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. Thanks for listening to my interview with Mark and Christy Summers. They have a beautiful story, both individually and as a couple, of healing and freedom and transformation. You're going to hear about same-sex attraction, pornography, jesus, and if you have felt hopeless, you're going to get some new hope. Enjoy the episode. Today. I am thrilled to introduce you all to Mark and Christy Summers, who are the founders of Redeemed Season, where they help men and women who are struggling with sexual and relational brokenness, and Christy also works for Restored Hope Network.

Speaker 2: 0:53

Our delight. You are so welcome. We are delighted to be here, truly. Thanks for asking us. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 0:59

You're welcome. You both have a very unique story as individuals and as a couple. Where should we begin?

Speaker 2: 1:06

Well, just to kind of give you a nutshell version of my story, I started struggling with same-sex attraction and actually was in a homosexual relationship from when I was 15 until I was about 30 years old. From when I was 15 until I was about 30 years old, it was not something that I desired for myself, not something that I ever dreamt of for myself. It was actually a surprise to me when I found that I was attracted to women, and there was actually one girl in particular. We were very good friends. The friendship evolved into a physical and emotionally dependent relationship. I really, really struggled with it. I was very tormented.

Speaker 2: 1:50

I was a nominal Christian then, but I wasn't following Jesus. I didn't know Jesus. He wasn't Lord of my life. At that point I kept thinking I was going to grow out of it. Quite honestly, I thought, well, the man of my dreams will come along and then I'll start dating him and fall in love with him and I won't have these feelings anymore. And that wasn't how it worked for me. You know it was so hard, drew, because it was like there was a huge deficit in my soul that needed maternal care, that needed maternal love. And it wasn't until later on in my healing journey with the Lord that I realized that's what the hole was and that was what I really needed and that's why I was so drawn to the touch and to the care of other women. Now I know that that isn't the same story for everyone everyone who struggles in this area but that was a huge part of my story.

Speaker 2: 2:49

I kind of got to the end of myself and thought, well, I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life because I can't be with women, because I always struggle with them, and then I can't be with men because I didn't want to be disingenuous and start a relationship, a marriage relationship, with a man, say, and draw him into something that wasn't real. And just to try and make myself feel normal, act normal, look normal, be normal, all those things when that wasn't my heart reality or my soul reality. I tried everything on my own. I tried having sexual relationships with men. I tried white knuckling it on my own. I tried willing myself to not feel this way anymore. I tried going to church. I became a new Christian and born again Christian. I got baptized in an evangelical church. That still didn't make the feelings go away. It didn't make the draw or the pull change. Then I said, ok, well, lord, I can't do it on my own. If you are who you say you are, then I'll give you a shot.

Speaker 2: 3:57

So that was the beginning of my healing journey and I think I was probably about 31 years old when I made that challenge to God. It took me a while. I was kind of scared, you know, walking into a support group for people who struggled with homosexuality wasn't like high on my list of things that I really wanted to do and it was a long journey. But I did get desperate enough to go to a group called Living Waters where it was a nice long nine-month program of intensive weekly connecting with the group, with very solid leaders who taught me about Jesus, who taught me about God's design for sexuality, who walked with me. And I went through that program numerous times and you know it wasn't really until probably my third time.

Speaker 2: 4:57

Through that I realized I'm seeking the wrong thing here. I'm seeking healing and not Jesus. So my true transformation started when I realized I just need to seek Jesus and in my relationship with him and seeking him and not being fixated on how are you going to heal me, jesus, but how? How are we going to be together? How are we going to be in relationship? And honestly, lord, I know that I have to surrender everything to you, and it was at that point in seeking relationship with him, when I surrendered everything to him and stopped holding on to the little things that I thought I needed and the things that I desired, and even sacrificed my desires to him, that he really started to do some deep healing in my life. Yeah, so that's kind of the nutshell version in my life. Yeah, so that's kind of the nutshell version.

Speaker 1: 6:04

Thank you so much for your vulnerability, because when I hear some people say I want healing, underneath that is often a self-hatred, yes, or a desire to be fixed or viewing myself as a problem or defective.

Speaker 2: 6:24

It truly was. I saw myself as defective, and too much for people, relationally too much for women, relationally too much for men because I didn't even know how to connect with men emotionally. But I had to learn all of those things. There was a lot of self-hatred, self-rejection, that I had to take those things to the Lord and go. Why, why, Father, why do I hate myself? Well, shame, of course, huge Shame, because of how I'd been acting, how I'd been living. Shame because I couldn't change myself, I didn't have the power to change myself. That was hugely impactful because it keeps us in that cycle.

