Hello everyone and welcome to the Covenant Eyes podcast. I am your host today, Theo McManigal. So today I am here with Paul Pulsipher and this should be a very interesting conversation. Paul, welcome to the Covenant Eyes podcast. How are you today? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on. Well, thanks for thanks for joining us. I think you're going to find that Paul has a very interesting story and a very interesting and beautiful contribution to make to everyone who is struggling with various things. So, Paul, just tell us about yourself. Some bit of background. I grew up in western Colorado, a little tiny town, less than 10,000 people. And, I'll get into more details of this later, I guess. But, you know, in the midst of honestly having, you know, decent situation going up, you know, family dynamics, although in general, there was a, as you can imagine why I'm on this podcast during this secret I had growing up, despite having a, you know, pretty good Christian home, honestly. You know, pornography addiction but butted up its ugly head and thankfully I was able to get clean later in my teen years from that and served a Christian mission in Canada. I got back from that to the States. It was a really good experience. The whole the whole time I was up there for that and I got back to the States. I had quite the engagement story with a lady I met up there in Canada. Her name was Lorraine, and we were married in 2009. She had had an extensive, wild background. Not because she was a wild child, but because of just what had happened to her in her life. And we'll talk about that more later. But, you know, we had a kind of a crazy ten years together. And because of health problems, she passed away in 2019, and I struggled myself through a lot of those years through addiction. Because of my trauma background, plus hers, you know, things just kind of came back from my teen addiction years after she passed. After some time processing through some things and kind of figuring out how to restart my life, really. I met Colette, my wife. Now. Oh, sorry. She found me. Correction. She found me. I was not, you know. I don't know how to do this. I'm a 33 year old widower. How does this work? I know what I'm doing in a way unexpected to both of us. God kind of made that happen. And we were married after some time for me be back, being back in the States, and I was able to go back to school. After that, and my Colette and I are living here in Nashville. I have degrees in music, recording technology and commercial music. I've been playing piano for more than 30 years. And yeah, I just run in my studio out here in Nashville and trying to spread the message of the Savior to as many as I can, as well as his role in my addiction recovery through music. So let's let's jump in there. How how has music been a factor, both in your faith as well as your recovery? Well, one of my my professors, the message is awesome. And he basically said that, you know, music is, you know, a very ambiguous and kind of amorphous language, right? It doesn't speak specifics very well unless we're talking about emotions, in which case suddenly it becomes much more specific than we can be with words. And for me, you know, it's how many times on society do we date today? Do we see people struggling to keep proper channels of communication open? Because I don't know what the words are. Well, music helps with that, right? It says things about how we feel that we can't say with words, you know, like how how would would, sadness or frustration or joy or excitement sound if it were a melody instead of a word. And sometimes I think that maybe even does a little bit better job than just the word right. And so for me, that's been and especially with, with when you put, you know, just right, with just the right words that are the words are close enough, and then you put the right melody behind it and it's like, oh, I feel that more now. And that's, you know, that's kind of, you know, the point is, I remember one professor, I showed him this, this song I was working on that, had this really cool pivot chord when I was modulating. And he said, on that chord you have, you better have a really important word like I do. It's the word Lord. So, you know, it helps emphasize the message. And to me, I think that's helpful because a lot of people in communication these days, they tend to, you know, they want to use things like profanity and insults and name calling and things like that to get their frustrations out. And it's like, no, there's a better way to do this. Put it to a song preferably that doesn't have, you know, profanity and insults and all that nonsense. Right. You want to really get most message across, put it to a melody. You know, there's even a scene in The Flash. For those who've seen a TV show where Barry Allen's mom and he was a kid, he she said something to him, like, when you say something, you're just saying it. But when you're singing it, you know, like the whole idea is the message gets across much better. So yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. And God made music, you know, and, Saint Augustine said, he who sings well prays twice. But also, I saw a video the other day by our friend or that of our friend Christopher West, talking where he was talking about how like, I mean, what is music? It's he was talking about a violin. I mean, he described it much better than I'm about to, but you have this stick and these strings and you're putting them together and you're making these noise. But the reality is you're calling something out of creation that God put into it that has the capacity for tremendous beauty. So, you know, you've picked a wonderful, effective avenue there that can really do a lot for people at the emotional level. And that's a level, of course, of ourselves that we have to be attentive to. So, how did you go about using this, using your music