I Told You So

As certain things happen in my life, a majority of society would see them as ‘bad things’, and I can hear these people in my head saying, “I told you so.”

Recently, three major opportunities have opened up. They were opportunities that would have been educational, financially beneficial, and all around great experiences for myself and my family. All three of them came and went very similarly.

I was encouraged. I was loved. ……….I was accepted. As I told you before, I only bring up my past and what I’m doing about it now – if necessary. And that was the case. With two of the opportunities, it was necessary, the other one was not.

Let me stop and answer your question…..”Why is it necessary to even bring up your past, Justine?”

Well, agreeing with many of your stances, if someone has done something awful in their past, so what? Especially if they’re not doing it anymore – what’s the big deal? I firmly believe not everyone is required nor expected to lay their past on the line. However, my case is a little different.

I haven’t only made mistakes that I’m not proud of – not only are they all over the Internet – I am the one promoting my past. I am the one who started a blog. I am the one with the ministry – a cause of attention. I’m the one that could possibly, yes, lead someone to actually look at my solo girl site.

This is the problem and why sometimes it is quite necessary for me to say something.

Ok, back to the topic. In all three instances (the one I didn’t tell ended up being told), after leading me to believe that I was accepted, within a few days, my excitement was squashed like a worm on a bad day.

The overall theme? “It’s not you, Justine. You’re great. What you’re doing with your life is amazing. However, because it is unknown how it would affect us personally and us as a whole, unfortunately, we can’t accept you.”

So…… I’ve actually been on this journey since January. They didn’t all happen at once. But each time….it hit me like I got punched in the face. The first time I balled my eyes out. The second time I held my composure but I think it was definitely a harder blow than the first. And the third time came on as just a way of life.

Here’s where I think most people would start discouraging my vision. “Are you sure this is what God told you to do? Is it worth it? What about your family? See? You shouldn’t be broadcasting your life like this………………………………………………………I told you so.”

Well. Thank you so much for your concern. Those thoughts do, in fact, cross my mind. Here’s my answer…
“Yes……I know this is what I’m supposed to be doing. Because of God and for many other reasons. I believe God provides my needs especially when I’m fulfilling His will, therefore, I have full comfort that we will be taken care of. I can’t focus on the here and now. I need to focus on what this will be in 30 years.”

Today, while doing some work, a thought dawned on me.

This is why girls go back to the industry.

They quit. They try to move on. They’re qualified. They’re ready and willing to change. Maybe they realize they're actually not qualified. And they get hit with rejection after rejection after rejection. And they think….”Hell…I’ll just go back to making $1000 a day. At least there, I feel like I'm worth something.” (Isn't it ironic how money and acceptance makes getting slapped, choked, or ejaculated on more bearable than real life rejections?)

In all three of my experiences, very instrumental and beneficial moments happened….a new enlightenment occurred….a life changing conversation happened….a new path was revealed in my life.

There will be many times along our paths in life that God will teach us lessons. Sometimes, like in my case, it might come in sort of a pattern. What’s the lesson? Find it. Learn it. And just because you hit road blocks, it doesn’t mean you need to turn around. You just might be learning something you’re going to need to know in order to get over obstacles in the future.

The Point of No Return

I figured people would assume I was doing this blog with questionable motives or as a way to justify my actions and ‘make myself feel better’. But honestly, I never thought I’d get the overwhelming response of people genuinely proposing caution for my decision to ‘go public’ with my past.

“Are you sure you want to make your past a part of your future, Justine? You’ll get a lot of tomatoes thrown at you.”

“You’re giving people more ammo to use against you.”

“Your life will never be private again.”

One factor that many forget is my life became ‘public’ the moment peers exposed my dark secrets on the Internet back in 2005. And then in 2006, choosing to do a pornographic website also compromised my ‘private’ life. All one had to do was Google my name and there it was; which we all know, that’s a very common practice today. Before even starting this blog, the caution and consideration for my family and future employers was very similar to what it is today.

