is it any wonder i'm so f*cked up?

welcome to my childhood...

The Playboy Club on Madmen...The View is Better From Up Here

have you ever had a salad served to you by a woman w/ a bunny tail glued to her ass? i have - 6 years old. they had one of these in my home town - it was a resort and my aunt was the head of catering. my father was a "key holder" - we had dinner there at least 3 times i can remember. six years old.

i was flipping through the channels last night - they just changed our cheap cable to include amc - i have watched the first 2 seasons of "mad men" as the time frame is totally my growing up years, but i missed season 3 - and didn't really want to watch 1/2 way into this season, but i couldn't turn the channel when this came on - i was instantly transported back to this horror. how could anyone think this was a good place to bring your wife & daughters? oh my stinkin' heck.

other than that life is good, celebrating 24 years of marriage w/ liam today.

have a good one! miss you all.

porn and conservatives

no surprise to me - when my political & religious views were so bound up tight i had a much bigger struggle with porn. through my recovery i have learned that having opinions that are so stringent made me so legalistic - the steam has to go somewhere - and with their horrible view on women this isn't a shocker.

New Scientist - Porn in the USA - Conservatives are the biggest consumers

via queer messages

fathers and daughters

neatorama had a link to an unusual article for them, they're usually fun facts, funny videos and interesting stories - this is something i wouldn't have found on my own, but followed the link and read the full article. while not a father i fully appreciated the author's dilemma - how to raise his new daughter in a world where she is valued and honored for far more than the media tells women they should be:

Best Life Magazine: Family & Fatherhood - Bimbo Proof the Nursery: How to be sure your daughter doesn't turn out like Lindsay Lohan, by Steve Almond

It’s here that my old Dude Self and my brand-new Dad Self come to blows. Because as much as I want to check out Paris and Lindsay, I know I’m harming my daughter by doing so. For one thing, I’m sending her a very clear message: Daddy loves sluts. Be a slut and Daddy will love you. And if you don’t believe that a 1-year-old picks up on messages, you’ve never seen my daughter in action. She is intensely focused on everything in her environment, especially whatever I happen to be looking at.

But even if I ogled Paris in private, I would still be contributing to the Culture of Paris, helping to shape a world in which young women win adulation for making porn videos and getting arrested, rather than for, say, curing cancer or brokering peace in the Middle East or being a mom. If we all stopped consuming celebrity scandals, they would cease to exist. If a media slut goes to jail and no one’s there to film the perp walk, does it really matter?

...

I want Josephine to grow up in a world where her ambitions will be about what she wants, not what the panting men of the world want from her. My daughter is not a commodity. Her heart can be broken. Her spirit can be wounded. And there is no accessory that can rescue her from these dangers.

this reminds me a lot of a post i wrote four years ago that still seems to find it's way into a lot of google searches: daddy's girl - an open letter to fathers of daughters

cancer in the body of christ

reading will's blog today i saw that ted haggard, the head of the national association of evangelicals is caught in the middle of a great and grand mess. god help him. true or not this again sheds light on the issue of pastoral struggles and the environment we have created for those who lead the church.

i blogged at the end of september on the church and porn. maybe i should have entitled it 'pastors and sex'? either way we have a HUGE mess on our hands and we need to begin again. the elephant is sitting square behind the pulpit and if we don't begin to dialog about this in new ways we will NEVER weed out this hidden behavior that is eating like a cancer in the body of christ.

please know i am not condemning ted haggard - there but for the grace of god go i. i pray that this is false, but the new acting sr. pastor at his church said (here) that some of the allegations made have been admitted to by haggard.

i don't see this as much as his failure, but the failure of the church. we have trained these men to be separated from their souls. the disconnect will wipe us out.

i know that when i was in the middle of my acting out in my sexual addiction that i was the most vitriolic and shaming of everyone around me. my own shame was so great that i had to keep throwing it outside of myself. those who are the most vocal in shaking their fingers in others faces many times are the ones that struggle the most deeply. i know it was true for me.

