Tag: addiction

Humility

“The god of intellect displaced the God of our fathers. . . . We saw that we had to reconsider or die. We found many . . . who once thought as we did. They helped us to get down to our right size. By their example they showed us that humility and intellect could be compatible, provided we placed humility first. When we began to do that, we received the gift of faith, a faith which works. This faith is for you, too.” 12/12 p 29

I’ve always considered myself to be a pretty smart person. As I grew older I thought I had a seasoned perspective on many issues. I believed I could hold my life as a husband, father and important leader in one hand and my addiction quietly in another. What I didn’t bargain for was that the addict continued to grow and my intellect had to abandon all humility to keep up. I tried to remain humble by looking meek when it suited my circumstances. False humility became a second lie; my addiction was the first. I tried to live so others would not see what I was like on the inside.

Slowly intellect became another false god in my life. I knew that if I was smart enough I would be an important person, especially to those spiritually minded. I could quote spiritual writers and people who had a distinctively God centered worldview. But inside, my life was crumbling like a piece of burnt toast. I was falling apart, coming apart at the seams. I could not hold my addiction to lust, any form of humility, and my true self together any more.

Only when I disclosed to my wife and two sons that I was attracted to men did I begin to understand that intellect and humility were compatible. My understanding grew when I kept honesty squarely on the table. When I lead with honesty about my addiction, humility rises above intellect. It becomes primary. Intellect becomes secondary. Then, and only then, is my faith a working faith. As one of my SA friends puts it, “Faith with skin on it.”

Honesty disarms my addict. I can’t be honest without being humble. I’m still learning to lead with my weakness when I share in meetings or talk to another person in the fellowship. I still want to lead with my intellect. I want to share what I know about recovery instead of how I am powerless over lust and how my life is unmanagable. For me, the progress in recovery I long for moves from honesty through humility to faith in God.

Bit by bit.

“The proper perspective of a servant of God must not simply be as near to the highest as he can get, but it must be the highest. Be careful that you vigorously maintain God’s perspective, and remember that it must be done every day, little by little. Don’t think on a finite level. No outside power can touch the proper perspective. . . But Paul said, in essence, ‘I am in the procession of a conqueror, and it doesn’t matter what the difficulties are, for I am always led in triumph.’ Is this idea being worked out practically in us? Paul’s secret joy was that God took him as a blatant rebel against Jesus Christ, and made him a captive— and that became his purpose. “ – Chambers

It is difficult for me to “vigorously maintain God’s perspective” in my addiction. I am so very distracted by myself, my desires, my need to be on the hunt for another dab of pleasuring. In my best moments, I surrender my thinking and my desiring bit by bit as it is playing out in my mind. I surrender it to God and ask for his help to deliver me from a mindset of lust and then immediately report it to a fellow in the program. But I do this very inconsistently because I believe deep down that I can handle it myself.

But Paul through Chambers reminds me that “no outside power can touch the proper perspective . . . I am in the procession of a conqueror, and it doesn’t matter what the difficulties are, for I am always led in triumph.” My new purpose is to stay sober through captivity to Christ, and through real and intimate relationships with my brothers in Christ and in SA.

God, take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of thy power, thy love and thy way of life.

Damn It!

Damn this addiction. A very nice barista at Starbucks just delivered my drink to where I was sitting and then brought my spinach feta wrap to me a minute later. The addict in me turned on my lust. I started to objectify him. I’m fucked up.

But I recognize that I need help and that I am powerless to change left to my own devices. God, deliver me from the lust that is in my heart. Show me through this time of reading and reflection how to stay sober.

“Don’t give up because the pain is intense right now— get on with it, and before long you will find that you have a new vision and a new purpose.” – Chambers

I do have a sense that my life’s purpose is changing. The vision for my life has always been to do God’s will. But, now I am developing the resources and the right thinking to actually begin to do it. I have been so self absorbed that God’s will has always been secondary to my own. I wonder if my new purpose is to help others deal with addiction?

I also wonder, why in this moment, I am drawn to look lustfully at people. I guess recognition that this is a problem I have is the first step in overcoming it, but I’ve looked three or four times at another dude ordering a drink. The second step is surrender. God grant me the strength to surrender to you and your will. Keep my addict in check. Thank you that I feel more focused on you just writing about what’s going on.

