too weak, two week

I’m trying something new in the endless battle of the bulge. I’m doing the RPM class at the gym (a.k.a. “Spin,” or “really painful bike riding, set to music“  in most other gyms). I’d say it’s as easy as riding a bike, but that might give one the impression this is not a difficult effort.

I have never sweat so much in my life.

I almost blacked out the first morning.

My legs were sore for almost a week.

Sounds like fun, huh?

As I began this new brand of torture, I also started looking at changing my approach to food. I’ve been watching very carefully what I do during the day, keeping fat content and other stuff at bay, while trying to kick in the protein and other good stuff.

As I was thinking this morning about what to get to take me through the week at work, I had a troubling thought:

I will put a tremendous amount of thought and effort into what I eat, how food is prepared, portion size, etc., and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. But why is it so much harder for me to bring that same intensity to bear on what is my biggest problem? Why is it that I can focus for a year and a half on busting my gut, but I have trouble maintaining my focus on holiness and righteous living for more than two weeks at a time?

Don’t misuderstand – I’m not going back to old patterns of behavior every two weeks; instead, I find that I am intently focused on taking all the right steps, calling people, being highly involved in others’ lives…all for brief periods. Then I retreat again, back into my coccoon, back to the safety of not having to deal with real people.

It perplexes me. I see what I need to do, and I can talk a good game – but there are times when my heart just isn’t really in it.

I know that a muscle builds endurance through being torn and rebuilt. Strength doesn’t come from light work. As Benjamin Disreali said, “No pain, no gain. No gain, no brain.” Most people leave off the last half of that quote. I’ve been able to retrain my brain regarding exercise. I know what will likely happen if I don’t work out, and I know that losing the weight of a sack of concrete has made my days much less painful.

I also know that there are similar benefits and risks in not getting “fit” spiritually. The obvious problem is that the risks are less tangible.

So what do I do to make the risks more real? How do I reach a point where I take to heart what my head already knows, that I don’t want to cross the finish line in the back of the pack?  I really want to hear, “Well done – good job” at the finish line, not “Well, I guess you made it.“

Perhaps I’ve forgotten one of the mantras of recovery – one day at a time. Thinking ahead is not a bad thing – but maybe I need to establish a pattern of single days – one that lasts longer than two weeks – before I start getting concerned about the long term.

finches, phlox, and fear

Anxiety is a sobriety-killer.

For an addict, the drug of choice often had initial appeal because it brought pleasure, or at least because it distracted us, numbed us, from the cares of life. So what do you suppose happens when the everyday stress level is ratcheted up a few notches?

• The struggler who is trying to go it alone is more likely to fall back into old, familiar, destructive patterns.
• The addict who is recovering with an occasional slip here or there feels the pull more strongly than they otherwise would.
• The person who is thought of as a model of recovery is blindsided by a desire they believed was a thing of the past.

Anxiety is a constant gnawing, the slow dripping sound from that faucet that keeps you awake at night, and pervades your dreams when you do sleep.

In the last several verses of Matthew 6, Jesus spoke to the issue of anxiety (my paraphrase here):

Listen, don’t worry about stuff like your 401k, your car payment, even your job. Isn’t life about more than that stuff?

Ever seen the bluebells along the highway in Texas, or the sunflowers in Kansas? How much time do they spend worrying? They don’t spend two hours commuting and nine hours in a cubicle farm, staring at a computer and wondering about whether that job will still be there tomorrow; they just sit in the dirt and take in what God sends them.

How about the birds around you? How much do they focus on the finer things in life? They build their nests, eat worms, and maybe say, “Dude, it’s getting frosty. Let’s go south” once a year.

You are God’s special creation – princes and princesses in an eternal kingdom. How much more do you suppose he cares for you than these things?

Look, I’m not above feeling anxious. We’ve been feeling the pinch in finances lately as so many others have. My industry is considered a good one to be in, but I see things slowing down. We will have to make some lifestyle changes if we want to keep working to get out of debt. We will likely have to sacrifice a few of the comforts to which we’re accustomed in order to keep our house and feed the kids.

But I am holding on to the fact that the Creator of the Universe sees me as His child.

Oh, I know there are a lot of people who don’t buy into creation, let alone the whole God thing. If that is your belief system, I don’t know how you avoid despair.

