Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing

by Jay Stringer

“If we fail to engage the ways we were sexualized in the past, we leave open the high probability that these patterns will become more pronounced in the future.” Sexual struggles reveal the truth of our stories in ways that will constantly surprise us.

Our sexual brokenness, if we pay attention, is revealing our way to healing. As we begin this journey, ask yourself, Where is it that I come from? And where is it that I am going? May your heart be curious as you study the great tragedy and beauty that your story reveals.

There is an unspoken rule in many homes and churches that sex is not to be talked about unless the conversation serves to put the fear of God in children about their participation in sex before marriage. Talking about sex solely in the context of prohibition, however, sets a child up for madness. A child needs to hear sex talked about in a way that honors the natural, God-given changes and desires that will accompany them from childhood to adulthood. An overemphasis on negative instruction about sex has the capacity to lead a child to associate sex with silence and shame. By the time the child reaches adulthood, this association becomes ingrained and continues to operate.

Healing requires you to pivot from condemning your lack of willpower to addressing the role trauma may be playing in your unwanted sexual behavior. A heart with an ounce of kindness for your life story will accomplish so much more for you than a mind filled to the brim with strategies to combat lust. Bessel van der Kolk said, “Very few psychological problems are the result of defects in understanding.”[3] We tend to focus on the apparent defects because it gives us something to blame, something to control. But what happens when we have nothing left to blame and no “silver bullet” to pursue? We are left with our pain.

Collectively, we prefer to blame our defects in understanding or lack of willpower for our unwanted sexual behavior. The solution is to find the latest and greatest strategy to combat lust. You can spend all your time and money trying to develop strategies to treat bad behavior and forget that the solution to your problem may be evident in the sexual brokenness itself. The more you look for strategies to combat lust or fortify your willpower against unwanted sexual behavior, the further you are from the traumas in your story.

If you ceased striving for a lust-free life, what would you be left with? We can be so preoccupied with filling our lives with something to do rather than trusting that God wants to do something within us. Jesus’ invitation to go to him when we are weary and heavy laden is for our sexual failures, but even more so for the trauma beneath those failures. God looks beyond the outward appearance of unwanted sexual behavior and into the heart of what is driving men and women into captivity.