My Transformation from Nice Guy to Red Pill Christian

I was born in the Midwest and raised Catholic. We struggled somewhat financially, but my parents always provided what we needed. We lived in a nice neighborhood and knew most of our neighbors. I am the oldest child, and have 2 sisters. My parents loved us and treated us well. They never ever fought in front of us, and my dad never hit my mom. They would drink socially, but I never saw either of them drunk even once. We went on hikes at the parks, went for drives in the country, went to the lake for the day, went to Cedar Point almost every year, and rented a cabin by a lake for 2 weeks for our summer vacations. All as a family. We were somewhat sheltered as kids, and were the first ones in the house at night and the first ones to bed in the neighborhood. I had a childhood most people can only dream about (I’ve often described it as a Leave-It-To-Beaver childhood – NMMNG was a sorely needed wake-up call). The only bad thing was that I was picked on a lot at school because I was smart but somewhat overweight.

When I was 11, I went to a different school and on my walk home one day, a group of us walked behind the adult movie theatre because some of the kids said we could find pieces of film with naked pictures on them. We did, and soon I was going every day to look. My mom eventually found them, and of course I told her I was holding them for someone else. She threw them all away. A few weeks later my best friend showed me his dad's stack of Playboys in the garage. I took one home to look at with his permission. This is when I began to be addicted to porn. When I was 12 I spent the night at a new friend's house. He had hardcore porn magazines, and his parents knew and didn't care. He gave me some of them and that only fueled my addiction.

At 13 I got into playing video games at the arcade. I didn't have much money so I began to steal it from the till box of money my mom had for Cub Scout activities she was in charge of running. At 15 I went to my first party at my best friend's house, where I got drunk for the first time. Later that night my friend's brother and I went out and broke into some cars and stole some stuff. I began to steal from others when I was at their houses too. At 16 I smoked my first joint, and began to use marijuana daily.

At 17 I started dating a friend of my sister. She was my first girlfriend, and after 2 weeks of dating she asked me why I hadn't made a move on her yet. I told her I was a virgin and didn't want to scare her. She told me to come over that night with some condoms, and I lost my virginity that night on her living room floor while her parents slept upstairs. About 6 months later, one of my sister's other friends called me and asked me if I wanted to go out. She told me on our first date that it was supposed to be a joke, that she never intended to go out with me; she and her friends were only looking to string me along and be mean because they thought it would be funny, but once she talked to me a few times on the phone she found that she really was beginning to like me. On the third date I charmed the pants right off her and we had sex. So now I was seeing both of them and having sex with both of them too. Neither of them knew about the other.

Then at 18 I started using LSD and cocaine because some of my drug buddies offered them to me, and it was pretty much anything-goes from there. My drug of choice was still marijuana, though, and I used it every day, all day. Because of my partying ways, I soon began to meet other girls who were interested, and one by one began to sleep with them as well. I wanted as many as I could get, and would often sleep with two or three different girls in the same week – sometimes two in the same day. Then I moved 3 hours away to a larger city to go to college. I met a girl there, and we slept together on the first date. I continued to see her, as well as sleep with other girls when the opportunity arose.

After about 6 months, I stopped sleeping around and moved in with my girlfriend. I dropped out of school, because I wasn’t really being serious about my studies and was more into partying and having sex. After a few months I began cheating on her with a couple girls at work. One of those girls convinced me to leave her and I did, and we moved in together. She was married, but had been separated from her husband since she went to prison. She had just gotten out of prison when I met her and was in a release program. We moved in together once she was released from the halfway house. A month after we started living together, she got custody of her 2 daughters, 8 & 9, back from her husband. We began to raise them in our house, while continuing to party daily.

She told me she could not get pregnant, so we were not using anything to prevent pregnancy. A few months later, however, she ended up pregnant anyway. I pressured her into having an abortion. She was against it, but reluctantly agreed. Our relationship was never the same after that. We got her tubes tied, but she began withholding sex from me except when she wanted it. We fought a lot, and I started cheating on her. In 1998 we got married. A month later, we moved from the Midwest to start life over in the desert Southwest. Our temporary living arrangements quickly fell through, and we found ourselves at a homeless shelter for families for 3 weeks until we could get money together to rent a place. Once we got jobs and got settled it was back to partying, smoking weed and porn. I stayed faithful to my wife for the next 7 years, but she rarely wanted to have sex and this was really difficult for me.

In December of 1998 I went to a Wednesday night church service with a friend from work who invited me. I had heard the Gospel before but it never "clicked." I suddenly understood that I needed to be born again as Jesus said, and that there was nothing I could do to save myself. I gave my life to Christ that night, and felt the witness of the Holy Spirit inside me powerfully, opening my spirit up for the first time to communicate with God. Soon after I began studying the Bible with my friend and I joined a church, but was still getting high every day.

My wife's youngest daughter got pregnant at 16 and hid the pregnancy from us as long as she could. She gave birth to a boy in 2002. She wasn't the best mother, but she took decent care of him. My wife and I helped. We began taking him to the nursery at our church when he was 5 weeks old. A few weeks before her 18th birthday, the mother began running with a new group of friends and started using crystal meth. She began to not take care of her son and would leave for days at a time. She and her mom got into a fight, and she left for a few weeks to use meth. My wife contacted CPS right away and they granted us temporary guardianship based on abandonment. I bonded with him during this time and began to really love him like my own son. Eventually her daughter returned, and spent the next few years coming for 6 months at a time to live with us and then leaving again. She had a different boyfriend with her each time she showed up.

Eventually I got tired of doing without sex, and I went online and joined a casual encounter website in 2005. I met several women and had a bunch of sex with them. Then in 2006 my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. I started taking her to the doctor several times a week, and they told her they would have to remove her right breast and part of her underarm, then start chemo. I stopped seeing anyone else and focused on taking care of my wife. The surgery was successful, and then she started getting sick from the chemo. I took a lot of time off of work to care for her when she needed. Then they started radiation and she was in even more pain. It was during this time that she began to read her Bible every day and go to church every week. She even started a daily devotional, and began to make God the primary focus of her life for the first time ever. In December of 2006 the doctors told her the cancer had metastasized to her brain, and she began more chemo, as well as full head radiation 5 days a week. In March 2007 she had a PET scan and was declared cancer-free. In May of 2007, the cancer returned and she was in the hospital for 8 days. I spent every moment there with her that I could, and during that time she finally let go of the resentment toward me and we began to be friends again like we were when we met.

She came home and was alright for about a week, but then began to deteriorate. She started sleeping all the time and would barely eat or drink anything. About 2 weeks after she got out of the hospital, she had a breathing attack and was rushed to the emergency room. Her organs shut down a few hours later, and they gave her a shot to wake her up so I could say goodbye. They took her off the ventilator and I said goodbye, and she took her last breath while I held her hand. I left the hospital that night numb. I had to tell my grandson the next day that she had died, and he understood as well as a 5 year old can. I also shared the gospel that day with him, and he gave his life to Christ. After the funeral, I began to read the Bible and pray like never before. I also listened to a ton of sermons and God grew my faith during this time. I contacted the court and went through the process of securing permanent guardianship so I could take care of him. I was, however, still using drugs and watching porn.

The following year I decided to check out the singles Bible study. After a few months I met my current wife, and we exchanged numbers. I called her a couple weeks later and asked her out on a date. She is from Eastern Europe and has a super-sexy accent. We went on 2 dates, and I was high on both of them. As I arrived home that second night, I felt God speaking to me. He told me that a relationship would never work with her if I continued to use drugs. He told me I had to make a choice:

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