But for those who believe, I need only look back at a few other lean years in my life to see that God cares and will provide. He won’t give me my every desire; but He will provide for my needs.

All it takes is a little trust.

let’s be honest

Honesty is critical to recovery. I know a lot of people in recovery programs don’t like absolutes. We live in a world that is not fond of absolutes.

But the power of addiction is strongest in the shadows – which leads me to the conviction that being dishonest, with myself and others, is likely to lead to a relapse (at best).

There are a few different types of discussions I believe are important for my recovery. Each has a different purpose, a different audience, and different timing; but each requires honesty or it becomes useless.

First, there is telling my story. This is usually what happens in Step 5 of the 12, confessing our faults. In the context of a 12-step program, this will often be a discussion with one’s sponsor. My sponsor and I went to a local monastery and spent a long day with me talking, crying, and walking through my full story.

When I told my story, I had to remember that the point was not to talk about what a victim I was, but to own up to where I had missed the mark. I needed to take responsibility for my own choices.

I think that confession allowed me to be honest with myself, which was at least as important as being honest with anyone else. It also gave me a chance to process some of the stuff that had happened in a more coherent view than anything I had done in private confession through prayer, and gave me a broader view. Patterns began to emerge. For the first time, I saw that there were certain events or feelings that often preceeded my acting out. I later learned these are called “triggers.”

Eventually, it was time for another conversation – a disclosure to my wife. The focus in a disclosure is different. This is not the encyclopedaic recitation of the full list of wrongs that was in my story; this was a specific disclosure of the behaviors which had impacted our relationship, whether she knew the impact or not, and regardless of whether they happened before or after the wedding. It was more general in the sense that she didn’t need (or want) to know the gory details, more pointed in terms of recognition of impact.

My wife has since said that there were two things she saw in my disclosure that were key to our continued marriage: I was broken by my errors, and I was complete in my revelation.

Wait a minute – you just wrote ‘complete in revelation’ just after writing ‘more general.’ What?

By complete, I mean that there was no general area of acting out, no range of activity, that felt incomplete. I gave her general areas or activities (“I visited adult bookstores for anonymous encounters”), and let her ask whatever details she wanted to hear. That’s not to say she liked my answers. I just decided that if there was pain involved, it would be more merciful for both of us to get it out and over with at once instead of continuing to poke and prod at it. If the marriage was going to fail, it was going to fail quickly. By her ( and God’s) grace, that was not the outcome.

I think trying to do a complete disclosure with her without the filter of the prior confession would have been disastrous. Had I gone to the level of detail my confession required, I suspect there would have been a steeper path to our climb. For example, listing specific locations and specific actions might have spurred her imagination, making our relationship that more challenging. I know a guy who bought a new mattress, then a new bed, then remodeled the bedroom, then bought a new house because he dwelt in the details of where his affairs took place.

Again, wherever my wife asked for details, I provided them. There is a world of difference between paving a path for renewal in your relationship and giving her material to question how she compares to someone else, and your words in a disclosure make all the difference.

The final conversation I think is critical is my testimony. OK, technically that’s a monologue, not a conversation. There is healing power in sharing my story. There is a renewed reminder of where I was, and why I would not want to be there again. There is the hope that someone who hears the story might see something of himself, and get some help.  There is hope, in spite of that part of me that sought fulfillment in so many wrong ways.

I share that testimony when I can. Not every setting is appropriate, but I have found very few cases where the story shared creates discomfort or disconnecton with others. Maybe I’m more cautious in sharing than some. I certainly don’t get on the train in the afternoon and say, “MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE?”

I’m not a masochist.

I am a human, flawed, fallen, devious in many ways; but I am also being healed, and I am a child of the King. If I am honest, that’s my identity: a prince, so named by the King whom I didn’t want to serve. That’s a far cry from where I was, not that long ago.

belief

I was listening to a conversation last night that has stirred some thoughts about belief. To some this may not seem connected to the primary topic of my blog, but I think it has everything to do with it.

The two primary participants were discussing the existence of God. Both of these guys are very intelligent (both by my estimation and their IQ scores), and I know them both well enough to say that neither of them is flippant about their viewpoints on important issues. One is a devout Christian and leader in his local church (henceforth referred to as J); the other is a devout agnostic (B).

I was reminded in their discussion how much a worldview is changed when God is added or subtracted from the equation.

