asked.

Despite his manliness being proven wrong, Şüräle seemed to love the tickles! And Virgil seemed to notice this right away! “So, I guess you like tickles too?” Virgil asked Picani.

Picani blinked in surprise and slowly started scratching the back of his head. “W-Well...yeah. It’s why I came up with this type of therapy in the first place.” Picani explained.

Virgil nodded in understanding. His hand slowly started to drift away from Şüräle, allowing Şüräle to get out and start breathing and talking properly.

“How would you like to start now?” Şüräle suggested.

Picani nodded his head and snapped his 1 finger. “Yes. Good idea.” Picani replied. “So Virgil: telling by your cute little reaction to Şüräle, I think you are a bit of a Ler, as well as a Lee.” Picani explained. “So, that makes this a little more complicated. Do you prefer to be tickled? Or would you rather tickle someone?” Picani asked.

Virgil looked down and visibly blushed at the internal thoughts he was having. “I wanna...I wanna be tickled.” Virgil replied.

Picani clapped his hands together. “Wonderful!” He reacted as he walked up to the purple-wearing emo. “Would you like to tell me where you’re ticklish? Or would you rather let me figure it out?” Picani asked. “Or, perhaps you could give me a spot to start with, and I can go on from there.” Picani suggested.

Virgil looked up at Picani with a smile and started giggling as he pointed to his own ribs. Picani narrowed his eyes and smirked as he understood just what he was telling him.

“Sounds like a plan!” Şüräle declared before jumping into Virgil’s hoodie. Şüräle immediately started skittering around in the sweater, and sniffing all over Virgil’s upper and lower ribs.

“Wha- HEY! NAHAHA! ŞÜRÄHAHAHAHALE!” Virgil laughed helplessly, doing all he can to not squeeze his arms against his chest.

Şüräle popped himself out of Virgil’s shirt collar. “Mr. Picani! Reporting high levels of ticklishness!” Şüräle told him.

“Ooooh! This is gonna be fun!” Picani reacted. Eager to start right away, Picani placed his hands on Virgil’s ribs and started wiggling and drumming the fingers.

“OhohoHOHOHOHOKAHAHAHAHAY! Hohold on-” Virgil instinctively started pushing away the eager fingers. He seemed really nervous about letting people know about his ticklish weakness.

“Pushing me away, huh? I guess I’m gonna have to...GOFORTHESTOMACH!” Picani declared before shoving a hand under the sweater and tickling his belly.

“HAHAHAHAHA! KNOHOHOHOCK IHIHIT OHOHOHOF! IHIHIT TIHIHIHICKLEHEHES!” Virgil laughed.

Picani giggled and started squeezing his belly more. “Look at how squish-squish-squishy your belly is! Such a chub-a-chubby belly!” Picani teased.

“NOHOHOHO IHIHIT’S NOHOHOHOHOHOT!” Virgil protested.

“But it IS! Such a lovely little belly for an emo like you!” Picani teased while he continued to squeeze it.

“Is it really that squishy?” Şüräle asked.

“Yes! It really is!” Picani told him, pausing his tickling. Şüräle gasped excitedly and shoved itself under Virgil’s shirt. With curiosity and mischief, Şüräle started squishing Virgil’s belly with its front paws, and started tickling his belly with its mouse tail.

“Hahahahaha! Yohohohour tahahail ihis soho sohohohoft!” Virgil told the mouse.

Şüräle popped out from under the bottom of the shirt and beamed. “Thank you!” Şüräle replied.

“Nohoho prohohoblehehem.” Virgil replied.

Şüräle crawled itself back under the shirt and climbed itself up Virgil’s body. It was about to pop out and snuggle into Virgil’s neck, but it stopped in its tracks when it started smelling something...pretty! It smelled nice, actually!

“Hey Virgil! Your armpit smells nice! What’s in it?” Şüräle asked as he shoved its nose into Virgil’s armpit.

“eeeEEEK! ŞÜHUHRÄHAHALE, NOHOHOHOHO!” Virgil laughed.

“Oooh! You want some help there, buddy?” Picani asked.

Şüräle removed his nose from the armpit. “Yes please!” Şüräle replied.

“Okay. Which arm are you under?” Picani asked.

“This one!” Şüräle replied while poking the sweater with its nose. Picani noticed the poking fabric, and lightly grabbed onto Virgil’s arm.

“If you were ever uncomfortable with the thought of being pinned, just let me know.” Picani told him. Then, Picani gently lifted the hand above Virgil’s head and lifted the other arm as well. With both hands pinned, both armpits were now vulnerable and ready for tickling.

“Thank you!” Şüräle said happily before sniffing and moving its nose around the armpit.

Virgil bursted into helpless giggles almost immediately and started tugging on his left hand. It was his left armpit that was being tickled by Şüräle’s nose right now, and he wasn’t able to stop it no matter how much he tried to. Picani was too strong. And yet...he didn’t have the heart to tell Picani to let him go. He liked this. It made him feel all giggly inside and made him want to curl up at the same time. It was a strange mix of feelings that he struggled to fight with.

“You feeling okay, Virgil?” Picani asked.

Virgil nodded in reply. He had a huge smile on his face that couldn’t be hidden, no matter how much he squirmed.

“That’s good. How would you feel if I tickled your other armpit?” Picani asked, as he slowly brought his left hand over to Virgil’s right side. Virgil squealed and squeezed his eyes shut. “Do you want me to tickle your other armpit? Or is that too much?” Picani asked.

Virgil looked at the lingering fingers above his right armpit and looked at Picani with a pleading facial expression. That seemed to tell him everything!

“Alrighty then!” Picani touched his fingers down onto Virgil’s right armpit and immediately started scratching and skittering his fingers in the hollow part.

Virgil let out a HUGE squeal and fell into loud, squeaky laughter! It was so cute to listen to! Who knew such an awkward and quiet emo would be hiding such a cute laugh?!

Finally after what felt like hours, Picani stopped tickling him. “Alright. I think you deserve a big break.” Picani told him.

Virgil was still giggling and kicking, and even shaking his head back and forth a little. It was like he was still being tickled.

Hmm...Maybe he was?

“Tickle tickle tickle tickle tickle! Such a cute little guy! I like you a lot! You’re so fun!” Şüräle’s voice spoke.

...So he IS being tickled still!

“Şüräle? Buddy? I said for us to stop. He needs a break.” Picani told him.

“Awww...But I didn’t get very long with him!” Şüräle whined.

Picani gave Virgil a guilt-filled ‘sorry’ expression. When Virgil signalled for him to get his mouse, Picani reached under Virgil’s shirt and pulled him out from underneath. “You sir, got more ticklish Virgil time than I did! So don’t start complaining.” Picani warned.

Şüräle frowned and pouted in the doctor’s hand. Virgil, finding it kinda cute, let out a giggle at the pouty stuffed mouse.

“Hey...don’t be giving me the whiny pouts, buddy.” Picani warned before curling his finger in an evil, threatening manner. Şüräle looked up, and immediately dropped his pouty face in surprise and slight eagerness.

Picani started tickling Şüräle’s belly with a couple of his fingers. “Kitchy kitchy kitchy kitchy koo!” Picani teased.

Şüräle let out a squeal and started laughing. The mouse’s laughter was super high-pitched and squeaky, making the mouse even MORE adorable!

Not even a second later, Picani laid Şüräle onto the bed beside Virgil and started tickling both their stomachs at the same time! Both of them were giggling, laughing, squeaking and even snorting!

Picani quickly figured out that Virgil has a snort when tickled long enough! And even though Picani already knew this, Virgil learned something adorable about Şüräle:

Şüräle will fall into fits of just squeaking when tickled a lot! It was like Şüräle was a real, living mouse! Only...its body was stuffed with cotton.

Soon enough, Picani let up on both of the adorable beings.

“Alright. I have to go talk to Patty the Secretary out in the waiting room. You guys can bond for a while. Okay?” Picani rold them.

