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Jun 6, 2010 4:21:35 GMT -7
Post by Deleted on Jun 6, 2010 4:21:35 GMT -7
I'm a little nervous, talking to strangers about the mangled, poisoned part of my heart. The part that aches with guilt all the time and once in awhile bears its fangs on me in the night. I gather most of you know what that's like.
I'm 27. I've been addicted to pornography for 13 years--despicably fetishy stuff, too--overcoming the call of it for only a few months at a time here and there. I've been to this site a few times before, usually searching the web in desperation a few hours after searching it in lust, but never posted. Now I've made a commitment to freedom, and need your advice and support. As a start, I've bought SafeEyes and scrambled the admin password. I'm also planning a fast, since I think appetites are connected (at least for me), and gluttony is often a precursor of sexual sin. There's other stuff I can think of, like daily prayer and confession, which sounds super holy but probably requires more self-discipline than I've actually got. I'm incredibly weak in this area. How many times I've prayed sincerely and promised to end this, only to be back in its thralls a week later! I have sincerely wished I were born a eunuch. Daniel got by fine that way. But instead I am hobbled and haunted by evil yearnings I never asked for, but which were somehow created in me anyway. I can't get away on my own. And if I don't get away soon, I don't there'll be enough heart left to marry or raise a family. Even my sister says there's something wrong with me, and she can't put her finger on it. I know what it is, but can't admit it anywhere but on chat boards...
On top of this, I'm in ministry. I really do care about the work I do, and earnestly desire to serve God. But today I fell again, though not as far as before. If anyone found out the sites I was browsing just a few weeks ago it could shatter my life, and, irrationally or not, I feel that fear all the time. I know all things will be revealed in the end. But I pray that will be in the context of a life where, by grace, my sins were overcome and blotted out, not in the context of a son, brother, or friend revealed as a monster.
I know this all sounds kind of maudlin. My current emotionality will probably ebb in a few hours, but the underlying facts remain. I just want someone who can sympathize to be praying for me. I know God wants to make me clean, and I know I'm eager to submit. But I don't know the mechanics of it, and can't bear to wait in fear like this. All I want is not to feel guilty and not to be overwhelmed with temptations I hate. Please pray.
And thanks be to God that salvation isn't just on the way: He has arrived and paid all debts. Hard as it is to believe, all has already been finished. I'm just awaiting the manifestation.
Thank you.
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Jun 6, 2010 4:58:25 GMT -7
Post by Deleted on Jun 6, 2010 4:58:25 GMT -7
Let me add one thing. A palpable thing about sin--especially embarrassing sin--is the way it puts you in a false position. I'm admired by some people, but on the inside I'm not admirable. Now it's easy to say that everyone's a sinner, but it has no force. My sins are more disgusting than most. The thought of my mom, or my little brothers and sisters, seeing what appeals to the darkest corner of me is plainly horrifying. Part of that is selfish, but part of it is revulsion at seeing them hurt and bewildered like that. This is what I think and feel when I'm sane, and it gives me plenty good reason to flee sexual immorality. And I do. 99% of the time. But 1% of the time my heart somehow grows dark, hardened to evil and numb to consequences. And scar-grooves of habit are so deeply worn in my soul by now that I can't imagine they'll ever lose the power to make me sin, let alone the power to make me flinch. That makes me feel helpless, like the battle is already irrevocably lost, which in turn saps my will to fight.
I pray and pray about this, but cannot hear God answering. I just want him to rescue me, but it seems like it's been ages since I can be sure I heard his voice. Just one word of encouragement and forgiveness from God directly would mean more to me than all the wealth in a thousand worlds. But--by my own fault I'm sure--I can't hear anything of the sort. I only fear.
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Jun 6, 2010 9:46:38 GMT -7
Post by Deleted on Jun 6, 2010 9:46:38 GMT -7
Welcome, Bookender!
You say a lot of powerful things in your post.
That's really the core, isn't it? I fear other people. I fear God. I fear what I will find if I look inside myself. And so, in my addiction, I hide from others, from God, from myself.
I think my sins are the really disgusting ones, and that what others will see if they look at me will be a monster, not a human being who was made in God's image but who is sick and hurting.
Patrick Carnes describes sex addicts as having 4 core beliefs:
1. "I am basically a bad, unworthy person." 2. "No one would love me as I am." 3. "My needs are never going to be met if I have to depend on others." 4. "Sex is my most important need."
Recognize any of those?
