blaming the past or understanding it?

I remember years ago, when I was still in denial that my life was out of control, shaking my head when I heard someone talk about how their childhood had some impact on the bad choices they were making as an adult. “Yeh, it’s always easier to blame our parents than take responsibility, isn’t it?”, I thought.

What I’ve come to believe in the intervening years is that the events of our earlier years does indeed shape our thinking, our values, and our beliefs about ourselves and others.

The child who is told that they are useless, a mistake, that the people who brought them into the world wish they had never been born – is it really surprising that they would either be hopeless or be extremely driven to prove long-departed tormentors incorrect?

The child who is never reprimanded, never corrected, never taught to consider others – is it surprising when this person turns out to be corrupt, criminal, incorrigible?

Okay, so there are extreme cases; but what about ‘normal’ people with average childhoods?

I would argue (as many do) that virtually everyone carries some wounds from their youth. The wound may not cut as deep for me as it does for someone else, but they are there nonetheless.

My dad never abused me. He was a “model father” of the 1960’s variety. He worked hard and provided well. He didn’t smoke or drink, was highly involved in church, saved for rainy days, and could spend a long day making corporate management decisions and come home and change the brakes on the family roadster.

He was also absent a lot during the years I was looking to him for guidance on becoming a man.

I see; it’s all his fault you strayed so far.

Hardly. My fault, my choices. During my teen years, I was figuring out a lot of things on my own, things some other kids learned from their dads earlier. I’m not blaming him – I’m saying that where I went to learn wasn’t the right classroom for the subject of being a Christian man.

Perhaps an analogy would help. My grandmother played the violin. Somewhere in her early adult life, she broke her left arm. I’m not clear on the circumstances, but for whatever reason, she never went to the doctor. The arm set, badly. It would affect one of the great joys in her life until she quit playing somewhere in her 70s. But the fact that it hindered her disturbed her less than the thought of the pain that would be involved in re-breaking the bone to set it correctly.

To me, that typifies why a lot of people don’t address the issues from their youth that so clearly affect where they are today.

It isn’t blame-shifting to recognize that the past has an influence on where we are today.

It is blame-shifting to say, “It’s all someone else’s fault,” but that’s a different animal than I’m talking about.

I’m trying to dig into my past a little more, trying to understand what I missed that may have helped set me up for the bad choices I’ve since made. There’s some pain in that. But I believe the music will be sweeter in the end.

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.

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.

married…and dating

I had a date Monday night. My Monday night group was having a big social dinner, and I was overdue for a date. But it was not with my wife. More on that in a moment.

In many cultures in the world, men have rites of passage where the adolescent boy is invited into the circle of men. He is welcomed at their fire, at their table at the pub, to take part in their rituals.

We don’t have anything quite like that here. There isn’t really any point at which we say to a boy, “You are now a man.” I’ve heard some suggest that the first drivers’ license/car keys is a substitute, but that isn’t uniquely manly.

I have a couple of men with whom I meet regularly for accountability. I suppose I could, someday, invite my son to join us for those breakfasts…but that doesn’t quite do the job either.

And so I took my son out on a date Monday night.

Does the word “date” make you uncomfortable in this context? If you consider a date to be something you do to get a “happy ending,” I can understand; but I’m defining a “date” as a social engagement to improve the relationship between two people.

He’s only three, so the level of interaction is somewhat different than when my wife and I go out.

I took him to a restaurant that sits in an old train station – he’s nuts about trains – and then to a bookstore where they have a train table set up and several of the Thomas the Tank Engine toys outand usable.

It was an evening about him.

It was my way of saying, “I know I correct you a lot – too much for your age. I want you to know that I love you, I love to be with you, and you are great just as you are.” He really is great. He is smart, he is goofy, he sees everything through eyes of wonder. I could learn a few things from him.

Three years old. Obviously not yet time to take him out to hunt wild boar in the moonlight with spears yet. But it is the right time to start spending some serious one-on-one time, establishing a pattern so I don’t look back somewhere down the road and say, “Why didn’t I take more time with him?“

Maybe if I spend the time now investing in the relationship, he won’t be as likely to quickly divest himself of me when he reaches his teen years.

And maybe, if I am consistent, he will someday have memories of a dad who took the time for him, and who held him in higher regard than the other stuff in his life.

cause and defect

You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose; but you can’t pick your friend’s nose.

There’s a thin line between recognizing the effect of past events and blaming them. When I started my journey, I didn’t want to consider the possibility that some of my outcomes were rooted in beliefs, that they might be anything deeper than a surface behavior.

Surface behaviors can generally be dealt with by practice. ‘Stop picking your nose‘ may be more effective than counseling sessions for a three-year-old, for example. At three, the child is just being childish. They put fingers into anything where they will fit, and they put things in their nose. Nose-picking is pretty much an inevitability, but it can be stopped before it becomes habitual.

