Out of the Darkness with Ruth Hovsepian

Removing the Mask of Addiction with NEIL Getzlow

• Ruth Hovsepian/Neil Getzlow • Season 1 • Episode 39

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We're taking the gloves off and getting real with Neil Getzlow on our latest podcast episode. Neil bravely lifts the lid on his battle with porn addiction, revealing how the seeds were sown at the tender age of just 10. From a childhood curiosity to an all-consuming obsession, he details how it warped his perception of love and sex and its disastrous effect on his relationships. Neil's candidness doesn't end there - he also reveals how his addiction led him into dangerous situations, including a terrifying ordeal in Chicago.


But it's not all doom and gloom. The second half of our chat with Neil sheds light on faith and forgiveness's transformative power. Hear how his wife, Amy, and his spiritual journey played pivotal roles in pulling him out of his darkest days. Neil's story is a testament to the human capacity for change – he was not only able to conquer his addiction to porn but also alcohol and infidelity. This episode is a potent mix of raw emotion and resilience, underpinned by an inspiring message of redemption and second chances. Get ready for a rollercoaster ride of emotions with Neil Getzlow.


Connect with Neil Getzlow:

✔Website - neilgetzlow.com

✔Facebook - https://shorturl.at/bpNU4

✔Podcast – Unmasked with Neil Getzlow

✔Book – Unmasked: Conquering Sexual Sin and Walking in Victory


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Speaker 1:

This is 9.30 at night. I'm working in my office and I get stuck in text from this couple in Chicago again and they say you have 15 minutes to pay us more money or we're going to call Amy. I ignored the messages, I just thought they were, but they'd get bored and leave me alone. But exactly 15 minutes later they called Amy and I could hear her the phone blowing up upstairs and she comes charging down the stairs into my office and she barges in there and she's like are you cheating on me?

Speaker 2:

Hi, I'm Ruth Hubsapkin. Welcome to the Out of the Darkness podcast, where we help you navigate life's trials based on faith and biblical truths. Today on Out of the Darkness, neil Gesslow joins me and we talk about addiction to porn and sex and how he was saved through his wife's prayers and today he and his wife enjoy an awesome relationship as a couple. Welcome, Neil, to Out of the Darkness. It is my pleasure to have you today on the show and to have a discussion about an addiction that we have in some ways shared the same addiction and how you have overcome it. And we're going to talk about your book, unmasked. I love the book, by the way. It really hit home in many ways. But I would like to start very simply so people can understand how this starts, because we all start our journey in a different place. How and who introduced you to pornography?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and first thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate the chance to share very much a blessing. So yeah, my addiction to pornography started back when I was 10 years old, so 40 years ago. And there is a wooded area behind my elementary school is nicknamed the Playboy Forest, and so this is in the 80s. Ok, so there's no internet, it's just all magazines and things like that. So we rode our bikes there after school and we'd go into this little forest and actually went back and visited a few years ago. It's not really much of a forest, it's just some bushes, but on the ground there would be ripped up pages of Playboy magazines. And so we was 10-year-old We'd go back there and look at the pictures.

Speaker 1:

And that's where porn first just kind of took over my heart, and once I was exposed it wouldn't let go. There's always been a hole in my heart for so long that I was trying to fill up, and for me it started with pornography at the age of 10. And so my first introduction was just being a childhood curiosity type of thing. And then you'd go to your friend's house next door and you'd play hide and go seek, and then when you got done with that. It's like, ok, where's your dad's porn stash? And she'd be rifling through the closet and sure enough, you'd uncover something. So again, it was just sort of like a treasure hunt, in a way, when you're that young trying to figure out what's going on, but what really sort of cemented my addiction was.

Speaker 1:

So I was alone. I was a latchkey kid of the 80s. My parents got divorced and I left that school, left all my friends, moved into an apartment with my mom. I knew nobody, went to a school where I had zero friends. There were no kids at this apartment complex and then my mom went to work for 40 hours a week. So I was home a lot, especially during the summers, like it was just me, and on either side of her bed my mom had these two nightstands with these stacks of Playboy and Penthouse magazines, and that's how I would fill my heart up and that's where the cycle started, right there. So, believe it or not, like it started with you know, my mom had that material that was just out in the open.

Speaker 2:

And it's true. Many times when I've been speaking with folks about their addiction, it usually starts in the home, in the home of a friend, of a home of a relative. That's how they are introduced, as very young children. How did this introduction at a very young age start to affect your relationship with friends, with family, with girlfriends? You know, how did that play into it?