Speaker 2: 7:14

But below all of that, the self-hatred was even deeper because it did stem from and I don't want to say anything negative about my mother, because there has been a lot of redemption there. She is now with Jesus and I love her truly. She loved me the best she could, but it wasn't adequate for what my needs were and so I didn't see myself as valuable to her. And if my mom didn't see me as somebody that she wanted to spend time with, I mean, that was my perception. I'm sure that wasn't her truth, but that was my perception as a little one that I wasn't of value to her.

Speaker 1: 8:09

Yeah, and that's what stays with us, that's what we carry in our bodies, regardless of how well our parents loved us. We experience our feelings that don't always match up with that, and that's okay. Thank you for validating both sides of that story, because often people are caught in the tension of trying to figure out why am I feeling this way, why am I struggling with these behaviors, even when I have a positive view of my parents?

Speaker 2: 8:35

You're very welcome. You're very welcome.

Speaker 1: 8:38

And it seems like you started to experience the love of God and the love of Jesus more fully.

Speaker 2: 8:53

A large part of why I was able to embrace Father God was because my earthly father was a very loving man. He was an emotionally tender man and he did see me. He did spend time with me. Spend time with me, he did care for those places in my heart. And while that was wonderful and it was an amazing gift to me, especially when I started to learn more about the Father, the Father, our Abba Father, and His heart of love for me, it also kind of confused me because what that did to me is that, okay, my father loves me, I'll spend time with my father.

Speaker 2: 9:30

Now I can get attention from my dad. Well, the things that he liked to do were sports and athletics and watching NASCAR and playing baseball, and watching NASCAR and playing baseball. And so I start going in the backyard when he would get home from work and shooting hoops, and so I started to do the very more, more masculine type things that that weren't. Honestly, I was very gifted and very good at those things and I enjoyed them, but my heart was crying out to. I wanted to learn how to cook.

Speaker 2: 10:07

It seems silly and very, very masculine, feminine, you know, stereotypical and all that, but I really wanted to learn how to cook and to this day, it's still something that I don't really enjoy doing is I feel very insecure in the kitchen. Now, my mother did like to bake, however, and she did pass on to me her love for baking, so I hold on to that as a very dear thing, and I will bake cookies and pies and I love to do that. I love to do that for my family and friends, and every time I do that, it is a way that I bonded with my mother, so you know, but there were still big gaps there.

Speaker 1: 10:52

This is great. I want to hear Mark's story and then more of life for you as a couple. So let's hear the other side of the story.

Speaker 3: 10:59

Very different from Christy's story. So I grew up in a home that was not nominally Christian. We were pretty active in the church. I was baptized at the age of nine but in my late teens turned my back on the church and turned my back on Jesus and said I want nothing to do with it, that's not for me, that's for other people. And I was about 15 years into my working career and my marriage when things started to go sideways. My first wife began to experience some pretty dramatic mental health issues and those sort of devolved into some pretty dramatic substance abuse issues, multiple suicide attempts. We were really doing a death spiral into the dirt.

Speaker 3: 11:54

So, out of desperation, god happened to have placed me in a place. I had three young men working for me who were on fire for Jesus, three young men working for me who were on fire for Jesus. So I went into one of them one day and said do you have anything that talks about why Christianity is any more or less valid than any other religion that's out there in the world? And he reached up on his desk and pulled out a copy of the Case for Christ and handed it to me and I read that I devoured that over the course of about 48 hours and decided, oops, I've made a mistake, I need to go back to church and back to God. And at the time when I look back on it, my motivation was very much okay, this is how I'm going to fix my family, god's going to fix this for me. Okay, this is how I'm going to fix my family, god's going to fix this for me. So I stepped into a church context that was very biblical, very Bible-based it was a Calvary Chapel church and just made my list of check boxes for being a good Christian man and started checking off the check boxes as best I could and, as you can imagine, as I waited for my new Savior to fix everything, things didn't necessarily get fixed. In fact, they got worse. And so I worked at being a better Christian and a better Christian and had some painful issues within the church where people told me that she wasn't getting better because I wasn't praying enough or wasn't praying right or wasn't doing the right things. And finally, at some point, I very distinctly remember a night out on the front porch, the front deck of my house, saying to God if you're not going to fix this, if you aren't going to step in and help. Then you go to your corner and I'll go to my corner and I'll just do this on my own. And so that was about in 2006.