B believes that, if God exists, He set things in motion and sits back watching with curiosity, wondering what we’ll do next, hoping someday we’ll get it right and straighten the world out.

J responds that, no, we won’t get it right. We aren’t really capable of getting it right, not without divine intervention.

B thinks that is a very pessimistic viewpoint. I didn’t understand why at first, but then I thought about his worldview. If God does not exist, or is a disinterested third party, it would be distressing to think that we are limited and incapable.

But from a viewpoint of belief, I recognize that I am a child of a loving God who wants what is best for me. It makes more sense to me now as a father than it ever did when I was childless. I don’t want to give my children everything; I want them to grow and learn, which doesn’t happen if they just sit on their rear all day and never live. I am very careful to make sure they have what they need, but that is a far cry from just handing over everything they want.

Then there’s the issue of our place in the unverse. J mentioned that his brother had just sent him some pictures from the Hubbel telescope, including captions estimating the distances of the objects from earth in terms of light years. My brain isn’t capable of keeping track of the number of zeroes involved, but it is, as we say in the South, “a fur piece.”

B says that makes him feel all the less significant, that he is a fortunate accident among millions of other fortunate accidents, spinning around on another unfortunate accident, feeling feelings that are an amazingly fortunate accident, looking out at galaxies upon galaxies of similarly fortunate accidents…and that increases his feeling that he is insignificant. That decreases the odds, in his view, that he is especially designed for a purpose. I should mention that he didn’t keep inserting “fortunate accident” in that dialog. J was doing that, and it was really beginning to annoy B.

J didn’t have a chance to respond; B took the conversation in a different direction.

I’m not a mathmatician, nor am I an odds-maker. But I really do wonder about those numbers. If no design, and therefor no Designer, what are the odds of planetary placement in favor of life? What are the odds in favor of a planet stable enough to support ongoing life for hundreds, thousands of years? What are the odds of life developing at all, and what evolutionary purpose do emotions serve? For that matter, why conscious thought? Why not simple instinct? Why would we ever place ourselves under the burden of organized society, and why would we ever have such altruistic ideals as love, honor, patience, kindness, hope?

I know none of those things prove a loving Creator, or even a creator at all; but there is so much that makes no sense if we are indeed fortunate accidents existing strictly for the propogation and survival of the species.

What has this to do with addiction?

If we are not an incredible series of fortunate accidents, if there is some plan, if there is a Planner, than I believe the plan would not be for me to be enslaved by my behaviors. Oh, I know, that requires the assumption that the Planner is interested – a step of faith B finds quite troubling – and even compassionate. I suppose my predisposition toward that is based in the idea that God is a father.

I don’t want evil to happen to my kids. I want them to grow to their greatest potential, and I’m smart enough to recognize that this sometimes requires some bumps and bruises (not at my hand; only those that result from their unwise choices). I believe the best parental instincts I have are a reflection of how my Father sees (and treats) me.

I want good for my kids. I don’t want them to suffer the consequences of slavery to alcohol, drugs, sex, food, whatever substance gets between them and really relating to others and to me.I hope they will allow me to give them guidance, to suggest how they can avoid some of the traps that lie ahead on a perilous road.

I know my connection to God was the first victim of my addiction, and meaningful relationships with those around me soon followed. As I have found some respite from my addictions, I am discovering those connections again.

That just makes more sense to me than a series of fortunate accidents.

if you only knew…

The movie Sneakers featured a decryption device which could break any code. One needed only the secret passphrase to gain access to the secrets of the world, and the phrase was “Too Many Secrets.“

Secrets can be a good thing, when it comes to birthday parties or roses ordered but not yet delivered; but secrets in a relationship are often deadly.

A phrase my wife used when we first became more serious in our relationship was, “if you really knew me, you wouldn’t love me.” Of course, if she had known more about me back then, who knows how things would have developed…but the point is, we kept each other in the dark. We feared each others’ rejection and alienation.

I know that, as I became more aware of her issues, I felt that those issues were of little importance relative to the relationship we were building. They would certainly affect us, sometimes dramatically, but none were “deal-breakers.”

I wonder if she has felt the same way about my issues.

What I find now is that the more I am honest about my struggles, the more she respects me. Oh, true enough, it might be different if I was still cruising and acting out…but my honesty about the difficulty of remaining ’sober’ has only drawn us closer.