Virgil nodded and happily took the time to get to know Şüräle. Through talking to the mouse, Virgil learned that Picani’s father actually get him the mouse when he was younger! Not only that, but Şüräle had taken on Picani’s childhood personality, including his childhood love for tickling! So through getting to know Şüräle, Virgil was getting to know Picani as a kid!

And of course, no bonding experience could ever be finished without a cuddle or a tickle. And for Virgil, he was gifted both. 

[kabane52]

The War Within

This is an old article from Christianity Today from 1982

Driving through Wisconsin on vacation this summer, a Leadership staff member passed a huge sign in the middle of the bucolic countryside. "Naughty Things for Nice People," it proclaimed, and as if to prove it, a gigantic cuddly bear peered out from beside the words "Adult Novelties."

"What's that mean, Dad?" came the question from the ten-year-old boy in the back of the van. "Yeah," piped up the siblings, "what's that all about, Dad?"

Such questions abound these days, as media penetrate our homes and vehicles with not just sleazy sex but carefully packaged titillations. One report has it that a recent convention of youth pastors created the highest rental of X-rated movies in the hotel's history. More than 80 percent of all customers signing up for cable TV opt for the erotic films. The availability—the near-ubiquity of so much sexual enticement, the constant barrage of innuendoes, and the nonstop polemic for indulgence inevitably attracts.

Many rationales tempt the mind of the Christian leader: "I have to know what's going on. … Voyeurism is better than adultery. … I need moderation—total deprivation isn't necessary."

Admittedly, there are no easy answers. We cannot shut off either our brains or our glands. But consider the following article by a man in full-time ministry. The article is blunt. But we felt it important to be just this honest and realistic. Sexual temptations in many forms have always lured Christians, but today's opportunities and climate make this article especially relevant to all of us.

* * *

"Lust is the ape that gibbers in our loins. Tame him as we will by day, he rages all the wilder in our dreams by night. Just when we think we're safe from him, he raises up his ugly head and smirks, and there's no river in the world flows cold and strong enough to strike him down. Almighty God, why dost thou deck men out with such a loathsome toy?" Frederick Buechner Godric I am writing this article anonymously because I am embarrassed. Embarrassed for my wife and children, yes, but embarrassed most for myself. I will tell of my personal battle with lust, and if I believed I were the only one who fought in that war, I would not waste emotional energy dredging up stained and painful memories. But I believe my experience is not uncommon, is perhaps even typical of pastors, writers, and conference speakers. No one talks about it. No one writes about it. But it's there, like an unacknowledged cancer that metastasizes best when no one goes for x-rays or feels for lumps.

I know I am not alone, because the few times I have opened up and shared my struggles with Christian friends, they have replied with Doppelganger stories of exactly the same stages of awakening, obsession, possession. Years from now, when socio-historians sift through the documents describing our times, they will undoubtedly come up with elegant explanations of why men who grew up in church homes are oversexed and vulnerable to attacks of lust and obsession, and why women who grew up in those same environments emerged uptight and somewhat disinterested in sex. But I leave that to the future analysts.

I remember vividly the night I first experienced lust. Real lust—not the high school and college variety. Of course as an adolescent I had drooled through Playboy, sneaked off to my uncle's room for a heart-thumping first look at hard-core pornography, and done my share of grappling and fumbling with my fiancee's clothes. I date my lust awakening, though, to the adult onslaught of mature, willful commitment to lust.

It hit on one of my first trips away from home. My job required me to travel at that time, and as I sat in a dingy motel room near the airport and flipped through the city guide of what to do in Rochester, New York, I kept coming back to one haunting photo of an exotic dancer, a former Miss Peach Bowl winner, the ad said. She looked fresh and inviting: the enchanting kind of Southern girl you see on TV commercials for fried chicken—only this one had no clothes on.

Somehow, I had survived the sixties sheltered from strippers and Woodstock-type nudity. And when I first saw the ad, I instinctively ruled her show out of bounds for me. But as I settled down to watch an inane TV show, her body kept looming before my mind with the simple question, "Why not?"

I began to think. Indeed, why not? To be an effective Christian, I had to experience all of life, right? Didn't Jesus himself hang around with prostitutes and sinners? I could go simply as an observer, in the world but not of the world. Rationalizations leaped up like flying buttresses to support my desires, and within ten minutes I was bundled in the back seat of a taxi headed toward the seamy side of Rochester.

I got the driver to let me off a few blocks away, just for safety's sake, and I kept glancing over my shoulder expecting to see someone I knew. Or perhaps God would step in, efface my desires, and change my mind about the wisdom of the act. I even asked him about that, meekly. No answer.

I walked into the bar between acts and was then faced with the new experience of ordering a drink. My forehead sweating, I scanned my memory of Westerns for an appropriate drink to order. Finally I decided on whiskey. I tried to make it sound casual, but the waitress flummoxed me by asking another question.

"How do you want it?"

How do I want it? What did she mean? What could I say? It seemed everyone in the bar was staring at me.

"A double," I stammered.

Sensing my naiveté, she rolled her eyes slightly and asked, "Is on the rocks OK?"

Bolstered by my first fiery sips of whiskey, which I tried to stretch out so as not to have to order another, I sat with my eyes glued to the stage.

Miss Peach Bowl was everything the ad had promised. With a figure worthy of a Wonder Woman costume, she danced superbly and was something of an acrobat. She started fully clothed and teased us with slow removals of each sequined article of clothing. Toward the end, when she wore only a G— string, whooping men near the stage bade her lean over and stuffed folded bills under the tiny swatch of cloth. She grinned invitingly. I stared in disbelief. In one final strobe-lit routine she cartwheeled nude across the stage.

The flush of excitement created by my first whiskey, drunk too fast in spite of myself, the eyepopping spectacle of this gorgeous woman baring all and jiggling it in front of me, and the boisterous spirit of the all-male audience combined to overpower me. I walked out of the bar two hours later feeling strangely warmed, intensely excited, and surprised that nothing had actually happened to me. I suppose it's the same feeling that washes in after a big event like marriage, or graduation, or first intercourse for that matter. In just a few hours, you realize that although in one sense everything has changed, in another sense nothing has changed. You are the same person.

Lust shares with sins like envy and pride the distinction of being invisible, slippery, hard to pin down. Was what happened that night a sin? I denied it to myself on the way home. To really rate as lust, I told myself, you must look on a woman so as to desire sexual intercourse with her. Isn't that what Jesus said? Whatever happened that night, I certainly couldn't recall desiring intercourse with Miss Peach Bowl. It was more private and distant than that. What happened, happened quickly, was gone, and left no scars. Or so I thought at the time.

Ten years have passed since that awakening in wintry Rochester, ten years spent never far from the presence of lust. The guilt caught up with me, and back in my motel room that very evening, I was already praying slobbery prayers for forgiveness. For a while that guilt kept me out of live shows and limited my voyeurism to magazines and movies, but only for a while. For ten years I have fought unremitting guerrilla warfare.

Being the reflective sort, I have often pondered the phenomenon of lust. It is unlike anything else in my experience. Most thrills—scary roller coasters, trips in airplanes, visits to waterfalls—lose a certain edge of excitement once I have experienced them and figured them out. I enjoy them and will duplicate the experiences if given the chance, but after a few tries, they no longer hold such a powerful gravitational attraction.

Sex is utterly different. There is only so much to "figure out." Every person who endures high school biology, let alone a sniggering sex education class, knows the basic shapes, colors, and sizes of the sexual organs. Anyone who has been to an art museum knows about women's breasts. Anyone who has hauled down a gynecology book in a public library knows about genitalia. Somehow, no amount of knowledge reduces the appeal—the forces may, in fact, work concordantly. What strange power is it that allows a male gynecologist to clinically examine female sexual organs all day long—there is nothing left for him to "learn"—and yet return home and find himself quickly aroused by his wifely peekaboo blouse?

