An exercise we encourage Hidden Heart participants to do is to write a goodbye letter. It is important to let go of the image we had of the "perfect" marriage or man, and begin to face the reality of our situation. This is usually a difficult and painful task. But one woman, a little further down the road, has a different perspective...

I happily wave goodbye to the man I married, climb on the horse with my "new" knight and embrace this new adventure. It is full of danger and attack but we have faith, hope, love and - now - weapons for the battle.

I don't want the man I thought I married. Though kind and gentle, he was also weak and sort of absent. As my husband grows into a biblical man and spiritual leader, I admit I am scared and frequently annoyed at my loss of power and control. But I also feel growing relief and secret pleasure at being loved, cared for, and lead. In the last couple of years my husband has grown into a man of strength. While it has caused friction in our marriage, it is good and mostly healthy as he learns to have opinions, to express them well, and to act. But his battle for healthy sexuality has been at a whole new level. It has inspired me. I have never seen such discipline and stick-to-itiveness in him. He is determined to submit to God and overcome. And he has experienced a great deal of freedom - two years of purity.

And there is an upward spiral: energy freed up from unwholesome things does not dissipate. My husband has diverted it to grow stronger and more involved in life: more help and projects around the home; passion for his work and ministry; investment in his spiritual growth and physical body. He is being rebuilt à la Hebrews 12:1, "...let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us" and Philippians 3:14, "I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward." It makes my heart beat fast.

There will still be dark places on the path in front of us. We are still wounded, not fully healed.

But we have hope, courage and some experience. I believe we will ride on together, and we will reach the Golden City one day.

If you've heard the word porn in church recently, in a small group or from the pulpit, chances are you hardly blinked. Thanks to ministries like Promise Keepers and Operation Integrity, the research of sex addiction expert Patrick Carnes and neuroscientist William Struthers, and individuals courageous enough to admit they have a problem, American churches have squarely faced porn's destructive and tragic effects. We know porn is highly addictive, and we have more tools than ever to break its stranglehold. Praise God.

If you are a man, that is. On the whole, U.S. churches have been slower to see how pornography—a multibillion-dollar industry that dominates the Internet and becomes more violent by the minute—hurts more than the men addicted to it. Pastors, counselors, and Christian families should realize and begin addressing how porn hurts women in particular. Three sets of women come to mind.

Women Who Use Porn: Precise numbers are hard to come by (Carnes estimates 3 percent of American women are sex addicts, which includes porn addiction), but it's clear that porn is no longer solely a men's issue. Nor are the shame and cycles of secrecy, though men and women often turn to it for different reasons. Says Marnie Ferree, a Christian clinical therapist and author of No Stones, "No woman can recover alone. I hear a lot of women saying, 'I thought I was the only one.' When they believe they are uniquely perverted, it's hard for them to talk."

With this in mind, churches can make the tools that are effective in helping Christian men escape porn more available to women. Referrals to outside counselors might list someone uniquely trained to help female addicts. Church leaders might establish accountability groups for women only. And, during cyclical sermons about sexual purity, a pastor might even ask a woman to give her testimony of how Christ met her at the well and freed her from sexual shame. Redemption, like addiction, is no respecter of gender.

Women in the Porn Industry: Beyond what fleeting release their precious sexuality can provide paying viewers, women in porn are a means to an end. This is the brutal truth of the industry, one that will not go away despite Hugh Hefner's and TV execs' attempts to glamorize it. And today's porn puts women in more physical danger, let alone psychic turmoil. "Pornography today is not your father'sPlayboy," says Gail Dines, recent author of Pornland, which details how rape, beatings, and other brutalities are depicted as sexy. Many actresses deal with it by using drugs and alcohol (the industry's "office supplies," says one Orange County counselor). Other women in the industry don't have that luxury: The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and journalists like Nick Kristof and Dawn Herzog Jewell have connected the grimy dots to expose how our culture's appetite for porn feeds our trafficking problem. The State Department reports that, of all trafficking victims brought into the U.S.—80 percent of whom are women—70 percent are sexually exploited.

In the past few years, we have seen a groundswell of gutsy ministries that know porn stars bear the imago Dei, and go to XXX conventions and strip clubs to reinforce that truth. Groups like Pink Cross Missionaries and Treasures are led by former porn actresses whose own broken imago Dei has been restored by Jesus. Beyond continuing to raise awareness on human trafficking, churches and individual believers can support ministries that treat porn actresses like daughters of God—and teach a theology of salvation that corroborates that.

Any Woman You Know: In a "sexually obese" culture like ours (a phrase from psychiatrist Mary Ann Layden), people who never use porn end up bearing its costs. That includes wives, who are held up to impossible sexual standards and are as robbed of sexual intimacy as their addicted husbands are. That also includes teenage girls, who are being taught by the entertainment industry and boyfriends that being a woman is about being hypersexual for others.

But because porn literally rewires the brain, creating neural pathways that change how users understand the world, we know that porn warps how men and women see each other. Porn is demonic not primarily because it is addictive. It is demonic because it always flattens three-dimensional humans—especially women—to a collection of body parts meant for others' gratification, sullying the full glory that God intended them to reflect. And often it leads addicts to flatten women too, despite their beliefs or intentions.

When that happens, a whole society suffers, as ours is now, paying for it in countless broken families and lives. Beyond helping addicts, churches can prophetically speak out on porn's unseen but very real societal costs—and invite addicts outside the church to abandon their junk food habit and come to God's banquet of soul-nourishing intimacy.