Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Husband Material podcast, where we help Christian men outgrow porn. Why? So you can change your brain, heal your heart and save your relationship. My name is Drew Boa and I'm here to show you how let's go. Today I am introducing something new, something that we have never done before over the last four years of husband material something vulnerable, something powerful, something exciting and connecting, and I can't wait to tell you about it. It is a four-part series called Story Work for Men Outgrowing Porn, and this is the first installment.

Speaker 1: 0:44

In each video and each podcast in this four-part series, you are going to get a teaching at the beginning about story work, going into what is story work, why do we do it, how do you write a story, how do you respond to a story, and then that teaching will be followed by an example of what it really looks like in action. So you will get to sit in on a real story group, just like what we do in husband material groups and husband material academy and in some of the places where men are doing this work. And if you've ever wondered what would that be like, how can that help me? What would happen if I were to share the story of some of my deepest sexual secrets or experiences. Well, this series is going to answer your questions. In this series, I am joined by Wendell Moss, who is a therapist, lead instructor and facilitator at the Allender Center at the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. At the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. I'm also joined by Chris Inman, who is a fellow pastoral sex addiction professional and the founder of Porn-Free Masculinity, and my dear friend Marcus Spahr, who formerly served as the Husband Material Director of Care and Support and who is still a certified Husband Material coach. I can't think of a better group of men to do this work alongside, and I really believe you'll be blessed by each man's story and seeing how we respond to each other in the process.

Speaker 1: 2:11

Before we begin, I want to answer the question what is story work Like? What are we talking about here? Ultimately, we are talking about the deeply vulnerable and courageous process of putting words to your experiences Experiences of shame, fear and loss, sexual experiences of pain and pleasure and the internal conflicts that we feel, especially with our sexuality. We're putting language to these things. We are noticing and naming what is true because, as Jesus said, the truth will set you free. But this is not just a spiritual truth, it is also a biological truth. There's so much power in our words that we speak and also that we write. So when we talk about story work, this is really a tradition that goes back for thousands of years, because as humans we are storytellers, we are story hungry, our lives are a story, part of God's bigger story, and there is nothing that is more central to who we are as humans than story. But the practice of expressive writing and storytelling as a strategy to heal trauma and recover from addiction wasn't really researched and studied until 1986, when Dr James Pennebaker at the University of Texas in Austin turned his introductory psychology class into an experimental laboratory. I want to read an excerpt from the book the Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk that talks about Pennebaker's experiment In a class of 200 students.

Speaker 1: 4:04

He began by asking each student to identify a deeply personal experience that they had found very stressful or traumatic. He then divided the class into three groups. One would write about what was currently going on in their lives. The second would write about the details of the traumatic or stressful event. And the third would recount the facts of the experience, their feelings and emotions about it and what impact they thought this event had on their lives. The students took the study very seriously. Many revealed secrets they had never told anyone. They often cried as they wrote. The group that had written about both the facts and the emotions related to their trauma clearly benefited the most. Writing about their deepest thoughts and feelings about traumas had improved their mood and resulted in a more optimistic attitude and better physical health.

Speaker 1: 4:53

When students themselves were asked to assess the study, students talked about how writing things out increased their self-understanding, saying it helped me think about what I felt during those times. I never realized how it affected me before I had to think and resolve past experiences. One result of the experiment was peace of mind. To have to write about emotions and feelings helped me understand how I felt and why. Other writing experiments from around the world consistently show that writing about upsetting events improves physical and mental health and, I would add, is incredibly important for sexual health and sexual maturity, because our sexuality is often laden with secrecy, with shame, with lies, with burdens, with wounds and with parts of ourselves that we don't understand, parts of ourselves that we wish could be removed or replaced. And to be able to write things out, to get things out on paper and to share that in a safe, connected environment and community can be so incredibly healing.