"An ape that gibbers in my loins," wrote novelist Frederick Buechner about lust, and no experience comes with such a feral force. And yet, maybe by labeling it an "animal drive" we have missed the main point of lust. No animal I have heard of spends its life fixating on sex. Females in most species invite attention only a few times a year or less; the rest of the time males obediently plod through the mundane routine of phylogeny, apparently never giving sex another thought.

Humans are different. We have the freedom to center our lives inordinately in this one drive, without the harmony enforced by nature. Our females are biologically receptive the vast majority of the time, and no instinct inhibits us from focusing all our thoughts, behavior, and energy on sex.

I have tried to analyze lust, to fractionate it down into its particulars. I take a Playboy centerfold and study it with a magnifying glass. It consists only of dots—dots of four primary colors laid down by a printing press in a certain order. There is no magic on that page, only stipples of ink, which under magnification, show flaws and blurs. But there is magic on that page. I can stare at it, burn the image in my mind, fondle it mentally for hours, even days. Blood steams up when I gaze on it.

Early Marxists, heady with revolution, added sex to their list of human foibles needing alteration. Lenin pronounced his famous Glass of Water Theory, legislating that the sexual act was of no more consequence than the quenching of thirst by a glass of water. Surely bourgeois morality would topple along with bourgeois banks and industries and religions. But in a few years, Lenin had to abjure the Glass of Water Theory. By all reductionist logic, sex was like a glass of water, but sex proved immune to reductionist logic. It resisted being made of no consequence. Lenin, a historian, should have known better. Kings had renounced their thrones, saints their God, and spouses their lifetime partners because of this strange demon of lust. Dialectical materialism hardly stood a chance.

Books often question God's wisdom or goodness in allowing so much pain and sorrow in the world, and yet I have read none that question his goodness and wisdom in allowing so much sex and lust in the world. But I think the two may be parallel questions. Whether through creation or marred creation or whatever (we can't get into that here), we ended up with sex drives that virtually impel us to break rules God laid down. Males reach their sexual peak at age eighteen, scientists tell us. In our culture, you can't even legally marry before then, so when a male marries, if he has remained chaste, he has already forfeited his time of greatest sexual prowess. Mark Twain railed against God for parceling out to each human a source of universal joy and pleasure, at its peak in teenage years, then forbidding it until marriage and restricting it to one partner. He has a point.

Couldn't our hormones or chromosomes have been arranged so that mates would more easily find sexual satisfaction with just one partner? Why weren't we made more like the animals, who, except for specified periods, go through their daily routine (nude to a beast) with hardly a thought of sex. I could handle lust better if I knew it would only strike me in October or May. It's the not knowing, the ceaseless vulnerability, that drives me crazy.

Lust, I read somewhere, is the craving for salt by a man who is dying of thirst. There's a touch of perversion there, isn't there? Why were we not made with merely a craving for water, thus removing the salt from every newsstand, television show, and movie?

I know what you are thinking, you readers of Leadership. You are protesting that God never makes me lust, that I choose it, that he probably allows it as an opportunity for me to exercise my virtue. Yes, yes, I understand all that. But some of you know firsthand, as I do, that those pious platitudes, albeit perfectly correct, have almost no relevance to what happens biologically inside me when I visit a local beach or pick up any of a hundred magazines.

Some of you know what it is like to walk with your eyes at breast level, to flip eagerly through every new issue of Time searching for a rare sexy picture, to yearn for chains on the outside of your motel room to keep you in—unless it comes with that most perverse of all modern inventions, the in-room porno movie. And you also know what it is like to wallow in the guilt of that obsession, and to cry and pray with whatever faith you can muster, to plead with God to release you, to mutate you, to castrate you like Origen—whatever it takes to deliver you. And even as you pray, luscious, bewitching images crowd into your mind.

You also know what it is like to preach on Sunday, in a strange city, to preach even on a topic like grace or obedience or the will of God, or the decline of our civilization, with the awful and wonderful memories of last night's lust still more real to you at that moment than the sea of expectant faces spread out before you. You know the self-hatred that comes with that intolerable dissonance. And you muddle through the sermon swearing never to let it get to you like that again, until after the service a shapely woman comes beaming and squeezes your hand and whispers praise to you, and all resolve melts, and as she explains how blessed she was by your message, you are mentally undressing her.

The night in Rochester was my first experience with adult lust, but by no means my last. Strip joints are too handy these days. The drug store down the street sells Hustler, High Society, Jugs, anything you want. I have been to maybe fifteen truly pornographic movies, including the few classics like Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door. They scare me, perhaps because it seems so deliberate and volitional to stand in line (always glancing around furtively), to pay out money and to sit in the dark for an hour or two. The crowd is unlike any other crowd I mix with—they remind me I don't belong. And the movies, technically, aesthetically, and even erotically, are vapid and boring. But still, when a local paper advertises one more Emmanuelle sequel, I drool.

I learned quickly that lust, like physical sex, points in only one direction. You cannot go back to a lower level and stay satisfied. Always you want more. A magazine excites, a movie thrills, a live show really makes the blood run. I never got as far as body tattooing, personal photograph sessions, and massages, let alone outright prostitution, but I've experienced enough of the unquenchable nature of sex to frighten me for good. Lust does not satisfy; it stirs up. I no longer wonder how deviants can get into child molesting, masochism, and other abnormalities. Although such acts are incomprehensible to me, I remember well that where I ended up was also incomprehensible to me when I started.

A cousin of mine subscribes to at least fifteen of the raunchiest magazines I have ever seen. Books I have peeked at for just a few seconds in airport newsstands litter his house. He has told me that, even surrounded by vivid depictions of every sex act, every size and shape of woman he can imagine, he still wants more. He still devours the new issues. He and his wife are experimenting with orgies now, and numerous other variations I won't mention. It is not enough. The thrill will fade before long, and he will want more.

Psychologists use the term obsession to label what I have been describing, and they may say that I have more innate obsession than the average male. They would trace its genesis back to my repressive upbringing, and they are undoubtedly right. That is why I am writing to others of you in the Christian world. If you have not fought such obsession yourself, every Sunday when you step to the pulpit you speak to many who have, although you could hardly read it in their blank, freshly scrubbed faces. Lust is indeed an invisible sin.

At times the obsession has felt to me more like possession. I remember one time especially that scared me. I was in Washington, D.C., one of the places in the United States where any kind of lust is easily attainable. At three o'clock in the afternoon, after touring the cherry blossoms, I sauntered into a dark bar that advertised nude dancing. I fended off the girls who came to my table and asked for drinks, and instead directed my attention to the dancers. There were only two, and maybe five customers at most. One black girl with an unspectacular figure weaved over to the part of the stage nearest my table.

This was somewhat different than the other strip shows I had seen. There was no teasing or "visual foreplay." She was already naked, unashamedly so, and she wiggled maybe a foot from my head. She stared right into my eyes. This was so close, so intimate, that it seemed for a terrifying moment to be nearer a relationship than a performance. What I felt could only be called possession.

I found myself—it seemed as though I had not made the decision, that someone else's hands inside mine were doing it—fumbling in my pocket, pulling out bills and stuffing them in a garter belt high up on her thigh. In appreciation she maneuvered herself to grant an even better view. She had no secrets.

I staggered out of that bar. I felt I had crossed a line and could never return to innocence. That weekend I had important business engagements, but throughout them indelible images of that anonymous girl filled my mind. I yearned to flee and go home to my wife, to demonstrate to her my fear so that she could shelter me and mother me and keep me from following where all this was leading.

Just a few years before, I had sat with a distant, reproachful view and watched men lose control and act like country-fair churls as they stuffed bills down the G-string of Miss Peach Bowl. I would never stoop to that—I was smugly confident in Rochester. After all, I was intelligent, happily married, sophisticated—a committed Christian known by friends for my self-control. It would never happen. But it did.