It is also important to say that I would not expect a person of lower caliber than my wife to be able to accept the darkness in my story. Since those things were/are a part of me (though not the definition of who I really am) , I would be stupid to pursue a relationship with her if she couldn’t handle my past.

I know several men who are ’single again’ because their spouses were not able to see through the history into the present tense of the person before them. I also know a lot of men who continued to act out, regularly,  after divulging the truth; that doesn’t usually work out so well either.

Secrets make it easier to keep secrets. New secrets. Dark secrets.

Honesty begets honesty. Harsh, brutal honesty.

I believe pain is always easier with a clear conscience.

confession – good for the soul, hard on the fingernails

I slipped this week.

I was researching a blog topic, and followed a link that came back from a search…and I was reading some material that is outside the lines. This dovetails neatly into a discussion we were having at my group a couple of weeks back; the issue was how we should avoid sin and where sin starts.

When I first clicked to the page, it took a minute for me to realize where I was. No, really, stop laughing. There are places in my blog that sound very similar to what I was reading there, at first. Then I realized, this guy isn’t confessing for the sake of illustration or as an apology – he was quite proud of his stories.

That’s the point where I needed to steer away. But I didn’t. I bookmarked the page. And I returned to it, a couple of times.

Here comes the comic relief. We were up late Friday night, and I stayed on the couch after my wife went upstairs. I clicked on the link, and decided I was thirsty, so I went to get a drink from the kitchen.

I heard my wife’s footsteps on the stairs as I turned off the faucet. Too late, she was downstairs. Maybe she’d come to the kitchen.

No such luck. She was warm, so she went to the living room to adjust the thermostat.

My laptop was about three feet away, facing the thermostat.

I walked in briskly, and tried to position myself between her and the computer. She was fairly tired, so I don’t know if she sensed my panic. The air wasn’t kicking in; would I take a look? I leaned over her shoulder, she stepped to the side, and the next thing I knew she was standing there staring at the computer.

My bride is not blessed with tremendous eyesight, and that may be the only reason I have unbroken fingers and a laptop today.

I’m not sure what she saw. She said nothing, and didn’t react visibly. We were both so tired, I decided to see if she said anything about it. She didn’t. I had to get out early Saturday morning, and we didn’t have any time to talk until that afternoon. It was a very long morning, and I gave a lot of thought to just waiting to see if she would bring anything up – but I know better. It was my slip, my transgression; the ball was in my court, whether she even realized what had happened or not.

I chose the better option. When we had some time with the kids out of earshot, I told her what had happened and asked her forgiveness.

I didn’t enjoy the talk that followed.

But my heart is lighter, and I was able to worship this morning, not weighed down by the guilt of a sin covered in secrecy.

There are several directions I could go with this. For now, I’ll just say that I am still convinced that being real with my spouse is much more important than us having “peace” (peace being defined as blissful ignorance, in this case). I am reminded that I’m still a struggler, and that I am still vulnerable (and probably always will be). Finally, I am relieved that I can look at what I did with a touch of disgust and shame, but mostly with a sense of remorse; in the past, it probably would have been more a sense of resignation and defeat.

party on, prodigal father?

Prodigal can be defined as lavish. It is in that context that Louie Giglio presented a twist on the story of the ‘prodigal son.’

I’ve heard the story since I was a baby. A son tells his father he wants his inheritance, and wastes it. When he gets so far down there’s nowhere to look but up, he returns to the father to ask for a job as a servant. The Father has a different plan.

The way this story is normally told is as a warning about wasteful living, and with a certain air of deprecation towards the prodigal. We know that we are the wayward son in the story, but we are a little better than him, right?

After all, in that culture, to ask for your inheritance and leave home was like saying, “Father, you are dead to me. And I am dead to you.”

Pretty harsh, dude.

But when Louie offered his interpretation this last Sunday at NorthPoint Community Church, he focused very little on the riotous lifestyle of the son; instead, he focused on the return home, and the father.

I saw myself more clearly in the son this last Sunday than ever. The son was desparate, and he had a plan. He knew that he had offended his father in the worst possible way, and he had no right to be called a son anymore; but he also knew that his father’s servants ate (and probably smelled) better than he did. He was at the end of himself, and ready to approach his father in what seemed like a humble way.

He practiced his speech.