Speaker 1: 6:03

Within the Christian world, dr Dan Allender has pioneered an innovative and incredibly powerful approach that he teaches at the Allender Center, which you can find at theallendercenterorg. They do workshops, courses, and Dan's book To Be Told tells the story of how all of this started and what it looks like to co-author your story with God. And one of the lead facilitators of the Allender Center Story Workshops is Wendell Moss, who actually leads the story group that we share with you in this series. More recently, jay Stringer, who trained under Dan Allender, has taken all of those insights and applied them to our sexual brokenness, and Jay's book Unwanted how Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing, provides a really good foundation for understanding your sexuality in light of your story and I would strongly recommend it. I had the privilege of going through a group for leaders with Jay Stringer, through a group for leaders with Jay Stringer doing my own story work, realizing things that I had never expected to discover about myself, which took my healing journey a lot deeper and is really the foundation for a lot of the story work we do at Husband Material. So that's a little bit of the history and, to summarize it, humans have been storytellers ever since the beginning, more recently with the work of James Pennebaker. It's been researched and proven to be helpful in a number of ways. People like Dan Allender and Jay Stringer have really helped us to approach story work from a Christian perspective and apply it to our sexuality. Now, what does story work actually look like in practice? Well, you're about to find out.

Speaker 1: 7:46

For this story group series, I chose to write and share the story of the day I got braces. This is incredibly impactful for me, since my sexual fetish and fantasies have always focused on braces and orthodontics, so I wanted to be able to deal with that. I wanted to get more healing, more freedom, specifically in that area, so that's why I wrote the story I wrote. The format we use for story work at Husband Material is writing a story about a specific life event, not your entire life, not everything that happened from birth up until the current time, even though that is a powerful practice of writing your own autobiography or your sexual autobiography. We really want to zoom in and focus on one moment or one day or one week where something important happened, and that's the kind of story that I wrote here 500 to 1 a thousand words and then, after writing it, sharing that story in a group of people where there is a level of trust, listening, curiosity and compassion, People who are able to hold space for your story. And that's what we do in this story work group that you are about to witness, where I share the story of the day I got braces. So for the rest of this episode, you will be hearing my story and how these three men of God responded.

Speaker 1: 9:19

The story is called the Day I Got Braces. It's April 2006. I'm 14 years old, enduring another mindless day at Dawson Middle School. Halfway through fourth period, my mom picks me up early to drive me to the orthodontist. Today is the day I'm getting braces on my teeth. Fear and fascination flow through me, my heart beats faster and a million thoughts race through my mind. Part of me is excited.

Speaker 1: 9:49

I've always wondered what braces would feel like. My mom used to tell me she had a retainer when she was a little girl, and when I was younger I secretly straightened out a paperclip, put it on my teeth to see what the wire might feel like. Maybe, if I actually get braces, the fixation and fantasy about them will no longer dominate my thoughts. So I've been scheming for months leading up to this day. I've been dropping hints to my mom that I might need orthodontic care. I would wake up saying my teeth hurt or my teeth are sore, until she suggested that I might need some work done to straighten them out. And my secret plan worked.

Speaker 1: 10:32

But a part of me is dreading this. I shudder at how the metal will change my smile, especially at school the next day when each one of my awkward acquaintances will ask did you get braces? I know this because I've seen other kids endure the interrogation and every time my heart goes out to them. But another part of me is very, very aroused by these scenarios. I replay them over and over again in my head. The pretty girl with the beautiful smile is suddenly shy, hiding and covering her face. She feels humiliated why she just got braces. But for me it's not a barrier, it's a bridge, because I can relate to feeling humiliated. I can connect with that. Maybe if a really attractive girl feels bad about herself, I could comfort her. Maybe then I might have a chance to be her boyfriend. While sitting through classes I fantasize about dating and kissing one of these girls almost every day In the office of the orthodontist.

Speaker 1: 11:44

I am having an out-of-body experience. While they are putting braces on my teeth, I distract myself by listening to the longest song on my iPod. At the end they let me go look in a mirror. I open my mouth and wince I look ugly. Now my teeth really do feel sore. Why did I do this to myself? My mom buys me a cold smoothie from Jamba Juice to help with the pain. She drives me home Immediately.

Speaker 1: 12:15

I walk upstairs to my room. My sister and her friend walk by asking if they can see my teeth, utterly ashamed. I show them the bottom row and they scream, following with giggling and cruel laughter. A sinking feeling grows in my gut as my self-esteem plummets lower. In the bathroom I spend the next hour examining my teeth in the mirror and even masturbating. Apparently. This fulfillment of my fantasy didn't take away its power, but intensified the attraction all the more. What can I do now? Nothing. Who can I talk to about this? No one who will rescue me from this prison of my own making.

Speaker 1: 12:58

My dad meets me in the hallway downstairs when he gets home from work. He knows I just got braces. I have always felt less masculine than him and in this moment the gap I perceive between him and me has grown even wider. He's strong. I'm skinny and sensitive. He's successful. I'm a struggler. He's charming and I'm weird. I don't like the way I look. I flash a smile full of braces. He reacts in his normal way even keeled emotions and a few well-chosen words. He gives me a hug to be like him.