However, today, there are some main differences. I have chosen to embrace what I cannot change and instead of trying to hide it and lying, it has now become a part of who I am and that particular part of me is disclosed to necessary people at appropriate times. I don’t walk around, wearing my past on my sleeve and am an open book from the get go. It is just now becoming something more openly discussed with people in my life that aren’t necessarily close friends or family.

Nonetheless, taking my ‘not so private life’ and making it even more public by doing the Current.tv documentary (no longer on their site and can be found above) as well as starting the blog, I fully realized, 100% acknowledged, and was very much aware of the step I was taking. It was a step in the right direction due to the vision God showed me a year or so earlier. Here’s what I knew going in:

1. I was 100% surrendering my future to God, to use me at His disposal, for His purpose and vision that He shared with me.

2. I KNEW the persecution that I would face would be great…..for my choices, for my Faith, and for my message. This thought is what kept me from fully surrendering my future for a few months, questioning if it's what I wanted.

3. But this journey in life is not about me. It’s about bringing God glory. It’s not about normalcy. I owe Christ so much more than this. Giving up my worldly expectation of an ‘All American Family’ and a little privacy doesn’t seem like all that much when seen from that perspective.

“But why, Justine?”

Well….aside from owing Christ my life, I feel it would be a selfish motive to just focus on fighting, pulling, and trudging through life trying to make it ‘normal’. (Whatever that means, by the way!) The enlightenment I have received through the awful experiences I’ve been through can in turn, hopefully shed some light on someone else’s situation. Many of you have seen how pornography could be affecting more than just your sexual tension and need to release. And many marriages one day will be able to experience unconditional, safe, and genuine love by working through their differences and sexual integrity issues rather than covering them up or running away completely. Does that sound soothing to any one? Well, I’m doing this for you.

That post kind of turned into something it wasn’t supposed to be, but that does happen sometimes! I guess what I really wanted to talk about needed a little explanation. So rather than make this a really long post, please stay tuned.

….to be continued…

Announcement!

Taboo For Your Attention

Why does it seem like if anything is going to make an impact somehow, the 'marketing' approach has to be almost taboo? Radical? Out of the norm? To compete with mainstream tactics, it takes a lot to get noticed.

That's the approach Craig Gross took when he co-founded the site, xxxchurch.com. I'm sure some of you may have heard about it. Craig believes that sometimes you might have to come off a little surprising if you want people to listen. The start of his career was hosting a booth at a porn show. There, he respected those in the business and gained their respect in return.

In a recent local newspaper article entitled "Live Pure - a radical approach", Craig talked about the importance of not focusing on what people do for a living, but the mere fact that Jesus loves everyone....even porn stars.

His tactic is to reach out to those in the business as well as the consumers of the business. He seems to always try and find a 'cutting edge' approach, such as coming out with a "Jesus Loves Porn Stars" Bible, an accountability software program called X3watch, as well as traveling across the nation to universities, holding porn debates with a well known porn star, Ron Jeremy.

The article listed some of the statistics that xxxchurch is facing head on.

-42.7% of Internet users view pornography (familysafemedia.com/pornography_statistics.html#webpages_country)

-"At a 2003 meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial lawyers, two-thirds of the 350 divorce lawyers who attended said the Internet played a significant role in divorces in the pat year; with excessive interest in online porn contributing to more than half such cases." (www.divorcewizards.com)

-51% of pastors say cyber-porn is a possible temptation: 37% say it is a current struggle (Christianity Today, Leadership Survey, December 2001)

-100,000 Web sites offer illegal child pornography. (U.S. Customs Service estimate)


One thing Craig said that stood out to me personally was this: "It is time to take a different approach. I don't buy half of the garbage that I see in he supermarket, but that doesn't mean that I am not going to go to the supermarket. I have to make a choice. You can't avoid this [pornography]. You can't avoid the Internet. The whole thing [the Internet] is not bad. You just have to make a conscious and deliberate choice."


If you haven't checked out the site already, please do. It is very informative and can be a great resource for any of you looking for help. You can hear directly from a former porn producer on the home page video which is very enlightening.

Porn can feel like an uphill battle. For those of you losing your grip, people like Craig and myself are here...praying and fighting for you - no matter how taboo we have to get.