Speaker 1:

So, as I you know, obviously when I first got exposed I wasn't really sure what I was looking at. I knew that it excited me and so as I got into high school and got older, what the porn did to me was rewired my brain. So, because I was alone and not feeling the love and affection that I had needed from my family, I turned to pornography for the love and affection. So now I'm equating sex and love. Those two, those lines are blurred for me, were blurred for me all through high school and into most of my adult life. It was just a series of dating and trying to, you know, one night stands and trying to, just trying to. If I got into a relationship, I'd immediately go jump into sex because, thinking that was love, right, there wasn't any sort of breaks, it was just. And then when that part was over, then usually right. You'd kind of like, okay, that's done, now I need to find that high again with somebody else, and that's why I just do is just a string of failed attempts at love.

Speaker 2:

I totally relate with what you're saying because unknown to me, right? Because at that time I didn't think I had an issue with pornography, you know. But I, very quickly, even before I was married, I had it had been ingrained and burned into my mind that as a Christian, I shouldn't have premarital sex. But there's all these other ways that you can get around it and still remain technically a virgin, as we all know. So that was my path before I got married. During my marriage again because of the time it was and I think that was my only saving grace was in the 90s. We still were not on into online pornography. Therefore, how do I consume it in my home without my husband knowing and without affecting my children? But after my divorce, which happened you know, and my separation, which happened in the late 1990s, 2000 hit right and we were bombarded with online access to pornography. And when I went into this world this really because it is a dark world, isn't it Neil?

Speaker 1:

It is very dark.

Speaker 2:

And we make it darker because it becomes a secret that we need to hide. I did the same thing as you. I met someone because I had just come through a divorce. I met someone and I did not. I could not differentiate love. I didn't know what love was in a relationship and I thought by my being forthcoming and having sex with someone showed that I cared or they cared about me. Talk about like a messed up way of thinking, right yeah.

Speaker 1:

And I'd also say too I want to point out too what it also did in my mind was it infected how I looked at women and how I treated women in general, even not even girlfriend or women that I might be interested in dating, but just women. Overall I'd view women as objects and sexual objects, and that was the only value that I saw. And again, that's so that right there was sort of screwed up any other relationships I might have had professionally with women in the workplace or just any casual friendships. There was always a voice in the back of my hand that was pointing me back to the sex aspect of it.

Speaker 2:

I had the same thing too. It was really hard because I saw a man and I automatically started to. It didn't and this isn't said proudly or boastfully, it just I'm stating a fact.

Speaker 2:

It didn't matter if they were married or not or if they were single or not, or if they were available or not, or if they were in. It was a challenge and if, the greater the challenge, the more of a high I had, because it was that's what I needed right To prove this power that I had. This goes into a lot of other areas. Right, because, as you, you were a latchkey kid. I had other issues. We all have something that we're trying to fill it, that void, that emptiness in our life. So how does that now translate? Because you're working, you meet your future wife. How does that start to affect? Because it's not something you can talk about. You find it a way.

Speaker 1:

Well, that's why I called my book Unmasked. And you know, because I, when all this came into an end, I had to unmask. Throughout my entire adult life I wore a mask I had. I didn't tell anybody about this until I told my current wife when we had that conversation a few years ago, which we'll get into. But nobody knew. Nobody knew the secret life that I was leading and I did not want to tell anybody all the things that I did. Nobody knew, not at Inkling. All they did, all they saw was the clean cut married man, hard worker, you know, good, family man. That's all they, that's all they knew and that's all. Because that's all I let anybody expose and what.

Speaker 1:

What that also did for me and I think a lot of men experienced this. It created this sense of loneliness because I could not tell anybody anything. I only stay. I only let the most superficial of facts come out, even to my closest friends. Most of the conversations were about sports or politics. Maybe at least mid to mid 2000s politics was a little bit easier to talk about than it was today, but it was. It was really just sports and politics and entertainment, just stuff, just very basic stuff. I was dying to take the mask off, but I couldn't, and so it created this loneliness and that sort of fed the addiction.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a cycle, right, it's like catch 22 on this. But but how do you keep going? Because I know that I took. With each encounter, the risks got greater.

Speaker 2:

Yes because I needed the thrill. It wasn't good enough to do what I did in the past. I needed to go a step further. How, how dangerous did the start to get free? Because I know the dangers I was in. But what kind of dangers were you putting yourself in and your family right? Because at some point you get married, you, you're starting to stop what, what are? What is happening in that instance?