that is why telling out stories is where healing can be found. finding the safe place to share our fears, confess our sins and receive grace and healing is what truly will bring this back from the brink.

it truly is a cancer. and it's breaking god's heart. instead of portraying perfection, image and the bright shiny plastic jesus we need to return to the place where redemption is found. by bringing our stories into the light and allow those damaged places to find healing. we then become the 'wounded healer' nouwen writes so beautifully about.

cancer survivors are some of the most vibrant, enthusiastic souls. watching them minister to those currently going through treatment is like watching jesus himself. they know what it is like to be so afraid. be so sick. be so wounded and broken. real survivors make the best ministers. they never shame. they never wound. they are present and carry their story with them wherever they go.

the church needs a lot more survivors.

Glenn Beck - Porn: America's Addiction

CNN is running a four-part series starting yesterday (i missed it) featuring someone called Glenn Beck - i'm sorry, i'm not familiar with him, but i wanted to make those of you who struggle like it do with this. there are some video links and they are linking to patrick carnes - so this is amazing!

i think any light that can be shed on this is important - and if the mainstream media is starting to speak of sexual addiction i think that can only be a good thing.

here's the link:

Glenn Beck - CNN - Porn: America's Addiction

some good recovery links

here are some recovery links i didn't want to lose in the tidy:

sex help

xxx church

12 step prayers

recovery promises

overeaters anonymous

restoring the glory

antidote to lust?

pure intimacy

the emptiness i feel is not hunger - repost

i have been looking through old blog posts in preparation for the teaching time i get to give at church. i have wanted to say things for so long that narrowing it down to 'one thing' is difficult. i've been re-reading old posts to remind myself of what my burning passion really is. what is the 'one thing' i want people to walk away with?

while i was reading i came across this post - and not much has changed - so i needed to remind myself of things i had uncovered, recovered, and discovered again today. (oh, and i found out that i've been mis-counting my abstinence - i robbed myself of a whole year! i've been saying 5 1/2 years instead of 6 1/2 years!!) silly me!

up early, and pondering. i have been struggling with my food lately. haven't wanted to own it. i just so want to feel 'full'. i have a lot of triggers to this, loneliness, abandonment, unresolved issues, not being heard... but i just can't put my finger on why this need to feel full is being triggered so regularly.

when i'm at my best i'm eating 3 meals a day, one serving and allow myself a healthy snack. i can live well on that plan, i have for years. lately though i have gotten sloppy. i'm sure it hasn't helped that i moved my office to the room behind the kitchen. so i am constantly in visual range of the pantry and fridge. every time i write i have 'comfort' close by.

i know that opening up about it and sifting through it by writing is what i need to do, but i have been avoiding this because it means that when i do unlock the reason i will have the ability to stop. and i don't want to.

i'm not breaking my abstinence, but i am distorting it and ruining my serenity. instead of seeking silence or contemplative time i want to drown that out with chewing. i can be anything. baby carrots, microwave popcorn, anything. chewing makes me feel safe somehow. i hate that.

feeling full makes me feel even safer.

i hate that even more.

on october 14th, a day after my 39th birthday i will have maintained my abstinence for five years. 4 years and 12 days ago i had my last piece of birthday cake and awoke to one day at a time, step by step facing my issues and working my program. lately i am maintaining, but i've gotten really sloppy.

i know with addictions that it's never about the fix - it always goes deeper. it's not about the food, the chewing or even feeling full. it's about being empty. that hollow feeling terrifies me. when i picture myself empty i see a woman with a bird cage for a stomach, it's dark and full of cobwebs, the little birdie swing is empty, hanging there lonely. i look down into the cage where my heart and vital organs should be and i am a shell. there is nothing there. i can see past the bars of the cage at the back, but it is darkness, eerie darkness. there is a path, there is a wood, the only light comes from a small quarter moon. i echo. i am empty. i am afraid.

