I sobbed alone in my dorm room, devastated from yet another night of watching pornography.
My growing curiosity about the worldliness around me during my first few months of college—combined with persistent loneliness and bitterness, painful family dynamics, and a creative-writing class that put erotica right into my hand as assigned reading—had led me into a deeply hidden struggle with erotica and, eventually, pornography.
Though I’d been a Christian for almost my entire life, my love for Jesus had been slowly replaced by the love of my sin, and I’d started to believe it offered much better things than the gospel ever could.
Confession Instead of a Cover-Up
God graciously moved me that night during Thanksgiving break, and, rather than continue to stifle the Holy Spirit’s voice, I finally responded to the conviction it brought. I confessed my pattern of rebellious choices before the Lord for what they truly were—sin. I resolved that night that I’d never fall into sexual sin again, and I meant it.
And then, I sinned again a few days later. Another couple of days later, I fell again. I’d entered a cycle that would haunt me for the next two and a half years, despite my growing hatred of my sin and best efforts to rid myself of it. I was living a double life characterized by a chronic sexual sin struggle that I couldn’t shake, and no one knew.
My love for Jesus had been slowly replaced by the love of my sin.
Whenever I felt the Lord’s frequent whisper to drop the facade and be honest with a trusted sister in Christ, the fear of rejection and abandonment spoke louder. But over time, those fears were overshadowed by new ones—the fear of not ever really being known and of never being free. So at the end of my junior year, I confessed to a trusted mentor who had been discipling me at my campus fellowship.
The first words she said in response to that confession—“It is good to live in the light”—were an echo of the truth she would later point me to in 1 John 1:5–10. Those verses became a lifeline for me in that season, especially verses 6 and 7:
If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
After I’d fully confessed my sin to the Lord and to a few trusted sisters, my final year of college looked much different than my first. When trapped in another class that constantly threatened to compromise my sexual integrity, it didn’t control me like the previous one had.
Bring Others In
The circumstances that once would have led to hidden sin now drove me to text these friends in my moments of temptation, and they offered faithful prayers and accountability that helped me to resist. When I anticipated temptation to be overpowering during Thanksgiving break that year, my friends called me every night to support me and help me choose obedience rather than sin. The many times that shame crept back in, it no longer ruled my identity.
And when I did fall, my friends made sure I didn’t stay down for long. They became a beautiful and powerful illustration of the words of Ecclesiastes 4:9–10:
Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!
The workbook I walked through with that mentor in the months following my confession became the foundation for a small group we began for our campus ministry. Unlike my freshman-year dorm room where I shed those tears, my senior-year room was transformed by the Lord into a place where other college girls like me, once struggling with sexual sin in secret, could meet to walk in the light and find freedom from their addiction and shame.
I used to think my faith was solely between me and God—that even without ever being really known in community, I could faithfully live the Christian life. But how incomplete is our calling as Christians without embracing the body of Christ! James 5:16 commands us, “Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”
Find Freedom in the Light
Confession to God has brought me forgiveness and cleansing, but confession to others helped me to repent and live that identity out.
These sisters couldn’t save me in their own power, but they pointed me back to God’s great power and helped me believe it really had defeated sin and death—and that it was capable of freeing me from my sin too. The faithful prayers of those who knew the darkest places of my life and loved me deeply anyway reflected a perfect Heavenly Father who knows and loves me even better.
These sisters couldn’t save me in their own power, but they pointed me back to God’s great power.
Beloved daughter of the King, as you face the struggles in your life—whether you battle against sexual sin or something else entirely—may you remember you aren’t alone. We have a merciful, faithful, and approachable High Priest in Jesus, who understands our struggles and is able to help us in our time of need (Heb. 2:17–18; 4:14–16).
May the Lord not only bring you trusted mentors and friends to whom you can safely confess but also give you the courage to walk in honest fellowship with them and with him. His freedom and redemption really do exist, and they’re for you.
My dear sister, please bring your sexual sin into the light. It really is a good place to live.
This essay is the third-place winner in TGC’s 2026 Essay Contest for Young Adults.
