Bonus Episode 22 – God, How could you?
I didn’t understand how could God let the things happen to me that led me to addiction? How could he let them happen to my wife? God, How could you?
Are you trustworthy?
“How do I know you won’t do it again?”
Have you been asked that question? Has your spouse, kids, partner, parents, people who love you…how many times have they asked you that question? I thought it was just a lack of trust due to my years of deception that led to my wife and kids asking me that. I found it it’s more than that. Its really a question of “how do I know you won’t hurt me again?”
This week, my wife traveled back to our home state to see her Mom. She’s in her 80’s and starting to have health issues. Late one night, my wife texted me, obviously upset. She had seen an old Facebook memory come up on her phone. It was a reminder of what life was like then, of my old behavior and the damage and hurt I had caused her.
The questions started coming quickly:
“What are you doing? Why didn’t you respond quicker? I get very worried leaving you alone. How do I know you aren’t going to go back to your same things again?”
Her hurt and pain and fear all exposed at once. My immediate response, no my immediate desire was to flee…or change the subject. Manipulate the situation. Talk about something else. Anything. Just not have to face her hurt. The hurt I caused.
That is how I responded to uncomfortable questions or concerns or anything else that was too intrusive. I fled. I would like to say how I used to respond. But that isn’t right. Or truthful. I instinctively want to move my wife or kids or whoever I am being challenged by off of the topic that’s causing me pain. Only, this time I didn’t.
What’s worrying you right now,” I asked? “What’s got you upset that you think I might be doing?”
I have been this brave before. Stepping into her hurt enough to ask what was causing it. But then going off the rails and becoming defensive and challenging. Saying things like “can’t you tell how different I am” or “I can’t believe you don’t see I am not like that anymore.” I stopped myself. I just shut up and listened.
“Its still there. The hurt. The triggers. I hate when they come up but they do. Constantly,” she said.<
“I am so sorry for that. I love you and am right here.”
And that was it. That was what she needed to know. That I recognized her hurt. I didn’t minimize it. I just listened, acknowledged, and supported. I didn’t try to avoid and I didn’t try to fix.
Tomorrow or next week or next month she will probably get triggered again, ask how she could possibly know I won’t do it again, and respond in hurt and anger. Pray for me that I can remember to step into her hurt, support her, love her, and pray for her. Just as she has supported me.
Became willing…
In a small church in rural south Mississippi, on a warm Sunday evening, I became willing to stand up in front of almost everyone I knew in my young life and tell them that I believed in Jesus. That I knew who He was and that I wasn’t Him. I professed my faith in Him as a savior and forgiver of sin. I trusted that He could and would save me from Hell. And that was that.
Very early in my life, I became willing to lie to protect myself. Small things, large issues, all required lies on my part, because the truth of my own loneliness wasn’t bearable on my own. I became willing to trade the consequences that came with lies being exposed for the false narrative that I wasn’t really alone or abandoned…I was in control.
I became willing to hide the pornography magazine I found of my Dad’s. I hid the shame I felt as well, wondering how I could keep looking at the women inside those pages over and over…and not being able to stop. That was my first real instance of powerlessness.
When we got expanded cable television, I became willing to sneak to our downstairs playroom to watch pornographic movies. Each night I would make sure the lights were all out, lay down on the couch so I could pretend to be asleep if someone walked in, and zone out watching movies that fed my desire for self gratification.
At the age of twelve, I became willing to not speak of the molestation my friend perpetrated on me. I buried that deep in my psyche, not speaking of it for almost forty years. The shame of that time deprived me of my victimhood, convincing me that I caused it. Not until recently, when discussing this with my wife, did I realize I never wanted it to happen or did anything to make it happen or try to seek out other boys to have sexual encounters. But when it happened, I became willing to continue to lie and hide my shame.
Throughout my youth, I remained willing to have God as my Lord but not as my savior. I remained willing to keep Him at a distance. Someone who’s name I knew but who didn’t really know me. I became willing to grow in my closeness to Him but not at the cost of my lying or growing sexual enthrallment.
In my early twenties, I became willing to marry my wife, to share my life with her. I didn’t become willing to share all of my life, holding back my secrets and lies. I allowed her to open all of herself to me without truly doing the same. The two of us became one and a half. Half to her, half to my lies and addiction.
For the next twenty years, I became willing to violate my promises to her. To lie to her over and over about my faithfulness, motives, truths, and stability. I sought out what was best for me and left behind what was best for us.