“When we set out to face the pain and sadness of making a moral inventory [or of just taking the steps of recovery in general], we will need the “joy of the LORD” to give us strength. This joy comes from recognizing, even celebrating, God’s ability to bring us out of bondage and care for us as we pass through the sadness toward a new way of life.” – Recovery Bible

Yup, I’m in bondage! Step one: we admitted we were powerless over lust and that our lives had become unmanageable. The path out of bondage is through deep sadness. It takes God’s joy to buoy me up out of sadness. I have no joy of my own, only sadness. I will look unto the mountains, where does my help come from? It comes from the Lord who made the heavens and the earth. He is always watching over me. The joy of the Lord is my strength. This has never been more true for me.

Facing the Facts of the Valley

Humiliation is a stern teacher. Faced with my own addiction, I have swallowed hard and deep to take an honest look at myself. I wasn’t the person on the inside who I presented myself to be on the outside. In that way I was like the Pharisees, a white washed cup with a grossly dirty interior.

This past year I have had to rely on others to regain reality. I’ve faced facts about myself that I never wanted any other human to know. My emotions have been intense as I’ve walked the path of recovery. Emotions I have ignored in the past were near or on the surface most of the time. I’ve learned to sit with my emotions and process them with time. I’ve spoken about them to friends in the program, to therapists and to my wife. Unexposed emotions fester into a raging infection of resentment and despair. Naming them aloud doesn’t stop the pain but it allows the hurt to subside with time.

“After every time of exaltation, we are brought down with a sudden rush into things as they really are, where it is neither beautiful, poetic, nor thrilling. The height of the mountaintop is measured by the dismal drudgery of the valley, but it is in the valley that we have to live for the glory of God. We see His glory on the mountain, but we never live for His glory there. It is in the place of humiliation that we find our true worth to God— that is where our faithfulness is revealed. Most of us can do things if we are always at some heroic level of intensity, simply because of the natural selfishness of our own hearts. But God wants us to be at the drab everyday level, where we live in the valley according to our personal relationship with Him.” – Chambers

I’m a stronger person after being “brought down into things as they really are, where it is neither beautiful, poetic, not thrilling.” Life is earthy and real in the valley. Honesty dwells there and relationships hold grit like the clothing of a traveler on a quest. My own understanding of purpose is superseded by God’s will for me.

When I remain in humility long enough, His will rushes over me like water at the exact right temperature and buoys me up with his grace and love. I don’t need to swim hard to get where I am going because the current He provides takes me to the places He has prepared for me. There is peace and serenity here along with the uncertainties life brings. Only one thing is certain, God’s love for me a sinner.

Holiness

We may have already chosen to follow God, letting him define the overall direction of our life. Even so, many of us still try to keep parts of our heart hidden from God. We have devoted these parts of ourselves to gratifying our addiction, to doing things that are contrary to the will of God. This sets us up for living a double life, which can fill us with guilt, shame, and instability. – Recovery Bible from Single Minded Devotion

“Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world. Let there be tears for what you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor.” James‬ ‭4:8-10‬ ‭NLT‬ http://bible.com/116/jas.4.8-10.nlt

At all costs a man must be rightly related to God . . . Never tolerate through sympathy with yourself or with others any practice that is not in keeping with a holy God. Holiness means unsullied walking with the feet, unsullied talking with the tongue, unsullied thinking with the mind — every detail of the life under the scrutiny of God. Holiness is not only what God gives me, but what I manifest that God has given me. – Chambers

I have caused sorrow, deep grief, sadness and gloom in my life and in the lives of those who love me. I have devoted part of myself to gratifying my addiction and to doing things that are contrary to the will of God. Because I have lived this way for years, I have trapped myself in a double life, living with guilt, shame and instability. Only God can forgive me and make me holy. At all costs I must be rightly related to God.

Unsullied walking, talking and thinking are practical ways to lean into God’s will and holiness. Being a holy person is not only about what God gives to me but what I make clear about what God has already given to me. You will know me by my fruit. My recovery is only a process by which I submit to God and to others. Through submission I am able to see myself more clearly and understand more fully how to be a better person. The principles of twelve step recovery are inherent in God’s will for me, and when they are lived out each day in my life, I will become a better person.

I am thankful, not for my addiction, but for the person I am becoming through the gift of recovery. Without addiction there is no journey of recovery. When I surrender my will to this journey and ultimately to God, I am able to receive instruction and put it into practice. Everyday is an opportunity to submit to God’s will and to walk the path that He makes known to me. It is my path and to fully walk it in His presence brings fullness of joy that is unattainable by any other means.

God, I submit my self to you. Make me an instrument of your peace that where there is wrong, I may bring a spirit of forgiveness. I cannot persuade others to forgive me, I can only by grace and through humility and prayer bring a spirit of forgiveness into every relationship, conversation and difficulty. May my difficulties and my victory over them bear witness of thy power, thy love and thy way of life. May I do thy will always.