Speaker 1: 13:42

But that seems impossible. Then a new thought crosses my mind and seems strangely appealing. If, for some reason, my dad got braces, then we would be the same in a way. He would feel embarrassed and humiliated too. He wouldn't be all powerful, he would be vulnerable. I can relate to that. I can connect with that. For me it's not a barrier, it's a bridge. If I could feel more like my dad, or feel that he is more like me, if I could feel a connection with these girls at school, my self-confidence would skyrocket. Am I a winner like my dad, or am I the loser I see in the mirror? Having braces on top of acne, on top of awkwardness, on top of anxiety, is not helping. Tomorrow I will go to school feeling even more self-conscious than usual. Everyone will ask me did you get braces? And I will say yes.

Speaker 2: 14:45

Thanks Drew. Thank you, drew. I mean, I'm just even wondering, just even what's going through your body.

Speaker 1: 14:56

I'll twist it up in my stomach.

Speaker 2: 15:03

Essentially, as you say, twist up in your stomach. I mean, that's actually what it feels like in a story, like what it feels like a little boy in a story feels it feels twisted. I don't know about you guys, but the first thing that really hits me, drew even as you used to wear Twisted the sense of first this kind of boy going from being excited about braces by actually going from feeling the pain and then feeling excited to no longer feel the pain to all of a sudden feeling pain. What's it going to gain him?

Speaker 2: 15:40

And yet at the same time knowing there's gonna be a sense of humiliation, and then there's a sense of wanting to be like his dad, but these braces not make him not like his dad. So so there's just so much happening in this little boy. And so when you say feeling twisted, I feel that, that twisted. I even wonder what's like even if I kind of lay the story back out. How does it resonate?

Speaker 1: 16:10

Yeah, yeah. There was so, so, so much more going on inside me than anybody knew. It was so much more complicated than just a simple middle school moment, and one of the words that stands out most of all is humiliation, because that is where I feel most twisted up that is where I feel most twisted up, I found myself aroused by humiliation. And I also was terrified of it.

Speaker 2: 16:56

Yeah, I mean, how did you come to the place of feeling aroused by humiliation?

Speaker 1: 17:10

Any sense. All I know is that I felt that over and over in my family as a boy. At school, I felt so much humiliation that when I saw someone else feeling that, it sparked something for me, it was like, oh, they get it, they understand. Maybe you might be able to relate with what I feel.

Speaker 3: 17:35

Yes and that's really striking to me, drew, because you would share twice, in the beginning of the story and then towards the end, that the braces were not a barrier, they were a bridge, totally. And yet, as you were, as you were telling us this experience, as you were telling us this experience, it wasn't a bridge to your strength, it wasn't a bridge to your confidence, it was like a bridge trying to bring these others to your level, yeah, to that humiliation.

Speaker 1: 18:21

Into my world. Yeah, this bridge in some sense that.

Speaker 2: 18:23

So you Into my world. Yeah, this bridge in some sense, so you won't be alone.

Speaker 1: 18:28

Yeah, that's it.

Speaker 2: 18:31

Because this story is interesting, the story holds. A lot is happening inside you and no one knows.

Speaker 1: 18:38

Yeah, Although I think my sister at some level, walking by my bedroom, knows how humiliated I feel. And then I like open my mouth a little bit and she, she and her friend are mocking me like yeah I mean in the sense that they're I mean honestly they're enjoying your humiliation.

Speaker 2: 19:00

Yes, they're getting something from it. They're. They're enjoying your humiliation. Yes, they're getting something from it. They're enjoying I mean they specifically intentionally wanting to be around to humiliate.

Speaker 1: 19:09

They come on a scene to humiliate you, yeah, I just feel my eyes go down when you say that.

Speaker 2: 19:17

What do you wear as your eyes go down?

Speaker 1: 19:24

I really wish that wasn't true.

Speaker 2: 19:29

That's what makes this boy feel even more alone.

Speaker 1: 19:38

The thought even comes to mind that with the girls at school, I wish maybe I could have the sister that I didn't have a home.

Speaker 4: 19:49

So, drew, when you think about that thought of connecting over the shared humiliation of braces, and when you're in that place of that kind of screams and a couple points but I'll deal with the girls first when you're feeling the desire to connect, what is it that you're really wanting to be, to experience with those girls? What do you want to find there?

