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Journal Through Recovery Entry 37: How Do I Tell My Story?

I have no interest in giving you an account of my adventures, only the wondrously powerful and transformingly present words and deeds of Christ in me that triggered a believing response among the outsiders. – Romans 15:18 (The Message)

I have been uncomfortable with trying to tell my story. I honestly still have pride and selfishness as character flaws that haven’t gone away. I know these exist in me and therefore add to my hesitancy to tell my story. Basically, I don’t trust my own motivations for telling my story. I don’t want to make it about me. I want it to be like the Bob Marley work of my youth: a “Redemption Song.”

I took this to my counselor and my sponsor to get some guidance on this. My sponsor as I believe I have previously stated has cautioned me about not being willing to share my story. That by not doing so, I am not allowing God to use it for His glory. So I am not sure what to do here. They gave me good advice and straightened out my warped thinking. So here goes.

First, I should tell my story if I need to tell it to get more out of me. Will it benefit me in my own recovery to tell my story in the situation I am in. Is there a purpose for me to share it to aid in where I am in working the steps. Like I did in step five when I shared it with a friend who isn’t in recovery, as an act of admission of my wrong doings. I should consider the situation and see if there is a need for me to share based upon my own recovery.

Second, I should tell my story if the other person will benefit from hearing it. Recently, I had this opportunity come up when speaking with someone new in one of our recovery meetings. I saw that he was struggling in starting to work through the steps and in maintaining any long periods of sobriety. So I prayed about it and really felt the need to share my own difficulties in entering recovery and staying here. I was able to share my experience, strength and hope with him. I was able to talk to him about the need for counseling, accountability, recovery meetings, checking in with other guys, and having a sponsor in my own recovery. I told him to take what you like and leave the rest. And he did.

Finally, my story has to be relevant. In other words, I don’t need to share it just to hear myself talk, to bring attention to myself for no purpose. There has to be a reason and a purpose to share it. In step nine while making amends, I have shared my story with a couple of people who had the right to know my story. It was relevant to me making amends with them. So I did. It was uncomfortable and difficult and definitely relevant. I didn’t share my story to make excuses for my actions and the damage I caused them. I shared my story because my story was relevant in the context of making amends.

Three guidelines to sharing my story:

  1. Do I need to tell it to get more out of me
  2. Will the other person benefit from hearing it
  3. Is it relevant

I can live with those. Otherwise, as my sponsor told me before, anything else is probably wasting my story, my “redemption” story.

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Recovery: Expectations v Reality

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Prayer and Recovery

https://applyingmybeliefs.wordpress.com/2015/05/29/prayer-and-recovery/
by applyingmybeliefs

Most spiritual programs of recovery admonish us to pray.  Some pray to “higher powers”, some to God, as they know Him, and others to Christ who is the one true God.  It seems that non-Christian recovery programs implicitly agree with the Christian perspective that prayer changes things.  So they pray to their higher power and the real God hears and answers their prayers in accordance with His will and purposes.

God almost begs us to pray when He tells us this in His word:

Jas 5:16(b) – The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

While James 5:16 is a great recovery verse, it actually is not the best verse on prayer and recovery in scripture.  This is:

Mt 26:41 – Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.  (Also recorded in Mk 14:38)

This is Jesus instructing His disciples on prayer as He Himself is going through the agony of knowing He is about to be crucified.  This instruction was not just for Peter, James and John; it was also for us and is every bit as important today as it was in the moment back then.  As Jesus speaks this He is quoting from the prayer Psalm that He gave David close to 900 years beforehand:

Ps 51:12 – Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.

If you recall, Psalm 51 was penned after David was confronted by Nathan over his sexual indiscretion with Bathsheba, another man’s wife, and his subsequent murder to try to cover up the sin.  David was tempted, and his flesh was weak.

In Christian recovery we often talk about putting on the armor of God, as listed in Ephesians 6.  What we sometimes forget is what Paul said right before and right after.  Before he says our enemies are not flesh and blood, immediately after listing the armor he says to pray.

So when Jesus is instructing us to watch out and pray because our flesh is weak, He is speaking of personal spiritual warfare; our inner unsanctified person and our temptation versus the Spirit of God inside us.

All of this suggests that one of our greatest tools in recovery is that of earnest prayer, the kind of prayer mention in James 5:16.  It also implies that those who don’t pray might struggle more than those who do.  Interestingly there is research that suggests that this is true (Carter 1998, The Effects of Spiritual Practices on Recovery From Substance Abuse)

What is your experience of prayer in your recovery?  Have you decided to be like David, called by God, “A man after God’s own heart (Acts 13:22)”, and pray over your own weaknesses?

 

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How To Heal Any Marriage

Colossians 3:12-14 –“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”

I (Dr. Cloud) was leading a seminar, and I asked the audience of married couples to stop for a moment and think of their spouse. I told them to think of all of the wonderful things that they love about their spouse and to concentrate on how awesome that person is and how much they love him or her. “Think of the wonderful qualities that you admire and that attracted you to that person. Let those feelings fill you,” I told them.

Then, after they were feeling all giddy and in love again, I asked each person to turn to their spouse who was idealizing them at that moment and to repeat after me, “Honey, I am a sinner. I will fail you, and I will hurt you.”