When I went home, I did not tell my wife. How could I? The story was too long, and she, who had hardly ever known lust and had never been unfaithful to me, would not comprehend it. It would likely rupture my marriage, and then I would be cast loose on a sea I could not navigate.

I made a vow then—one more in a series. I vowed I would only look at Playboy and other "respectable" erotic magazines. No more raunchiness. I had certain rationalizations about lust, and pained realism about my inability to stay pure. I simply needed some safe boundaries, I decided. Here are some of my rationalizations that supported my conclusion to contain, not destroy, my lust:

Nudity is art. Go to any art museum in the world, and you will see nudity openly displayed. The human form is beautiful, and it would be puritanical to cut off appreciation for it. Playboy is photographed well, with an aesthetic, not prurient tone. Playboy and its kin have great articles. There's the Jimmy Carter interview, for example, and Penthouse's conversation with Jerry Falwell. I must keep up with such material. An aesthetic, not prurient tone. Some stimulation will help my sex life. I have a problem approaching my wife and communicating my desire for sex to her. I need a sort of boost, a stimulant to push me to declare my intentions. An aesthetic, not prurient tone. Other people do far worse. I know many Christian leaders who still do all the things I toyed with, and worse. For that matter, look at Bible characters—as randy a bunch as you'll ever meet. There's probably no such thing as a pure person anyway; everybody has some outlet. An aesthetic, not prurient tone. What is lust anyhow, I kept asking myself. Is fantasizing wrong in itself? If so, then erotic dreams would count as sin, and how could I be responsible for my dreams? I reminded myself of the definition of lust I had started with long before: desiring intercourse with a specific sexual partner. I experienced a general sexual heightening, a raising of the voltage, not a specific desire for the act of intercourse. Some, perhaps all, of these rationalizations contain some truth. (Do they sound familiar?) I used them as an overlay of reason and common sense to help calm the cognitive dissonance that tormented me. Yet I knew inside that the lust I experienced was not subject to reason and common sense. To my dismay, on several occasions I had already felt it burst out of containment and take on a sinister power. At other times, I could analyze lust and put it in perspective, but at the moment when it was occurring I knew I would not stop and analyze. I would let it take its course. Secretly, I began to wonder what that course would be.

Don't let me give the wrong impression. My entire life did not revolve around lust. I would go days without fixating on sex, and sometimes a month or two without seeking out a pornographic magazine or movie. And many, many times I would cry out to God, imploring him to take away the desire. Why were my prayers not answered? Why did God continue to curse me with freedom, even when that freedom led me away from him?

I read numerous articles and books on temptation but found little help. If you boiled down all the verbiage and the ten-point lists of practical advice for coping with temptation, basically all they said was "Just stop doing it." That was easy to say. I knew some of those authors, and knew that they too struggled and failed, as I did. In fact, I too had preached many a sermon on handling temptation, but look at me. Practical "how-to" articles proved hopelessly inadequate, as if they said "Stop being hungry" to a starving man. Intellectually I might agree with their theology and their advice, but my glands would still secrete. What insight can change glands?

"Jesus was tempted in all points as you are," some of the articles and books would say, as if that would cheer me up. It did not help. In the first place, none of the authors could conceivably describe how Jesus experienced sexual temptation, because he never talked about it, and no one else has ever been perfect and lived to tell about it. Such well-meaning comments reminded me of telling a ghetto dweller in East Bronx, "Oh, President Reagan used to be poor too. He knows how you feel." Try telling that to a poor person, and prepare to duck.

I felt a similar reaction when I read accounts of people who had overcome lust. Usually, they wrote or talked in a condescending, unctuous tone. Or, like Jesus, they seemed too far removed from my own spiritual quagmire to comfort me. Augustine described his condition twelve years after conversion from his lusty state. In that advanced spiritual place he prayed to overcome these besetting sins: the temptation to enjoy his food instead of taking it as a necessary medicine "until the day when Thou wilt destroy both the belly and the meat"; the attraction of sweet scents; the pleasure of the ear provided by church music lest he be "more moved by the singing than by the thing that is sung"; the lure of the eye to "diverse forms of beauty, of brilliant and pleasing colors"; and last, the temptation of "knowing for knowing's sake." Sorry, Augustine, I respect you, but prayers like that led to the climate of repression and body-hatred that I have been vainly trying to escape all my life.

I got a perverse pleasure out of knowing that this same Augustine a few years earlier had prayed, "Give me chastity, but not yet." He delayed purity for a while also, to sample more delights than I would likely get around to. Why is it that I scoffed at accounts of saints who overcame temptation but loved hearing about those who gave in? There must be a name for that sin, too.

Most of this time I hated sex. I could not imagine it existing in any sort of balance in my life. Of course I knew its pleasure—that was the gravitational attraction—but those short bursts of pleasure were horribly counterbalanced by days of guilt and anguish. I could not reconcile my technicolor fantasy life with my more mundane experience of sex in marriage. I began to view sex as another of God's mistakes, like tornadoes and earthquakes. In the final analysis, it only caused misery. Without it, I could conceive of becoming pure and godly and all those other things the Bible exhorted me toward. With sex, any spiritual development seemed hopelessly unattainable. Maybe Origen had the right idea after all.

It is true there is difficulty in entering into godliness. But this difficulty does not arise from the religion which begins in us, but only from the irreligion which is still there. If our senses were not opposed to penitence, and if our corruption were not opposed to the purity of God, there would be nothing in this painful to us. We suffer only in proportion as the vice which is natural to us resists supernatural grace. Our heart feels torn asunder between these opposed efforts. But it would be very unfair to impute this violence to God, who is drawing us on, instead of to the world, which is holding us back. It is as a child, which a mother tears from the arms of robbers, in the pain it suffers, should love the loving and legitimate violence of her who procures its liberty, and detest only the impetuous and tyrannical violence of those who detain it unjustly. The most cruel war which God can make with men in this life is to leave them without that war which He came to bring. "I came to send war," He says, "and to teach them of this ware I came to bring fire and the sword." Before Him the world lived in this false peace. Blaise Pascal Pensees This article is divided into two parts. The first part, which you have just read, recounts the downward spiral of temptation, yielding, self-hatred, and despair. If I had read this article several years ago, I would have gleefully affirmed every thing. Then, when I got to the second part, which describes a process of healing, I would have turned cynical and sour, rejecting what follows. Such is the nature of self-deception.

I have described my slide in some detail not to feed any prurient interests in the reader (after all, how many racy articles have you read in Leadership?) and certainly not to nourish your own despair if you too are floundering—God forbid. I tell my struggles because they are real, but also to demonstrate that hope exists, that God is alive, and his grace can interrupt the terrible cycle of lust and despair. My primary message is one of hope, although until healing did occur, I had no faith that it ever would.

Scores, maybe hundreds of times I had prayed for deliverance, with no response. The theologians would find some fault in my prayers, or in the faith with which I prayed them. But can any person assume the awful right to judge the prayers of another who writhes in mental torment and an agony of helpless unspirituality? I would certainly never assume the right, not after a decade—long war against lust.

I have not mentioned the effect of lust on my marriage. It did not destroy my marriage, did not push me out to find more sexual excitation in an adulterous affair, or with prostitutes, did not even impel me to place unrealistic demands on my wife's sexual performance. The effect was far more subtle. Mainly, I think, it cumulatively caused me to devalue my wife as a sexual being. The great lie promulgated by Playboy, television commercials, and racy movies is that the physical ideal of beauty is attainable and oh, so close. I stare at a Playboy centerfold. Miss October has such a warm, inviting smile. She is with me alone, in my living room. She removes her clothes, just for me, and lets me see all of her. She tells me about her favorite books and what she likes in a man. Cheryl Tiegs, in the famous Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, sweetly walks toward the camera, letting the coral blush of her breasts shine out boldly from underneath a net bikini. She lets me see them—she has no inhibitions, no pudency.