A lot of what you have done is stuff most of us have done - praying desperately, emotionally resolving that now is the last time, wishing to have all sexual desire removed from us. That sounds like 30 years of my life. At the end of those 30 years, I was just as stuck as at the beginning, just a lot more beaten down and depressed, isolated and angry and fearful. It seems like the things I was doing for those 30 years aren't enough.
Well, if the core is my fear of God and self and others, then the way out better involve losing that fear. It better include recapturing an image of myself as a child of God. It better involve discovering that others do love me as I am. It better involve learning that I can be honest, that I can depend on others, and, incidentally, that sex isn't my most important need - that sex addiction isn't really about sex.
You say some of that succinctly and you state clearly one reason why it's important to find a new way when you write,
I think that's absolutely right, and a lot of smart people who have spent their lives studying addiction agree. We can't do it on our own. But people find freedom from all kinds of addictions every day. They do it in part by accepting exactly what you say - that we can't do it on our own, and that finding freedom is the most important thing in our lives, so that anything, however scary, is worth doing if it moves us toward hope.
For me, those scary steps toward hope and toward other people have included trusting and getting support from professional counselors and from my fellow addicts in 12-step fellowships; but those aren't the only places to find people who understand addiction and who can help. As a counselor I have worked with says, the critical turning point comes when we're ready to trust and follow somebody; who that is doesn't much matter.
In the course of pursuing my recovery, I've also found that some of the things that seem unthinkably terrifying to you now are not only possible, but enormously healing. It turns out one can talk about one's sex addiction with one's wife, one's sisters, one's mother, one's children, with a few of one's friends. I've done all those things. Some of those conversations have been incredibly hard. Obviously for my wife, the pain of my betrayal is never going to be gone. But all those people still love me and still respect what I am doing now (though obviously not what I did before). My ability to be honest, to be weak, to be vulnerable, to be open has had amazing impacts on my relationships with some of those people. I'm learning what intimacy and trust are about, and it's wonderful. With every person who knows my story, I am far closer now than I was in my decades of hiding.
I remember the first friend to whom I disclosed, a counselor I had known for many years as a colleague (she works where I teach). I went to her because I didn't know who else to turn to. When I finished telling her my story that filled me with incredible shame, she sat silently for a long moment and then said softly, "It must have been hell." At the end of our session, she hugged me and thanked me for trusting her. Five years later, I'm still sitting here with tears in my eyes at her acceptance of me.
You're right. We can't get away on our own. The miracle is that when we accept that, when we give up and start seeking help, then we allow God and our new friends and our own inner selves to do what we can't do on our own. We can be offered a way out. And it's not just a way out of the porn. It's a way out of our isolation, out of our fear, out of our self-centeredness, out of our lack of faith, out of our loneliness. In recovery, we can find open and serene and honest connection with God, with others, and - maybe most amazingly - with ourselves. In fact, we have to do all those things if we are to stay sober. And thousands of people just like us have done it. What an astounding hope!
Take a look at the 12 steps, if you haven't. They're not about our drug of choice. That only gets mentioned in the first part of Step 1 and the last part of Step 12. Everything in between is about the real issues - seeing myself honestly, real surrender to God, opening myself to others, mending the wrongs that separate me from others. We can do those things, and we can live. Amazing!
So welcome. Welcome to what can be the start of a whole new life. That's terrifying, of course. We've led our whole lives hiding from what we now have to face honestly, calmly, serenely, in love. What we need to do in recovery is the hardest thing most of us will ever do. It's also the most important and the most blessed.
May you find the blessings that should be yours!
Tim M.
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Jun 6, 2010 10:09:32 GMT -7
Post by Deleted on Jun 6, 2010 10:09:32 GMT -7
Welcome to blazing grace forum, bookender. Thanks for your honesty and depth of sharing what your problems are. You said one particular thing which matters a lot. "It is finished." Yes, He finished it and the separation caused by our sin has ceased to be a barrier, not because of what we can make of ourselves (because we can't put ourselves right - only God can do that - with our help) but because His sacrifice on the cross for our sins has paid what we could not pay ourselves. We are accepted - only through Christ - into the presence of God. For no other reason.
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Jun 7, 2010 2:22:25 GMT -7
Post by Deleted on Jun 7, 2010 2:22:25 GMT -7
Hi Bookender,
Sometimes, when we pray, we are hoping for that still, small voice, but do not hear it. That does not, however, mean that God is not speaking to us. The entirety of His Word is living and active, and as 2 Peter 1:3 says, "His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory an goodness." That wholechapter would be a great one on which to meditate.
It is important to identify and dig up the roots of your addiction, which, as Tim so eloquently expresses, is not accomplished in isolation.
Praying for you... TruthSeeker
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