Speaker 1: 20:22

instead of being alone, I want to find friendship. You know, the way I felt about getting these braces is the exact same way that I felt about the opposite sex aroused and terrified, just right never going to talk to them, never going to approach them or indicate that I have any interest in them, yet privately obsessed with them.

Speaker 4: 20:46

Yeah, and you mentioned in the story of one particular girl that you were obsessed with. What was the experience that you desired with her?

Speaker 1: 20:56

Hmm, the one, who, who got braces. And then, yes, well, that would happen a number of times. It was just a normal occurrence in eighth grade, yep, where one of the other classmates would come to school and be like hiding her face, or everybody's pointing and laughing, just like I was talking about earlier, everybody's pointing and laughing, just like I was talking about earlier. And whenever I would see that I would feel drawn in. Yes, yes.

Speaker 2: 21:34

Any curiosity why you're drawn in?

Speaker 1: 21:40

I mean, part of it was I want to go protect this person, like this is not okay, what's happening to them. Part of it is I want to comfort this person, like hey, it's okay, I still view you the same way, you're no different than before. Part of it is also just understanding exactly what that feels like. Over and over, in fact, this was something that that would often intensify. The arousal is if somebody got braces for a second time and it was like repeated.

Speaker 2: 22:19

That would actually be even more charged up if it was repeated, if it was like this is happening again and again and somebody recently pointed out to me that's like what happened to you again and again and it's interesting, drew, I can't help but get the sense that how you wanted to stand for other people in this story, there was no one defending you, Right, and so that sense of oh, this little boy is connecting and defending people almost was like he would want to be defending Very, very very true.

Speaker 1: 23:06

There is one person, my mom, who is attuning to my hints and my comments like, oh, my teeth hurt. And yet I actually don't feel safe enough to just be honest and say here's what I really want, here's what I really feel. I'm secretly manipulating her to try to do this for me.

Speaker 2: 23:37

Yeah, you put in words like you had to actually kind of yeah In order for her to see, yeah in order for her to see, in order for her to see, and you had to be in pain for her to notice. Yeah. And interesting, like she disappears in this story after she gets her job issues and I'm just curious, like she kind of disappears.

Speaker 3: 24:02

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:03

So this is kind of noteworthy too. And even at school, um guys, if I'm correct, at school there are teachers.

Speaker 4: 24:12

I believe so.

Speaker 2: 24:14

There's authorities. And again you describe a lot of mockery happening and there's no one again to defend.

Speaker 3: 24:26

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:30

Yeah, what's your heart doing I?

Speaker 1: 24:35

feel sad.

Speaker 2: 24:38

Yeah, because you're having to do a lot of work in this story on your own behalf and I think that's what grips. I don't know about you guys, but that's what really grips me and this feels like I wonder even if there's a sense of ambivalence around humiliation, because in the context of humiliation are the only places I see you get seen Like that's where you get gazes in the context of your humiliation. You know that. Do you notice that?

Speaker 3: 25:08

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 25:10

What you doing where you at.

Speaker 1: 25:12

That's a new thought.

Speaker 2: 25:15

Where does it take you?

Speaker 1: 25:17

It takes me to porn, where I get gazes in my humiliation.

Speaker 2: 25:24

And they don't humiliate you yeah.

Speaker 4: 25:29

In fact, maybe they humiliate themselves and you get to watch.

Speaker 1: 25:33

That's it, man. I mean well put Chris, yeah, and it also wasn't just braces, it also sometimes would work for glasses too. Somebody gets glasses.

Speaker 3: 25:47

Something that is showing an outward fault that the person has.

Speaker 1: 25:55

Yeah, or or a perceived fault that I can then come in and say, no, there's nothing wrong with you, right? I think you're wrong with you, right, I think you're beautiful.

Speaker 2: 26:05

Yeah. Every time you say that I can't help but wonder who you're talking to. Yes, I believe you're talking to them, but I don't believe you're just talking to them.

Speaker 1: 26:17

Right, maybe I'm talking to me, yes.

Speaker 2: 26:21

I want to put words in your mouth. What do you?

Speaker 1: 26:23

Yeah, that resonates with that time in my life, because when I was at this middle school, 14 years old, I had just moved from a place where I really liked myself and I was thriving, and then I spiraled and I was thriving, and then I spiraled and I felt like a completely different person, like a fish out of water in a culture where I didn't belong and felt totally powerless and trapped.