The truth is, of course, that if I sat next to either Cheryl Tiegs or Miss October on an airplane, she would not give me the time of day, let alone take off her clothes for me. If I tried to strike up a conversation, she would brush me off. And yet, because I have stared at Cheryl's breasts and gone over every inch of Miss October as well as the throng of beauties that Madison Avenue and Hollywood recruit to tantalize the masses, I start to view my own wife in that light. I expect her to have Farrah's smile, Cheryl's voluptuousness, Angie's legs, Miss October's flaming red hair and sparkling eyes. Envy and greed join hands with lust. I begin to focus on my wife's minor flaws. I lose sight of the fact that she is a charming, warm, attractive woman and that I am fortunate to have found her.

Beyond that, lust affected my marriage in an even more subtle and pernicious way. Over time, I began to view sex schizophrenically. Sex in marriage was one thing. We performed OK, though not as often as I liked, and accompanied by typical misunderstandings. But passion, ah, that was something different. Passion I never felt in my marriage.

If anything, sex within marriage served as an overflow valve, an outlet for the passion that mounted inside me, fed by sources kept hidden from my wife. We never talked about this, yet I am sure she sensed it. I think she began to view herself as a sex object—not in the feminist sense of being the object of a husband's selfish greed, but in the deprived sense of being only the object of my physical necessity and not of romance and passion.

Yet the sexual schizophrenia pales in comparison to the schizophrenia of my spiritual life. Can you imagine the inner rupture when I would lead a spiritual retreat for a weekend, winning sighs of admiration and tears of commitment from my devoted listeners, only to return to my room and pore over the latest copy of Oui? I could never reconcile it, but somehow I could not avoid it. If you pinned me down on what degree my succumbing to temptation was a conscious choice, I would probably search for an enigmatic response such as the one a Faulkner character gave when asked about original sin. "Well, it's like this," he said. "I ain't got to but I can't help it."

Paradoxically, I seemed most vulnerable to temptation when speaking or otherwise performing some spiritual service. Those who see Satan as personally manipulating all such temptation to sin would not be surprised by that observation.

Lust became the one corner of my life that God could not enter. I welcomed him into the area of personal finance, which he revolutionized as I awakened to world needs. He cleaned up many of my personal relationships. He gave stirrings of life to the devotional area and my sense of personal communion with him. But lust was sealed off, a forbidden room. How can I reconcile that statement with my earlier protestations that I often cried out for deliverance? I do not know. I felt both sensations: an overwhelming desire to be cleansed and an overwhelming desire to cling to the exotic pleasures of lust. A magnet is attracted equally to two opposite forces. No matter how small you cut a magnet or rearrange it, the two ends will still be attracted to opposite forces. One force never cancels out the other one. This must be what Paul meant in some of those strange statements in Romans 7 (a passage that gave me some comfort). But where was Romans 8 in my life?

Even when I had lust under control, when I successfully limited it to brief, orderly perusals through Playboy at the local newsstand, I still felt this sense of retaining a secret corner God could not enter. Often I would get bogged down in sermon preparation. For motivation to keep going, I would promise myself a trip to the newsstand if I could finish the sermon in an hour and a half. Can you sense the schizophrenia?

Just as I can remember graphically the precise incident in Rochester when adult lust moved in, I can remember the first flutterings of a commitment to healing. They also came on a trip out of town, when I was speaking at a spiritual life conference. The conference was scheduled for a resort hotel in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, near my favorite part of the country. Nothing affects me like the long drive up the rocky coastline of Maine. It is an invigorating, almost religious experience. Some people find deserts affect them like that, some wheat fields, and some mountains. For me, the magnificence of creation unwinds with each curve on the road up Maine's coast. I made plans to fly into Boston, rent a car, and spend three days cruising the coast just to refresh myself before the conference.

My mistake was spending the first night in Boston. I was then practicing a fairly rigid regimen of "controlled lust." I hadn't given in to any scary splurges like my Washington, D.C., encounter in some time. But sure enough, that night I found myself stalking the streets of the seedy areas looking for lust. I did not have to look far. Like many cities, Boston offers strip shows, porno movies—a veritable menu of lust. I usually avoided porno movies because they had proved so unsatisfying. But, Boston also features live nude girls on a revolving platform that you can watch for twenty-five cents. I went in one of those booths.

The mechanics are simple. Twenty curtained booths encircle a revolving platform. Each booth has a glass window covered by a piece of plywood. When you insert a quarter, a mechanical arm somewhat like a toll gate lowers the piece of plywood and lets you see the nude girls revolving on the platform. Then, about three minutes later the toll gate goes up, and you have to drop in another quarter to continue. This is lust at its most unadorned.

The girls employed by such places are not beautiful. Imagine for yourself what kind of women would willingly settle for such employment. You lie under bright lights, revolving like a piece of roast beef at a buffet table, masturbating occasionally to keep the quarters clinking. Around you, leering, furtive stares of men appear for three minutes, then disappear, then appear again, their glasses reflecting your pale shape, none of them looking at your face.

Maybe such booths do serve a redeeming purpose for society—by exposing lust in its basest demythologized form. There is no art or beauty, no acrobatic dancing. The woman is obviously a sex object and nothing else. The men are isolated, caged voyeurs. There is no relationship, no teasing.

The girls are bored stiff: over the whir of the timing mechanism you can hear them trading talk about grocery prices or car repairs. They masturbate as a routine for the customers, like an ape at the zoo who learns to make faces because the onlookers then laugh and point. This is what the richest, freest society in history spends its wealth and freedom on?

And yet, there I was, a respected member of that society, three days away from leading a spiritual-life retreat, dropping in quarters like a frantic long-distance caller at a pay phone.

For fifty cents you could go to a private booth, and one of the girls would entertain you personally. A glass wall still separated you from the girl, but you could, if you wished, pick up the receiver and talk to the girl. Maybe you could talk her into doing something special for you. I went into the booth, but something restrained me from picking up the telephone. I could not make that human an act—it would expose me for what I was. I merely stood, silent, and stared.

Guilt and shame washed over me in waves that night, as usual. Again I had a stark picture of how low I was groveling. Did this animal lust have any relation to the romance that had inspired the Symphonie Fantastique, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets, and the Song of Solomon? Certainly each of those works contained traces of glandular desire, but this that I had experienced was devoid of all beauty. It was too naked, and shameful.

I had felt all that remorse before. What shocked me more was my trip up the coast the next two days. I followed my usual practice of staying in homey inns with big fireplaces, and of eating by the waterfront and watching the sailboats bob in the shimmering sea, of taking long solitary walks on the rocky promontories where huge waves crashed with thunder, of closing my eyes and letting salt spray splash across my face, of stopping at roadside stands for fresh lobster and crab. There was a difference this time: I felt no pleasure. None. My emotional reaction was the same as if I had been at home, yawning, reading the newspaper. All romance had drained out, desiccated.

The realization disturbed me profoundly. By all counts, those wonderful, sensuous experiences rated far higher than the cheap thrill of watching a fat, pock—marked body rotate on plywood. And yet, to my utter disbelief my mind kept roaming back to that grimy booth in Boston. Was I going crazy? Would I lose every worthwhile sensation in life? Was my soul leaking away? Was I becoming possessed?

I limped through the conference, and everyone warmly applauded each talk. They were all blessed. Alone in my room at night, I did not pore over pornography. I pored over what had been happening inside me for ten years. I did not like it.

Exactly three days later, I spent the night with a very dear friend, a pastor of one of the largest churches in the South. I had never shared intimate details of my lust life with anyone before, but the schizophrenia was building to such a point I felt I must. He listened quietly, with compassion and great sensitivity as I recounted a few incidents, skipping over those that showed me in the worst light, and described some of my fears to him.

He sat for a long time with sad eyes after I had finished speaking. We both watched our freshly refilled cups of coffee steam, then stop steaming, then grow cold. I waited for his words of advice or comfort or healing or something. I needed a priest at that moment, someone to say, "Your sins are forgiven."

