Seeking God? My journey

I noticed that a lot of people click on my blog because they’re spiritually seeking, and not just interested in addiction and relationship issues. So I thought I’d post a little bit about my story.

I came from a pretty secular background. My parents are not Christians, though my mum is a bit New-Agey. My dad is not interested at all, really. I always had a vague belief in God, though at times I’d have called myself agnostic.

My interest in God was really triggered when I read a book called, ‘Women who love too much’ by Robin Norwood. This book is about women who are always in negative relationships where they are hurt. I think the back of the book says something like, ‘if being in love means being in pain, this book is for you’. But the key as relates to this post was a short comment in the book, that those who recover from this kind of problem nearly always had a spiritual aspect to their life.

So I started searching. I read books on buddhism, for example those written by the Dalai Lama. I read the Koran. I read vague books about spirituality from a New Age perspective, like the Celestine Prophecy. I read the New Testament. The latter is what really interested me – the person of Jesus. But I didn’t like what I thought I knew about Christianity.

I started attending a local church which was quite liberal. I started to read books by liberal Christians. there was just something about Jesus that drew me to him, and a sense of God’s presence in church meetings. Gradually, my interest in and commitment to Jesus won over my prejudice about the church, and now I’d call myself a Christian. It was a long slow process though. I’m very grateful for God’s love in my life and how much I have been made emotionally and spiritually richer through my faith.

I think being religious brings loads of advantages to people who are doing the 12 steps. There is a concept of who God is, rather than just who you think God is. There are clear guidelines about what and how you should love. There is structure and direction. Most of all, for me, there is Jesus, and my living relationship with Him. I know it’s unfashionable to be Christian, but I’d really suggest that people explore it rather than go on the negative stuff that can come out of churches sometimes. It’s been a real blessing to me.

Helpful books for your first relationship in recovery

I suspect I’ll be adding to this post as I continue to try to help myself with reading material. When single in the first two years of recovery, I’d been reading stuff related to finding peace as a single person. So suddenly to find myself in a relationship and struggling, I started looking around for help.

Of course the Bible has been helpful, although I have been beating myself over the head with it a bit recently.

‘Facing love addiction’ by Pia Mellody is very helpful by being quite focused on recovery while in a relationship, rather than recovering from the ending of a relationship. It talks about the dynamics between a love addict and a love avoidant, and offers helpful advice on how to work towards more healthy relating. It’s a bit tricky if your partner is not in recovery though, I suspect the suggestions would be most helpful if you were working on it together.

I found the ‘S-anon’ basic text really helpful. It and the Al-anon ‘Courage to change’ book are focused on being in relationships and staying in them, and help you focus on yourself rather than the faults of the other.

Boundaries by Henry Cloud and John Townsend is also good, although the type of boundaries it talks about are quite limited, and I’m not sure it was all directly applicable to my situation.

What is our true self?

I’ve been pondering this question, because I realise that my partner can be very different, depending on who he’s with. I know I used to be, before recovery and before God. But what about now? How do I know I’m being my true self?

I’m reading a book by Leanne Payne, ‘The healing presence; healing in your broken places, living in God’s love’. I’ve not got that far but she talks a lot about false selves; the self that tries to please others rather than be true to ourselves and to God. She talks about the presence of God being the healer. I certainly believe this. I’m still negotiating the way though, still stumbling along as I aim to be true to myself and surrendered to God’s love. Now that I have more distance in the relationship, I’m feeling more connected to God, perhaps because there is less self-protection needed.

Relationships in recovery

OK so I’ve not posted on here for a little while. The main reason is that I’ve been in a relationship, the first in recovery.

Wow, any illusions I had that it would all be easy have long gone. It’s been hard. Is this because the relationship isn’t right? What does God want me to do? How do I cope with boundaries? I don’t have answers to these questions yet, and I’m not sure I will. I’m learning that part of handing over my will is to accept that I will not have answers to all my questions.

For others in the same position, I’d recommend Pia Mellody’s books, especially ‘The intimacy factor’ and ‘facing love addiction’. I re-read the latter and it became much more real while in a relationship. I also discovered, I’m an avoidant more than I’m an addict.

