CASTIMONIA

Sexual Purity Support & Recovery Group

K.LeVeq

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How’s your side of the street?

Psalm 94:19 When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought me joy.

Since COVID-19 took over our lives, I have struggled with worry. No, worry isn’t right. Anxiety is more accurate. It’s weird. I know I have experienced much worse situations. My wife discovering my infidelity. My sons not speaking to me for months after that. Losing my job multiple times. The death of both of my parents within 1 year of each other. Real devastating issues. For some reason, though…my anxiety has been crippling. Which really makes me laugh when I stop and think about how my current situation compares to previous experiences.

I haven’t slept well. For the last few weeks I have probably averaged 4-5 hours a night, tops. My schedule, stability, all are off. I like routine. I didn’t realize how important that was to me until recently. My routine isn’t routine. I can’t get into a groove. Work, life, marriage, my kids, my job, church. All are off. I don’t quite know what to do about it. So far I have just not done anything. Except whine, obviously.

My wife and I take walks every day. It’s part of our routine. A major part of our intimacy building. And something we just both crave. Even when I travel, which I usually do a lot for work, we take a walk together on a video call. It’s our time to catch up, listen, talk about our lives, the future, our boys, our struggles, our hopes, dreams…and then we stop on a bench along the lake and we pray together. This part of my day has been transformational for my marriage…and my own recovery. 

One of my wife’s strengths is that she is a truth teller. I didn’t recognize this until very recently. She has always been a truth teller. I just didn’t realize how important that part of her character was to me. I come from a family of untruth tellers. We hide stuff. We cover up. We don’t talk about things. We try to ignore them so they go away. We don’t want anyone to see under the tent. To know what exactly happens. That is my family of origin. And only later did I realize how shocking my wife had to have been to my family. She certainly was to me. 

So we stopped along the lake the other day, and we did what we always do. We started talking about what was on our minds. What we wanted to pray about. So she asked me,

“You have been really on edge. I am worried about you. What’s going on? Do I need to be worried?”

“No,” I said. “It’s just all this. Everything. My job, you, the boys, our finances. It’s a lot.”

“Is something wrong at work,” she asked? “What happened? I know you are having a hard time with your boss.”

“Yes, it’s just getting to me. I hate working on this project but I don’t want to not be on a project right now. Not a good time.”

“No, it’s not. Do you like the work still. Is it that? Or just your boss on this?”

“I don’t appreciate how this boss treats me. Nothing is ever right.”

“So let me ask you something. What do you tell your guys when you hear them complain that their wife isn’t responding fast enough, isnt recovering quick enough? What do you say?”

“I say to control what they can control. Take care of their side of the street. That’s all they can do. The rest is God’s job.”

“Yes, that is right,” she said. “So why are you spending all your energy freaking out about your boss? Why don’t you just do what you can do…your work. Do it the best way you can.”

That woman pisses me off sometimes. Especially when she is right. I would like to say since that conversation, I have slept well every night. I haven’t. I have stopped when my anxiety is ramped up and remembered step 3…that I committed to turn my life and my will over to the care of God. Including my anxiety. How’s your side of the street? Mine is still messy…but improving.

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Journal Through Recovery – Bonus Podcast #23: The Perfect Storm

Bonus Episode 23 – The Perfect Storm 

Where were you when everything stopped? I was traveling for work. Asking why. 

I think that maybe just maybe…God is using this time because He knows it’s how he can bring so many back to Him. When they, like I did, reach the end of themselves. 

 

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Journal Through Recovery – Bonus Podcast #22: God, How Could You?

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?

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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.

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Became willing…

NotUnknown.com

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…