Speaker 1: 26:52

And that's when all this happened. I didn't I didn't used to be terrified of girls I mean, I was actually beginning to get to know them where I used to live. All that got interrupted and cut off. I lost confidence. I lost who I was.

Speaker 2: 27:09

And it's interesting that towards the end of the story, one of the characters like you talk about your father, almost like this is the one who you are not like.

Speaker 1: 27:20

Yeah, and I guess when we lived in Canada, which is his culture, it was like I was kind of becoming like him. But then we moved to Texas. Everything changed and and that was some of the most difficult parts of the story for me to write about most- difficult parts of the story for me to write about how unlike him I felt and how I even had these thoughts about him.

Speaker 4: 27:57

Can I ask you a direct question about that, Drew?

Speaker 3: 28:00

Yeah.

Speaker 4: 28:01

In the story, you were drawn to people with braces because you thought you could connect in the humiliation with them, but yet you wanted to give your dad braces. What? What was the feeling? What was the connection between you and dad versus you and these girls, or you and yourself?

Speaker 1: 28:23

I don't know, but when you ask that question, I just picture me and my dad hugging yes, yes I see it, that picture in the hallway, like I see it.

Speaker 4: 28:34

Would you just see me?

Speaker 1: 28:39

and it's weird because we did hug and, like he did, say I love you yeah I like you said it really well, like you hugged when it didn't bridge the gap.

Speaker 2: 28:50

Yes, that you felt between the two of you. I mean your descriptions I'm skinny and sensitive, he's successful, I'm a struggler, he's charming, I'm weird, I'm ugly. So there's, there's some massive gap that even a hub doesn't wrench you know, it's, it's a.

Speaker 4: 29:15

It's a masculine gap, because you said I feel less masculine, like the masculinity is not transferring. Wendell was saying he's the father, it's his responsibility to give that to you, to see you in your humiliation, to bring you the connection that you long and he can't go there. And what I wrote down was that grief, what does it feel like to have a father who can't truly see you in that space, in that time?

Speaker 1: 29:58

For me it felt normal.

Speaker 4: 30:00

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:02

It's almost as if by by picturing him with braces or being humiliated in some way. It's almost as if I'm fantasizing about him transferring his masculinity even into this place of shame.

Speaker 2: 30:18

It's like yeah, it seems to either transfer his masculinity onto you or, I think chris kind of put like or make him ugly, yeah, or make him. Make him skinny, because I'm actually putting braces on him, yeah, it's to bring him down, correct? Yeah, and I'm struck by that. I need to make him something, because right now he's too big, I can't touch him.

Speaker 3: 30:47

Yeah, well, it's like I need to make him understand what it's like to be me.

Speaker 2: 30:53

yeah yes, yes yes, what's it like to even hold that hug. Still, the hug still couldn't bridge the gap that feels really significant.

Speaker 2: 31:07

I feel kindness toward my dad yeah, there's not a sense of cruelty. He's not being cruel. He's not being cruel in this story, right? Not at all. And there's still a lot of grief and tragedy because one you said this is normal he doesn't fully see. Even this is not about his intent. I have no question whether he loves you in this story, right, and there's a sense that, oh man, it's a lie. He doesn't see.

Speaker 1: 31:43

Yeah, yeah, and he can't. I made peace with that, at least.

Speaker 4: 31:49

I thought I did. Well, there's a word in the story that says you're still making peace with that which is longing. That's true Longing. You're longing for connection, whether that's through the girls, whether that's through the masturbation, whether that's through your dad. Is that there still is a healing, a drawing in as a healing. A drawing in the the the biggest place I saw it is you were so emotionally descriptive until you got to your dad and the emotions stopped and it was just this is what happened. This is what happened. This is what happened Like I've got a list of emotional words until your face changed a little bit too. You kind of just went, went a little bit blank. But in that, my friend, you know this isn't my story, but I'm with you In that same longing of a father who said all the right words and did all the right things but wasn't there.

Speaker 1: 32:45

Emotionally. Emotionally and it hurts, it's gnawing and so I wasn't there emotionally with him, didn't't know how. I'm not telling him how I really feel, I'm not being honest about what's happening within me, and that's exactly right.

Speaker 2: 33:03

I mean, I've never seen that before because I didn't question it and the thing is, no one knows what you are doing with your own face, Right? No one knows, essentially, that you I mean, in some ways this may be really tough language, but in some ways it feels like you're taking a little knife and you're just cutting up your own face, Gosh man.