Crisis

Suppose God has brought you up to a crisis and you nearly go through but not quite, He will engineer the crisis again, but it will not be so keen as it was before. There will be less discernment of God and more humiliation at not having obeyed; and if you go on grieving the Spirit, there will come a time when that crisis cannot be repeated, you have grieved Him away. But if you go through the crisis, there will be the psalm of praise to God. Never sympathize with the thing that is stabbing God all the time. God has to hurt the thing that must go. – O. Chambers

“He changes rivers into a wilderness And springs of water into a thirsty ground; A fruitful land into a salt waste, Because of the wickedness of those who dwell in it. He changes a wilderness into a pool of water And a dry land into springs of water; And there He makes the hungry to dwell, So that they may establish an inhabited city,” Psalms 107:33-36 NASB. http://bible.com/100/psa.107.33-36.nasb

I’ve always thought of wickedness as a really, really bad thing, something I would never do. But according to Chambers, it seems that wickedness disguises itself as some choice I need to make. When God brings me up to a crisis, I’ve got a choice to lean in or run. For fifty years, I have run from the crisis of addiction in my life.

Leaning in means that I need to get help but my addicted personality believes it can handle everything on its own. My addict is very self-centered, very self-absorbed, cunning and crafty. When I submit to God, it means I must also submit to someone else by sharing that which I do not want to share. This is bringing to light what my addict wants to keep hidden. Staying in the light is the only way to stop the addiction.

And living in the crisis takes time, especially when I have done everything I can to avoid dealing with it for fifty years. Rivers were turning into wilderness and fruitful lands into a salty waste. My focus was on managing my secret and it was taking more and more time and energy. I would feed the addict and sanitize my surroundings so no one would know.

Finally I admitted to myself and to God what was going on, then to my family and friends. I pledged to be honest on September 24, 2017, and I’ve been keeping that promise. It is still really hard to tell my therapist everything and I mean everything. Keeping short accounts is almost impossible. I’ve said things to people that I fully believed I’d carry alone to my grave. Honesty brings freedom but also the pain of responsibility and recovery.

In recovery, God begins to change the desert created by addiction into springs of water. I have confessed the iniquity of my sin to God and He has forgiven me. “Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, in whom there is no deceit.” Ps 32 I am truly blessed in this way.

God will clear the wreckage of my past. I’m getting more and more used to who I am as created by God, while living into the pain I have caused my wife, my family and my friends. I doubt if the pain will ever completely subside, but by God’s grace, I believe it will diminish more and more if I stay in recovery and in relationship with God and others.

So I’m willing to walk in my crisis. I’m not happy about it. Some days I’m just willing to be willing, and somehow because that’s being honest, it is enough. I’ve got a long way to go in recovery and I’m waiting on the Lord, trusting in the slow work of God. I’d rather skip to the end of the story, past all the intermediate steps. But I’m learning that is not God’s way of doing things.

Sobriety is not recovery.

If addiction is an illness to which there is no absolute cure, then healing is more of a process than a finality. Sobriety is only a part of the daily surrender necessary to recover. There is so much more to my healing, like abandoning myself to God, offering myself to Him, finding and doing His will, and doing the work of each of the twelve steps.

When I suffer under the bondage of lust, I may not abandon all that I know will help me stay sober. At that point sobriety is an anchor. To yield to my temptation is to cut the anchor line. Then I am free to float aimlessly in the darkness back toward the pit of self satisfication. My own self interest is the only thing I Iook after and helping others becomes a mere platitude.

The way through lust is to surrender, not by giving in but by admiting I am powerless to control the temptation. I can’t turn back from its enticingly sweet pleasure. I can’t go around its grip on my heart nor my mind because when I resist in this fashion, it is like quicksand pulling me deeper toward my compulsions. But I can move through it as through a wisp of smoke when I recognize it for what it is, a temptation that I cannot resist on my own. Only by humility in complete surrender to God will I pass by to the other side.

We came to to realize that we were powerless over lust. This is a communal act we must do in fellowship. Going on alone does not work. Keeping secrets starts the snowball rolling down the hill and before long it is too big to stop. We end up crushed in the deep snow having to pick ourselves up to start once again on the path of recovery.

