A Door With Two Locks

I’ve attended addiction recovery programs for several years now, and while there are many consistent themes in each man’s story, each is also unique. Some come to recovery for the first time while still a teenager, some after having had a child or two, and some well into their retirement. Some experience a miraculous change of heart and stop acting out all at once, some have a gradual improvement over the years, and some continue to struggle for the rest of their lives. Even in the same person, not every addiction plays out the same way.

That’s the case for me. After twenty years in a pornography addiction, I finally shone a light on my shame and started to really work on my recovery. Instantaneously, pornography took a backseat in my life. Yes, there continues to be daily temptation and surrender, and at one point I had two brief relapses, but this area of my life has felt permanently different from what it used to be.

But my addiction to food? That’s a fight I’m fighting just as hard as ever, with almost no changes from before and after I began my recovery journey. I might just recently be starting to see some progress on this front, but if so, it has been a much longer and more varied path than the one to sexual sobriety.

There are a series of questions, all the same at their core, that I have repeatedly asked when trying to make sense of how I could succeed in one arena, yet persistently fail in another. What am I missing? Am I not surrendering correctly? Am I not trying hard enough? Is there a childhood trauma I still need to uncover? What do I need to do?!

Well, I’ve come to realize that these questions may have already received their answer 2000 years ago in a story of Jesus and his disciples.

And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?
Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.
And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.
John 9:2-3, 7

There was nothing that any person had to change to make this man able to see. He was, apparently, already worthy of being healed. All that the man needed was for the time to be right that “the works of God should be made manifest in him.”

I like to think of sobriety as a door with two locks on it. We have one of the keys, and we turn it by being willing to be changed, no matter the personal cost. Once we turn our lock, that’s great! We have done our part. The door still won’t open until the Lord turns His, though, and sometimes He doesn’t do that just as soon as we’ve turned ours.

On the other hand, it’s entirely possible for things to work the opposite way. God might have already turned His key, but we’re just not being honest about whether or not we’ve turned our own.

This was the case for me with pornography. I genuinely believe that the reason I experienced such an immediate improvement once I started recovery was because God had already been ready to heal me for years, but I hadn’t been ready to be healed. For more than a decade my conscience kept telling me the same thing over and over: You have to tell someone about this. You have to make a confession. You have to stop living a lie….You have to turn your key. And for years I kept refusing, even while continuing to pray for deliverance.

Jesus was already telling me, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam,” and I was saying, “How about another option?”

When I finally stopped trying to find another way, made my confession, and turned the key to my lock, the door swung right open.

So now I have to take a hard and honest look at my addiction to food, and see in my heart what the situation is there. Am I sincerely ready to be healed? Am I just waiting for the works of God to be made manifest in me? Or, is God already waiting to heal me, and I’m just ignoring the step He’s laid out for me?

Whether God is telling me what action I must take to receive His healing, or He is telling me to just wait, I have an instruction that requires faith and humble submission. And then, if I do faithfully submit, it will all lead to healing in the end.

By Abe, Writing Team