But my friend was no priest. He did something I never expected. His lip quivered at first, the skin on his face began twitching, and finally he started sobbing—great, huge, wretched sobs such as I had seen only at funerals.

In a few moments, when he had recovered some semblance of self-control, I learned the truth. My friend was not sobbing for me; he was sobbing for himself. He began to tell me of his own expedition into lust. He had been where I was—five years before. Since that time, he had taken lust to its logical consequences. I will not dwell on sordid details, but my friend had tried it all: bondage, prostitution, bisexualism, orgies. He reached inside his vest pocket and pulled out a pad of paper showing the prescriptions he took to fight the venereal disease and anal infections he had picked up along the way. He carries the pad with him on trips, he explained, to buy the drugs in cities where he is anonymous.

I saw my friend dozens of times after that and learned every horrific detail of his hellish life. I worried about cognitive dissonance; he brooded on suicide. I read about deviance; he performed it. I winced at subtle fissures in my marriage; he was in divorce litigation.

I could not sit in judgment of this man, because he had simply ended up where my own obsession would likely take me. Jesus brought together lust and adultery, hatred and murder, in the Sermon on the Mount, not to devalue adultery and murder but rather to point to the awesome truth about hatred and lust. There is a connection.

If I had learned about my friend's journey to debauchery in an article like this one, I doubtless would have clucked my tongue, questioned Leadership's judgment in printing it, and rejected the author as an insincere poseur in the faith. But I knew this man, I thought, as well as I knew anyone. His insights, compassion, and love were all more mature than mine. My sermons were like freshman practice runs compared to his. He was a godly man if I had ever met one, but underneath all that … my inner fear jumped uncontrollably. I sensed the power of evil.

For some weeks I lived under a cloud that combined the feelings of doom and terror. Had I crossed some invisible line so that my soul was stained forever? Would I too, like my trusted friend, march inexorably toward the systematic destruction of my body and my soul? He had cried for forgiveness, and deliverance, and every other prayer he had learned in church, and yet now he had fallen into an abyss. Already lawyers were dividing up his house and possessions and his children. Was there no escape for him—for me?

My wife could sense the inner tension, but in fifteen years of marriage she had learned not to force a premature explanation. I had not learned to share tension while it was occurring, only afterward, when it fit into a logical sequence, with some sort of resolution. This time, I wondered whether this particular problem would ever have such a resolution.

A month after my conversation with my friend, I began reading a brief and simple book of memoirs, What I Believe, by Francois Mauriac. In it, he sums up why he clung to the Roman Catholic church and the Christian faith in a country (France) and an age when few of his contemporaries seriously considered orthodoxy. I had read only one novel by the Nobel prizewinning author, Viper's Tangle, but that novel clearly showed that Mauriac fully understood the lust I had experienced, and more. A great artist, he had captured the depths of human depravity. I would not get pious answers from him.

Mauriac's book includes one chapter on purity. He describes the power of sexuality—"the sexual act has no resemblance to any other act: its demands are frenzied and participate in infinity. It is a tidal wave"—and his struggles with it throughout a strict Catholic upbringing. He also discounts common evangelical perspectives on lust and sex. The experience of lust and immorality, he admits, is fully pleasurable and desirable; it is no good trying to pretend that sin contains distasteful seeds that inevitably grow into repulsion. Sin has its own compelling rewards. Even marriage, Christian marriage, he claims, does not remedy lust. If anything, marriage complicates the problem by introducing a new set of difficulties. Lust continues to seek the attraction of unknown creatures and the taste for adventure and chance meetings.

After brazenly denying the most common reasons I have heard against succumbing to a life filled with lust, Mauriac concludes that there is only one reason to seek purity. It is the reason Christ proposed in the Beatitudes: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Purity, says Mauriac, is the condition for a higher love—for a possession superior to all possessions: God himself.

Mauriac goes on to describe how most of our arguments for purity are negative arguments: Be pure, or you will feel guilty, or your marriage will fail, or you will be punished. But the Beatitudes clearly indicate a positive argument that fits neatly with the Bible's pattern in describing sins. Sins are not a list of petty irritations drawn up for the sake of a jealous God. They are, rather, a description of the impediments to spiritual growth. We are the ones who suffer if we sin, by forfeiting the development of character and Christlikeness that would have resulted if we had not sinned.

The thought hit me like a bell rung in a dark, silent hall. So far, none of the scary, negative arguments against lust had succeeded in keeping me from it. Fear and guilt simply did not give me resolve; they added self-hatred to my problems. But here was a description of what I was missing by continuing to harbor lust: I was limiting my own intimacy with God. The love he offers is so transcendent and possessing that it requires our faculties to be purified and cleansed before we can possibly contain it. Could he, in fact, substitute another thirst and another hunger for the one I had never filled? Would Living Water somehow quench lust? That was the gamble of faith. Perhaps Mauriac's point seems obvious and predictable to people who respond to anguished problems with spiritual-sounding cliches. But I knew Mauriac and his life well enough to know that his observation was the culmination of a lifetime of struggle. He had come to that conclusion as the only possible justification for abstemiousness. Perhaps, just perhaps, the discipline and commitment involved in somehow allowing God to purge out the impurities formed the sine qua non, the essential first step toward a relationship with God I had never known.

The combination of grave fear struck in me by my pastor friend's grievous story and the glimmer of hope that a quest for purity could somehow transform the hunger I had lived with unabated for a decade prepared me to try once again to approach God in confession and in faith. I knew pain would come. Could God this time give me assurance that, in Pascal's words, pain was the "loving and legitimate violence" necessary to procure my liberty?

I cannot tell you why a prayer that has been prayed for ten years is answered on the 1,000th request when God has met the first 999 with silence. I cannot tell you why I had to endure ten years of near—possession before being ready for deliverance. And, most sadly of all, I cannot tell you why my pastor friend has, since our conversation after New Hampshire, gone into an unbelievable skid toward destruction. His marriage is now destroyed. He may go insane or commit suicide before this article is published. Why? I do not know.

But what I can tell you, especially those of you who have hung on every turn of my own pilgrimage because it so closely corresponds to yours, is that God did come through for me. The phrase may sound heretical, but to me, after so many years of failure, it felt as if he had suddenly decided to be there after a long absence. I prayed, hiding nothing (hide from God?), and he heard me.

There was one painful but necessary step of repentance. Repentance, says C. S. Lewis, "is not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could let you off if He chose; it is simply a description of what going back is like." Going back for me had to include a very long talk with my wife, who had suffered in silence and often in nescience for a decade. It was she I had wronged and sinned against, as well as God. Perhaps my impurity had kept our own love from growing in the same way it had blocked the love I could experience with God. We lay side by side on our bed one steamy summer evening. I talked about nothing, in a nervous, halting voice, for an hour or so, trying to break the barrier that held me back, and finally about midnight I began.

I told her nearly everything, knowing I was laying on her a burden she might not be able to carry. I have wondered why God let me struggle for a decade before deliverance: maybe I will one day find out my wife required just that much time to mature and prepare for the one talk we had that night. Far smaller things had fractured our marriage for months. Somehow, she incarnated the grace of God for me.

I hurt her—only she could tell how much I hurt her. It was not adultery—there was no other woman for her to beam her resentment toward, but perhaps that made it even harder for her. For ten years she had watched an invisible fog steal inside me, make me act strange, pull me away from her. Now she heard what she had often suspected, and to her it must have sounded like rejection: You were not enough for me sexually, I had to go elsewhere.

But still, in spite of that pain and the vortex of emotions that must have swirled around inside her, she gave to me forgiveness and love. She took on my enemy as her enemy too. She took on my thirst for purity as her thirst too. She loved me, and as I type this even now, tears streak my face because that love, that awesome love is so incomprehensible to me, and so undeserved. But it was there.

