What it means to live Unafraid and Unashamed

Yesterday I was feeling restless. I had anxiety about a number of things including my career, family, and societal contribution.

I reached out to my daily accountability partner via text to put words to my emotions. Then I decided to attend an online 12 Step Meeting. A few minutes into the meeting the inspiration came very strong to immediately hang up and call a former sponsor.

I had no idea he was going through very significant stressful struggles in his family life. We talked and mourned what he was going through.

Recovery isn’t a continual path of ease in the sense that all things are easily surmounted by faith, like a cheat code in a video game. Instead, I’ve found God needs me to live Unashamed and Unafraid of my past so that I can be open and vulnerable and present. Emotionally connected. Confident that recovery “works when I work it”. Because instead of wallowing in my self pity yesterday, I was able to sit in another’s pain.

Living a life Unashamed and Unafraid started for me with sharing my story on this podcast. It continued with me sharing my episode with my local Church group, family, and friends. Dismantling the pose of supposed perfection I had worn as a mask, I now lead with vulnerability and honesty.

For each of us the journey of how we live Unashamed and Unafraid will be different, but what unites us is the cause, the driving desire to live a life free of a secretive dark past. A focus on forward progress over pretended perfection.

What no one warned me about is that in recovery I would learn how to not only confront my own traumas, but to be able to lift others burdens as I mourn with them.

… Okay, I guess Christ did warn us of that but I somehow missed how much depth and beauty, sorrow and sadness, hope and humility the grieving process for myself and others would bring.

To be Christian is to be like Christ. To shoulder up alongside Him for my own healing and to have Him use me to help others just as others have delivered me from dark times indeed.

Statistically, many of us have abandoned any New Year’s resolutions if we even made any. But I invite us all to continue the charge to be Unashamed and Unafraid of our past. To be Unashamed and Unafraid of living our lives out loud, proclaiming our healing in the wings of Christ who has restored our souls. And to reach up and then reach out and help those around us.

By Pete, Writing Team

A framework for safe conversations

In the recent podcast “Live Unashamed - Navigating 'The Talk' with Friends,” Chris, Steve, and Sam discuss the complexities of talking about recovery from unwanted sexual behavior with friends and family. During the discussion, Sam shared a quote from Timothy J. Keller that resonated with me:

“To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God.” - Timothy J. Keller

This quote captures the essence of the recovery groups I attend, where being both fully known and fully loved is often a lived experience. Unlike typical conversations with friends or family, these recovery groups benefit from a structured framework of safety that is established and read at every meeting. This framework establishes the meeting as a safe place to take off our masks and authentically share our struggles.

The Safety Framework

A framework that successfully creates this kind of environment includes several elements. One key principle is the acknowledgment that life is a battle for all of us. Though starved for good, strong men, our world can seem determined to stand in our way. We struggle under mounting responsibilities, expectations, and forces that leave us bewildered, hopeless, isolated, and angry. All this while facing pressure to hide our struggles, mask our genuine selves, and escape into endless options for distraction that threaten to take down the best of us.

However, this recognition of life’s challenges must be paired with a strong element of hope. In recovery groups, there’s a shared belief that in a strong, safe brotherhood where God is present, we can find footing, strength, hope, peace, and progress. God is considered a friend and our primary source of acceptance, validation, healing, and change.

Other essential elements include valuing authenticity, encouraging one another, celebrating progress, and refraining from judgment or elitism. Anonymity is sacred, preaching is avoided, and disagreements are met with connection rather than division. Above all, these groups cultivate an environment where vulnerability is met with compassion rather than criticism.

Applying the Framework to Conversations

Getting back to the podcast and the discussion on the complexities of recovery conversations with friends and family, I’ve started to wonder whether some of the elements of the safety framework described above could transform these conversations as well. While it might feel unusual, consider an approach like this:

“I’d like to share something personal with you. Before I do, can I suggest that we approach the conversation with the understanding that life is difficult and that sometimes we don’t respond as our best selves? But that there’s hope for all of us when we’re among good friends and a loving God? Could we also agree to keep this confidential?”

An opening like this could establish a framework in which the conversation could be had in safety.

Becoming a Safe Place

As a final thought, people tend to have an innate sense of who they can trust and where they’ll be safe. When someone lives their life within a framework like the one described above, others often sense it. My hope is that by adopting such a framework in all of my conversations, I can be one of those people and end up making a difference in the life of someone who needs a safe place to talk.

By Ty, Writing Team

Changing the Marriage Relationship After Addiction

We addicts don’t tend to be messed up in just one aspect of our lives. It’s not like we’re just perfectly healthy people in every way except for that one isolated problem. Rather, we tend to be fundamentally flawed people, with a crack at the base that fractures and compromises us all the way through.

One common failing for many addicts is in their relationships with other people, including the spouse. In what way the marriage relationship is flawed varies from addict to addict, but for me it came in the form of abdicating all authority to my wife.

As I think back to my old approach to marriage, I think I just didn’t want to be responsible if things went wrong. If I never had the final say in anything, then nothing could ever be my fault. And so, even in matters that I felt very strongly about, I would downplay any personal opinions and just defer to her judgment.

Of course, I dressed it up very nicely. I told myself that I was just a really nice, really agreeable guy. I was self-sacrificing, unfazed by disappointment, always making sure everyone else was getting what they wanted. In reality, though, I was building up resentments, putting undue stress on my wife, and undercutting my own power. It wasn’t a good way to be.

As I dove into addiction recovery, I started to recognize this unhealthy pattern for what it was, and I knew it had to change. I realized that I wanted to grow up. I wanted my opinions to be taken seriously. I wanted to have the deciding voice on the choices that rightfully belonged to me. I wanted enough space and grace to make and learn from my own mistakes.

Now I’d like to say that my wife and I made this transition immediately and there was no drama whatsoever…but that would be a lie.

Making this change was actually very difficult and conflicted. Since I was so inexperienced in sticking to my guns, there was a lot of trial and error in finding the right tone when I did so. I’d lurch from spineless simp to fire-and-damnation persecutor, creating a lot of unnecessary tension. Meanwhile, years of experience had taught my wife that I would back down on any disagreement if she just turned up the pressure, so things would escalate even further.

At first I blamed my wife for a lot of the difficulty in making this transition to a balanced relationship. As I thought about it, though, I realized that a large part of why she expected me to adapt to her whims was because I had conditioned her to do exactly that. From the very start of our relationship, I had demonstrated to her that I didn’t want her to take my feelings seriously. So now she was experiencing the whiplash of me being angry at her for doing the very things that I had been asking her to do for years!

When I realized that, I concluded that I carried at least half of the responsibility for what the relationship was, and for why we were having a hard time in changing it. Of course, none of that changed the fact that I still wanted to make that change, but it gave me greater empathy and patience as I took ownership for my part of the problem.

Gradually, my wife and I settled into a new dynamic. I learned that it was possible to hold my ground in a way that was calm and confident. By doing that consistently and peacefully, my wife and I naturally reoriented ourselves to one another.

Changing the relationship was like wading out into the middle of a riverbed. At first, your new presence seems to be an intolerable disturbance to the already established flow, with the water violently sloshing and trying to knock you down so that it can continue undisturbed. But if you find your place and stand still, the river will soon develop a new cadence that takes your presence into account. The trick is to not be so discouraged by the momentary chaos that you quit before peace reestablishes itself. You can have a better relationship than you’ve ever had before, just by consistently showing up as the new you.

By Abe, Writing Team