The title says it all: “Pray, Read and Write When I Don’t Really Want To”
Why don’t I want to pray, read and write today?
I think part of it is because I had a bad dream. I was at a party or something with Becky and there were a bunch of other people there: high school acquaintances, friends, etc. We were all talking and having fun, but then I came to a table and Becky was telling them all about my online affair.
Just hearing about it again made me sick.
Just watching her tell the story again made me sick.
Just remembering how far lost I was again made me sick.
I think this is one of the reasons I don’t want to pray, read and write – self-pity or isolation or shame for what I’ve done in the past.
I think another reason could be that I feel like there are many things to do and I don’t know where to start.
I made a new list in Wunderlist today titled, “Top 3 Things I Don’t Want to Do Today.” I shared it with Becky for fun.
I feel that, if I can get those things done FIRST, then other things will seem less stressful.
So, I just prayed. It was short and sweet and to the point, but I feel good about that.
And I’m writing: writing about how I’m feeling, writing about what I have to get done, and writing about recovery.
Things I Have To Get Done Today
- Call with Steve Hannett
- Bid for Steve Hannett
- Email to URedZone about Jquery (see Devin’s texts)
- To Do review for URedZone
- HSciences project scope
- Research why NWOUT isn’t aligned properly
- Find out why MTP isn’t working with Thrive
- Finalize Karen P PPC and get it started
- Close UCR project in UW
- Get UCR live on new server (make sure all content is transferred over properly)
- Get a great theme for Eric and get that started
- Absolute Air work
- Call Mike Shelton
- Experts section finished
- Meet the team section
So those are a few things that come to mind.
I also need to deposit checks.
I also need to call Karen Pool back about her website for her daughter. – DONE
Now some spiritual nutrition…
I read some in the SA book this morning and a few things really stuck out to me. Here’s what they were:
God doesn’t want to remove from me the possibility of falling; he want me to have the freedom to choose not to fall.
I really liked this. This life is the time to prepare to meet God. He wants me to exercise both gifts He gave when He sent me here: a body and agency. How ironic that they are both so closely tied to my addiction, and how even more ironic that Satan doesn’t really have either of them any more – he lost them due to his poor choices.
Does Satan have agency? I would say not at this point. He’s so tied up in his own addictions to pride, power, and authority that he’s entrapped himself in his own chains.
To win, I had to surrender and admit defeat.
This was exactly how I felt as I did a full disclosure and determined to rid my life of the pain, shame, and disappointment I was causing myself and those closest to me.
We have to suffer to get well.
I’ve suffered, but I feel I’ve caused more suffering than I could have ever imagined. What a terrible way to go through life. I’m grateful that today, I don’t feel the suffering.
I became as a child, teachable, having to reject my way of doing and thinking for a new way of life based on surrender of my will to God.
This reminds me of Mosiah 3:19:
“The natural man is an enemy to God and has been since the fall of Adam, and will be forever and ever, unless he puteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the Atonement of Christ, and becometh as a child…” or something like that.
My continuing freedom is based on my attitude; if it isn’t open to the grace of God and others I’m in big trouble.
For me the key was finally giving up all expectation of either sex or affection, and working on myself and my defective relations with others.
I really like this – giving up the expectations for sex and affection. I don’t deserve anything. Sex is only optional and is a way to emotionally and then physically connect. If I’m not connected to God, I won’t connect very easily to Becky. And if I’m not emotionally connected to Becky, sex becomes and objectification and form of lust – not a healthy connection, more selfish.
He could not cope either with his own emotions or with life in the big world out there, and was constantly running. Running to satisfy demands and lusts that could never be satisfied.
…baffled by what addiction really is. It seems the more we know, the more there is to know.
Living inside our illness, we were blind to it. In recovery, the addiction begins to lose its hold over us, but it is necessary that we never forget what we really are.
I love this too – I can never forget who I am and where I’ve been. I don’t need to dwell on it, but I have an addiction that only God can help me battle.
Sobriety involves a new and unfamiliar way of life…
This is the new normal.
Without the drug, we begin to feel what’s really going on inside.
Feeling has come back. I can recognize what I’m feeling and it feels good to be aware.
…others who have gone before us have discovered that sex is truly optional, once they surrendered lust and the expectation of sex.
…there is life after lust! And life after sex!
More remotely identifiable triggers are such things as feelings of loneliness, alienation, world-weariness, boredom, isolation, “the lonely crowd,” and other manifestations of unfulfilled God-hunger.
The unfulfilled God-hunger is a big trigger for me. If I don’t connect with God, or make efforts to do so, I’m white-knuckling it on my own and I know from sad experience how that will end up.
At first, [addiction] is a pleasurable way to cope with our inner conflict or stress or pain that seems intolerable.
It is almost impossible to pinpoint exactly when, how, or why our practice becomes addictive. Eventually, the process takes on a life of its own, often unrelated to the initial causes.
We become unwilling and finally unable to see the truth about ourselves.
That’s quite a lot I got from the reading today, but much of it really stood out to me in thinking about what I’m going to write to my parents about boundaries and living in the new normal.
I’m grateful for the writing and study today.
I look forward to another day in recovery.
Hasta luego!
Nate
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