The Radiant Mission
The Radiant Mission
123. Sex Addiction and Redemption: Mary’s Story of Faith and Healing
Mary’s heartfelt testimony reveals her journey through sexual addiction, toxic relationships, and the struggle for self-worth, ultimately discovering redemption through faith in Christ. With powerful insights on healing and spirituality, she emphasizes that true transformation is possible for everyone.
- Mary shares her experiences with childhood trauma and its long-lasting effects
- The impact of toxic relationships and emotional turmoil on her self-worth
- Struggles with substance abuse and sexual addiction in the search for connection
- Rediscovery of faith and God’s forgiveness as a turning point
- Navigating spiritual warfare and overcoming temptations of the past
- Finding true love through a supportive relationship with her husband
- Encouragement for others facing addiction and the importance of community support
Mary implores anyone struggling that there’s nothing too big or too small for God to handle.
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Hello and welcome to the Radiant Mission podcast. My name is Rebecca Toomey and we are on a mission to encourage and inspire you as you're navigating through your life and with your relationship with Christ. We've been in a series on being countercultural in a secular world and today I welcome a very special guest who has so graciously agreed to share her testimony today. Her name is Mary Corona and we will be diving into a topic we haven't really yet explored and that is with sex and sex addiction, anxiety, divorce, spiritual warfare and spiritual attacks and some more things. There'll be some surprises along the way, I'm sure, but, mary, thank you so much for being here and for being willing and open and vulnerable to share your testimony. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:So today is part two of Mary's story and if you did not catch part one, you're definitely going to want to tune back because it gives a lot of context for what happens next in Mary's life. We discuss her parents' divorce and childhood trauma, generational curses and really it sets the stage for some of the spiritual warfare that then ends up following Mary through her teen early 20s. Definitely go back. If you didn't listen to part one, that is episode 122. And if you did. We're just going to jump right back into where we left our conversation.
Speaker 2:I think it's crazy for me because so I, I believe in a relationship with Jesus, right, I don't really think we're supposed to have any sort of spirit of religion, and I feel like that's what held onto them was they preached a lot of love, but they still had a spirit of religion. So it was a thing of like, oh, it's love, you come to God with love and grace. But anytime I was doing something out of line, it was literally a big catastrophe for them. So it's just, it's a little hypocritical to know so much about it, but then you can't pinpoint it in like your own people like to help me it's, it's uh hard for us to see the speck in our own eye right, or the log in our own eye.
Speaker 1:We can see the speck in others, but not the log in our own. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's um, so, yeah, so it's just so. A lot of that, honestly, was just very confusing from out to work, because then I'm just feeling hurt and in a whirlwind, um and cause, even before that, during that time of that transition with my best friends, I met my best friend, her boyfriend's brother, and he was older than me by a lot. I was 18, like in five months turning 19,. He was 23.
Speaker 1:It's not that much older, but I understand what you're saying. At that age he was a grown-up and you were finishing high school, yes, so it's different because it there's just nothing in common with someone that age.
Speaker 2:Like you have a lot more life experience, because when I met him he was just just broken up with his baby mom. He had three kids with her.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, yeah, so he was a totally different life stage.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely, and so. But at the time I was really like alone and I never really had. I had little boyfriends in school, but they didn't last more than a few weeks and at the time, you know, he just seemed really like few weeks and at the time, you know, he just seemed really like into me. At the time it was just a different feeling, but I also felt like he's not for me. I was like, well, this is not gonna work out, I don't really feel like he's my type, but we'll hang out. You know, because I had not really had that experience with boys or hanging out alone with boys or anything like that um, but he, um, and he was very clingy, um, sound feeling at the beginning, like he just was like very much like texting me all the time, blowing up my phone all the time. If I wasn't responding on times it's like okay, well, and then at that point, because I was alone, right, and I liked the company, but I was also getting prideful because I kept having my mom telling me like you need to not be with him, blah, blah, blah. But she was coming at me like kind of aggressively about it and I think in caring and love. But when she did that, I think my pride was just like well, you can't tell me what to do, so I'm like I was like I'm going to do what? Tell me what to do? So I'm like I was like I'm gonna go, I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do, like basically, so I'm just like let me make my own decisions, kind of way, because I felt like she was still kind of treating me like a child, um, and at that time I wasn't living with her anymore either.