and in such a way as to, kind of help with your, your addiction, your struggle? You know, when did you start doing that? When? What's that been like? I can say for sure that, though I had my struggles with pornography addiction growing up, my, the time I spent trying to, you know, get in good practice habits with piano lessons. Growing up, I took ten years of lessons. You know, I know getting into that was something that helped a little bit to displace things because, you know, the time I spent practicing was time I wasn't spending doing worse things. Right. And that was also training my brain to kind of, you know, form. One of the things that you'll hear from a lot of musicians is that music helps train your brain, in a way that, like, forms connections that, like, can literally physically increase the connections between the sides of your brain that helps cognitive function and ability to process things, mathematically, socially, scientifically, like it actually activates all the areas of your brain, whether it be creative or more analytical or whatever it may be. And that can actually help to process what you're feeling more effectively. Sadly for me, one of the reasons that I got into the addiction in the first place, the first thing I have in this album that I'm putting together right now, I certainly I haven't come up with a title for it yet because I'm like, there's so many things that could call this, but the very first song is called inside. And, you know, when you're when you're a kid, like when I was growing up in this little tiny town, when you're exposed to something like that the very first time, you know, it brings on such intense emotions, you know, especially when you're getting just just coming up on the puberty years. Right. It brings the fourth. These the emotions and feelings you don't have the vocabulary to describe as a kid. You don't know how to talk about what's happening to you. It's like, you know, and the very beginning says, I'm just a kid. What is this? This feeling I'm feeling inside is too complicated for my growing brain. And it's pushing so hard on my mind. It's like, you know, this weight. It's like you don't know what to do with it. You know, and, and the last part of the song, should I speak up about it? My mind feels so clouded. What should I believe? What is right? My parents might be furious, but I'm a little curious. Maybe I'll just sneak a peek tonight, you know, and it's like kids don't know how to respond to that kind of thing. The next song has a part in my teenage years where the chorus says, I wish it didn't feel so hard in this little town to talk about sex and love. I wish I felt more safe asking questions about it, but it only feels like a game of push and shove, you know? The little town is in, like, everybody just had that small town paradigm of everything. Encanto, that Disney movie. Encanto. Yeah. We don't talk about Bruno. And. That's a that's a great analogy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm like, this is that is what it was like. We don't talk about that. Why? Because people are scared to have the tough conversations. I think it was another, doctor John Delany. Like, he does a he's a therapist, he does a call in show or whatever. But I think he did some kind of analysis of this, and, you know, that's incredibly, like, damaging for kids and even for family dynamics to have these secrets, to have these things like, oh, you can't talk about that. I mean, and, you know, as a, as a kid, man, you need to be able well, really adults to like, we need to be able to just we need to be able to talk about things. I mean, granted, I mean, certainly there secrets that need to be kept in what have you, but like, you know, those are mostly professional contexts anyways. But for when you're a kid, man, you need your you need your parents to be able to guide you through these experiences or, or somebody else. So like, yeah, I mean, I'm sure I'm sure that's probably something that the Disney movie Encanto wanted to get at. But you can definitely see the impact that it had on that particular family and the, the impact that it has on a kid. When you're exposed to this stuff and you can't talk about it. Oh, yeah, I hear you. So yeah, just great analogy and, and and already with what you've shared with your lyrics, I mean, wow. Yeah. You're totally good. I'm glad you said that too, because it actually leads into what the bridge here of the next song says. I know I'm addicted this point of civic and I'm scared of what I might become. I want a way out, right? But I'm so scared about what will happen if I come out, let it out and tell someone. And then the very next part says, and this is, I think, what a lot of kids might be thinking inside, but they're too afraid to say, but they really do feel it. I wish one of these times that someone would catch me, take me by the hand, lead me back to the Lord. I wish a lot of things, but right now, most of all, I want to feel the love of God restored. And I know a lot of people out there might think, well, God always loves you. That's true. You know, in Romans where it says, you know, nothing can separate us from the love of God, but your ability to feel it, as I learned firsthand, is stunted. You know, when you're feeding your your spirit and your body that kind of garbage, you know, the Lord works through both our spirits and the way our mind connects to our spirits in order to speak to us. And when your mind is clouded, your spirit is going to have a harder time translating what he wants to tell you to your thoughts. You know, it's going to get clouded. And so like this whole idea of. Oh, we don't want to talk about this because it's just such a hard conversation to have. I'm sorry, but I want to tell people, get over it. And I might not be the kindest way to say it, but, like, I don't want to get political about this, but you know what did, I'm sure