Speaker 3: 13:50

In 2007, things got so bad that I felt like God was telling me you need to take your son and you need to get out because the ship's going down and you've got to save yourself and your son. So I did and we went through the divorce process. Just as the divorce was closing up. As things were getting finished, that's when I met Christy and I was pretty beaten, beaten up, pretty battered and bruised. I didn't understand why God hadn't done the things that I had asked him to do. I was not one who had any understanding at all of what it meant to have a relationship with Jesus. That was like. Those were nonsensical words to me. I could not understand what they meant. I knew what I was supposed to do and not supposed to do and, like any human being, I was somewhat successful at it and somewhat unsuccessful at it, but I was doing what you know what things were supposed to look like, and things didn't get fixed. But in my relationship with Christy, as I got to know her, she had a good, strong, solid relationship with Jesus. So we started talking about what that looked like and what that meant, and we eventually got married. We got married in November of 2008.

Speaker 3: 15:17

About a year after we married, she was ready to get back into ministry She'd taken a year off from doing ministry work, was ready to get back into ministry. She'd taken a year off from doing ministry work. She was a leader in the Living Waters program up in the Seattle area. I decided well, you know, it would be a good idea for me to go through it, just because that would help me understand better her own story. She'd been very transparent with me about her own story and about her experiences with same-sex attraction and her former relationships in ways that I could not understand or explain. The Holy Spirit had told me it's going to be okay, even though this is a background that you have no capacity to understand or to identify with. It's going to be okay, just walk with me and we'll get through this. And so I just had a sense of peace about it, and so that's what we did. So when she went back into leadership at Living Waters, I decided to go through the. I went through the program to understand her better.

Speaker 3: 16:21

It was in that context that God opened my eyes for the first time to my own brokenness. I had never heard anything about story or any of that stuff, and he opened my eyes to my own brokenness and that was profoundly life-changing. I had a problem with pornography and that was profoundly life changing. I had a problem with pornography and I had been exposed to it as a boy, in my early teens, and it had been really a part of my strategy for sort of self-care and self-soothing for you know, really my whole growing up life, especially once I got to college and I didn't have any regulating factors around my choices or the things that were in my environment.

Speaker 3: 17:12

I had my first sort of genuine personal experience with healing, with how the Lord met me in that space of reliance upon pornography, because what he did to me in my journey was and this I can only explain this as a Holy Spirit intervention is that he opened my eyes in a way where, when I looked at any material that was pornographic, all I could see was pain. All I could see was the victimization, the exploitation, the bondage of the people who were in it. And I mean I was blessed to have, in an instant the draw of pornography taken away from me. It's like he opened my eyes that every person there was a son or a daughter of the Most High was an image bearer, was somebody's sister, somebody's daughter. It had a profound impact on me and I think in part he knew he had me on a path of moving toward ministry and we needed to get this taken care of quickly.

Speaker 3: 18:32

This could not be a 10-year healing journey out of pornography if I was going to step into the spaces and places that he had for me. It was also, in God's wisdom, a very profound bonding experience for me and Christy, because in the context of going through living waters, I had to face that that was part of my story and I had to share it with her. I didn't share it with you before we were married, so I had to share that with her and there was some shame in that, just in the fact that she had been so transparent with me and that I wasn't necessarily that transparent with her as we got to know one another. But my mindset at the time was oh, I've got this under control. I'm not. You know, I'm not doing this, so it's really no longer a factor, but the beauty of what God did was he showed me that Christy could be a partner for me in my walk out of it and became a partner, not an accountability partner as in oh gosh I don't want to have to tell her that I did wrong, you know sort of thing but more in a support partner, in a support partner, and that then transferred over into other spaces in her life where she ended up in a couple of different uncomfortable relational spaces and we had begun to build this pattern of helping one another out in those kinds of struggles.

Speaker 3: 19:58

And so she could bring those things to me and thankfully I received them and handled them well and was able to walk out genuinely being a partner to her in those spaces, in the way that she was a partner to me when I was trying to get past things that I had brought into the marriage. So it's been an amazing journey, not one that either one of us expected. No, you know, we got married late in life. You were 47. 47. I was 51. I was married to my first wife 29 years and you know, with the way that that crashed and burned, I at the time figured well, I'm done with relationships for the rest of my life Nobody's going to be interested in. You know, picking me up, I was, she was, so it was really quite the journey.

