addiction and recovery

honestly, i was preparedto lie until i was dead. if there was a sexual thing thatyou could pay for, i bought it. normal peopledon't get triggered to do immoral things20 different times on a five-mile trip to work. that's not normal,but that's my life. the one thing fromthe age of six that i swore i was never goingto do was ruin my marriage, and yet here i was doing it.

and i knew that ifi told the truth, that i would lose my marriagebecause the truth was going to wreck my marriage. it was going to hurt my childrenin ways that i would never be able to make restitution for. i was unfaithful to mywife and to my church and to my children. when my son turnedseven, i realized, "he's going to need tobe baptized at eight,"

and that was somethingthat i knew i couldn't do. and so i made thisstupid deal with myself that if i stoppedacting out for a year, that somehow that would beok, that it would be all right for me to baptize my son. i could just skip the confessionpart of the repentance process, and it would be ok. so that year i didbetter, mostly because i was self-medicating withlighter forms of pornography

to avoid actually engagingin sexual activity with other people. some people think thatsex addiction isn't real. and i ran my life into theground because i couldn't stop. i was in the showerlistening to a song, and i wasn't really thinkingabout anything in particular. but i was singingalong to the lyrics, and it said, "lights will guideyou home and ignite your bones, and i will try to fix you."

and the spirit just hitme, that all these years in my addiction i hadfelt like if i could just be honest, that i couldmaybe get some help and be able to change. but as long as i waslying, i was on my own and i could not stop. and it was like the lord wassaying, "if you can do this, i can make you a better man. i can change you."

so i called mybishop and i said, "i've been unfaithful tomy wife for several years, and i need your help." this was devastating to my wife. instead of filing fordivorce the next day, she just had me leave. step one is to admitthat you of yourself are powerless toovercome your addictions and that your life hasbecome unmanageable.

as an addict, you thinkthat "if i admit defeat, then what's left?" in recovery, that'sthe first step. once i started beinghonest--once i admitted that i really was powerless over myaddiction and that my life was unmanageable, that i couldn'tmanage it anymore--hope came pouring into my life. she would have me comehome from work long enough to put the kidsto bed every day.

my marriage was hangingby the finest of threads, and the fact that therewas a thread at all was a huge miracle. there's a sentence in theaddiction recovery manual. it says that "because of thelove and grace of the savior, you do not have to bewhat you have been." i'm here because the lordhas rescued me in a way that i don't even havethe words to describe. each one of us is madeof the same stuff.

and we have a fatherin heaven who loves us, and he wants to make us intothe people that we can become. and if we will turnour lives over to him, we can draw on all thepowers of heaven to change. and that's my testimony.