Speaker 2:I was living with my best friends at the time and so in their mom, well, he pushed boundaries a lot, um, and he and it was kind of I would have to like snap at him times because he was always trying to touch me, he was always trying to push the limit of things that I wanted and with me. I was putting boundaries with him. But since I had a background of already dealing with temptation, unless within myself, which did get worse as I got older and I got exposed to a lot more I was wrestling with the flesh on like completely like pulling away from him and not getting into those situations and also like naivety, because I've never been in situations like this before either. So and also I was very much a people pleaser and like pushovers. It was also like I would put boundaries, but I wasn't firm about it, so in this instant I was not really. Uh, I did lose my virginity to him.
Speaker 2:It wasn't really, it wasn't planned and it wasn't anything I wanted, like I literally like threw up afterward um because I don't want to get like explosive, but pretty much he never really gave me a chance to really make my own decision, so literally I didn't really text him as often afterward because I was in shock about it and I couldn't stop crying, I think for about three or four days so, and my best friends are asking me, but I just like I couldn't talk to them because I literally was like, with the way I was introduced to things from my, from my dad, and that I was like, wow, I was like all of my chances are gone now I can't go back to God, god won't accept me back. Now I was like I think and I'm thinking in my head like the only way I can fix this is I have to marry this dude. I was like I was like I literally defiled myself, like I'm gonna go to hell, like there's nothing I can do about it. I was like I literally ruined all of my chances. So I still stayed with him, um, because at that point I was like, well, I'm ruined. What was like? So what difference does it make?
Speaker 2:So, and it was bad because I was only with him for gosh, maybe almost four months, something like four months at the time and we broke up like three times within it because, or two times within that, because I caught him cheating on his baby mom and then, about a month late, like so, or I don't know, maybe he was cheating on her with me at that time, I don't know, there was such a mess going on between them. But then and then he cheated on a whole entirely different girl. So literally he was between the three of us like yeah, um, so at that point I was letting it go. But shortly after that, like a month, I saw him again, um, and at that point my best friends kicked me out because they didn't want me with him.
Speaker 2:So I did go back to my mom's. The reason was is I do? It was because I know that there was a toxic attachment there, because that was my first, and I think part of it was also that I did feel like I had to stay with him. At the time I felt like the little signs that he would, in the first few weeks, want to change that, the liver signs of like, okay, well, maybe we can make it work Um, that we lasted about a few more months together because then he had to move back in with his baby. Well, and I was like there's no, yeah, because his mom kicked him out. So that was like absolutely not. Like, are you crazy?
Speaker 1:yeah, you can't live with a woman and date another woman at the same time yeah, the mother, your kids, like your kids, are there.
Speaker 2:Like I can't trust you after what happened and so we had three kids with the same woman. It's come to find out, the third was not his, which is why they broke up in the first place.
Speaker 1:I see Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's what initially started it, but it was a whole taboo back and forth of like it's the baby with his or not.
Speaker 1:But still to have two kids with a woman. Yeah, I mean, that's a relationship there.
Speaker 2:Something's going on, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean it's a thing too, because it's still another thing with his problem of younger girls, because I don't necessarily, because he says how we are five years. He says that when he met his baby mom, that she lied to him about her age, but so when he got her pregnant he was 20 and she was 15 oh, wow so I don't know if I believe him on that, because I he lies about him that wow yeah so.
Speaker 2:So we broke up, um, and I kind of moved on with myself trying to work, because at that point I was back with at my aunt's house and things were a lot better in that household by that time. She got a lot more better on her meds and everything. It was a lot better um, so I just spent the time working and saving up my money um so that way I could move out.
Speaker 2:And at the time, um, one of my still close friends from school, um, we were very close and she had a baby and I was the godmother to her baby at the time. Uh, so they needed help. So I was like, okay, well, I'm planning on moving out. Do y'all want to get a place with me and we can share, like we can for the year? Do it into, y'all can get on your feet, um, and they were like, yeah, that would be great, as long as you share. I'm like, yeah, so I move out. And we got our own apartment shortly after.
