Ted Haggard Talks

Ted says he spent years trying to deny his attraction to men, struggling with what he saw as a conflict between this attraction and his love for being a pastor. "I loved the whole dynamic of serving people," he says. "But then I had this other thing inside of me that seemed so contrary to that."

In the months leading up to the scandal, Ted says he would walk around his church in the middle of the night, praying to God.

"I'd pray, 'God, do whatever it takes'," he says. "Because I knew I was on a road that was going to kill me. And then the month before Mike Jones spoke up, I was at our prayer and fasting center and I laid on the floor and said, 'Oh, God, never again. I'll never do that again.'"

For months, he worried that if his secret surfaced he'd lose everything meaningful in his life, including his family and his church. Ted says he prayed desperately that "God would do a miracle in me and I would be okay before I embarrassed my family and my friends."