Speaker 2: 20:55

It was a good one yeah.

Speaker 3: 20:56

So we spent the last 15 years then paying attention to what God has called us to do in the spaces of ministry. We just really feel like we both we bring very different stories into the ministry space, but complementary stories, and we've got a capacity to understand the journey of a lot of folks and be able to walk with them in that space.

Speaker 2: 21:23

When Mark revealed to me his struggle in the past and how that had been and everything, my immediate reaction was just compassion for him, and because I have received so much grace and compassion in my own life and my own healing journey, it was easy to extend that to Mark.

Speaker 3: 21:49

We were in very, very different spaces with the Lord when we met and we got married and we talked about that. Biggest trepidations was I felt like I was so far behind in terms of developing a relationship with Jesus than Christi was. I felt almost remedial in terms of my spiritual walk and wondered if that would be a frustration or a dissatisfaction for her.

Speaker 2: 22:17

Yeah, the Lord assured me in the beginning, when Mark and I were courting, that Mark was on a journey with God. He wasn't stuck, he was seeking more. He was asking questions. He assured me that he believed in Jesus, which I knew he did. I could tell he did, but he wanted to know more and learn more. And so the Lord just assured me he doesn't have to be your more advanced than you spiritual head. That's not the way God works. God seeks the heart and God knew Mark's heart and he assured me of Mark's heart. That was seeking him and that was enough, because God does the work. We don't do it, he does it.

Speaker 3: 23:05

Thanks be to God.

Speaker 1: 23:07

How beautiful that you both got to go through the Living Waters program, and I love the way that you've been vulnerable with each other so that you can support each other and it's not just one way.

Speaker 3: 23:23

Yeah, definitely a gift.

Speaker 1: 23:24

There are so many men in husband material who find themselves experiencing same-sex attraction in marriage or wondering if marriage is even possible for them, having a lot of inner conflict about that. What are some of the unique challenges of being married with your particular stories?

Speaker 2: 23:48

It is very different for Mark than it is for me because our stories are so unique and us coming together. For me, the goal in my healing journey, as I said, my goal was the healing. Then my goal changed to knowing Jesus and finding what is it, jesus? What is your will for my life? So there was a time where I had to sacrifice everything that I desired and that I wanted and that I saw for myself, and part of that was okay. Well, I will have arrived once I'm attracted to men and get married, and I had to let that go. That couldn't be the goal Because I had no idea what Jesus had in store for me and that was a very difficult thing to do.

Speaker 2: 24:38

That is a very difficult thing to surrender. But I grew in my relationship with Jesus to the point where I knew that what he had for me was going to be the best for me, even if I never got married, even if my life was going to be as a single woman loving people the way he's calling me to love people. Whether it was going to be as a single woman loving people the way he's calling me to love people, whether it was going to be fostering children or embracing my grand nephews or whatever he had for me, continuing working in ministry and caring for others who have the same struggle. So I just felt like that's an important thing to say, because the goal wasn't marriage when I eventually got to where I was able to surrender everything and it wasn't okay, lord, I'm going to surrender all of these things to you so you'll give it back to me.

Speaker 2: 25:34

It had to be a true surrender. It had to be okay. I'm going to give these things up and really have my hands open to receive what you have for me, not just today, but throughout the next year, throughout the next decade, through the rest of my life. And in that place of complete surrender is when I finally I really felt the peace of the Lord. Lord. Then, god in his grace, mercy, knowing the true desires of my heart better than I know myself, my truest desire was him. And once that place was really met in relationship, then he started adding things. And I call my marriage to Mark a cherry on the top of a really, really wonderful Sunday, you know, and that's what it's like, the bonus, yeah.

Speaker 1: 26:33

So there's this one theme of same sex attraction and another theme of pornography, and for some guys they're experiencing one or the other or both pornography, and for some guys they're experiencing one or the other or both. And I feel like you have such a great opportunity to speak hope and life into those situations there's this sense, for whatever reason, that somehow, um, same-sex attraction it's some sort of super attraction.