Staying Sober Today

Draw near to my soul, redeem me; ransom me because of my enemies!” Psalms 69:18 ESV http://bible.com/59/psa.69.18.esv

“When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you. Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” Psalms 73:21-23, 26 ESV http://bible.com/59/psa.73.21-23,26.esv

Addiction is as much a spiritual condition as it is a physical longing. When I long to take a drink of lust, I should realize that I need to seek God more intently. My flesh, the temptation that ensnares me, and my heart, the center of who I am, may fail, but God is the strength through which I keep my sobriety.

Even when I respond from instinct, when I’m drawn to look with intent at people or pictures to titillate my craving, God holds my right hand. He does not forsake me even when I make a selfish decision that sends me down the slippery slope. My heart is pricked with the longing to act out. I become like a starving animal hunting for food. I am brutish, carnal and sensual. I choose to be ignorant of that which I know will help me overcome temptation. My mind plays tricks on me with the intent to trap me in the hunt. My heart pounds in my chest. My breathing is fast and shallow.

I sip the salty nectar of the pleasure that haunts me. Even now it is hard for me to stay calm and focused on God. I yank my hand away to break the trance. I inhale, hold in the life giving air and exhale deeply to release the grip that lust has on me. I must turn toward God and receive his life giving will. God grant me the serenity to accept myself as you accept me. God is my portion. He is just the right amount of everything I need to stay sober.

The LORD Is With Me

“For the Lord takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with salvation.” Psalms‬ ‭149:4‬ ‭ESV‬‬ http://bible.com/59/psa.149.4.esv

“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.”” ‭‭Joshua‬ ‭1:9‬ ‭NASB‬‬ http://bible.com/100/jos.1.9.nasb

Difficult days have passed. My soul is numb with grief over what I have done. Yet yesterday, by God’s grace, I was able to wait through the suffering and experience the deep, deep pain without running to hide or isolating myself or resorting to old habits. God’s grace was sufficient in my weakness to make me strong. His power was made perfect in my weakness.

Above all trust in the slow work of God. I am quite naturally impatient in getting to the end without delay. I would like to skip the intermediate stages. I am impatient of being on the way to something unknown , something new. I am on the road less traveled and it is making all the difference.

I am working hard to recover from my addiction. Yet I am discouraged to find that this work is not yet bearing fruit in my relationship with my wife. She does not know me. She does not believe me. She does not trust me. Yet, by God’s grace in my recovery, I do speak the truth.

My complete honesty was confirmed in another polygraph on Saturday. When under the machine, I am bound around my chest and a cuff is tight around my right bicep. I can’t take a deep cleansing breath without messing up the results and my speech must be soft and quiet. I feel like a trapped animal. But God quieted my heart, I told the complete truth, and the elusive machine with it’s wiggly lines confirmed it was so.

I know I have brought pain to myself and even greater pain to my wife for forty years of marriage through my addiction. On Friday, I confirmed the deceit and lies I have lived when I read to her the emotional restitution letter I had written. There is nothing I can do now but wait on the Lord. In Him is the strength I need, measured out only for this moment.

The Lord takes pleasure in his people. He is with me wherever I go. I will look unto the mountains. From where does my help come? It comes from the Lord who made the heavens and the earth. He will not allow my foot to slip. He will guard my going out and my coming in from this time forth and forever.

Help me to be fully present today to see the opportunities you bring to me to share the healing presence of Christ with others. What can I do today for those who are still sick? Whenever appropriate, grant me the courage to share how God is healing me from addiction.

Still I Am Learning

“It’s a dangerous thing to refuse to continue learning and knowing.” – Oswald Chambers

When Michelangelo was in his eighties he is reported to have said, “ancora imparo” which means, “still I am learning.” In the 1500s living into your eighties was not an easy task. He was drawing and sculpting at that age as well. I want to be a life long learner like Michelangelo.

“The fear of the LORD is the instruction for wisdom, And before honor comes humility.” Proverbs‬ ‭15:33‬ ‭NASB‬‬. http://bible.com/100/pro.15.33.nasb

In other places in Scripture it says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom.” Psalms 111:10

When we keep learning, we place ourselves in the hands of humility. We realize we don’t know everything, and moreover, even that we don’t know much at all. If we aren’t learning, we limit our ability to change and to grow. Haughty people live like they know more than they really do. Humble people realize how much they don’t know. They remain curious and can wonder about things.

In addiction, if a person won’t learn, they can’t change. Old habits not only die hard, they need to be replaced with new ones. Being open to new learning is a key to this process. That’s why it’s dangerous to refuse to learn or to know new things. Without an openness to learning, we get stuck in our old ways of thinking. And since knowing is so closely linked to doing, we aren’t able to do those things that will move us out of our old addictive behaviors.