Speaker 2:Who comes around again? And I let him back in again because he seemed like he was in a much better place. He seemed like he was working a lot better, that his baby mama was out of town, he was taking care of the kids it was just him and them and he seemed like he was doing better. So I let it back in. Well, this argument was the best one I was living with and she got mad at me and she was just not being fair and how she was acting to me, because I never brought her into my drama with him, but she very much dictated, like the apartment and everything. So if I wanted to go spend time with him, literally would have to go a hotel instead of being in my own apartment with him. So it was like, and I understand like why she felt the way she did, as the best friend, but at the same time it was just a lot so and the things progressively got more drama. So I moved out of that apartment and got my own apartment. So the apartment was Thankfully very kind To separate us from the lease, so I could do that, like take us from the lease, so I could do that, like take me off the lease, so I could do that.
Speaker 2:So with the rush of things, he moved in with me, um, and that didn't go well. Um, he was very traditional and I worked four in the morning to one and he still expected me from that to clean all the house, have dinner ready, do his laundry, everything, and he wasn't really doing anything. So we broke up again. So he also, um, it was just a thing of he drank too much too and that caused a lot of problems.
Speaker 2:So, um, shortly after that I started a new job and I met a new, another new guy, um, and he seemed like the light of the world. He treated me like no one ever treated me before, like so much thought, so much consideration, so much love, um, and then things came up with him. He was also an alcoholic, oh no yeah. And a lot of problems were coming up with him, like not all the time, but it was Because any time he drank it was just bad, like just how his behavior was, and it was just too much. And I didn't know it until at one point when we broke up that he was stealing money from me along the way as well.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, we were together, I think, about six months and so, um, when that happened, and so he stole, probably, and you're what, and you're, you're in your early 20s at this point right, yeah, yeah, I am, I.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I am 21 at this point.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's very young to be in these types of relationships too, where some folks are struggling with alcoholism and all of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he was also five years older than me as well.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:So he was older too and he also had a kid already as well. Okay, so, yeah, absolutely too, um, and he also had a kid already as well. Okay, um, so yeah, absolutely. So, he has um, had was living with a friend at one point and, yeah, he stole 200 from me to make rent, um, and at that point we I separated from him. But we were kind of confused at the same time because I'm like, well, he's treated me so good, he's made a mistake, and so I'm hurt because I'm like, wow, like here I am thinking I found someone who's treated me right and I'm just getting hurt. You know, I was like I'm kind of dealing with the same stuff, but just differently and then it comes in my other ex again so at this point I kind of have a love triangle going on between the three of us.
Speaker 2:So things are very confusing for me. I'm having feelings for the second guy and then I'm having still attachment feelings for the first guy, and so that was just a confusing time until I kind of just separated from, like. I told both of them like I need y'all to give me space. This is too much for me. But then shortly after my first ex got into a situation and he moved in with me in my next apartment and I said look like you're gonna have to help out if you do this, I was like because like we weren't even really fully officially back together, like so it was just a whole situation so and he was progressively just getting worse from there. Because shortly after that on my birthday, when we went out, he told me that he was on drugs again. He used to be a drug addict before I met him. He said. And then he tells me shortly after that he's back on drugs.
Speaker 1:So I'm like okay, can I ask what kind of drugs?
Speaker 2:don't know, I have no idea. Yeah, I don't. Yeah, I don't know. He just told me that he found someone. He gave it to him.
Speaker 2:He was a mess at that time, like he really was, because he would allude to there being a woman. And I was just like, what are you talking about? Like, and it was just triggering me because I know him of what he's done. So we were it was bad fighting all the time, like screaming and yelling because I it was toxic and it was, it was toxic, like. So, um, eventually I found out during the whole time he had been seeing another girl, um, and he said it was her, his drug dealer or no. But I'm like I saw, I see this facebook and you're kissing her like, that is not your drug dealer. So I kicked him out after talking to the girl and finding out and she took him right back and they were together and that's that. But I'm like so, yeah, so that messed me up, because here I am looking dumb again. So I at that point just was like I don't want any relationships. So I just kind of started having flings at that point because I just did not want to deal with any sort of relationship. Wise, um, because I already felt so silly for taking him back um.