Speaker 3: 27:05

Same-sex attraction it's some sort of super attraction. It's like the immovable object or the mountain that can't be moved. And I think one of the things that the Lord laid on me very early in my relationship with Christy is that it's attraction. Same-sex attraction is just an attraction. It's no different from your attraction to an attractive, good-looking woman. The issue is, what do you do with it? And so if your wife comes to you and says, oh, I found my, you know, or you suspect that your wife is attracted to another woman, feel like there's something like that going on. That's no different than if she was attracted to another man. It's just an attraction. It is a thing that we work through in the context of marriage. All men struggle, all women struggle with oh, there are other attractive bodies and persons out there and I just need to process it as oh, I'm attracted to that person. Move on.

Speaker 2: 28:14

Nothing's going to happen here Next topic yes.

Speaker 1: 28:18

Yeah, but it has so much more power and energy when fear and shame start to take control.

Speaker 3: 28:29

As I entered into marriage, the question wasn't at all, and never has been, to whom or to what is Christy attracted? The question is does she love me? Does she love me, and how does she walk out that love toward me? How is that love manifested? Is it manifested in the ways, the healthy ways that I would desire to be loved? And if it is, then we're good. Then we're good In the same way that the fact that I find women attractive. That's an unhealthy manifestation. If I'm looking at pornography, it's a very healthy manifestation. When I'm looking at my wife and I'm attracted to her, it really does. I don't want to oversimplify it, but it really does come down to. I'm going to choose. I have the power to choose what I'm going to do with those feelings and how I'm going to walk them out.

Speaker 3: 29:26

In the same way that we deal with same-sex attraction as some sort of super attraction, I have to tell you, with the men that I've walked with in pornography struggles, we men and women tend to view pornography temptations as some sort of super temptation. Oh, it's its own entity. I'm not just tempted, it's porn. I'm not just tempted, it's porn, and that's a super temptation that has more power over me than anything else in my life, and it doesn't have to. It doesn't, and that is part of why riffing off of what Christy said that is part of why the relationship with Jesus is so, so important. It's because that relationship takes these things that the world says are super sins, or super attractions or super temptation, and puts them into perspective. He's what matters. He comes first and all the rest of it is secondary Good cherries on the top, but still secondary. That's right, yeah, you know.

Speaker 3: 30:39

The other thing I think that is really important from a hope standpoint, drew, is it's never too late. I've had men say you know, I'm 45 and I'm struggling with this. Yeah, you're 45 and you're struggling with this, but guess what? You could be 46 and I'm struggling with this. Yeah, you're 45 and you're struggling with this, but guess what? You could be 46 and no longer struggling with it. And then, how many years of freedom do you have ahead of you? Right?

Speaker 1: 31:04

Yeah, amen, christy, were you going to say something?

Speaker 2: 31:07

I was. I was going to talk about how the accountability between the two of us is such a huge gift Because me having a struggle, a relational temptation after we got married, and that did happen, but I didn't. And you said something too. It's like oh, it has this power and this shame and it's a super, super struggle. Well, when I didn't sit on it, as soon as I realized, oh gosh, there's something here that doesn't feel right, I am thinking about this person too much. They're not in the right space in my heart right now, I didn't hold it. I brought it to Mark.

Speaker 2: 31:53

And I didn't freak out and he didn't freak out and basically we shone the light of Jesus on it and took it out of the darkness. You keep it in the darkness, it festers and it starts to have more and more hold over you, right? Yes, so you know, and I trust my husband to hold those things with me, as he trusts me to hold his struggles, and we don't do it perfectly, but we do do it. You know, I don't want to give people the illusion that that we have it all together and that you know that it's not hard, and it is hard. It always feels like a risk to have to bring something that we are struggling with. That's a temptation, but the thing is that temptation isn't sin. It's a temptation, right? So let's take it to those who love us before it becomes a sin. Let's let Jesus do the work, let's let our loved ones walk with us.

Speaker 1: 33:00

Good stuff.

Speaker 3: 33:01

Absolutely. God does such good work.

Speaker 1: 33:04

So good.

Speaker 2: 33:06

Yeah, I am so grateful. I am grateful to be continually being worked on and you know I haven't struggled in this area the same sex attraction for many, many years now, many years, and when it, when it did come up, it was dealt with right away and it was gone. But the beauty of it was drew that those, one of those relationships was pruned and the other relationship was blessed, was redeemed, and it was redeemed in my heart. It wasn't a mutual struggle between myself and another woman, it was all within me, but the Lord blessed that. And now I have an understanding of what true same-sex intimacy is. Right, because we were what true same-sex intimacy is.