You could feel the sense of discombobulation in the room. In one moment, they were shaken from the ideal to the real. Some began to laugh as they got it. Some felt even closer to each other. Some looked up confused as if they did not know what to do with my invitation.

But that is reality. The person you love the most and have committed your life to is an imperfect being. This person is guaranteed to hurt you and fail you in many ways, some serious and some not. You can expect the failures to come. As the Bible says in Ecclesiastes 7:20, “There is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins.” We can expect failure from even the best people in our lives.

So the question becomes, “What then?” What do you do when your spouse fails you in some way or is less than you wish for him to be? What happens when she has a weakness or a failure? How about an inability to do something? What about an unresolved childhood hurt that he brings to the relationship?

Other than denial, there are only a couple of options. You can beat him up for his imperfections, or you can love him out of them. The Bible says, “Love covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). Nothing in a relationship has to permanently destroy that relationship if forgiveness is in the picture. No failure is larger than grace. No hurt exists that love cannot heal. But, for all of these miracles to take place, there must be compassion and tenderheartedness.

What does that mean? I like how the Bible describes God’s compassion: “to bend or stoop in kindness to an inferior” (Strong’s Hebrew and Greek Dictionary). For God to have compassion on our brokenness or sin is certainly to stoop to an inferior. But we need the same attitude toward an equal spouse for two reasons:

First, you forgive what is inferior to the ideal standard. You humble yourself to identify with your loved one, who is experiencing life in a way that is less than you or even he would want. You give up all demands for your spouse to be something he isn’t at that moment.

Second, if your spouse is hurting or failing, you are not morally superior, but you are in the stronger position at that moment to be able to help. God never uses the stronger position to hurt, but always to help. As Paul puts it in Colossians 3:12-14, “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”

What a picture that is! “Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” What if you “wore” these qualities every time your spouse failed or was hurting? I think we would see a lot more healed marriages.

But that is not the human way. The human way is to harden our hearts when we are hurt or offended.

I was talking to a friend the other day who had offended his wife in a relatively minor way. But to her it was not minor at all. As a result, she did not speak to him for several days. Finally he asked her when she might forgive him. “Will it be before next month? Before Christmas? Just let me know so I can get ready.” She finally broke and started laughing, and things were fine again. She saw how unnecessary her “hardness of heart” was to the offense.

Hardness of heart, much more than failure, is the true relationship killer. Jesus said in Matthew 19:8 that failure is not the cause of divorce, but hardness of heart is. This is why the Bible places such a high value on tenderheartedness.

Today’s content is drawn from Boundaries In Marriage by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend. Copyright 2014 by Zondervan; all rights reserved. Visit BoundariesBooks.com for more information.

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Journal Through Recovery Entry 36: Facing My Past

So now I am making amends. I didn’t expect this to happen this way. I don’t know what I expected. I guess I expected the big emotional scene. The one you see on TV and the movies. I tearfully lay out my shortcomings and take responsibility for my past and how I caused such damage to each and every person I hurt. We both cry and talk about how much we love each other and that things will be different and the past is the past and we have a bright new future to look forward to together. That’s not how it has gone for me. Or for the people I have on my list.

As I mentioned before, I have three different categories. First is my wife. Her amends are different and special. Quite honestly, her amends are up to her. I came to her to lay bare my character flaws, the ways that I recognized that I had damaged her, and to listen to how she felt based upon how I had hurt her. There was no tearful scene that led to a shared view of a hopeful new day. She was honest with her hurt, the damage she felt from me, and the destruction that my acting out had caused to her personally and to our marriage. She was clear about the end of her trust in me and in other people because of me. She said she didn’t know if she could forgive me. She also said she was guarded about telling me she loved me and that she was hopeful for the future because she didn’t know if I would stay in recovery. Amends with my wife is a day to day undertaking. Not something that is immediate or instant.

Second is those that I make amends with face to face. My family including my kids, my friends, my parents. People that I have hurt that are still in my life and will most likely stay in my life. I met with my kids and talked them through what I had done, how I had not been engaged and had not been the father God called me to be or the man I should be as an example to them. I asked them how my behavior had impacted them. They told me that my absence impacted them. That even when I was here, it was obvious that I was distracted or didn’t have time for them. One of my kids told me that this version of me now was different, that it was obvious I was trying to change and that he hoped I would stay this way. I met face to face with my close friends who are not in recovery but are my accountability partners. I saw the impact of my lies and my manipulation on them and the struggle they have to remain in my life, that its only through Christ acting through them that they can be here with me in accountability. I didn’t see before the damage I had done to them.

Finally, there are those that I can’t see face to face. People that aren’t reachable in person. Former bosses that I had to send a letter or email to apologize for my previous behavior, to ask how that impacted them, and to ask forgiveness for the man I was and the selfishness and behavior that impacted them. One former boss told me that he appreciated my candor and that he was thankful that I was seeking to improve my life. Several didn’t respond. There are also those letters that I can’t and won’t send. The ones that I wrote to former affair partners. I apologized for my part in manipulating them to meet my own selfish needs. Then I shredded those letters.

I didn’t expect amends to be this way. I didn’t expect this depth of feeling. I didn’t expect to see this depth of damage in all those around me.