so i grab anything and try to stuff it in that cavern within me. it just drops out the bottom, it disappears. nothing fills it up, not things, not clothes, not food, not people. please, i know about the god shaped void. this is different. i don't know if it's about permanence or substance or emerging. i sometimes feel like i'm turned inside out. like the emergence has left me with my nerves all jangly on the outside of my body instead of the inside. i used to have all the answers, god was in a box and although i didn't like the answers it was neat and tidy.

all i know is that i've been trying to stuff this empty space full of food. it is familiar, it is comforting. it is soft. i know that sounds weird, but biting into something soft has been so comforting to me. i allow myself bread in my abstinence. i know that if i removed it from my diet that i would be better off. i don't do white bread (unless it is an occasional croissant or garlic bread, or pizza crust... see how sloppy i've gotten??). but i'm sure that if you video taped my first bite of soft bread it would look like the face of the junkie you see shooting heroin into his arm when the kick finally hits. it's not the taste, it's not even the chewing at that point. it's really about the feeling of that soft food in my mouth.

i have had oral fixations my whole life. because of the oral rape my mouth becomes my best friend, and my worst enemy. clenching my jaw locked (how i just realized i was when writing those words) became my defense against the world. that first bite of soft bread somehow makes the world feel like a safer place to be. i know it makes no sense, i know my thinking is so f*cked up here - but it's true, that's how it makes me feel.

i have lived 5 years without chocolate. i have no intention of having it this side of heaven. i'm okay with that now. but bread? oh bread has become that replacement. i am weeping, getting too close to the reasons. it hurts. it's scary, and i want to walk away. i want to change the subject.

how stupid is it that i've convinced myself that bread is going to solve my problems. make me feel whole, less empty or alone? communion always had a real, fluffy white loaf of bread. our communion service growing up was called 'the breaking of the bread'. two silver goblets filled with mogan david wine and soft chewy bread. how did something like that become my savior instead of jesus?

i know i'm all over the map here, just stream of consciousness thoughts linking together to weave through my thoughts of bread, of comfort. take eat, this is my body, broken for you. do this in remembrance of me until i come. what am i remembering. what am i linking to this feeling?

safety. security. warmth. my mother never baked a loaf of bread my whole life. this isn't a warm from the oven kind of moment. it's plastic wrapped wonder bread (btw - i jumped for joy to hear they were being forced into bankruptcy - wonder bread is the pornography of bread in my mind - no nutritional value whatsoever, and we wonder why our children weigh 100 lbs before they get out of 4th grade. my father brings wonder bread into my home and i abhor it. my children only get white bread at friend's houses.) sorry, tangent rant...

one of the things about reading other's blogs is that when someone says something so meaningful and important you honestly think you will remember it when you go to write on the subject. i don't, it all blurs together, and for my life i can't remember who wrote on emptiness, but it started me down this path. i even left a comment on their blog about how i equate the emptiness i feel with hunger. how that is so dangerous for me. i can't seem to tell the difference. it's like my brain lost that piece of equipment that can separate spiritual/social/emotional emptiness from hunger. i want it back. i know that there are tiny edges of it when my serenity is in place and i am living a clean, neat abstinence. but even then it's not nearly as strong as it is in 'normal' people.

i have used my time. i need to get my kids up and moving, ready for friday school. if you think of me today, please pray for me. i don't even know how to pray, or ask you to, but if something i wrote resonates with what you think i need, please ask god to bring that to me today. i don't want to be so sloppy. i want back what i have traded for feeling full. thank you.

patriarchy and pornography - part ii

stephanie has opened up a whole can of worms for me lately - her past two posts weight and gender and more gender questions are taking me places i haven't been wanting to go lately. i tried to respond on my other blog and found i couldn't be as honest under my 'real name' as i would have liked to be - so i set it aside. now i know i must face these issues. stuffing them, eating them and ignoring them aren't going to get me anywhere.