more than just Charlie Kirk said this. But when we stopped talking, you know, even just as a society, that's when wars starts, when we stop communicating, you know, and it's like if you're I had, you know, I had the talk, you know, growing up back in the 90s when it was just the talk and that was it, about birds and the bees and stuff. Right. But, you know, as psychologists have been learning more throughout the last, I would guess, what, 25 years ish, maybe, like it needs to be a series of conversations where parents, you know, identify with their kids. And as you said, and even sometimes adult kids, how to have like comfortable, natural, normal conversations make it something that can be felt as a normal thing to speak about in an appropriate manner, granted, but so that it can be done without. Oh, we got to treat this with such, you know, kid gloves. It shouldn't be quite like that. I don't think, you know. And that would that would have saved a lot of trouble. In fact, the narration I have these songs, I have this narration that I have in each one that I'll probably put in a separate track, a short, separate track before each song when it comes out. But part of the narration I have for this, this song I just mentioned says useful, regular preparatory conversations that would have helped me avoid sexual pitfalls, was shunned by every adult sorry, felt shunned by every adult in my life as well as my peers. And then I said, what you hear next is the narrative that went on in my heart for most of that period of my life. So it's like, you know, and I know, like my parents and not even just them, all the adults in my community, I know they didn't. They weren't sitting out there, you know, intentionally thinking, oh, I don't want to talk with this. I just I just don't want to do it. I'm too lazy. Like, you know, I don't I'm too scared. It wasn't just that. It's a cultural paradigm that was faulty for everyone. It wasn't just any one person. But that's just kind of how it was. And and yeah, I think that that for me, that was something that needed desperately to be fixed and still needs to be fixed in a lot of families all around the world. I think another thing there too, is. That's a moment for a parent when you are actively taking a step which could be construed as in the parents own mind, not without some truth of, well, this when I when I have the talk and I'm not advocating for it only being the talk. But when I begin, maybe better said, when I begin to talk about these things, this is when my child loses their innocence. And this is, you know, we're saying goodbye to a stage of this child's life, but also my life in relationship with this child forever by now beginning to inform them of these things. And I guess I just wanted to call. That out. Because there's that. That's understandable. Obviously, you know, I mean, here at Covenant Eyes, we want parents to be having these conversations. We teach them how to have these conversations. We have resources for them to have these conversations. We're not advocating not doing it, but we I say it out loud so that you know, that we understand that, that what these things can mean or what the parents can be telling themselves that these things mean. And there's something to that. Like it is a a big step, but the reality is still right if you don't do it. Number one, I mean, they're going to figure it out eventually, which you did. And at the same time, you still sounded like, based on the lyrics, felt lonely in it, right? Yep, yep. Absolutely. You know, and that's what it does, you know, the chemicals that connect you with your spouse when you're, you know, in physical intimacy and marriage, those same chemicals go off when you're getting into porn and stuff, and it bonds you with an object instead of a person, I think, oh, it's the person. No, no, no, no, it is a digital fake portrayal of something that and I can mention this, another song, I talk about this that's really just a promise that porn just continues to break over and over and over again. It gives you this fake promise that, oh, I can make you feel good about yourself and about, you know, what you're seeing and all that stuff. It doesn't do that. It hijack and fight the new drug you ever heard of. Fight the new drug? Yes they are. Yep. We know. They have. Yeah, they have their research they've done about exactly how porn hijacks the brain and actually disrupts and displaces healthy connection between like, face to face interaction. You know, the nuances of actually like connecting with a person on an emotional level and seeing more than just bodies. There's a meant to be that's what this meant to be is where I have these lyrics that says, changing choices. And this is after the first time I was caught in my addiction. My my mom. It's the changing choices of which voices I listened to and tune out the poisons that because that gaudy obsession with bodies was a reckless, self-sabotaging hobby. Because that's what it is. You're obsessed with something, not someone. Yeah, and I guess there is something to be said to to those parents who are worried like, oh no, this is the this is when my child begins to lose their innocence. This is not when you're, you know, when your child. It's a stage of growing up and growing up. Of course, number one for the parent means I'm getting older. Two. Number two, it's like, oh man. Well, my does my child need me less? No, they actually they need you critically right now because they don't understand these things. Especially if I mean, you know, the average age of first exposure is between 8 and 9 years old. And that's the average stage. That's the average age. That means plenty of kids younger are getting exposed. You really need your parents. You need someone to talk to you. You need someone to help you understand. You need someone to validate you when you're feeling the things that you're feeling. And