I’m also finding that Al-anon and S-anon is sometimes more helpful for me at the moment than SLAA, with the focus on how to have healthy relationships and handle other people’s imperfections.

God’s will and step 3: I want a husband

This is a big one for me and particularly in my love addiction, I was seeking a man to ‘fix’ me. However when I used to pray and pray for a husband, I found that God was gradually leading me in the direction that eventually showed me what the obstacles are that prevented me from having an intimate relationship that is healthy and genuinely loving. I have become more and more aware of these barriers, and have had some difficulty with the idea of opening up and even committing at all. But I needed a long time to work through difficulties and become aware of what needs to be done. So it is no surprise that I have not had my earlier prayers answered about a husband – God loved me too much to let me make what would have been a mistake at the time. Instead he is helping me prepare for possibly being ready in the future. But now I trust God enough that if a husband never arrives, I feel confident enough that this is for a good purpose and that God knows better what I need than I know myself.

As a postscript, I found that I was looking for a guy to satisfy longings that can only be satisfied in God.

God’s will and step 3: I’ve had an argument with my boss

As I said yesterday, I’m going to give some examples of how I work step 3 out in my life. I’d be interested to hear how others do theirs.

I argued with my boss the other day. It’s a disagreement about a point so fundamental that I could lose my job over it. I did some step 10 work to look for how my character flaws were affecting the situation… however I was also worrying about the implications of what happened. I felt anxious and my mind was racing. When I drilled down, there were a number of things that bothered me. One was that I could lose a job of some kind of status, and what would my friends think? What would I do for money? What about coming to the city where I have my fellowship meetings – I might not be able to do that anymore? What if people at work now think I’m really difficult and awful and don’t like me?

Well a lot of this is plain old anxiety. However when we have fully done step 3 (handing our will over to God) – or if we are wishing to work it in our lives – then I must give these concerns over to God. To respond to the worries in my head, I might say to myself: Having a high status job might not be good for me spiritually, I’ll have to trust that God knows what he’s doing as to what sort of job I have, and if I have to leave that’s the right thing. Also, this argument could this might be about my own pride and ego. In reality, my friends won’t mind – and I’d rather care more about what God thinks than worry about what others think. My income may change, but God says He will provide what I need if I seek the Kingdom – that’s a promise in the Bible. I can go to other fellowship meetings if absolutely necessary. I can also pray and ask God what the right thing to do is, and seek His will, and ensure I’m keeping myself accountable, not causing harm and not holding onto resentments.

Basically, the whole situation is either something that God can take care of, or something that God is doing for a good reason, or my worries are based on character flaws and therefore I need to ask God to remove them.

What is handing our will over to God? (Step 3)

Before I was in recovery, I didn’t know what trusting God meant. I’d hear irritating suggestions from people such as ‘you need to have more faith’ and ‘God will give you the desires of your heart’, which seemed to dismiss my feelings and imply that I was doing something wrong. Well in some ways they were right, but what they didn’t tell me is that the root of all of this – and the serenity of 12 step programs – comes from trusting God.

I’m not sure I really knew what trust was in any case. Significant others had rarely been trustworthy in my life, and I’d not let friends in deep enough to trust them. The men I’d chosen to be romantically involved with were deeply troubled and certainly not trustworthy. I spent my whole life hiding my real self from others and depending on my own abilities for all my needs. This hadn’t got me very far, but I felt a lot safer. And as I chose not to respect myself and got hurt, my ability to trust lessened and lessened.

When I became a Christian the challenge was about believing whether or not God is there or not, and whether what it says in the Bible is true. This is important stuff, but rarely did I let the implications of what I believed affect my day to day life. OK so I started to try and not have sex with people and behave a bit nicer. However this didn’t really work as I still did these things despite my best efforts. I was a lot happier and felt I had meaning and direction in my life. But the fundamentals were not there, and my relationship with God was pretty superficial.