Sources: Zeppieri-Caruana, Marisa. "Live Pure: a radical approach." Good News March 2010, Print.

In Somebody Else's Words

I just found this really unique site, www.iamsecond.com. Please take a look at this video of Nate Larkin.

This site also had other celebrities that I've written of before such as Josh Hamilton.


Some people wonder why I started this blog. Why would I bring any attention to myself. I'm not going to get into that answer, but you know, part of me thinks that most would believe it's for selfish reasons just because that's what Americans in particular do...especially those in the lime light. When they mess up or feel guilty, they do something in order to 'make up for it'.

When in reality this world is full of very hurt individuals. We're all on the same level no matter what we've done. Evil is evil and I don't believe if something is evil, it can be a little evil or a "big, unforgivable" evil. We're all living the same life....on the same level.

The people on this site have been struggling and hurting...and they would like to share their story.

John Mayer Interview

"MAYER: Internet pornography has absolutely changed my generation’s expectations. How could you be constantly synthesizing an orgasm based on dozens of shots? You’re looking for the one photo out of 100 you swear is going to be the one you finish to, and you still don’t finish. Twenty seconds ago you thought that photo was the hottest thing you ever saw, but you throw it back and continue your shot hunt and continue to make yourself late for work. How does that not affect the psychology of having a relationship with somebody? It’s got to."

Well I'm just gonna get straight down to it. Out of all the craziness in John Mayer's Playboy interview, there's at least one thing he and I can agree on. The fact that porn inevitably affects the psyche specifically in regard to having a relationship with someone. He 100% supports porn and the use of it, and actually says it would be his dream to 'write pornography', but yet he completely understands that it's part of his relationship problems.

He calls porn the "new synaptic pathway" and says, "Rather than meet somebody new, I would rather go home and replay the amazing experiences I've already had.....I'm more confident in my imagination than I am in actual human discovery."


After reading his interview, I kept having this terrifying thought that....if you take away his fame and his money - that he would represent the average 32 year old. So much confusion. So many misconceptions. So much searching for significance. All in part because of porn.

John Mayer spoke of his love for pornography and frequent use of it as if it were an award he could hang on his wall - all before the interviewer even said the word "porn".

So now the interview is out and people became enraged and disgusted. Some at his sexual comments, but most at his racial comments and therefore, a video produced of him at a concert explaining himself:

"....so I decided that I would try to be as clever as possible all the time. And I did that at the expense of people that I love. And that feels absolutely terrible. Feels worse than any headline that I thought I could get my way out of."

He said he was "done" with the media and trying to be clever. He wasn't clear as to who the people he was hurting actually were, but many of the comments online were people saying it was to rectify any racial backlash....not because of any other comments that he made.

Now, I'm not saying his racial comments were acceptable, but what I am saying is young boys who want to be guitar rock stars and young women in his audience received no enlightenment on the comment he said about pornography or flippant approach to sleeping with women.


During the interview, he talked so much about how he just wanted to be liked...that having a woman like him was equal to having sex. He also had a, I guess he would say "clever" way of deal with those who didn't like him. He wanted to encompass the "F- You!" attitude and not care what anyone thinks. But he also realized this also may be destructive:
"Maybe I'm so meta-aware that it's off-putting to people. But I'm old enough to know I need to change."

And he reiterated that once again at his concert reflecting on the Playboy interview, saying that the band members on stage were there because "they support myself as a possible future grown up."

At the end of this video, he said "My name is John Mayer and I'm going to figure that out".

He made it seem like he was going to figure that out by being "done" with the media and accepting what others think without getting bent out of shape. By focusing on music and apparently, "growing up". But I fear the fulfillment he's searching for within his confidence and relationships will still feel astray as long as he's seeing '300 vaginas before he gets out of bed'.

Again...another story to reflect that people may grow up or eventually feel a void in their relationships or in life. So they release with porn which apparently is supposed to fill that void. It keeps filling and filling and filling but somehow, it never overflows. Then they're left with an even greater void, but now it's confusion, overwhelming, and difficult to recognize the source. And they continue to fill it...with the only immediate release they've grown to know.