Speaker 2:And then a few months later, in comes the second ex again and I forgive him and we start talking as friends really I would say friends with benefits, really um. But things do get progressively more emotional. I see a lot of change in him and everything. So I let him back in um at some point, though he ends up having to move with me a few months later after that because his mom kicks him out, because they have very strict rules in their house about not smoking or doing anything like that, and he would do it.
Speaker 2:So when he moved in, it was bad because I was getting triggered, because I told him I was not ready for him to live with me, but at the time we were together and I, how could I let him be on the streets, you know? So we fought a lot. It was not like we were doing better than we weren't. And then at one point he got a, he got a steady job and he was there a lot, and at one point he was spending weeks there saying he was working on stuff. He dropped a lot of weight in a very short amount of time.
Speaker 2:Um come to find out, he got hooked on drugs and he was cheating on a co-worker at the hotel cheating with a co-worker wow, yeah, so when he would say he was going off to spend the night to work on things, he was there with uh rooms with for her and him not really working.
Speaker 1:Wow, so you had these, this cycle of these two men that are coming around, hurting you, breaking your heart, getting you to let them back in, repeating the cycle.
Speaker 2:Wow yeah, and the same way too.
Speaker 2:It's just so wild that they literally like the same way how they did things, but they're like two different people. So, yeah, at that point I was, I was definitely, definitely done, and at that point it kind of just spiraled more for me on just sex, sex, sex, sex. Because I did not at that point, I had no capability in me to give anyone any of my love at that point, because the last one I thought really was for me, like I thought I was going to marry him. He talked about proposing to me, he asked my mom's permission to marry, so, you know, I thought that was it.
Speaker 2:So I was like you know what? I thought that was it. So I was like you know what I'm done. So at that point, though, that's when really things got really bad with sexual addiction, because, as you know I'm finding out, the more you have sex, the more that spirit of lust like attaches to you and it grows, and it would be so bad that if I was not having sex, I would get dizzy, like it was, yeah, like it was so bad, how much like I needed it at the time wow yeah, um, and I didn't want multiple partners.
Speaker 2:I would was preferring steady partners, but the generation is not good with consistency. So, yeah, it was really trying to just fill a void and crash that itch, I guess, like, however you want to say it, with that need of it. So, yeah, it was, um, yeah, I stayed single and just kind of in that life for about two years, two and a half years. So, yeah, I was just, I was broken off from it. I just I had nothing to want to do with it and I didn't want to try to force myself for that because I knew at that point I was so hurt that I would not be healthy in another relationship.
Speaker 1:Wow. So you went from really you went a long time into you know, through the years it sounded like you were about 18, not really having a lot of relationships to you're, kind of between the first boyfriend and the second boyfriend, kind of going through all that Between the first boyfriend and the second boyfriend, kind of going through all that Four years For four years, okay, and then now it's just spiraled at this point for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So that was like that. And then I moved from Texas because at that point, I was partying all the time. I loved like my whole point when I would go out with my friends was I wanted to get blackout drunk, like that's how I felt comfortable with myself being out, is I just wanted to get drunk. I didn't care if I got sick the next day, I just wanted to go out and get drunk, um, have fun, um, and then you know, I would meet with guys and stuff like that and that was kind of consistently what I enjoyed doing Like, and I loved hanging out with friends normally, but I just enjoyed partying a lot at the time. So, and I kept and that was a consistent thing until around our at the around 2021,. At the end of it, my, my sister, needed help. So I moved up to Ohio in December of 2021 and I still want was wanting that life. Like I felt really alone because it was a different dynamic. I came up to help my sister but she got her family so with like we I loved hanging around her, but we're also like not on the same page of life at the same time, you know, and so and I don't have she's quite a bit older than you, right yes, we have an 11 um year age gap okay
Speaker 2:so we still have fun. I love her, but at the time you know me like I just I hated being cooped up in the house because I didn't know anybody, you know, and she's not in the point of going out and doing stuff like that. Um, you know, transitioning and getting used to that, I found some friends. Um, I did have um a mistake. At one point though and this is kind of where I eased up on it is I borrowed my sister's car to go out one night and I got drunk and I crashed it.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, and I felt bad to that and honestly, some of like that guilt kind of still holds on to me. A lot for it, and she's forgiven me and we've made up for it.