What changed was hitting rock bottom in a disastrous romantic relationship and coming into 12 step recovery. Finally I realised that I couldn’t go on as I was – it wasn’t getting better. I’d tried to make things right on my own steam, and failed. I became open and willing, and honest to people about the craziness in my head for the first time in my life.

When I got to step 3 I thought that I knew all about this. I knew about doing God’s will. There’s lots about it in the Bible. But in reality, I knew nothing. The starting point was making a decision to do God’s will, as the step says, and then daily praying for God’s will to be done and also the willingness to do this.

Step 3 for me is not worrying, but trusting that God will work in each part of my life and letting Him get on with it. It’s about wanting to do His will more than my own. It’s about letting go of all my hopes and dreams and instead asking God what He hopes and dreams for me. It’s about trust.

In the next couple of days, I’m gonna do some posts with some practical examples of what handing my will over to God was like for me. Before recovery, I couldn’t really comprehend what letting someone else care for me was all about. I am helped with practical examples of these kinds of abstract concepts, so I hope these will help you too.

Raquel Welch criticises porn-obsessed culture

I just read an interesting interview with the very beautiful, and much objectified, Raquel Welch. She’s saying that our society is too obsessed with sex, and that porn is to blame. She says: ” I think we’ve gotten to the point in our culture where we’re all sex addicts, literally.”

You can read it at: http://www.menshealth.com/best-life/raquel-welch/page/3#ixzz1pCvrnYsZ

I think the obsession with sex in society is so bad now, that more people will start to speak out about it. For many people it’s almost as if all they have in their life is sex, lust and being desired. It’s an empty life.

Real love is so much better. It doesn’t depend on how attractive you are, or how much ‘expertise’ you have. It doesn’t depend on whether you’re in good mood that morning or if you’ve got enough energy.

The sad thing is that ‘love’ in our culture is a term that’s usually used for lust – the excitement of romance and the thrill of the chase. That’s no substitute for the real thing, either.

The real thing is available to us from God, and it’s so vastly superior to the counterfeit forms of romance and sex. Why don’t we choose to accept it?

Beautiful song

I love Tenth Avenue North. Their lyrics are really deep and help me connect to God when I’m feeling pain. I particularly love this one, which has a beautiful video too:

If the embed isn’t working try http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J95rAr0gOFU

Can you be addicted to sex and ‘love’?

There has been some debate over whether you can be addicted to activities such as sex. The doubts come from different angles, from the idea that calling something addiction means that you’re not taking responsibility for your actions, to the idea that our culture is over-sexed which has led to us inventing the term.

There’s been some shift in the people that know; the ASAM for example: http://bit.ly/yVchvg

In my experience, addiction is when you try to stop and you can’t. Then you really try and stop, and you still can’t. And so on. That’s the first step of the twelve steps – admitting that you’re powerless.

I was like this with cigarettes. I tried to stop time after time, and couldn’t do it. I was not like this with alcohol. I used it in a really unhealthy way, but I didn’t try and stop, and didn’t really want to stop. I used it less and now I just get the occasional desire to drink – not very often. I could take it or leave it, even when I was taking an awful lot of it.

With sex and love, my behaviour was like the fags. I couldn’t stop, and I couldn’t change. I was constantly obsessed with finding a lover, or a boyfriend, or just getting attention. I tried everything to stop it. I tried to swear off men for a while. I tried to not have sex. I tried to date but not have sex. I tried therapy. I tried women, even though I’m hardly attracted to them. It was hopeless. My disease went inside my head, and instead of acting out, I would do it all in fantasy, which seemed to be a lot safer. But eventually I would want to act out in the flesh and it would be incredibly painful. All of this was driven by an intense desire for love. Yet nothing that I was using for this purpose had any hope of giving me love. I was running around looking for love yet avoiding the very places where I could receive it. It was total insanity.

Someone once said to me, ‘this fellowship isn’t really an addiction, it’s just the sort of thing most people have to deal with’. Except the people who are addicted to sex and love know that they are different. It is an intense, painful, devastating addiction that ruins lives and destroys families. It is cunning, baffling, and powerful.

But it can be stopped, one day at a time.