Relapse

My kids have been struggling with their behavior lately so my wife made a behavior sticker chart for them. The idea is to motivate my kids to exhibit positive and uplifting behavior by giving them a sticker for each moment of goodness they create, and once they get enough stickers they get to choose a prize. For example, despite my flawless parenting, my daughter has a hard time listening to instructions. When we try to give instructions she will start to sing a song, ignore us, or run away. Our solution to this problem is to reward her with a star sticker when she listens and follows through with whatever it is we are asking of her. When she earns enough star stickers she gets a toy unicorn, of course.

Last week she had an amazing day. She was full of smiles, had open ears to everything we said, and was simply a joy to be around. Over the course of a few hours that evening she was able to earn 4 stars! She was ecstatic and the happiness on her face was unmistakable.

Then, the next day she forcefully pulled the rug out from under us as her 3-year-old tantrums kicked in. I was in shock at how well and for how long she could ignore me. My frustration peaked and I almost said, “I’m going to take away all of your stickers if you keep acting like this!” Right before the words came out of my mouth, I felt God tell me, “What about all of the progress she has made? Have I taken away your stickers when you made mistakes?” That hit home and my frustration melted away. How could I discount her progress? Those stickers on her chart are evidence that she has made good decisions that have brought her closer to her goal. This experience with my daughter took me a while to understand and even longer to connect to my own journey.

Children must sometimes be parented in this merit-based way and I have assumed that God was parenting me in the same way. I have often thought that God would take everything away from me if I made one more mistake. If I relapsed one more time then I would not only be out of His reach, but I would be kicked down the stairway to heaven to start all over again. This has been an agreement and a core belief I’ve had for most of my life. And what better time does the great liar have to reinforce this way of thinking than right after I relapse - just as I was about to do when my daughter turned back to her tantrums?

Fortunately for me and my family, I have learned that this is not true. God does not withdraw His love, His mercy, His passion, or His grace when I mess up. There is no stairway to heaven that I can climb by checking another box or moving onto the next step. God wants to be with me, He is on my team. Would God really leave during this crucial time? No, He does not leave. He does not give up. Surely, He does not take away my stickers.

I know relapse is not something I should let occur frequently or even be comfortable with. I know it can be the catalyst for a deepening of my addiction if I don’t appropriately address it. However, I have come to accept the reality of relapse and know its place in recovery. I know that God does not turn from me. I know that my progress in recovery does not restart upon relapse, but that instead it can be a place to learn. I can see where I went wrong. I can see what strategies did or did not work. I can stay in a healthy area of recovery as I choose God’s love over the lies that await in the dark corner behind me. My perfect Father has no intention of taking away my star stickers. My Savior has shown me a better path, a mightier goal to reach, and a clearer perspective on my journey in recovery.

By Adam, Guest Writer

Struggling with Change

In my recent post, “Love that Changes”, I grappled with the statement “Love that doesn’t try to change you, changes you.” (author-unknown). I concluded with the idea that God’s love may be like a bonfire in that it changes me without coercion. His love is not bound by the need for my transformation yet still manages to change me. If this is true, then I could also conclude that the only way I can remain unchanged is to keep my distance from Him, but this hasn’t exactly been my experience. It seems there’s still a missing piece to this puzzle.

There are behaviors and aspects of my character that I would like changed. After decades of trying a mix of prayer and self-help to make these changes a reality, I’ve come to a point where I have to admit that I must be doing something wrong. It’s not that I haven’t seen any success. In fact, I once experienced and now live a miracle: years ago, God healed me of my decades-long pornography addiction in a single moment. I wish I had journaled a little better back then because it’s clear that something was different.

Going back to the conclusions from my previous post, I could believe that I must have gotten closer to God at that point than I have gotten since. That’s not the case though. I’m closer to Him today than I’ve ever been. So I’m left wondering why, in such proximity to the Love that changes, these other behaviors and character weaknesses are not changing.