Speaker 1: 33:53

Right, because we were created for same-sex intimacy. The Bible celebrates brotherhood and sisterhood and the bonds of friendship.

Speaker 2: 34:04

Because I have the ability now to have same-sex friends without me warping it, without the enemy getting in and warping it, because I understand and I've taken those disordered desires, if you will, the lies that I was told and the shame, and have relationships with women that are, are the way god meant and are so much more intimate in an emotional heart level than any of the sexual relationships I ever had, so much more edifying, um, they're just beautiful, beautiful gifts from God and there's no shame. They're rich and there's no shame. Yeah. And the other thing with the same sex attraction thing is Mark understands because of my brokenness inside and the places that I have struggled in there will always be scarring there. The Lord has healed and filled those places up, but there's always a tenderness on those scars. So Mark understands how important it is for me to have time with my female friends, especially the ones that the Lord has given to me in a deep, intimate way, and he doesn't feel threatened. Actually, I'm a better wife for him when I have spent time with certain friends.

Speaker 3: 35:36

Yeah, it's a big mistake to think, as a husband or a wife, that you can be the all in all for your other.

Speaker 2: 35:42

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 35:43

You can't, you just can't. You need to be other people involved and, of course, god needs to be at the top of the list, at the front of the line, when it comes to those.

Speaker 1: 35:55

It is such a gift to witness your health and strength as a couple.

Speaker 2: 36:02

God's done a lot of work and we just keep agreeing with him and saying, OK, yeah, it's going to be hard, but it's so worth it. It's going to be hard, but it's so worth it.

Speaker 3: 36:11

One of the things that I do want to share, just briefly a perspective on, drew is for the men and women that you work with who struggle with pornography. I often hear men describe because I work mostly with men. Men describe their desire is just for the temptation to go away. I want the draw to just go away, and the reality is is that it never goes away. What happens instead is actually more powerful, and that is that it just becomes a thing that you don't do.

Speaker 3: 36:46

I get exposed to something, or I feel you know the enemy tries to put something in front of me that seeks to draw me back in there. My response at the heart level is oh, that's just not something I do. I don't do that anymore. It's unrealistic in our current world to think that we can insulate ourselves from that. Sure, there's choices that we make that you know that. Or we can consciously keep ourselves from being exposed to something when we know that it's there. But the reality is is that the enemy is always going to try to tempt us. It's just that the temptation loses its power when it becomes just. This is not a thing that I do. It has no power over me, you know, instead of being a spotlight. It's not even a blip on the radar screen. Yeah, yeah, go away. You know that's the space that we aspire to get to, and that's where I think the Holy Spirit really has the power to bring us is, into that place where it just has no call on our attention anymore.

Speaker 2: 37:48

It becomes like a gnat. It's a gnat, it's just a little gnat war, it becomes like a gnat.

Speaker 1: 37:57

It's a gnat, it's just a little gnat. Yeah Amen. That's much of what we talk about at Husband Material getting to the place where porn loses its power. Mark and Christy, what is your favorite thing about freedom and healing?

Speaker 3: 38:06

My favorite thing about freedom and healing is that I get to share it with others. It's part of how God calls me to love others, and it gives him glory because I haven't done any of this. It's all about God, and so it brings the light of Jesus into the lives of other people, and that's where I experience. My greatest joy is just in getting to work with men who are on the same kinds of roads that I was on and I get to say, ah, let me walk with you a while.

Speaker 2: 38:35

Yeah, yeah, I agree with what Mark said, because that is the most important thing. But layered underneath that is walking and living a life that I never thought was possible for me. For decades I did not think my life was possible for me, and just living a shame-free, guilt-free life where I'm free to love and be loved is just a stupendous gift.

Speaker 1: 39:11

It doesn't get any better than that I'm getting goosebumps right now thinking about it.

Speaker 2: 39:14

I mean, the bondage was so great. So now there hasn't been bondage for years and I am just beyond grateful to my creator for the freedom and healing that he's given to me through Jesus and being able to pass that on.

Speaker 1: 39:31

Thank you so much for sharing.

Speaker 2: 39:32

Thank you for having us here. Thanks for inviting us.

Speaker 1: 39:35

You're welcome, guys. If you would like to connect with Mark and Christy, go down to the links in the show notes and you can learn more about their ministry and the spiritual direction that they offer, and you can also find links to Restored Hope Network and the Living Waters program. Thank you so much for listening and always remember you are God's beloved son. In you he is well-pleased.