Speaker 1:

Well, for me, you know so, pornography was like any drug. I know some people have a hard time imagining that, but for me porn was a gateway drug, right, it was the starting point when I, when porn became, wasn't getting me that fix that I needed. I moved on to stronger things and as I got older and had more access to more time, to more money, that's where I graduated and moved on to strip clubs, moved on to adult theaters and then finally, again, those things would come and go and I needed something stronger. And that's where I turned to looking for women online to pay for sex. And I think I think any one of those encounters that I had and there are too many to to even try to remember, but they were all dangerous in some ways, because you don't know who's waiting for you. Yeah, you don't. You just don't know what's going to happen.

Speaker 1:

Now that I am, you know, have been saved by Christ, I also just know what he was doing to my soul, like it was. It was, it was killing it. I was slowly killing myself spiritually, emotionally and then physically. I put my you know how many gross, broken down hotels that I visit where you knew what was happening in those, in those hallways, and you spent, and that's the thing, like I couldn't stop myself. Yeah, I look back to yeah.

Speaker 2:

I look back to and you know, and you're right. Let me address one thing you said which I have encountered, and that is people not understanding, because I've had people tell me well, that's not really an addiction, like a drug addict or an alcoholic. Well, let me tell you, I have read in the research that they're doing that addiction to sex is the equivalent of someone who is addicted to drugs and it is a kid, rewires your brain. You folks need to understand this, that pornography rewires your brain and desensitize, desensitizes you to danger. And I have said this often that if I had continued in the road that I was going, I would have been a statistic woman found in hotel, woman found in a hotel, woman found in alley, woman, whatever. Because I was taking risk after risk after risk. It was almost as though I wanted someone to wake me up out of this.

Speaker 1:

You know, you know, you're giving me, you give me chills there, because that is. That is exactly how I felt. I had to get out and like, but I didn't know how how to catch me Please.

Speaker 2:

And I think that this is. You know, when I see addicts today, you know it doesn't matter what their addiction is my heart is heavy and is broken because people make it sound as though it's so easy to walk away from these addictions. When you don't have the Lord in your life, when you don't have this discernment of the Holy Spirit in your life, if you don't have the light of the world in your life, you don't, you don't see a way out. There is no way out. You just get deeper and deeper into it. And I agree with you, it is.

Speaker 2:

I tuned out the Holy Spirit's voice because I come from a different background than you. I come from a very evangelical family. So I I made the noise of the world louder to drown out the Holy Spirit. And at the end of my journey, when I was desperate for to be saved out of this world, I no longer heard the Holy Spirit because Satan and darkness had filled my life. What, what was the, the prompting, what was it that was, you know, started your journey to recovery or to get out of the mess?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you're in Well, and so you know you have my background, which I had zero religious background. I grew up in a Jewish family, but it was culturally, culturally Jewish, did not have a relationship with God. Consider myself an atheist, you know. By the time I was, you know, 20 years old. So I had no. I had no. I knew, morally, what was written. The God does write that on your heart. Everybody knows what's right and wrong, but I chose to ignore it and just thinking there's, there's no consequences for your actions, and and so, yeah, kind of like, like you said, like I was. So I was so desperate for help and trying to get out, but I had no idea how to do it. I couldn't stop myself and I kept putting myself in more situations that were more and more difficult, and what happened would be I would set up an appointment to meet somebody and I knew it was going to be a bad situation, and yet I'd still go through with, you know, still go there, and this is what happened to me on.

Speaker 1:

It was February 26th 2020. Snowy morning in downtown Chicago. I was there on a business trip and I woke up, and I usually would go running in the morning. Instead, that day I said I'm gonna go. I don't know why, I really don't know why I did it that morning, but I looked up and found someone online to go meet, went to her hotel room and as I was getting ready to leave her hotel room, after the encounter the other door opened up. The other bedroom in this room opened up and a large gentleman came out holding his cell phone in his hand and he showed it to me and it had my wife's contact information on there and he said you're gonna have to pay us more money or we're gonna call your wife. So at that moment things started getting really crazy, like that was the first time Unraveling.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it started to unravel very slowly. The thread was being pulled. I look back on it now and in fact that was the first time, my first time, I legitimately said I've made a really bad decision. I'm not gonna get out of this hotel room alive. And so I did whatever I could to get out of there. I paid $900 and made my way out of the hotel room, but they opened up the door behind me and they yelled down the hall hey, you're gonna have to pay us more money or we're gonna call your wife. But I made it out of there, went about my day and again I put my mask on, had some of the best business meetings in a long time and nobody knew I had just been blackmailed by a prostitute. Nobody knew. And Amy picked me up from the airport. This couple hadn't called her. So I'm thinking all right, I've avoided. I've avoided the worst of it. This is a momentary blip. Give me a couple of weeks and I'll be back to whatever.