17 But when he came to himself he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish here with hunger! 18 I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight: 19 I am no more worthy to be called your son: make me as one of thy hired servants. – Luke 15:17-19, American Standard Version

I can picture him walking along practicing his three-point plan. “Mr. Abramson, uh,…no, too formal. Dad! Might be pushing it after wishing him dead. Um, sir… OK, sir. That works. I’ve sinned against you and heaven. Good. Simple, clear, and definitely true. I’m not worthy to be called your son…man, that hurts, but I made my choices. Okay, the money line – Let me be one of your servants.”

He had to have a few doubts. “What if he says, ‘get lost, you big dope!’ I have done some really offensive stuff. Maybe I could work on cleaning up my name, my image…meh, I smell like pigs and I’ve been eating like them too. Maybe he’ll have a sinus infection and won’t notice.”

“Best I can hope for is a laundry list of things I need to do to measure up. Yep, ‘here are your chores for today’ says the foreman as he hands me a couple of scrolls of dummy-dos. Okay, practice the speech again….”

He is working out his plan. He has it all figured out. “I’m coming home, on my terms.”

He might oughta have checked with the father first.

He approaches. His father is sitting on the porch, maybe even standing at his gate, watching, hoping the son will come home. The father spots the son coming over the rise in the road and begins running. This dignified man, a man of means, hikes up his robe and sprints toward his son. He is overcome with joy that the one who was dead to him is returning.

The son sees the father coming, and is suddnely scared. “Omigosh – what if he’s coming out here to brain me with that staff he’s carying? Okay, get the speech out…here he comes… father…”

He is knocked to the ground as his father smothers him with a bear hug and a series of kisses.

“Um, dad…I have sinned against you, and heaven; I don’t deserve to be called your son anymore…”

“Talk to the hand!” interrupts the father. Then he turns back toward the house and shouts a series of instructions – a ring, a bath, some new clothes, and slaughter that cow we’ve been saving.

“But father, I need to say…”

“Hush, son. You’ve said what you needed to say. “

Here’s where we get messed up. We think God is waiting to whack us on the head (or the knuckles, if you went to Catholic school) for the things we’ve done wrong. We think we can somehow work our way back into his good graces by doing things right for a while and then holding that up for his approval.

But we’re missing the point. Grace, as Louie said it, is God in action. He has already extended us grace. He already sees us as sons and daughters, and there ain’t no pleasing or displeasing that will change that. The best we can do is never up to His standard, but He says, “I love you in spite of that. I am madly, crazily in love with you, and you matter so much more than the little messes you make.”

Are there still consequences? Potentially. But those aren’t punishments. They are the natural result of our choices. There is no gaurantee, or even hint, that we’ll be spared that.

But the Father isn’t waiting to club us or weigh us down with a never-ending list of tasks or set of hoops to jump through. If you see any of that in your version of Christianity, you’re reading in stuff that isn’t there.

Easy grace? Wasn’t for the one who sealed the deal.

Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation* for our sins. – 1 John 4:10, ASV

Propitiation – an atoning sacrifice; that which satisfies a debt

a half-hearted man

His arm would twitch every once in a while. We never really thought that much about it; it wasn’t that noticeable, at first. But then it became a tic, a repetitive movement which he could not control. That was when he decided to go to the hospital.

It was Tax Day, April 15th, 1991. I was working at my office when my parents’ neighbor called me.

I don’t think there’s anything to worry about, but your dad is at the Emergency Room.

I left work and went to join my mom. We waited for a few hours, not hearing anything, not seeing anyone. Finally they called us back to his bedside. He told us about a battery of tests, where they seemed to be focusing their attention, what little anyone had said thus far. About then the attending physician stepped in.

I’m afraid I have some bad news. It’s a tumor…

…somewhere about an inch and a half in and behind his right ear. They would schedule surgery immediately. There could be no prognosis until they did a biopsy of the tumor, but it was not encouraging to note that a scan they had done on New Year’s Eve hadn’t shown anything, and there was now something this large, this soon.

He had seen his regular doctor somewhere between New Year’s and Tax Day about the spasms or tics. The doctor had told him to take an over-the-counter medication and let him know if the spasms got worse.

As it turns out, had his doctor pursued the cause a little more deeply, it probably wouldn’t have made a bit of difference for my father – he had a gliablastoma multiformae. The thing that killed my dad is now in the news because it is the same animal that is stalking Teddy Kennedy.