Speaker 1:but that was kind of a thing where I was like okay, I was like was it a wake up moment for you? Do you feel um? Yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like definitely. Like I felt like I just made a? Um reckless choice that time, and I felt like I trusted myself too much, because the crazy thing about it is I was literally only like right around the corner from my house when it happened was part of it, yeah, and then I um other parts of it too, like I still drank and I still would drink a little bit more, but just more so just being responsible and not being like driving and not really understanding things. So I didn't have my own car, I borrowed it. So at that time, though, um, I had met my now husband, um, so at that point he drank too.
Speaker 2:In the beginning of the relationship, he wasn't like, he never got drunk, he wasn't a drink to get drunk, kind. It's just he's mexican, so they're used to just drinking a beer, like so. But what was a thing for me on cutting back on drinking is we had just newly gotten to um into a relationship together, like boyfriend, girlfriend, because we had been dating for four months before we got together, which was a shock for me, because I never had a man take his time like really with that and he really was just so different in how he treated me.
Speaker 2:It was terrifying being with him at first, but was that on our first time hanging out together? Um, but was that on our first time hanging out together? I got so drunk and I didn't know how badly I still was holding on to my past, like the PTSD from being cheated on and everything, and I guess I blacked out. And when I was black I got drunk. I was accusing him of having a woman in Mexico like and just using me, like and like, and I I was crying.
Speaker 2:He said, while I was accusing him of all this stuff and I didn't remember a single thing of it, I came to at one point. I just remembered crying and just telling him I'm sorry over and over again, but I didn't know what I was doing. So when we talked the next day, he was like baby, you don't remember, and I was just like no, I don't. He was like, and then he told me and he said you know, that really hurts my feelings that you feel that way. He was like I really care about you, and so I was just like I'm sorry, and then that I was like okay, I definitely can't do that because if me getting drunk is going to be a way for me to like be toxic, like in this new relationship, like that's not his fault, I was like we cannot be having that.
Speaker 1:So that was kind of the point where I was like I definitely like need to ease up tell me more about that process, and did you make a decision to just stop drinking, or was it something that continued to happen over time?
Speaker 2:Um I I drank casually at that point, so just get-togethers. But I would never go past like what I knew was a limit that I needed to like stop at.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I would do it casually, but, um, it wasn't until I got back on my walk with God, and even then like every now and then a sip of something, but even then at that point I just, and even then like every now and then a sip of something, but even then, at that point I just right around. Then I just didn't have a desire, like especially because my thing is is like what's the point of a drink when a drink is to get you drunk? So it's like what's really the point of it? You know what I mean. So that's really kind of, after getting on my back, my walk back with God was really the just the one of. It just went away.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so talk to us about that, cause I know that you went through this period where you really felt like there was a lust, attachment, and you know, I think the way that you phrased it to me previously was that you know, you were just looking for bodies for comfort. You were terrified of rejection, you were terrified of being close, but now you're starting to get into this committed relationship, or this relationship with someone who really, truly cares about you. When did things change and how? How did things change? Tell me more about that.
Speaker 2:Um as far as trusting him what's that? Like do you mean? As far as as like kind of like trusting more in the relationship?
Speaker 1:well, I just meant how did you kind of overcome, yes, the trust, but also overcome your past and what, what you had been going through? Because it sounds to me I don't know the full story yet but you got into this committed relationship and never looked back. Now I don't know the full story yet, but you got into this committed relationship and never looked back. Now I don't know if that's true.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I will say yeah. So it was a lot. So I'll tell you this right now when we first started dating I didn't think it was going to go anywhere seriously, because guys in my generation just don't want to take things seriously. But he was. He was different. He was not looking for sex, he was looking to get to know me. He took me out on dates. Our first date he picked me up at 10 in the morning, which was I was like oh okay, you want to get breakfast? That's great. I should have known he was in it for the long haul that morning Because I overslept from working an overnight job and he waited like almost an hour in the truck for me to get ready. That poor man had no AC and was in the truck waiting for me, um.