How can I give you up, O Ephraim! How can I hand you over, O Israel! … For I am God and not man, The Holy One in your midst. Hosea 11:8-9 Saint Augustine, who wrote so eloquently of his own war within, describes our condition here on earth as a simultaneous citizenship in two cities, the city of man and the City of God. The lure of the city of man often drowns out the call of the City of God. Man's city is visible, substantial, real; as such, it is far more alluring. God's city is ephemeral, invisible, cloaked in doubt, far away. It may not even exist— no one knows for sure.

Cheryl Tiegs coming toward me out of the page, her teeth flashing, her eyes sparkling, her body glistening, is that city of man. She, and what she represents, fits well with my body and the hormones that surge inside it and the complexes that grew in my repressed childhood and whatever else contributed to my obsession with lust. The pure in heart shall see God. Set against luscious Cheryl, sometimes that promise does not seem like much. But that is the lie of the Deceiver, and the dyslexia of reality we are asked to overcome. The City of God is the real, the substantial, the whole. What I become as I strengthen my citizenship in that kingdom is far more worthy than anything I could become if all my fantasies were somehow fulfilled.

A year has passed since the late-night talk with my wife. During that time, a miracle has occurred. The war within me has fallen away. Only a few snipers remain. Once I failed, just a month later, when I was walking the streets of San Francisco. I felt myself pulled—it felt exactly like that—into another of the twenty-five cent peep shows to watch an undulating girl on a revolving table for three minutes. Not ten seconds had passed when I felt a sense of horror. My head was pounding. Evil was taking over. I had to get out of there, immediately.

I ran, literally ran, as fast as I could out of the North Beach district. I felt safe only when I got out of there. It struck me then how much had changed: previously I had felt safe when I had given in to lust, because the war inside died down for a moment, but now I felt safe away from the temptation. I prayed for strength and walked away.

Other than that encounter, I have been free of the compulsion. Of course, I notice girls in short dresses and halter tops—why else would they wear them?—but the terror is gone. The gravitational force has disappeared when I pass in front of newsstands. For twelve months I have walked by them and not picked up a magazine. I have not entered a porno theater.

I feel a sense of loss, yes. I enjoyed the beautiful women, both the art and the lust of it. It was pleasurable; I cannot deny that. But now I have gained a kind of inner gyroscope that is balanced correctly and alerts me when I am straying off course. After ten years I finally have a reservoir of strength to draw on as well as a conscience. I have found it necessary to keep open and honest communication with God and my wife on every little temptation toward lust.

The war within still exists. Now it is a war against the notion that biology is destiny. Looking at humanity as a species, scientists conclude that the fittest must survive, that qualities such as beauty, intelligence, strength, and skill are worthy factors by which to judge the usefulness of people, that lust is an innate adaptation to assure the propagation of the species Charity, compassion, love, and restraint fly in the face of that kind of materialist philosophy. Sometimes they defy even our own bodies. The City of God can seem like a mirage; my battle is to allow God to convince me of its reality.

Two totally new experiences have happened to me that, I must admit, offset by far my sense of loss at the experiences of lust I miss.

First, I have learned that Mauriac was right. God has kept his part of the bargain. In a way I had never known before, I have come to see God. At times (not so often, maybe once every couple of months), I have had an experience with God that has stunned me with its depth and intimacy, an experience of an order I did not even know existed before. Some of these moments have come during prayer and Bible reading, some during deep conversations with other people, and one, the most memorable of all because of my occupation, while I was speaking at a Christian conference. At such moments I have felt possessed, but this time joyfully so (demonic possession is a poor parody of the filling of the Spirit). They have left me shaken and humbled, renewed and cleansed. I had not known that level of mystical experience, had not, in fact, even sought it except in the general way of seeking purity. God has revealed himself to me. The City of God is taking on bricks and mortar.

And another thing has happened, again something I did not even ask God for. The passion is coming back into my marriage. My wife is again becoming an object of romance. Her body, no one else's, is gradually gaining the gravitational pull that used to be scattered in the universe of sexes. The act of sex, as often a source of irritation and trauma for me as an experience of pleasure, is beginning to take on the form of mystery and transcendence and inexpressible delight that its original design must have called for.

These two events occurring in such short sequence have shown me why the mystics, including biblical writers, tend to employ the experience of sexual intimacy as a metaphor of spiritual ecstasy. Sometimes, lingering remnants of grace in the city of man bear a striking resemblance to what awaits us in the City of God.

* * *

[imagine-hetalia-countries]

matchup for @nightrainn2

This is under a readmore because of it’s extreme length. (Just under 2200 characters-) However, I do have to apologize for something: I was unable to come up with a second choice for your 2P Matchup. If I do think of one soon, I’ll be sure to edit this post and let you know, though!

Hi, I’d like a male matchup (I’m female and straight), please&ty. I’m apparently an INFP (from online tests), but my school test said I was an ISFP (so I guess I’m a mix), HSP (highly senstitive person), an Aquarius and an ambivert, but I lean more towards introverted side and tend to keep to myself more/gets time where I get withdrawn. I have depression (my depression can either be mild, or get to the point where I don’t even want to leave the bed) as well as OCD, anxiety,  I can be a perfectionist, and I’m used to pretending to be happy all the time/wearing a mask of happiness all the time, and also has a human chameleon personality (which means that I have a constant, unconscious change in the person’s ‘self/personaliy, which is kind of a way  to fit in with my environment, or the people around me). I honestly worry that once I let go of that human chameleon personality and my true personality comes out, that people won’t like the real me and reject me for who I am. But, when I’m alone or with family, I’m sarcastic, loyal, caring,try to have open mind and have short attention span. Gets bored easy, I act like I’m indifferent to things (and I am indifferent to some things), but I’m really a sensitive and a softie type person and I don’t like seeing those I care about hurt. Stubborn, can have a temper (but I notice it occurs more when I’m depressed).

Can be lazy, quirky, witty, get tongue tied easy, trust issues & a wall built up so it’s hard to let others in (but I want to, it’s just hard to do), curious, daydreamer.  I have an open mind about most things,compassionate, being around people too much drains me emotionally so a lot of times I’ll be on my own. But, I like days where I can just relax, and sit back while doing nothing or spending time with the people I care about. I’m also easily embarrassed, curious, and tend to overthink/worry too much. I also try my best to comfort others/be a good listener(whether good or bad news), good at keeping secrets and be there for them, or at least offer a shoulder to lean on since I tend to worry about saying the wrong thing. I can be silly and make others laugh, having fun is something I like.

I tend to keep my opinions to myself because when I was younger I used to get yelled at or told off by others (not my family, but outside my family) when I told my opinions, and so even now that I’m older I feel like I have keep my opinions to myself (it’s become a bad habit of mine) unless I know that I can trust the other people to care about what I have to say about things. If I feel like I can’t say my opinions without getting ridiculed, then I usually just keep quiet and nod when they talk to me/keep my true feelings to myself. Also, I tend to keep my emotions in check, I don’t really show what I’m feeling because I worry that I’d be a burden or people would get annoyed with me, tell me grow up/be an adult or they wouldn’t want to be around me if they saw my real self (that’s happened when I was younger, so even now I hide my emotions from others with the exception of putting on a mask of happiness, because whenever I was happy or pretended to be, I didn’t get yelled at or see people with an annoyed expression on). My therapist told me that it was emotional abuse that I have (which I didn’t even realize until he told me the signs of it, which I realized that I had) and emotional inhibition too (which means that I hold back emotions in situations where it would be healthier to express them. feelings like anger, joy, affection, and vulnerability get stifled).