My dad would find some irony in the idea that he and Teddy Kennedy had anything in common.

My father had a tumor that is 100% fatal, thus far. He was one of the lucky ones – the tumor was relentless, and he only had a short time of suffering. He was gone before the next March came around. Others live for a couple of years as this beast eats away at their faculties, robbing them of their personality and dignity before taking away their cognitive ability and eventually their control centers. My father died, officially, of a massive organ failure. But like the tics or spasms, the organ failure was just the final symptom of a terrible disease.

I, on the other hand, have a heart disease; but not the kind that a doctor would be interested in. My symptoms have included acting out sexually and eating nearly everything in sight. It is tempting to think that I could use some over-the-counter approach to those issues. There are pills you can buy that will expand like styrofoam in your stomach, convincing your body that it is full. There are medications that warn of ’sexual side effects,’ which can mean either an effect on desire or performance. Yep, we could stop those symptoms pretty darn quickly.

But I’d still be left with my heart condition. There would still be a hole in me, something that is incomplete, something that goes a lot deeper than the symptoms.

I’d still be a half-hearted man.

The first serious attempt I made at dealing with my addictions was a behavior-based program.

Follow these steps, and keep your zipper closed, and you’ll be cured.

So it was all about my performance. As an American and a man, I liked the sound of that. I could make it happen, I was in control.

But the reality was, and is, that if I continue to focus on behavior, I’ll just develop a different set of symptoms.

If you find yourself trying to stop some behavior, and failing time after time, it isn’t because you are weak. A compulsion that overcomes your rational mind repeatedly is not going to go away that easily. The good news is, there are qualified people nearby ready to help you with your treatment. You just have to get past yourself, and be willing to admit that you can’t beat it alone.

Your sickness need not be fatal.

coming clean

A man’s very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all,  when he kneels in the dust, and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life. – Oscar Wilde

I’ve rejoined a group that was very instrumental in helping me find my sanity a few years back. This time around I am going to be moving into a role of servant-leadership, hopefully helping others find their sanity as well.

As we went around the room last week introducing ourselves, there were several in the group who mentioned that they were married, and several had already had a session with their spouse ’spilling the beans’ on the hidden stuff in their hearts and lives.

Lest my next thoughts be misunderstood, let me say that this is a crucial conversation which (I believe) must happen, rather like re-breaking a bone that fractured and then set incorrectly from lack of proper care. However, there are good and bad ways to have that conversation.

The temptation for many addicts is to get a case of ‘verbal diarrhea‘ and pour out all of their stuff in one cleansing eruption. This feels emotionally satisfying for the teller; ‘there, that’s done’.

But this probably is more about you than it is about your spouse or significant other, and even less about the two of you.

In my 12-Step program, I had my confessional with my sponsor. It is probably best to start with someone other than your spouse, preferably someone who already knows a little about you and understands the nature of addiction.

By the way, I keep using the term ’spouse.’ Being single doesn’t release you from the need to do this. One of the things that keeps people in the power of the sickness is the secrecy. ‘If I keep my darkness in the dark,‘ one might think, ‘I won’t be rejected, more lonely…‘, or whatever. But giving a voice to the part of you that really does want to be free gives that part of you more strength. It doesn’t stop your knee-jerk reaction to your triggers, but it helps you start to build resistance. If you have no one in your life who is your partner in life, then you will need, eventually, to tell someone who is close enough to know the you you want people to see, not the you who acts out.

In the group I first attended, there were maybe a dozen guys that did some form of confession to their wives the wrong way. I don’t have any great body of research to draw from here, but I can tell you that most of those marriages were over within a year. Those who took a measured approach, not blurting everything out as soon as they were either caught or dinged by their conscious, had a marital survival rate above 50%.

That may not sound very encouraging. But bear in mind that the truth has a nasty habit of coming out, one way or another.

So if I were writing The Rules of Self-Disclosure, they would look something like this:

Law #1: Thou shalt go to someone you trust in clergy or a solid counselor to start the process. If their response is to beat you with a wet noodle, or a verbal dressing-down, consider going to someone else. They should neither condone nor condemn. If you are having this conversation, you are likely doing enough self-condemnation.