Speaker 2:So we hung out often from then, um, and I don't know, I just I enjoyed his company, um, but I guess I was just kind of waiting for, like him to pull away and I think, around getting around to the one and a half to two month mark, I was having feelings for him and I told him I was like are you talking to anyone else? I was like, because I'm not talking to anyone else. I was like I was. I was like, but I cut them off. I was like I was. I was like, but I cut them off. And he was like no, like I'm not talking to anyone. I haven't been talking to anyone. He's like I'm just talking to you. I'm like, well, you're not asking me to be your girlfriend yet. And he's just like well, I just want to take our time so that we can have a beautiful relationship. And I was just like, okay. And then, like a week later, I'm crying Are you sure? Because I'm just like, I'm terrified. So I'm like are you stringing me along? Is how? I'm like, yeah, I was scared Because you know.
Speaker 2:Then we're going into like four months of dating and I'm just like are you just stringing me along or do you want to be with me? Because you haven't asked me and so, and I knew it wasn't for sex or anything like that, because we didn't really have much at the time. So at one point he helped me out a lot. I needed help financially in a situation because I was paying my sister back for the car and I was doing rent. And he helped me out and I told him I was like you're doing this, you're doing that, like you're helping me with all this, you really care about me. Am I your girlfriend or not? And he was like, yeah, he's like you're my girlfriend.
Speaker 2:So then we kind of just went from there and it was not easy of not looking back. Even to this day. It's still somewhat working through triggers from the past of things and it's just praying through it and getting through it. But it was a little still more hard at the time because I couldn't really believe what I was seeing or how I was being treated, because you know, you get also used to like love bombing and you get worried if it's love bomb at the same time. So I know he's always been consistent in everything that he does, um, but yeah, I mean, we really were not.
Speaker 2:We were not together long before I got back on my walk with God. So when we were six months in together is when, um, I felt God calling me back to him. Um, so when that happened, I told Luis, I told him. I said you know, I feel like God's calling me back. I really like I don't want to mess up this opportunity, like I want to be with him. I want to be obedient.
Speaker 2:I was like I don't want us to have sex anymore. I don't want us to like live that life. I want to be obedient. I don't know if you're okay with that, live that life. I want to be obedient, I don't know if you're okay with that. And because I didn't know, because he says he, you know, guys will say oh, it's never about that, but you never know, and especially now. And so, especially how we met, and he was just like yeah, he was like that's fine. He's like that's of course that's fine. He's like whatever you want to do. And he, because he believed in god, but I will say, of course he grew up with the whole. You know, you believe in god, but you don't really know about god. So he was like, yeah.
Speaker 1:So at that point I started like reading my bible more and everything, and he started um reading his bible with me and we just kind of started growing together that's awesome, that's a beautiful thing when two people can come together like that, through and change the course of the relationship too, because that's not necessarily the easiest thing in the world to do. Right, you've been having a relationship in a certain way and now you're saying you know what. I want to stop doing this. I want to change and turn away from these things. So how tell me how God changed your heart during this and how did he deliver you?
Speaker 2:Well, I'll say it's an interesting way. I did see when you were asking about the podcast, you kind of touched on this, so it's kind of why I felt like I wanted to do this with you. But it's going to sound really funny how I'm going to say it probably, but I do believe it was God. I started on Facebook getting all of a sudden these random videos in my feed and it was from these two men that are really gifted in the spirit to see things and they were talking about how so much of our secular world is so demonic and how and everything in hollywood and the music industry is really manipulated by the devil. And at first I was like, um, well, it freaked me out. But I was like, oh, this is probably just those illuminati conspiracy theories and stuff like that. I was like, but something in me was shaken, like it like freaked me out, like something in me. And then they just kept popping up and I was reading more and I was like this literally is plain as day, like that is so evil looking I was and something in me just felt like that was not right with it and I because I listened to all those artists and everything, um, and not really paid attention to it, um of what they spoke about and everything, just like the music. So one night I basically just apologized to God and I said look, god. I was like I'm so sorry for anything I've done that has hurt you and hurt anybody else. I was like you know, and if there is any way that maybe I've been wrong about this and you'll take me back, you know, I'm here, I'm here.