So because of all that, I get jealous of other people who can express themselves freely. I also feel like if I express myself, some might find me annoying or are only putting up with me to be nice (I’ve had ‘friends’ who did that) so it always make me question myself. I’m oblivious when it comes to romance & since I’ve never had a boyfriend, I’m completely out of my element when it comes to dating (I actually worry that I might not make a good girlfriend because I feel like I wouldn’t know how to act like one). I also don’t believe in love at first sight, I’d prefer to be friends first. Tbh, when somebody mentions “love at first sight” I always mentally roll my eyes and I want to say ‘it’s not love, but lust at first sight”, but I try my best to keep that to myself. Though I don’t admit it out loud, I actually like the feeling of being protected and having somebody to lean on (even when I tell myself otherwise at times). I’m a bookworm, electronic & video game nerd. I’m not a morning person & it takes me a while to get up, I have a playful side that I show when I truly trust someone.

My true personality usually comes out when I’m around animals,  since I trust animals more than people because I know that I can trust them and that no matter what they’ll love you unconditionally.  I won’t admit it, but I like to cuddle (I’m always found hugging my stuffed animals or my dog or cat). I had to grow up quicker mentally when I was younger so I didn’t really get to enjoy being a child, so I’m always serious around others, but I truly enjoy when I’m able to have fun and laugh, and just be myself, but I do know when I have to be serious. I’m also easily embarrassed, curious, and tend to overthink/worry too much. I also try my best to comfort others and be there for them, or at least offer a shoulder to lean on since I tend to worry about saying the wrong thing.  I don’t really like being in big crowds (anxiety/panic attacks may start, and during panic attacks, I’ll usually cling to the person).I get more talkative and easily excitable about it if its something I’m interested in or I’m around someone I’m comfortable with. I have this habit of always apologizing, even if it’s not my fault or has nothing to do with me. I just automatically say I’m sorry. And when people ask why I’m apologizing, I just say I don’t know. It’s second nature to apologize or to say I’m fine even if I’m not. I love watching Disney movies, action/adventure, anime, Japanese and Korean shows/movies,and cartoons, mystery shows/movies, but I’m watching dramas I always check the ending to see if it’s a happy ending, if it’s not, then I’m not going to watch it, since I prefer happy endings

Even though this is random, when it came to Harry Potter Pottermore quizzes, I am a Hufflepuff/pukwudgie,and my patronus is a Piebald Stallion. I want somebody who accepts me for who I really am, and I’ll do the same for them, if they are overprotective, a bit possessive  and/or clingy, then I’ll accept them because that’s part of who they are, and if I don’t understand why they act like they do, I would try my best to understand or help them with it if they want. I would want a relationship where we can both accept and be ourselves, as well as both of us being able to be honest with each other.

When it comes to stuff I’m interested in I tend to really get into it/am detailed (unless I’m having a depression episode, then I just feel blah and don’t want to do anything), otherwise if it’s something I’m not interested in then I tend to be a procrastinator. Also, I’m pretty clumsy, I trip over my own feet often, sadly and even when I’m walking, I can trip (I’ve tripped going up the bleachers and hitting my knee pretty hard. I even once tripped while dancing in my living room and even though the doctor’s said nothing was wrong, a couple of months later when it still wasn’t healed, they said that I had a hairline fracture that could keep a football player out for a season).

My view on relationships are: they are fine, I’m kind of indifferent. I would like to be in a relationship, but sometimes it’s hard to put myself out there,especially when you hear news of divorce rates and hearing about people cheating on each other. When hearing that, it’s worrisome because I worry about that happening to me.

Likes: loyalty, food (both eating -ok, especially eating-, but also making it at times), dancing (might not be good at it, but I love it, especially when trying to copy the dances from music videos), music (especially pop, some r&b, j-pop, j-rock, k-pop, k-rock, alternative, musicals, anime music, video game music, and  instrumentals),  snow (I love playing in it and seeing it, I act like a child when I see it – giddy and excited-). animals (they are weakness, I could be talking and if I see an animals, I’ll say “oh look at the cute ___), fireworks, relaxing, puzzles, music, photography, swimming, the evening/night time, trying to learn another language, storms, cloudy days, rainy days (the dark and dreary weather actually makes me happy and energized as opposed to sunny days which make me want to stay in), trying to find loopholes to get out of things I really don’t want to be in, watching the stars, tea, candy, cartoons, stuffed animals (I’d prefer stuffed animals or books as a gift as opposed to flowers, since flowers don’t last long, though I’m always told not to say that out loud since I’d never get flowers), super soft and fluffy things (whether they are clothes, blankets, etc), bbq, yoga, cooking/baking (I’ve recently got into cooking international style recipes), and reading. I love brain teasers, and mystery/puzzle games because they make think and as weird as it may seem, I like the smell of pool water (that pool chlorine-y smell), it’s strangely nice and calming.

Disikes: cheaters in relationships, abuse (physical and emotional), most rock music, rap, the morning, public speaking (and will go to great lengths to get it out of it –even finding ways to get sick), being bored, animal abuse, betrayal, power outages, complete silence ( not like the ‘nobody is talking silence’, but the no noise in background silence, it freaks me out that’s why I’ll can usually only sleep if the tv is on or music is on), people who are rude to her family, needles/getting shots (I apparently have small veins, so they wind up having to stick me multiple times before they can find a vein, and now I hate needles), being/feeling lonely, being yelled at, feeling like I’m trapped in something (it’s one of my fears too), crowds, my laugh sometimes (because if I’m comfortable around somebody, sometimes when I laugh, I sometimes snort, so because of that I try my best not to really laugh or at least if I laugh I try to hold back my laughter from being a full one in case I let out a snort), getting into conflicts, and bugs (and I don’t like it when people play on that fear either).

Dreams/Goals for future: I’d like to get married someday and maybe have a family (whether having children by birth or adoption, either way is fine with me. No matter what, they would be family, blood ties or no blood ties),but if my s/o didn’t want children, I would be alright with that too, I’d be happy either way and as far as careers go, I might want to become a translator or something related to that, either that or something related to nursing (even though I’m not that great with science, I’m working on it learning/understanding it better ), something involving law or working with animals would be amazing. I have so many things that I want to try, I’m just trying to find the thing that is a fit for me.

I’m not sure if you need/want it, but here is my appearance incase you do:  I’m 5’7, have dark brown eyes with oval glasses, thick brownish black wavy/curly (that gets poofy/frizzy in humidity and while drying after it gets wet) shoulder length hair with bang that stop at my chin, I have light brown skin (not a tan),have a pear body type. I dress pretty casual, I like wearing hoodys, converse, boots and just comfortable clothes. I’m not really into wearing dresses, or heels, but I will wear them if the event is specia or the dress code calls for it.

Notes: She wanted 1p and 2p. For 2p I think China and for 1p I'm thinking Russia so far. I'll read this again tomorrow and see if that's changed.

When it comes to the 1Ps, I can definitely see you with China. Yao wouldn’t really mind all the masks and hiding of yourself. If he’s honest, he does it too. You’ll always be around animals at his house, so he’s usually either off with one of them, or if you’re both with animals, he’s petting one while internally swooning at you. You make him feel like a young nation again, one who hasn’t lived through the things he has. You make him smile, and your honesty is a massive plus in his book. Honesty is important in relationships, he’s probably just as honest if not more than you are.

As another choice, though, you have Italy. Feliciano has no censor when it come to the truth, or how much he loves you. Of course, he does believe in love at first sight, so that would mean he’s trying to woo you while trying to befriend you, and he struggles with not showing his emotions, meaning you’d probably end up jealous of him every now and again. He’ll get you the best of the best of anything and everything. The best. No matter what, he’ll get it for you. You’re the most important thing to him, aside from his nation itself.

For 2Ps, I can most definitely see you with Prussia. Gillen and you both have a lot of the same, and even still, many different problem points. He can help you cope with your OCD and perfectionism, and you can both help each other with being afraid of showing emotions. Past your ability to help each other, he’s going to greatly adore seeing you with animals, especially if you can get some small babies to let him pet them. You make him happy, he’s not afraid to be himself around you, and hopes you feel the same way. You make him a bit braver, too.