Acting like a pubescent teenager as one rounds forty is also childish. Unfortunately, it fails the ‘acting your age‘ test.

We expect, to some degree, for teenagers to have raging hormones and uncontrolled eyes; but these are not considered positive qualities in a middle-aged man.

So how do we explain it when a man who is ‘old enough to know better‘ acts to the contrary?

Midlife crisis, right?

He’s figured out that there are likely fewer miles in front of his horse than behind it. Some sociologists say the man has a natural desire to procreate and build a legacy through many children. Knowing he probably won’t be around for their adult years, he seeks out a mother-to-be who is younger, likely more fertile, more in the prime years for child-bearing.

How much you wanna bet those sociologists are a bunch of guys in their mid-forties looking for an excuse for how they feel about their graduate assistants?

That oh-so-scientific theory of mid-life behavior does a great job of providing an excuse. Heck, the way I heard it explained, it made me want to go find a coed so I could proudly support the theory. But the more I thought about it, the more that felt like an excuse rather than an explanation.

In my life, I recognize that there were factors that helped to shape me. These factors didn’t make me defective; they just exposed a yearning in me that had to be fulfilled. Some of the factors:

• We moved frequently, too frequently, when I was young; I have no idea what a ‘lifelong friend‘ would be like.
• I was encouraged to be oh-so-nice to everyone, to the point that I just took it when I was beat up on quite regularly in elementary school.
• Dad worked long hours, and would often drop off his briefcase just to pick up his Bible and head to church.
• We continued to go to churches even when they exhibited the most toxic behavior (side note – my dad was a bit of a crusader; he always thought he could help people get their heads on straight in church wars, but usually ended up being pushed out).
• I learned to try to get people to laugh when things were tense. I didn’t understand that tension and friction can sometimes lead to the best of resolutions.

None of these things drove me to my addictions. At worst, they were (forgive me, Roger Waters) another brick in the wall. When I look back on those things now, I recognize the way those items and others helped to shape me, and influenced my thinking. For example, the thing of being oh-so-nice…I got along with almost everyone, except for the guys who used me as a tackling dummy after school. But not only was I not prepared to defend myself, I was actually discouraged from doing anything about it. ‘Turn the other cheek‘ was drilled into me as my defense. And instead of that building a sense of humility in me, it built rage.

With my kids, I’m teaching them not to just take it. As soon as they are old enough, we’re putting them in martial arts classes. And as they get older, firearms training. They are also being taught a balanced view of their own worth, so they know that they deserve a basic level of respect from others, and need to show others that repect as well.

Was my rage a cause of my acting out? Not sure. There was often rage in my acting out. I never felt like such a rebel as during those dark moments.

Was my rage justified? For a while, probably. It was wrong for Brad and his henchmen to practice flying kicks into my back as I tried to walk away.

But that was a long time ago. There is a point where it is my choice as to whether I will let that rage control me and influence my actions, or if I will release it to God and ask Him to heal me.

Wrongs done to me do not justify wrongs done by me. I am an adult now. Carrying rage from my fifth-grade year, and letting it influence my behavior, is about as appropriate and attractive as sitting in team meetings at work and picking my nose.

i object(ify)

Did you see the {name favorite part of the female anatomy} on that one?

That’s not a phrase I would often use, but it is the cliche representing an unfortunate fact; many of us do treat people as objects. That’s a problem.

I’ve jokingly told my wife, “Hey, any time you want to treat me as an object, you go right ahead. Think of me as just a piece of meat.” But I don’t really want to be treated that way. I really want to be connected to her, not used by her.

Objectifying is denying someone’s humanity. It is redefining them as something to be used, and that is demeaning (literally, removing their meaning).

This objectification thing has been a serious part of my sickness. I learned from a fairly young age that if I could use my imagination, the person on the other end could be anyone or anything  I wanted them to be. In my mind, because they were no longer human, it was as if I were living in virtual reality. This allowed me to have serial relationships without regard to gender without thinking of myself as gay. This allowed me to continue meeting people for anonymous sex without thinking about myself as a cheater. This allowed me to ignore reality and continue in self-destructive behavior.

My viewpoint is informed by my faith. If I believed that we were all a grand accident, than I’m not sure how I could look at anyone (myself included) as having any innate value, and justifying objectification would be fairly easy. If we are without a soul, than what difference does it make how we treat others? But I believe we were created as something more than animals, and that no one should be treated as “garbage on legs.”

Unfortunately, in my sickness, this is exactly how I treated people. I saw them as something to be used and disposed of, and I became quite proficient at both the using and disposing.

Maybe this is part of the reason I’m a decent programmer – object-oriented programming is based on defining things with the attributes you want and manipulating the object and its attributes. I have thirty-ish years of experience with manipulating objects. I should be good at it by now.

