Meta Description: At forty-one, I stopped trying to be a hero. After decades of treating my body like a rental car, I discovered that some battles aren’t won by fighting. They’re won by running.
I was forty-one years old when I stopped trying to be a hero.
For decades, I approached life like every wall was meant to be climbed, every locked door was meant to be kicked in, and every forbidden thing was just a challenge waiting to be accepted. I didn’t back down. I didn’t walk away. I certainly didn’t run.
Then I hit something I couldn’t climb over, crawl under, or bargain with. It wasn’t a wall. It was a mirror. And the man staring back at me looked exhausted.
He had spent thirty years proving a point nobody was trying to disprove. He had chased every appetite, followed every whim, and collected enough memories to fill three lifetimes. He had also emptied himself completely and was too proud to admit he was thirsty.
That is where the running finally started. Just not the kind I expected.
The Rental Car Years
Before that point, I viewed my body like a rental car.
I drove it hard and never worried about the upholstery. I ignored the dings and dents and figured as long as it got me from point A to point B, who cared? The mileage was high, the maintenance was minimal, and the transmission made a funny sound when I pressed too hard. I pressed anyway.
Nowhere was this more true than with sex.
Our culture treats sex like hunger. When you are hungry, you eat. When you feel an urge, you find an outlet. We have reduced one of the most mysterious forces in human existence to a biological itch that needs scratching. Scratching feels good, so we keep doing it, even when our skin bleeds.
I believed this for three decades. I built an entire life around it.
But here is what nobody tells you about scratching an itch: it always comes back. And the relief never lasts as long as the memory of it.
The Man Who Told Men to Run
Then I started reading letters written two thousand years ago by the apostle Paul.
I expected guilt. I expected rules and threats and the wagging finger of a disappointed deity. What I did not expect was strategy.
Paul was writing to people living in Corinth and Thessalonica. I had always pictured these as quiet religious towns full of people who folded their hands and waited for heaven. After studying their history, I learned the truth. Corinth was the Las Vegas of the ancient world. Thessalonica was Miami Beach. These were trade-heavy, hyper-sexualized port cities where “anything goes” was not just a slogan. It was the civic religion.
Paul told them something that stopped me cold. He did not tell them to try harder. He did not tell them to form accountability groups or install filtering software or memorize three verses to quote before breakfast.
He told them to flee.
Flee from sexual immorality.
Not fight. Not resist. Not stand firm and stare it down like a cowboy in a spaghetti western. Flee. Run. Get out of the building and do not look back.
I had spent thirty years standing my ground. It had never occurred to me that the ground itself was on fire.
The Superglue You Cannot See
Here is what Paul understood that I did not.
In that same letter, he said something strange. He said that every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the person who sins sexually sins against their own body.
For years, I assumed this was religious guilt or was perhaps eluding to contracting an STI. A special category of divine anger reserved for the really fun stuff.
But look closer. Paul was not saying sexual sin is the worst sin. He was saying it is qualitatively different.
If I lie to you, that is an external transaction. I have wronged you, but I have not fused myself to you. If I steal your wallet, I have taken your money, but I have not taken your imprint. Those sins are real. They hurt people. They damage trust and require restitution. But they do not glue two human beings together at the level of the soul.
Sex does.
The Bible calls this becoming “one flesh.” Modern neuroscience calls it imprinting. Whatever language you use, the mechanism is the same. When we engage in what the Greeks called porneia, the root of our word for pornography, we are not just having a physical experience. We are wiring ourselves to people. We are creating neural pathways and spiritual ties and emotional bonds that were never meant to be temporary.
We are using superglue for Post-it note purposes.
And then we wonder why we feel fragmented. Why we carry ghosts into new relationships. Why the face of someone we barely remember still flickers across the screen of our minds at strange hours of the night.
We were not designed to leave pieces of ourselves scattered across thirty years of encounters. When we do, we don’t become more free. We become more scattered.
You Were Never a Rental Car
The biggest shift for me happened when I stopped asking what I could or couldn’t do with my body and started asking what my body was actually for.
Paul kept using a word that felt like it belonged in an architecture textbook: temple.
In the ancient world, a temple was not just a pretty building where religious things happened. It was the inner sanctuary where a deity actually lived. It was consecrated ground. It was set apart.
Paul said my body was exactly that. Not a rental car. Not a biological machine. Not a collection of urges waiting for satisfaction. A temple. Occupied territory. The King’s residence.
Imagine discovering that the beat-up sedan you have been mistreating for years is actually a one-of-a-kind Ferrari that belongs to someone who loves you. Imagine realizing the dents and scratches are not just cosmetic damage. They are vandalism against something priceless.
You would change the way you drive immediately.
I am not defined by what I want. I am defined by who lives here now. And He does not evict tenants just because they are messy.
How to Run When You Have Forgotten How
So what does fleeing actually look like when you are forty-one years old and your habits are thirty years deep?
First, it looks like surrender. I spent most of my life trying to be the hero of my own redemption story. I thought if I just worked harder or if I could make myself more disciplined or found the right relationship, I could conquer my desires through sheer willpower. Willpower is a finite resource. You cannot brute force your way to holiness any more than you can punch yourself out of quicksand.
The first step is admitting you are in quicksand.
Second, it looks like honest geography. You cannot flee from what you refuse to acknowledge is dangerous. If there is an app that always leads you to the same dark hallway, delete it. If there is a person who consistently pulls you toward versions of yourself you don’t want to become, stop returning their calls. If there is a habit that has taken up rent-free residence in your life, change the locks.
This is not weakness. This is warfare. You do not fight a fire while standing in the middle of the flames. You run. You let the professionals handle the blaze. Your only job is to get to safety.
Third, it looks like patience with the rewiring. The neural pathways don’t disappear overnight. The old songs still play in your head when certain stimuli appear. You still notice people. You still feel the pull of the door you spent thirty years walking through.
But here is what changes: the door no longer gets to define you.
You are not what you want. You are who He says you are.
The Revolution You Didn’t Know You Were Joining
The early Christians started something strange. They lived in a Roman world where powerful men could use anyone to satisfy their urges. Slaves, children, women, men of lower status. All of them were available. All of them were expendable.
Then these Christians appeared, and they said no.
They insisted that every single body has equal moral dignity. Not because of social status or economic utility or physical beauty. Because every body can be a temple for the Living God.
This was not prudishness. This was revolution.
That revolution is still happening. Every time you choose to honor your body instead of using it. Every time you choose to run instead of flirting with destruction. Every time you refuse to treat another human being as an object for your own satisfaction. You are not just managing your behavior. You are participating in a new creation.
I wasted thirty years believing I was free because I did whatever I wanted. Now I know that true freedom is not the absence of constraints. It is the presence of purpose.
I am not a rental car. I never was.
I am a sanctuary. And sanctuaries don’t exist for their own sake. They exist for the One who dwells within them.
He is still here. He never left. He was just waiting for me to stop running in the wrong direction.
When you are finally tired, really and truly tired, He will still be here too. He is not in a hurry. He has never been in a hurry.
He is just waiting for you to notice whose house you actually live in.