Hello, hello there, good listener. I am your host, Nick Stumbo, and you are listening to the Pure Desire podcast, your biblically based and clinically informed approach to healing from trauma and breaking free from compulsive sexual behaviors.

Today is episode 417 and joining me as my co-host

for most of this series is Mr. John Beggeman. John, welcome back to the podcast. Thanks so much.

We've got a great series on offer and I'm excited to see what happens. Yeah, I am excited. We are

starting a brand new series today. This is part one of six in a series that we are calling the Foundations of Freedom. And it may be that we have people tuning in listening to this episode for the very first time because maybe a friend or a group member or a coworker, a spouse said, you need to listen to the Pure Desire podcast. And this is the series about how to find

healing, how to find freedom. What would you say to someone who's listening for the first time

about why we all need support in walking this healing road? Yeah, well, first is to say welcome. Like,

welcome to the PD family. Welcome to this, uh, this conversation. I love so much, Nick,

that we get to break silence around this conversation

here at Peer Desire when it comes to sexuality. And for anybody engaging the first time,

the first things I'd want them to hear is simply, you're not alone, right? We end our podcast with

that phrase, which I think is really powerful. Number two, that they're worthy of love and their story

matters. And to that point, Nick, I think it's so critical to have others enter our house.

Just think about your life as a house.

We get really accustomed to what our bedroom smells like and the kitchen smells like to the

point where we become nose blind.

We lose sight or smell of what is quite literally happening around us. And it's in inviting other people into that house where they're like, wait, like, what's

happening in the fridge? And have you taken out the trash? And why isn't this vacuumed?

And why is the chair there instead of there? And they begin to ask really just curious, compassionate questions

regarding our stories, which is where so much pain or

woundedness really entraps us, that we need other people who aren't nose blind to our story

to enter in with us, to bear witness to what we've experienced, that we might find a traction

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