Speaker 2:And at that point I had a dream and I definitely felt it from God and basically I felt he told me in the dream I was working, there was a person of authority in my dream and I was in like a business setting and I was rushing to get around papers and get things together, and the person basically told me to stop and he had, and he told me to look down and I had an egg in my hand and it had blood on it. And how I feel like I've interpreted the dream is that he told me you don't have to work so hard, you already have me. So and I think it comes down to being yoked with Jesus and being covered by the blood. And I cried when I woke up because for years I felt like I was never going to be accepted again. I felt like I could never come back to him. I felt like I wasn't allowed to come back to him and then, now, being older, being my own, realizing that that was never the case.
Speaker 1:I could have always come back to him, absolutely, absolutely. We're never too far gone.
Speaker 2:Yes, amen. So from then, yeah, that's why it was so important to me. I mean, it was so important to me that I told God, like you tell me right now if I should not be in this relationship or not. I was like I will leave this relationship right now if it you, if this is not going to honor you and this is not for you. So, um, and, and I felt like I had my answer on that, which is why I stayed with Luis, and I think, and I definitely feel a confirmation, because we have just been so blessed in our marriage, like it's been incredible and it's so humbling, so and it's just, I'm just so grateful.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. I'm glad that you found each other and that you've grown in the Lord together as well and come back to him during this and that was something that you had mentioned to me was that, when you gave yourself back to God, that the lust spirit that you had felt earlier left and that you didn't have that anymore. Tell me about that or tell the audience about that yeah, um, it was really wild.
Speaker 2:When I went back to God, I really it was all of a sudden. It was like it was zapped out of my body, like when Luis and everything are being around him, there was nothing. There was like no temptation, there was nothing at all like I felt, just good, I was just there, was nothing like no, I know, even alone I didn't have like the urge or anything like it was just evaporated.
Speaker 2:It was a very like clean feeling no, yeah, it sounds like you became more filled with the holy spirit and the other stuff had no place anymore yeah, and I will say, with that too is what I noticed is, though, uh, with doing that, the enemy really actually tried to come after me about that oh, I'm sure yeah, and I didn't.
Speaker 2:I don't know how you feel about it, but from what I'm learning, I think there is such a thing as spirit spouses and I think it's because of all of the people. If you sleep with them, like they attach the spirits that are on them, attached to you. And I was having very explicit dreams, um, very, very explicit, like felt real and I would wake up and I would like be crying. I'm like god. I was like why am I having this dream, you know? And I would be rebuking it and everything.
Speaker 2:And that happened a few times until it went away. And then I realized much later that it was the enemy attacking me at the time, because I was just letting go of all that and like basically trying to reach me back in. Like so that was wild, because I was just like this is nothing that even happens to me. Like why is this happening in my sleep? Like it was crazy. It was like I felt like so crazy at the time, like not crazy at the time, but I was just like why is this happening? So it was hard.
Speaker 1:It can be hard to understand the moment, but absolutely, when you're trying to seek the Lord, especially when you're pulling away from the demonic, they're going to try to come for you and they're going to try whatever their hand is. That is interesting about the attachment side of things. You know the two boyfriends also being pulled themselves into darkness and being pulled into drugs and alcohol and then that set you down a very similar path where you were drinking and you know the had that lust attachment. Clearly they had a lust attachment with all this cheating going on.
Speaker 2:So no, no, I'm good You're go ahead. I was going to say, well, the thing about it is, though, is they all had very bad pasts and, like it all just is connected to that. There's so much like trauma. People have an emotional trauma, and they don't know how to deal with it, and they, especially if you don't go to God on it and you don't know how to go to God on it like it just the enemy prays on it, and then it turns into all these spirals of different addictions and different behaviors and different like narcissism and all that stuff is going to induce these situations and try to get us to fall down.
