CASTIMONIA

Sexual Purity Support & Recovery Group

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Journal Through Recovery Entry 32: Shame Is Selfish

I love meetings. I hear stuff that I just don’t believe at first. Ok, I know this is a goofy path for a journal entry but hang with me. I believe and the Bible is clear that God reveals Himself to us in many ways including reading His word, prayer, being still and shutting up and listening, worship, and even yes even other people. That includes recovery meetings. See, God LOVES revealing himself to me in recovery meetings. Only, I am too thick to see Him coming most of the time.

So I am going to shamelessly steal this incredible share that a friend of mine used recently in the Thursday night group. Yes, you know who you are. He announced very proudly that tonight his topic would be on shame. I seriously felt the air leave the room. If it was a larger group, you would have audibly heard the collective “ughhhhhh.” Sorry my friend, maybe it was just me but I think we all felt it.

I seriously considered just mentally checking out. I steadied myself for another reminder that shame meant I thought “I am bad” and guilt meant I healthily thought “I did bad things.” So moral of the story, feel guilt not shame. Blah blah blah, right? Only my friend is way smarter than me so of course that isn’t what he said at all.

His opening statement was that shame is an emotion from God but can be completely self centered and hinder recovery. What did he just say? Ok, I am awake now. He said that allowing ourselves to wallow (his words, not mine!) in our shame was another form of justification for our actions. Ok, so that is a bit harsh, don’t you think? I mean, come on. I thought we are supposed to feel sorry for guys stuck in shame because they are wrongly focused on thinking they are a bad person, not in the right area of guilt where they remember God’s salvation and redemption and that they have done bad things. Only…that isn’t what he was saying. He was saying that staying in shame is a cop-out, basically.

Ok, I am really paying attention now. Keep going. So my friend said there are three ways of recognizing that we are stuck in shame in our own lives. Three warning signs that we are in shame and that staying there is selfish.

  1. We are acting out of fear because we are afraid to expose our true self and need to hide. Yikes, that hurt. Definitely a cop out I take
  2. We are blaming and refusing to admit the truth. Basically, I let myself off the hook by setting such a low standard. Obviously, I suck so therefore I can’t expect to be much better. Yep, definitely a technique I have used.
  3. We disconnect and don’t feel or experience our emotions. This robs us from feeling compassion for those we have hurt. Yeah, emotional avoidance. I rock at that.

So shame is selfish. Yeah, I guess it is. So what do I do about it? Community. Community is the key. Being able to walk into my groups, share my garbage, and still be loved. Wow, what an antidote for shame. I love the quote he closed the share with and dropped the mic, so I will steal it (again, sorry my friend!): “As long as I am conditionally known, I will be conditionally loved.”

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Forgiveness

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Men of the Bible – Samson

Samson

His name means: “Little Sun”

His work: To deliver Israel from the Philistines. His character: Samson’s erotic attachments to foreign women eventually led to his death. A man of mythic strength, he was inwardly weak, given to anger and unfaithful to his Nazirite vows. His prayers as well as his actions against the Philistines seem to have been motivated by the desire for personal vengeance. His sorrow: To have been blinded and imprisoned by his lifelong enemies. His triumph: To have killed more Philistines by his death than he had while living. Key Scriptures: Judges 13-16

A Look at the Man

One of the first Bible stories children hear is the story of Samson, the man who defeated his enemies with a superhuman feat of strength. But it is such an unsavory story that we find ourselves leaving out certain details, for example, Samson’s boasting, his visits to prostitutes, or his murderous rage. Even the man’s prayers were selfish, focused as they were on his own desire for revenge rather than on God’s glory.

Why would God, knowing the future, choose such a person to play such a role, even sending an angel to announce his birth? The question is not easily answered. But it is certainly true that Samson would have been a better man had he paid attention to the call God had placed on his life. Instead, he seems to have squandered the promise of his life by living it in a self-centered, self-directed way.

Ironically, the pattern of his life formed a vivid picture of Israel’s own unfaithfulness during a period when it seemed incapable of resisting the allurement of foreign gods. And so the people God had set apart and called his own, the nation he intended to build up and make strong, grew progressively weaker in the land he had promised.

Samson’s story reminds us of God’s faithfulness, of his ability to deliver his people regardless of the circumstances and despite their sins. It also reminds us of what can happen when we allow ourselves to become attached to things and people, however enticing, that might end in our own self-destruction.

Reflect On: Judges 16:23–31 Praise God: For his sovereignty. Offer Thanks: For God’s strength working within you. Confess: Any promises you have made to God and not kept. Ask God: To make you a person who is strong on the inside.

Today’s devotional is drawn from Men of the Bible: A One-Year Devotional Study of Men in Scripture by Ann Spangler and Robert Wolgemuth. Visit AnnSpangler.com to learn more about Ann’s writing and ministry.