A lot of prayer and pondering has left me with one idea: I don’t want it desperately enough. Just prior to the aforementioned miracle, I could visualize what life without porn would look like and I wanted it as bad as a drowning man wants air. I had also come into possession of a measure of belief that God could make the change. One day as I entered an intersection on my commute home, I ventured to ask God to ‘help my unbelief’ and then asked for healing. I rolled out of the intersection in tears because I knew it had happened. I had felt it happen.

I don’t currently want any change as badly as I wanted that change. And if I’m honest, I’m a little terrified of the possibility of these changes. I think it may be because I can’t yet visualize life without these crutches and the safety they provide. I have to wonder if these fears aren’t overpowering my desire for change and shielding me from the transforming warmth of God’s love.

And so, I’m left with an understanding of the bonfire of God’s Love that changes without coercion and also of its patience and willingness to wait until it has burned enough vision and desire into my heart. I commit with a little hopeful curiosity to being more open to this.

By Ty, Writing Team

Commandments vs Shame

There is a particular conundrum that has troubled me all my life. On the one hand, I believe that God fiercely and lovingly calls me to be better. Because He cares for me, and wants me to have a fullness of joy, He invites me to step out of my baser self, inspiring and motivating me to become the sort of man that I can be proud of. Part of Him calling me into that higher place is the giving of His commandments, which I truly believe in my head are a sign of His love.

On the other hand, I still struggle to get that conviction down into my heart. When I am reminded of all the commandments, and particularly the ones that I’m not doing so great at, I can’t help but have a great upwelling of shame and resentment. In that moment the commandments don’t feel like a balm of love at all, they feel like a stick of punishment. Perhaps it is due to the way that I was raised. I don’t have any memories of being told, “I love you so much, and I don’t want this behavior for you because I know it will hurt you.” I heard things that sounded more like, “How could you even do that?! That’s so disgusting! It’s so beneath you!”

The result: I feel like I am caught between a false choice. If you’ll excuse the mixed metaphors, on the one hand I can take God’s commandments and the shame of not living up to them together, which is like eating a cupcake with a razor blade in it, or I can discard them both, which is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

For a long time, I didn’t even know that this was a false choice, because I didn’t know there was a third option until I became immersed in my therapy group, 12-step meetings, and spiritual retreats with Warrior Heart. In these places I found the elusive union of commandments and love that I had been starved for. I found brotherhoods of broken men who were very real about wanting to be better men, but who strove for it with encouragement and connection instead of disparagement and abandonment. In these brotherhoods shame only made an appearance when it was being laid to rest, and transformational change actually seemed like a joyful thing, even something fun!

But while I’ve seen that there’s a better way, I don’t stay in that message at all times. When I go back home I start slipping back into my old mindset of commandments=shame. I set goals for how to step further into the life God has for me, I fall short on those goals, and I feel ashamed for not measuring up.

Jesus promised us that he would put within us a “well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:14), which sounds to me like having a constant connection to the love of God. Jesus even said that those he gave access to this water would “never thirst again,” so why do I find myself getting thirsty again all the time?

I don’t know that this is the full answer, but the last time I read these promises of Jesus I noticed he never said that the establishment of this constant nourishment would happen in an instant. Out in nature, rivers do not burst forth all-at-once in full force. First there are little creeks that twist and turn around every bend and obstacle. The creeks combine into medium-sized streams that babble happily over small rocks that once would have stood in the way. Streams, in turn, merge into full-sized rivers, strong and purposeful, that carve the very earth to accommodate their passage. Maybe Jesus has put a little creek in me, and I’m still finding my way to the stream, the river, and the deeper seas that lay beyond. That’s alright. I can just allow myself to be part of the flow, winding back-and-forth around the obstacles that I can’t pass over yet, staying with the trickle to see where it takes me. Maybe just by learning to go with God’s flow I’ll already be adding a few more drops of water to my channel.

By Abe, Writing Team