actually, while it might seem counterintuitive, then what you said about wanting to be caught makes a lot of sense because I don't know how to start the conversation otherwise, especially if it's already hard to talk about things in general, you know? So that's an important question that parents need to ask themselves, like, can does my kid feel comfortable coming to me and saying, I either I messed up or this bad thing happened to me? I actually don't think parents, should be looking at, you know, pornography is something that if your kid is exposed to it. That's the that's the right language, is exposed to it. Like, this is not primarily a bad thing your kid has done. This is something bad that's happened to them. You know, when it comes to when it comes to this stuff, kids are always the victims. They're always the victims, as you know. And and as you're saying, I'm just re-emphasize it and I guess preaching they're always the victims, right? So in light of that, we don't want to think, oh, our kids done this bad thing. Well, actually, something's happened to them, and they need you. Yeah, yeah. They. Need you one time. Speaking of that, and there's something else I want to actually relate to what you just said there. I remember my my dad telling me a story, and this was like, you know, a long time through my addiction recovery process. This was actually, I think, towards the end of it, to be honest, he had told me that the experience he had when he was, I don't know, maybe a teen, I might be misquoting this, but somewhere around there, he was just of 11. I remember he told me he was. His dad had asked him where the the place where they were living. At one point there was, I guess, this alleyway, you know, they they saw this alleyway that was nearby their house, I guess, and my dad, dad asked him, hey, can you go pick up this piece of garbage in the alleyway down there? And he went down there and from a distance could see what it was. And he's like, you know, kind of thinking, no, you know, I don't know about. So he went back without doing it, told his dad, I don't think I should be getting close to that because I think there's something bad on it and, you know. Oh, oh, okay. Goes down, get to them, chucks it out. And my dad told me, he says, you know, and this tells you how, you know, how neural plastic the brain really is. He said because of the way that incident went, I couldn't remember what was on the front of that that I saw from a distance. Even if I gave my most earnest efforts, I there's no way I couldn't recall it if my life depended on it, which was, you know, a way to say, you know, a that's the healthy way it should be, you know, instead of, I'm scared. I saw something bad. Parents might be upset. It's like no parents would be like, oh, no, no, no, like you said, this happened to you. And because in that situation it was dealt with properly, he never had any problems with it in the future. You know, and I don't think necessarily that people think, oh, they're losing their innocence, but they're also losing something else. And, you know, to to childhood, to me, there's a certain level of, of naivety, right? When you're, when you're a kid, you aren't you are naive to a lot of things in life because you haven't had the time to experience a lot of, you know, good or bad things in life. You know, it's not intense things. And so what your child's also losing when they get to that point is they're losing some naivete. And, you know, lots of innocence doesn't always have to be a bad thing. Because it's something you can learn from. And if they're taught how to respond to this loss of innocence and this loss of this, this new understanding properly, it can avoid so much heartbreak, you know? Absolutely. Wow. Thanks for sharing that. Sharing that story. Tell me, do you have any music that kind of talks about where you're at right now or you know that that comes about following the passing of your first wife or anything like that? You know, Lorraine was born with spinal bifida, clubbed feet, broken hip. We found out later in life as she also had a type two mal formation in her neck that was discovered much later. A whole bunch of different. That wasn't even that wasn't all of it. And so, you know, her life was just riddled with health problem after health problem and lots of physical and emotional and mental and financial and sexual and not every kind of abuse you can imagine. And so, you know, she had kind of really, really found a solid Christian footing in her life. Several years before we had met. And so when we were married, a lot of this PTSD that neither of us knew she hadn't dealt with kind of resurfaced and with my past, and I was diagnosed with ADHD as a kid. But then I was reevaluated as an adult to kind of be more on the autism spectrum with, like, what they used to call Asperger's syndrome. And so, you know, with those combined backgrounds, those triggers just kind of came back up. And because of the nuances of her health, plus dealing with her trauma and mine, just everything came back up. And the song I wrote for that, I find it really quick here. It's called happening basically, you know, is this really happening? I thought I had beat this, you know, I had recovered enough to serve, you know, that Christian mission I talked about, without that addiction clouding my mind and then just piles back, but worse than ever before. And part of that song, you know, talking about the whole experience I put, I said, so many years fighting trauma and fear has made us our own worst enemies. What will it take these horrors to shake and make our love what we want to be? Why is this still happening? You know, in the last part says we need something drastic that fills up these massive holes in our hearts. So deep I don't care anymore what I have to endure if it causes the change that we need. Why is this happening? And then when she, The answer