Dear Sponsee,
My heart goes out to you as you work your first step inventory, and at the same time, I am excited for you as you now get to experience a deeper distance from your past. Please do a lot of self-care through this time – prayer and scriptures and eating healthy etc. This is a very important step. Two things came as a result of this step for me ….First, I saw more clearly how lust had led me to do things that were amazingly dark and destructive and shameful. This helped me get a very healthy respect the power of lust could have over me and how much I did not want to take the first steps into giving it any power going forward. Second, it had the amazingly paradoxical effect of helping me be free from an underlying shame that was making me vulnerable to relapse. I had shared my very worst with a faithful witness who understood the cunning, baffling, powerful nature of lust. I could now stand on equal footing with any man, and not feel somewhere in me I had some secret that I was hiding. All had come to the light already.
Don’t write with shame or triggers, when this happens, step back and see this process as though you were observing history from a place of self-acceptance for who you are today and compassion for who you were then.
I am glad you are willing to do this difficult work. Recovering men do what those who aren’t recovering are unwilling to do.