Law #2: Thou shalt tell your spouse or significant other that you would like for the two of you to have a talk with said clergy person/counselor. The timing should not be a month ahead, nor should it be at the last minute, but with enough time for your partner to steel themselves a little bit for something that will be tough to hear. The purpose in letting your partner know there will be another party present is that nobody brings a pastor along to announce they’ve found someone else, etc.

The delay between the notification and the meeting will seem an eternity, but please don’t start down the road to disclosure when it is just the two of you.

Law #3: Thou shalt let the clergy person/counselor guide the discussion. They are trained in tough conversations; you aren’t. Make no mistake; this conversation will not be easy, and there is no way to make your partner feel like this isn’t a personal attack on them. In addictions that involve either porn or interaction with other people, your partner will feel betrayed. And they won’t be incorrect. That will hurt.

Law #4: Thou shalt make no demands of your partner. Let me use my experience here, rather than impersonal pronouns. My wife seemed to take the whole thing fairly well when we had our talk. Truth is, she was in shock. She had known about my issues before we got married, but I had convinced her that her suspicions were her own paranoia, and I was ripping the mask off of my lies – several years of lies at that point.

I’m not sure how, beyond the grace of God, but we made it through those next few very tense months. After our initial conversation, I had to let her process things quite a bit. If I had been defensive during this period, I suspect I would be writing from an efficiency apartment or my mom’s basement at this point; but I took her moods and doubts and questions as they came. She had every right to question me, and denying that would have made her think that I was still hiding something. Oh, that reminds me…

Law #5: Thou shalt put everything on the table at once. Your partner may not need or want the gory details of when and with whom, but she might. A good approach is to start in general categories (“I’ve visited adult bookstores since we were married, even in the past few months“), and then get more particular if she asks.
Starting with things that would get my blog marked as ‘inappropriate’ may make you feel better, but it won’t help her process what you’re throwing out there.

Law #6: Remember that you are not in charge of the outcomes. This goes somewhat with #4 above, but it goes further than that. If you are fortunate, you may be sleeping on the couch for a while. But you may find yourself knocking on your best bud’s door asking for his couch for a while.

Depending on what you did, you may find yourself in jail.

But trying to manage the outcomes will nearly guarantee failure. Do what you can to make sure the initial disclosure doesn’t end in violence. But don’t expect your partner to say, “Aw, that’s okay punkin’” and invite you to continue your marital bliss anytime soon.

As I said in an earlier post, this may sound discouraging – please don’t let that stop you from doing the right thing. Your sin will find you out, they say; I’d rather have some input on the finding out.

So here I sit, three years after the toughest conversation of my life. I’m still married to the same woman (by God’s grace), and my children adore me. What my wife and I have learned is a level of honesty I never thought I would find. It isn’t always pretty, but it is always real. I used to think reality was overrated; now I understand that fantasy is overrated – reality is very cool.

entropy

Though it is oft stated differently, entropy is seen in physics as the amount of energy no longer available in a usable form to do work. Once an ice cube melts, the energy that was in the atoms of the ice cubes has been dispersed throughout the warmer air surrounding. And unless you have some device capable of trapping the energy used in that process, that energy is essentially lost.

One of the byproducts of addiction is a kind of entropy.

There is within us a great deal of potential energy, just waiting to be applied to the world around us. Each episode of acting out reduces that by some measure. And without some kind of intervention from some outside force, that energy is lost.

The laws of physics apply to addiction – who knew?

Think about this one, Newton’s First Law:

A body in motion tends to stay in motion

Having a little trouble breaking the cycle of your addiction? Newton tells us why. And with each cycle, we have less energy available to affect a change.

That’s why I find it difficult to understand those who try to break out of addiction without some serious Higher Power.

Consider this; if you had it within you to make the change, to break the cycles, on your own – wouldn’t you have already done it?

Or do you like living with the constant threat of losing the people you hold dear?

Or of hurting those who love you?

But you don’t have it within you to change yourself.

I go back to the man who sought healing from Christ – “You have the power; I know it. All that is required is that You would be willing.”

A body in motion tends to stay in motion … unless acted on by an outside force.

You need a force greater than your own to provide the energy you lack. You aren’t getting free of that repetitive motion otherwise.

It has been said that gravity is not just a good idea – it’s the Law!

Don’t think yourself to be the exception. You need a Higher Power. One with limitless energy. One that is above the Law.