Speaker 1:

So on Sunday night, march 1st, though, that's where everything really changed. This was 9.30 at night. I'm working in my office and I get stuck in text from this couple in Chicago again and they say you have 15 minutes to pay us more money or we're gonna call Amy. I ignored the messages, I just thought they'd get bored and leave me alone. But exactly 15 minutes later they called Amy and I could hear her the phone blowing up upstairs. And she comes charging down the stairs into my office and she barges in there and she's like are you cheating on me? And of course I did what any good addict would do I lied, said no, this is the first time I'd ever done anything like this. I never wanna do it again. I had to know what I was thinking. I was just more sorry I was caught than I was sorry for causing the pain to Amy, my wife, and so that sort of set off, a six week, just a wild six weeks of events. Because right after that, what happens? Covid. So now, two weeks after, literally two weeks after this event, both of our jobs were impacted by COVID. So we both now are home for the spring with nothing to do but look at each other and try to figure out what my issue was and why I was doing the things I were doing, trying to rebuild the marriage. But really, what was happening inside my head was like those things had not gone away, even though I had just been blackmailed. It did not scare me enough to think that I was done doing this, and so my addictions continued.

Speaker 1:

During the six week period I was looking at pornography, finally made an appointment to go visit someone About six weeks later. This would have been April 13th 2020. I made all this arrangements on my computer. This is where God visited me for the second time. I locked up my laptop and left. Amy was home, obviously. Now, normally Amy will admit this. She has no idea how to use the computer or has no way to navigate a computer and it would be locked. But as I'm driving down to meet this person driving down the highway, my phone blows up and it's Amy. Somehow she had gotten on my computer and figured out how to take screenshots and send me the messages that I was sending this other women.

Speaker 1:

Now I'm just like what is going on, and so I turn around, came home. Don't even remember when I told Amy it was all a bunch of garbage. And she said the only way you're gonna say this marriage is if you ask God for help. I just wanna pause that story real quick and just say, just for the point of reference, I was not saved. Amy was saved exactly three months after we were married, so she had been saved for eight years while I was out doing all of this horrendous stuff as an atheist.

Speaker 1:

And so that next morning I woke up, amy had left, didn't tell me where she was going, so I was home alone. And so I I prayed for the first time and just said, god, I don't like I need help, like my life is unraveling, I have nowhere else to go, like, if there was help out there, just just give me a sign, let me know. And Soon as I finished that prayer, the garage door opens up and it's Amy coming home. And Amy truly is the key, the key piece to this whole story. And I, amy, came upstairs, I told her I prayed, I really wanted to work on this marriage, and so you know that the ice was slowly melting on my cold, stony heart. And then, finally, that afternoon, god put it on my heart to tell her everything Like he me, just he's like you've got to tell Amy what has been going on.

Speaker 1:

And I sat her down and told her for the past five or six years that I've been looking at an extensive amount of pornography and that I've been meeting women online over these past five years, and what she said next changed our lives In a way that I've still have trouble Grasping. But she she looked at me and she said Neil Jesus, forgive me for my sins. How can I not forgive you for yours? I forgive you. Crazy that's still is.

Speaker 1:

I still don't understand like how, how did that? Why did she do that and how did that happen? And and then I look back and just look over the past three years where our life is today and it's just like, if you like, I Was the most cynical, bitter Person in the world and and that God in an instant broke broke every addiction from me. I haven't looked at pornography since that day was April 14, 2020. Haven't been tempted to by any of that sexual stuff since then, like I, was one way. On April 13th, I was somebody different. April 14th, like I I have no other way to explain it but God, but God, yeah.

Speaker 2:

I think it is, it is miraculous and it and I, you know, I, as we said, grew up in a very different world, where I knew the grace of God, I knew the the breadth of his forgiveness for us. He died on the cross and yet, and yet, every day, I marvel At the grace that he has shown me right and forgiven me for all that I have done. And I love when you say that you were one way one day, and the day after you were a new person. And this is the, the miracle that we speak of right, of bringing, bringing it all to the cross and laying it at the foot of the cross.