Speaker 1: 33:34

I literally was with my fingernails.

Speaker 2: 33:38

I'm not surprised. I mean that list at the end of the story. On top of acne awkwardness, I mean there's just this and I just wonder. I'm curious, like how have you been sitting with that little boy's face with braces acne?

Speaker 1: 34:05

I wonder how you hold his face. When we went into small groups and did a process where I asked another man to hold my face and then I put my hands on his hands and it was like teach me how to hold my face, because the night before I had a big zit and I popped it. The night before I had a big zit and I popped it and there was a red scab that day at the retreat and everyone could see it. It was right there on my cheek. And during this process I said I'm feeling really ashamed because of this mark on my face and it's because of self-contempt that I still carry, and I just asked him to hold my face and then after a while I asked him to take his hands away and then it was just my hands on my own face and it was like wow what's it like giving touch to your face now it's good takes practice.

Speaker 1: 35:19

about a week ago, I had a really big zit come up and it was a battle to just let it be and allow it to exist, not annihilate it, and so that was for me a way of relating to that little boy.

Speaker 2: 35:43

And if you have children, you know that acne is a part of, it's a part of, and so in some sense sense have you blessed the zits on your face not verbally or intentionally ever yeah, is there something about about seeing the zits as almost as little bad marks versus a sense of this is what a little boy's skin does in maturation?

Speaker 2: 36:26

This is part of the stage, in some sense, where you mark this, where you mark this face and your sisters, and I think the tragedy is that, wherever you joined your sister's humiliation towards your own face, would you hear.

Speaker 1: 36:43

Yeah, I did. I did join with the mockery and the cruelty.

Speaker 2: 36:48

Yeah, I love what you just did minutes ago. I don't know if you guys noticed I think when I saw you, I was wondering when you told the story about the man. I don't know about you guys, but I was so hoping that, eventually, that you would ask him. I was so hoping you would ask him to move his hands. Yes, I was so pissed when you told me you did.

Speaker 4: 37:08

I was like, yes, yeah, I was like yes, yeah, yes, and the fact that you lingered as you're sharing with us. You know how to practice that now, right, you're able to care for yourself, because you said I don't know how, teach me, right.

Speaker 3: 37:26

Right yeah.

Speaker 1: 37:27

It was amazing. It was a moment of receiving God's love Amen.

Speaker 2: 37:36

And this moment feels like that too, and for you to hold your face in a way that or never can oh yeah, come on oh yeah but. But that's the tragedy, that the porn held your face better than your sister's. The porn had a service. That's a tragic, that it in some ways offers something that no one else did.

Speaker 3: 38:03

Yeah, I would even go so far as the porn held your face better than even your parents did, better than the people who had the most influence on your life.

Speaker 1: 38:17

I trusted it more, of course, it was faithful. Yeah, so interesting, because the version of porn that I would use was scrolling social media for the other classmates, social media for the other classmates. It was always more interesting to have it be personal rather than some random website with people I don't know.

Speaker 2: 38:38

And again back to your story of wanting people to see you and also you also defending the way that you want to be defended. Just a sense, chris, where you still have used to have a lot of face holding to do yeah I do drew.

Speaker 1: 39:03

Thank you thank you receive that.

Speaker 3: 39:11

Receive that.

Speaker 1: 39:14

And that's it for part one of the story work series. If you would like to do this work with me or with some other husband material certified coaches, go to husbandmaterialcom slash group and you can apply to be a part of a group just like this one that you witnessed. We also do story work every Tuesday in Husband Material Academy, which opens up this July, and if you want to start doing this right now, then go into the Husband Material community, because this month, in the month of April, we are offering a spring story challenge where each day of the month, men are sharing stories like the one you heard today inside of our community, being vulnerable, courageous, taking redemptive risks and responding to each other with curiosity and compassion, just like you witnessed here. This is a movement of Christian men who are passionate about outgrowing porn through healing our childhood trauma and becoming sexually mature, and in next week's episode, part two of this series, you will find out why we do story work, and then you will hear a story from one other member of this group.

Speaker 1: 40:20

I hope you're getting some imagination for what story work could look like. Whether in your life, locally or online, husband Material is here to help. You have a story. That story matters and it's not over yet. God is not done with you or me and there is redemption that comes when we look back on our stories so that we can move forward and co-author the story that God is writing in our lives. My friend always remember you are God's beloved son and in you he is well-pleased.