 

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Journal Through Recovery Entry 28: The Wounds

The wounds aren’t just my spouse’s. The wounds aren’t just mine. Others have received the fallout from the depth of my years of lying, manipulating, and self satisfaction. My kids. Their wounds are hidden. Sometimes I don’t even know they are there. Until they are. There they are, bursting forth. The results of my sin and the sin of a fallen world. The results of my deep ingrained defects of character.

I am working on Step Six. It seems easy enough. I have to be entirely ready to have God remove my defects of character. It seems simple enough. All I have to do is say I am ready, right? Actually, this step is unfolding in a way I didn’t expect. My awareness of the stark differences in my fundamental core character defects when compared to the perfect example of Christ doesn’t leave my thoughts as I pray and ask for Him to make sure I am ready.

As I list each of my primary flaws, I try and focus on specific examples of how I have exemplified those flaws in my life. I can only go through one at a time. Cumulatively they are too much for me to comprehend and emotionally handle. The scope of the impact of my flaws on the people I love is just so great. So, I follow my sponsor’s advice and ask God to reveal each to me in His timing as I am ready to accept them and turn them over to Him.

This has been an exercise in patience, trust, and prayer. Specifically, I have asked God to go through each of them. To give me awareness of the impact of each and to prepare my heart and mind to release them to Him. First was pride and selfishness. I thought I was prepared to turn that one over. I thought I had dealt with all of pride and had released it. I didn’t pay too much attention to when my counselor told me he for some reason thought there was still pride ingrained in me that I hadn’t let go. So, I was ready to turn that over. But I really wasn’t.

I was walking with my wife. It’s a way we have connected again, spending time walking our dog and just having conversations. Intimate conversations about her damage, my recovery, our future, our kids. I told her that a division connected to my company had reached out to me, had interest in me for a job, a promotion, a level that I badly had wanted in the past. How awesome was that? We had talked about a new start and a move at some point, so I obviously thought this was a great idea. Thankfully, my wife is a truth teller. She looked at me and asked what was I doing? I was only 5 months into my recovery and why on earth would I want to mess that up, move our kids, uproot any sense of stability she and we had. She reminded me that my constant chasing of career led to strain on our marriage, instability for our kids, and ultimately enabled my acting out. Her wounds are there, always. Sometimes I don’t see them. Sometimes they are just below the surface. But her wounds are still there.

God is sovereign. God is consistent. God answers prayers. I asked him to prepare me to give over my defects of character. He is doing so by making sure I am clear on what they are. And I am clear on the wounds they have caused.

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Journal Through Recovery Entry 27: Am I Changing?

At the end of each 12 step recovery meeting, we read a section called “The Promises,” taken directly from Alcoholics Anonymous. In my first few weeks of recovery, I yearned and prayed for these to be real. I held on to these promises as a life preserver in my depth of shame and uncertainty of the future. Mostly though, I was afraid they wouldn’t be true for me. That I wouldn’t be able to be changed.

I wrestled most of my life with the question of why God wouldn’t take these flaws and sins out of my life since I had sought Him out as my savior. I didn’t get why He didn’t just change me. This was the source of one of my excuses for turning from God and turning more to myself. Maybe it was just an excuse for my behavior. Maybe it was justification for me to explain my real powerlessness. Still, I held on tight to the promises in each meeting and every day as I held on tight in recovery, trying not to drown.

I have been in recovery now for a few months if I am rigorously honest. One of the leaders at a recent meeting told the group that if he wasn’t actively working recovery, he wasn’t in recovery. I agree. That’s how I define recovery for me. So I am in recovery and actively working my recovery plan of meetings, step work, meeting with my sponsor and accountability partners, check ins with my wife. Trying to continue to add in parts to my life to replace the time and thought and effort I used to spend in my addiction.

I was at a meeting recently, a smaller one which I like, and I noticed something very obvious to me in retrospect. Two of the guys who entered recovery not too long after me were….different. I didn’t see it immediately. I don’t know exactly when it happened. But I knew that with absolute certainty. They were not the same. Either of them. It was as if the entire time I had known them in recovery that they had just adopted a posture of defeat and despair and then suddenly, they looked completely different. I don’t believe in “auras” or any of that new age garbage but their attitudes and countenances were different.

After the meeting, the three of us ended up alone in the small room together. So I asked them, what happened? Because you both have changed. They both responded with very similar answers, answers that mapped out exactly what was written in “The Promises.” Each related their experience of a new freedom and happiness, the new found willingness to own and tell their story to those who had earned the right to hear it, an ebbing of self pity and uselessness.

As I reflected on this conversation later, I started reviewing these promises to see if they had impacted my life. Specifically, what had others noticed that was different. I started just meditating on this to ask God to reveal to me where this had happened.

Later that same night, my wife and I were having a intimate conversation (I really love saying that and it being true) about what was going on in each of our hearts and minds. One part of these nightly conversations is that we each name one thing we love about our spouse. That night, she said the following:

“I love that you have compassion and care for your friends and that it is real. That’s something that is new.”

I guess the answer to am I changing is yes. All I could think of after she said that was the end of “The Promises” which asks: “Are these extravagant promises? We think not…”