But there is a world of difference between treating an invoice as an object and treating another human being that way.

I’ll probably come back to this topic again soon. I don’t feel like I’ve fully developed it here, but I’m not sure what I’ve missed.

trusting is pleasing; pleasing is not trusting

Sometimes I find that I can do things with the best of intentions but still miss the mark.

• I work hard to provide for my family, but my kids need my love more than they need my money.
• I try to give my wife breaks from her constant care for the kids, but she wants time with me more than she wants time alone.
• I try to give my customers at work what they want, but sometimes my attention to detail on a project means the project takes a lot longer than was desired and planned.

Trying to please can be a back-breaking load. How much more is this true when I’m trying to please God?

What do you give the God who has everything?

What can I offer that will make Him happy?

My daughter is becoming quite the little artiste. About once a week when I come home she presents me with her latest work of art (she specializes in crayon) for me to take to my cubicle. Her heart is tuned to wanting to please me. That is pleasing to me, in temporary and somewhat selfish ways.

What really makes me happy is what happened last Sunday. We went to a water park for Father’s Day, and waited to ride a raft down a tube. My daughter was scared. She didn’t want to go. But when I told her that I’d hold her close, and that she would be safe, she said, “Okay, Daddy” and didn’t put up a fight. She covered her eyes most of the way through the ride, but she didn’t moan. In fact, she was smiling a little towards the end.

What made me happy was that she trusted me. I said she would be safe, and she relaxed. At least a little.

So what can I offer God that will please him? Crayon art? Hand prints in clay? Or maybe what He wants is something more personal, like my trust.

In TrueFaced, Bill Thrall, Bruce McNicol, and John Lynch explore the difference between trying to please God versus trusting (and thereby pleasing) Him.

It is easy to take the approach of doing things for God, trying so hard to win His affection by doing good things. We try to win approval based on our performance.

The fact is, He already loves us – no performance required.

There is nothing we can do that will make God love us any more than He already does. In Lynch’s words, He is crazy about us.

7 But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, 9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith
- Philippians 3

I count all my stuff as rubbish. Not just my possessions; any peer recognition, any achievements, anything that I earn or is given to me counts for nothing. What counts is that God has designed me with Christ in me. He lives and breathes through me.

If I fall in my recovery, He still loves me.

If I give in to fear or anger, He still loves me.

If I forget who I really am, and Whose I really am, He still loves me.

This is where I can find contentment in a world that tries so hard to make me discontent. And here is where I can rest, safe and secure in the knowledge that it is not about me or what I do; it is about the One who loves me most, and always will.

royal lineage

My family is royalty.

When I come home each night, my Queen greets me with a kiss, followed by kisses, hugs, and/or snuggles from both my Princess and Prince.

Sometimes the Princess will even say, “How was your majesty’s day, Daddy?”

It’s good to be the King.

But it is even better, I think, to be the Princess or the Prince.

Ignoring the Peter Pan aspect of me wishing I were a kid again, here’s what I mean.

My Princess was born in a far off land. She was born to parents who didn’t feel they could properly care for her, so they made a loving choice to leave her where she would be found, and cared for. And adopted.

She was not born into our royal lineage; we chose her, made her the Princess she is today. That would probably sound conceited, like she owes us something, but I mean it in much the same sense as how God has adopted us.

3 So we also, when we were children, were held in bondage under the rudiments of the world: 4 but when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 that he might redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. 6 And because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. 7 So that thou art no longer a bondservant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God. – Galatians 4: 3-7

‘Abba’ = ‘Daddy’

My Prince was born into this royal bloodline. He was longed for no less than the Princess; his path home was just a little more conventional.

In him I see myself. He is no longer a toddler; he is fully a child now. And in every goofy grin, every story that goes on for what seems an eternity and never reaches a point, every session of tickle torture he endures, I see myself. I see a version of myself before the addictions. I see me with limitless possibilities still open, no doors shut by poor choices.

And once in a while it hits me that there is something about that which echoes the way God sees me. A little copy of Him. A goofy, rambling, laughing and laughable copy of the Original.

17 The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. ; He will take great delight in you, ; he will quiet you with his love, ; he will rejoice over you with singing.” ; – Zephaniah 3:17

He takes delight in us, much as I take delight in my children.

My Princess makes my heart smile; my Prince makes my heart laugh.

God has called us into His family, made us Princes and Princesses. Our Father wants us to call Him ‘Daddy.’ In the NorthPoint Community Church series, “Faith, Hope, and Luck“, Andy Stanley said:

Formality is the enemy of intimacy.

It doesn’t get much less formal than calling someone “Daddy.” It makes my heart sing when I hear my children call me that. I think it makes God feel the same way.