Speaker 1:

Well, I know it's kind of interesting because some people accuse me of Faking it or just being like I'm just saying, saying whatever I can say, digs in a little right yeah just to get out of it.

Speaker 1:

I'm like why would I pick this particular story to fake? Why would anybody want to tell this story and put yourself out there like that if it wasn't real? I think back to the 500 people who saw Jesus After he died and resurrected. Why would they go to death for a lie? They wouldn't. They wouldn't and I'm not like I know, but I did not sign up to tell this story. But it's a story that God gave me. It's his story, right, and you know, that was Jesus working through, that was the Holy Spirit working through. Amy, in that moment, say I forgive you and it really has changed everything. It changed our marriage. Our marriage went from being, you know, right on the First about ready for divorce to, I think I feel like our marriage is it's. We have a relationship that we've Always wanted because we have God in the middle of it.

Speaker 2:

That is the power of the prayer right, praying for your, your spouse, for your children and I am. I am such a Proponent of this. I constantly encourage spouses and parents and grandparents and friends to pray over and on their family members that are Not safe, because it's not our timing, it's God's.

Speaker 1:

Well, and I will say so to speaking of that. So this is the great thing about, about Amy what Amy's one act did, right like. So she prayed for me for eight years To get saved. And what happened? So I get saved. She was also praying for our boys.

Speaker 1:

Now what we have four boys. One is somewhat saved. Maybe he still has a little bit of rebel in him. He's, he'll get there. I know God will finish working on his heart and get him there. But our other four are not, but we pray so hard for them. Just recently, my youngest son started, went to church with us and he also he's now. He's, he's searching for something. He's, he's, he's walking in an alternative lifestyle right now. I'll say that, but he's searching for something. He's, he's, he's, he I can just feel it and he's reading the Bible and he's going to church and like and I prayed all the time God put someone in his path today to lead him closer to you. And he, my son, told me he's like it's crazy. He's like, like over the past few months, like I'm running into, running into all these, all these religious people, like, how are you now?

Speaker 2:

you know, prayer is so underrated by people. Prayer I, you know. I too did not. I didn't have intervention in my case, I did not get caught out that I was on dying, and I think I would have died if I had kept going, because the lifestyle had become very dangerous. I was associating with all kinds of people, but through recovery for me because for me it wasn't overnight, I didn't have that support that I needed it was through prayer, through reading the Word of God, you know, digging deep into it yeah get to know what the Word of God was saying.

Speaker 2:

And you know, I read your book. I I I really wanted to to commend you on it, because you, you've, you've told a story that is so difficult to tell and and I love the fact that it's not a tell-all story and it doesn't, you know, make things look all beautiful, but it talks about this taking off the mask, you know and yeah and keeping it off.

Speaker 2:

And towards the end of the book you you really sort of summarized the different seasons that you've walked through in the last, you know, three years and I loved it, and I just want to just touch on this one because it really spoke to me about it. You know the the seasons that we are in and you say that you started with the season of sin, which was full of booze, porn and infidelity. This wasn't really a new season, as I had been in this cycle for a majority of my adult life and then from there it moved into a season of suffering, facing a COVID-19 lockdown and having finally exposed my sin to Amy and had to face fully face all the harm and evil I brought into my marriage, which then leads you into a whole other and amazing and awesome season of faith. And you say I spent the summer building my relationship with God, reading the Bible, going to church and investing as much time as I could in Amy and my family. Amen to that.

Speaker 2:

And then you even had an opportunity to spend time with your dad before he died, which which I think would probably not have been on the books if you are still in your addiction. And finally, the season that you are in now, the season of rebirth. By the grace of God, I have a new life here on earth and a new life waiting for me in heaven, once this life is over. Honestly, you have summarized the four seasons so beautifully. You need merch on this merchandise frankly, I haven't.

Speaker 1:

I haven't read that since probably I rode, rode it, but hearing you read that like it's, it's overwhelming. Yeah, just to think where God where I was and where I am today.

Speaker 1:

I did nothing, it was all God. God led me, god showed me the door, he opened the door and lit up my path. I still had a choice to make, though I didn't have to take that path. I could have went on my way with my free will and continued to live the lifestyle I was leading. But I trusted God in that moment because I had nobody else to trust, like had couldn't trust myself anymore. And he blessed, he has blessed every step since, since that point, and yeah that's, and that I haven't thought about the merchandise.