to that question was very made very, very clear when she passed away in 2019 from a lot of these health complications. And that song is called more completely, charged out. You know, we didn't expect this. You'd be so many times we didn't expect this. But I can accept this is something that needed to be, you know, later on. Now, she's one of the angels that she used to see. She had a lot of amazing spiritual gifts. It's interesting. There's a phrase I use in here that says, if anything, our connection feels closer to perfection with both of our perspectives vastly changed the way that darkness pulled at me, now silenced internally, priorities now joyfully are rearranged more completely. And sometimes I think it needs to take. Doesn't always have to I won't, I won't say, you know, I'm you know, not everybody is me, right? But sometimes it might have to take a drastic change, for really healing to happen. And, you know, the real question that we have to ask ourselves, and this is something I put in my very last song, you can be, I basically said in the bridge to it, don't wait till the pain of the problem is worse than the pain of the solution. You know, don't let it fester any longer. Recovery will make you stronger, right? It's like when you if you take care of it before it becomes a major problem and take the drastic action that's needed, it can go away permanently. You know, deal with all the trauma, have all the conversations. And when you do that, it gives the Holy Ghost room right, gives you the Holy Spirit room to come back into your your mind because, you know, instead of what's that Bible verse that says, you know, we see through a glass darkly, that that's not a thing anymore. We're seeing clearly. It's like, oh my gosh, you realize that is as bad as some people say it is. And all of a sudden it's like, you know, your vision opens up. It's like, oh my gosh, I feel free. And it it works. You know, the savior can access you more and you can understand him better, and you can feel of what he really thinks about you and what you know, your true identity is to him, as opposed to just someone who, you know, like, it's like, I don't need this stuff. All I need is the savior and the healthy relationships that he is trying to give me and the mortals around me. Well, thanks for. Yeah, that's beautiful and fantastic and and very well put with those last few songs there. As we kind of come to the time in which we have to wrap up, I mean, one of the important things I want for people is to is your music able to be found anywhere online. If you follow PulsipherProductions.com? And I'm guessing that I'll be a link to that put in this, this episode. But if you go to PulsipherProductions.com do that, you will see that coming out. Yeah. No that's that's fantastic. And I think that, you know, we need good music. We desire good music. I mean, even myself all the time. I'm just I like to listen to music to, you know, I mean, come on, who doesn't in various ways, but I know, I just want to say, as we kind of wrap up here. Thank you. Thank you for turning, your painful experiences into a gift for the sake of other people. There was him, you know, given some of what I had had mentioned to you earlier, you know, losing my children and and such. I mean, it speaks to the reality of our faith that the worst things can become the best things. You know, not only does Paul say that God makes all things work for the good for those who love him, but I mean the the death of our Lord, right? Open up the way for his resurrection and ultimately our salvation. So we see that in this case, that is the worst thing to have ever happened, Paul, is that, you know, our the death of our Lord, the crucifixion of our Lord. I mean, his death being so brutal and terrible as it was. And we did that to him. And all of us have done that to him through our sins. Right? What what did he do with that? He turned that into his resurrection and the cause of our redemption and salvation. He turned that into the cause of our being able to be in right relationship with him again. And so if he can do that and he did, it does. We all have that opportunity with our various sufferings and terrible things that have happened to us to do the same. And what you've done here by, you know, taking your your pain and turning it into the beauty of music truly, truly is a gift, to everyone who encounters it, and in a way makes you a gift to the people that you are serving. So I just want to say thank you, Paul, for that. Any final words before we wrap up here? Yeah, actually, I'm glad you said that, because I was just going to say I want to read the last little bit of my the last song to this because it's, I think, the best message of hope in the entire album. We got to close with some song lyrics, man, we got to. All right. So the last part says, if anything. My life has been proof. Real change can happen when you don't give up and press on faithfully through ups and downs, turns and bends. Cling to Christ and in the end you'll feel his power to change your heart. You'll see what you can be. If you think you're just too far gone to save. Think again, my friend. God can change what you crave. It probably won't be easy to reversing such travail, but I promise. It's still possible when you partner with he who Never Fails. Amen, brother. That's the mic drop right there. Thank you so much for sharing your story for this conversation on the Covenant Eyes podcast. I hope everyone listening. Please, once again, please like this episode. Subscribe. Share it. Leave comments. It's good for the algorithms. It's good for our mission to get our name and brand in front of as many people as possible. Check out Paul's music and use music for the good and for the sake of your own virtue. So again, Paul, thank you so much. And for all of us here at Covenant Eyes on the Covenant Eyes podcast. I'm Theo McManigal. God bless you.