Speaker 1:Then the children experience trauma and in your case, you experienced your own, and now the boyfriends experience their own trauma. Now you're a bunch of broken people getting together, breaking each other even more, and it goes around and around in this spiral until someone breaks it and gets out of it. It's almost. It is like a spell being broken, isn't it To be set free Absolutely? And I think that that's kind of the part that you mentioned before about the conspiracies which made me chuckle.
Speaker 1:But you know, we hear those comments about breaking free from the matrix, so to speak. Right, and that is what it's like when we come to the Lord. We're breaking free from the world, we're breaking free from the secularism of the world, and it's one of those things that when you're in it, you can't see it because you're living it. I used to listen to secular music tons all my old growing up, you know, in my late teen years and early twenties through through my 20s. And it's not until the Lord gives you this discernment, when you start to really seek him and understand spiritual warfare, you start to hear things in a different way, where you're like whoa, that is crazy, that that is what that artist is singing about, and I was in that trance, I was in that spell that they were casting and I'd love to actually talk about that topic more one day.
Speaker 2:But yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah. Me too, um, because I know that's a whole topic of itself, right? I?
Speaker 1:know it is yeah but I.
Speaker 2:If you have experience with that, I'd love to hear yours well, I just on that topic of the spell, like I do absolutely believe that in this music industry and a lot of artists are saying it themselves like these songs have spells put over them so that's why, when you hear these songs about sex and everything, you're wanting sex more, I was like, and in violence as well.
Speaker 2:You get angry Like they do. Yep, they do oppress you because there are demonic spirits attached to them and that's why, like, we do have to be careful of what we consume in our through our eyes and ears.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely. I went through that emo stage listening to all that emo music and guess what? I was real emo. I was very just. You know, we become what is spoken over us and what our environment is like and what we're living with during our lives, and so it's a beautiful thing that you were able to break free and that the Lord pulled you back. And sometimes you know, this is the the awesome thing about testimonies and hearing your testimony is it's a reminder to everyone else that no one is too far gone, that all of us that are lost can be bound again. And Yahweh doesn't give up on us. He's always waiting for us. He's waiting for his lost children to come back and you know, like the prodigal son, just waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, and he will accept us with open arms, no matter what?
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely yes, absolutely so. I love that this story ended in you and your husband got married and you guys have been seeking the lord and seeking his guidance. I so appreciate your openness to talking about your whole story, and just sharing is very vulnerable. You know it's a very vulnerable thing to air out all your dirty laundry in a sense, but the way that you're doing this to help other people and that is what is so beautiful about testimonies is in it. We all find that we are very much the same and we all have a lot of similar areas where we're falling down or we've been through these things, and I heard myself in your story as well in different times in my life and I just think that that's an amazing thing. So thank you for sharing all of what you've shared today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm glad I got to share it. I'm shaking, but I'm glad I got to share It'll be okay.
Speaker 1:I do have kind of a last question, and that is is there anything else that you want others to know, that maybe if they're struggling with any sort of sexual addiction or spiritual attacks, is there anything that you want people to know or hear?
Speaker 2:There's nothing too much that god can't take from you, can't deliver you from you. Don't have to be scared to come to him and just lay it out to him, even if you feel like it's not something, that you feel like the anxiety some people feel like, oh, that's just a disease I have, or disorder, whatever you want to call it. But god, god can take that from you too. You have the authority in Yeshua to rebuke all of this worry, any pain that you have in your life. He will take care of you. There's nothing too big or too small for him.
Speaker 1:Amen, amen. Well, thank you, mary, so much for coming on and sharing your story, thank you for having me and thank you everyone for tuning in and for being on this journey with us. If you would like to follow along outside the podcast, you can join the mission on Instagram and Facebook at the Radiant Mission, and if you're listening in audio format, you can also watch on YouTube at the Radiant Mission. Today, we are going to close with Matthew 6, verse 34. This was a verse that Mary shared with me about struggling with social anxiety and that Yeshua has cured me and leaned and I lean on, and that verse is therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow, worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. We're wishing you a radiant week and we'll see you next time. Bye everyone.