Speaker 2:

You have, you have a prayer warrior. On your side, I believe Amy is a prayer warrior, and we spoke about this when we first met a little while ago and I said that your wife is a prayer warrior and she is, and to me, this is what changes lives. Oh, I'm so passionate about this because, yeah, you know, without these generational prayers, be without the prayers of those around us, where would you and I be? Neil, this, this is it not here.

Speaker 1:

Not here, no, not having this conversation not at all not in this context, right yeah, who would have thought and who would have thought yeah yeah, and I'll also say too, like Amy's forgiveness this is important to say too, especially for for someone in my shoes, make her forgiveness was important because it prevented any the bitterness from overtaking her heart, so that we had an opportunity to heal. But there was a lot of trust building. That had to happen. Obviously, you know in those moments of time what it, what her forgiveness did not do was take away any of the accountability and responsibility that I had to turn around my life and to actually walk out and demonstrate the fruits of my salvation to her. Yeah, right, like that's. That was the only way that she would know is that it wasn't by anything that I could say to her. She had to see me doing it to know that it was real. And if I had to take, I got there again. There's no way I could have faked any of it, these things that I'm doing.

Speaker 2:

There's just no way and I'm glad you shared that because I think that's a very important point that, yeah, people need to understand. We don't, first of all, we don't, take this lightly, you know, and and we are filled with joy because of our new lives. But you know, I'll speak for myself. I don't take my past actions lightly. They had devastating effects on many lives but, but the grace of God is what keeps us moving forward and the forgiveness of those around us. Neil, how and what do you say? How do you encourage someone who may be struggling with an addiction of of some sort? You know it, filling that empty void. You know that.

Speaker 2:

That yeah that void that we all have. What do you say to them? How do you encourage them?

Speaker 1:

so, like I think this is, this is the thing, like you've got it, ask yourself the question what's triggering that addiction? Why am I using the pornography? Why am I using the drugs? What is my masking with that? Because oftentimes we do things to to sort of wipe clean the addiction without going back and looking inside the heart to figure out what's going on. So eventually that addiction will come back if you haven't cleaned your heart out. And that's the biggest thing that I've learned is that whatever addiction is out in front of you, what is behind it, what's inside your heart, what's driving it? And get to the root of that issue.

Speaker 1:

For me, it was loneliness and abandonment. That's what was fed my addictions. And then I would say also that and this goes for whether you're a Faith person or whether you're not but take a look at what you're putting inside your mind, like when you know when you want to go on a diet and lose weight, what do you do? Right, you cut out chips, you cut out junk food, you cut out all the junk. But why don't we ever ask that question about our minds? When your mind is messed up and you need, you need to get it healthy, you've got to cut out the junk food of your mind. You know, and for me, I know I had to take some very drastic steps. I'm not saying everybody's got to do this, but for me I eliminated cable TV, eliminated Netflix, hulu, significantly cut back on social media, just all of that stuff.

Speaker 2:

Music was another one for me, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, trashed it all and I filled it up with good stuff. And again, for me, that happened to be praying every morning, reading the Bible every morning, going to church and building a community around me of believers that could encourage me and that I could encourage and that we could, you know, sort of go through life together as believers in Christ, get off the couch and you know, and get your mind out in the outside into the fresh air, and just you know there were, just I did and just I would also just say, like there is hope, like I, you, I think you offer hope and my story offers hope. If it's not too late for us and it's never too late Like there is a way out of that darkness. There really is.

Speaker 1:

For me it happened to start with God, which and again, I never would have believed those words, whatever have come out of my mouth that I remember telling, during that six week stretch between my exposure and the time I got that forgiveness, I told Amy somewhere toward the beginning of that that I'm 99.99% sure I will never be a follower of Christ. Well, I left the door open for that.01%.

Speaker 2:

I really want to thank you for sharing your story. I encourage everyone to get a copy of your book and I'll have all the information in the show notes. But thank you so much. The book is awesome and it is so amazing to hear this story of forgiveness and renewal and a new life. And thank you so much, neil.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for joining me. To stay connected, Follow me on Instagram and Facebook. If you like this podcast, can you help me find new listeners by leaving a rating and review? This small step takes only a moment, but really helps grow the listening audience. So let me thank you in advance. I hope you have a wonderful day and until next time let's continue on our journey as followers of Jesus Christ. I am Ruth Huffseppian.