I became willing to lie to my boys, abandoning them to the same loneliness and anxiety that ruled my life. Manipulating them into thinking that anyone else but me was to blame for our separation. Spoon feeding them lies and deception, ultimately destroying any trust they had ever developed with me.
I became willing to leave my family, blaming my wife for my own path of devastation. Pointing at her as the source of our crumbling marriage, when I was the source of the abandonment she experienced. I became willing to walk away from her and my sons. Writing that statement makes my heart hurt and my stomach churn, but I know it to be true.
My wife became willing to tell me the truth, despite my actions. She accurately said that I would continue to spiral downward, never finding peace or fulfillment. She gracefully offered me a path out…the way out that God promises in 1 Corinthians 10:13, giving me an opportunity to endure.
I became willing to take it, to follow that way out. But not yet fully give over all of myself. The strongholds of lying and shame were too deeply rooted for me to overcome on my own. Not until the true discovery of my lying did I become truly willing to give up.
It was then and only then that I truly became willing. Willing to disclose all of my deceptions, secrets, lies, shame, hurts. Willing to show my true self to my wife, knowing that my exposure could damage her beyond repair…but knowing she deserved to know the father of her children and decide for herself.
I became willing to walk into a room with a circle of men, to listen to their stories, to ultimately share my own. To realize that I had never been the only one. They too felt abandoned, suffered abuse, incorporated shame as truth, and hid it all from the world.
I became willing to share my junk, to dig deep into my present and past, to give my life and will to God, and to inventory the flaws requiring His grace. Through those steps, I began to see myself as a human being, broken, and yet forgiven.
Once I became willing to reach the end of myself, I became willing to give Him all of me. In doing so, He gave me something back. My life. My marriage. My sons. Gifts that were there the whole time but that I could only see through His love for me.
I encourage you brother. Become willing…
Tonight’s Meeting in Searcy, AR is MOVED
Tonight’s meeting in Searcy, AR will be held at an alternate location. Join us at 7 pm at 1903 E Beebe Capps Expressway, Searcy, AR 72143.
Humility
By Keith B., NotUnknown.com
I grew up in rural south Mississippi in the 70’s and 80’s. Recognition and self worth came from prowess in football, baseball, basketball…any sport. Sixty percent of the males in my class tried out for football. Five percent or less signed up for advanced math or qualified for the honor society or sang in the choir or auditioned for school plays. I ached to achieve in sports. Unfortunately, my physical gifts remained limited to above the neck. My football coach accurately captured my potential this way:
“Son, you are blessed to be a dual threat athlete…short AND slow.”
Obviously, seeking my identity from sports accolades wasn’t an option. Academics and intelligence became my currency for self worth.
I sought attention by identifying as an intellectual. Not a popular option in my small town. Self worth tied to what I knew and how I achieved. I felt superior from being smarter, making better grades, reading voraciously. My pride in my intelligence manifested as self made not God made. I took on the characteristics of a Pharisee, identifying obscure and unimportant positions I could lord over others.
Like the Pharisees, I intellectually understood who God was and what “belonging to God” meant. I professed to follow Him. Openly claimed I had ceded my life and will to Him. I knew Him. Like I knew the authors of the books I read…William Faulkner, Stephen King, John Grisham, Tom Clancy. I knew them. Only…like God…they didn’t know me.
Step 7 says “We humbly ask Him to remove all our shortcomings.”
To be ready for this step, I first had to learn what that word meant…humbly. Humility is defined as being unpretentious in comparison to someone else. Not a word that had been used to define me throughout most of my life. After my own rock bottom, pride was one of the character defects that God immediately removed from my life. I believed that my own importance was below everyone else. Exactly the opposite of where I had been before. I went from thinking my own importance was above everyone to believing I was the lowest on earth.
James 4:10 reminds me to “humble yourself before the Lord and He will lift you up.” God made me who I am. When I am living out His purpose in my life, I am making the most of the gifts and talents He gave me. I am fearfully and wonderfully made in His image. I am not the lowest on earth. But I have to humble myself before Him…truly submit to Him. In doing so, I am giving Him dominion over my life, asking Him to remove my flaws, and to allow me to use the assets He created in me.
God made you. Have you submitted to Him, asking Him to remove your junk? To highlight your gifts and talents He gave you? Are you stepping into His purpose for your life?
Humility isn’t the absence of strength or pride. Its submitting to the one who gives you strength, who created you in His own image, and who has a true purpose for you.