i have found many new plants to grow in that garden i spoke of (another garden metaphor...) on the grid blog for international womens day. i wrote:

patriarchy has planted and nurtured most of the plants in my garden. their roots go very deep. my hammer looks more like a machete some days - whacking away at the branches and leaves that overshadow everything else i try to plant. i can nurture it for a moment, for a small season, but then the well established roots catch up to me and i am left in the shadows again. too exhausted to care any more. too ashamed for even wanting this small life to grow on it's own.

the thought of a hammer makes me violent, smashing and crashing to release some of this deep, dark anger and rage i have against the machine. i realize it will make me no more than those who have made me this way. violence will solve nothing however tempting it would be to crush that which has wounded my very soul.

so, i am turning in my hammer for a plowshare to clear out these roots, once and for all, get to the bottom of that ugly theology that has made these plants that overshadow everything else i try to plant. remove them, shred them, burn the seeds so they cannot take root ever again. and maybe pink will grow up without them too. nurturing her own plants and bringing life to what god has planted inside of her.

i need to do some clearing out of the old plants - there is nowhere to plant the new ones that is clear enough and exposed enough for those tender new plants to survive. so i must root out the old, and i guess that happens for me with words - writing about it, asking questions, uncovering the questions to ask, and plain old allowing myself to get angry and sad and face the truth and allow myself to grieve it and then sit and allow the new plants time to grow. silence, prayer, writing and acknowledging my emotions on these issues (patriarchy and pornography) is my only way through.

and i am angry. really angry. these two issues have shaped and distorted my life more than any other issue except for my relationship with god - and the fact that that is marred by P&P is what makes me just want to explode.

you see, i bought in - i believed it all. i loathe that i was so easily manipulated and formed by it, but it has truly made me who i am today. spiritual formation is a powerful thing - anything can become a spiritual discipline. silence is one of the most treasured of all spiritual disciplines. sitting in the presence of god in expectation - oh what joy and rapture. but when that is distorted like it was in my church of origin - silence no longer becomes a tool, but a weapon.

and not only was i to be silent, but god was too. who did i think i was that i would merit a word from god - the written word from god was the ONLY WORD FROM GOD. so silence was pointless, useless, just a cause for creating a fantasy life to keep myself from utter boredom and sheer desperation. how totally cruel to make half the kingdom (at least the only part i knew) silent, but to then take away any input from god - it was sick, twisted and wrong and it makes me want to hurt someone. the anger deep in my soul is so vile. all i ever wanted, please understand me, all i ever wanted was to please god. to serve god. to be obedient. i was truly silent, my head was covered, my heart was even covered. while i was in that place i was there trying for all i was worth to please god. i didn't fight, question or challenge. that would have been sin, and the deepest place of my heart has always been to please god.

so i sat. in silence. and heard god. and pushed the voice away. do you understand how much they stole from me? i thought i was crazy. hearing voices. god was SILENT JUST LIKE ME. then why did i hear his voice? i fought that voice my whole life. thinking i was crazy. the level of distortion is cult-like in it's control and influence over my young, eager soul. THEY WILL PAY FOR THIS at the foot of god one day. they stole from me and i want it back. i want them to pay. i want to take that hammer instead of that plowshare and bash them all to bits. the anger is so deep and so strong that i feel it overpowering me as i type. i am reduced to a puddle and trying to keep from keening.

what happens when a church makes a young girl feel like she is insane?

patriarchy and pornography

stephanie at just etchings is doing some important work on her blog right now. this quote is so good i just can't let go of it and wanted to honor it here too:

The war on women is not a war of men against women. We naively assume that this war has been declared by and caused by men. That’s the big lie! This war is being fought against both sexes, against all of us. Men are not the author of this war, Satan is. This cause of the war on women is Satan, who uses the fallen powers and principalities of this world to keep us in oppressive traditions and structures. Jesus has taught us to know that the enemy is always the Enemy! Pg 106/107

Both man and woman participated in the Fall. Adam and Eve were both responsible (Gen 3:6; Rom 5:15-21; 1 Cor 15:21-22). A direct result of the Fall, gender mutuality was disrupted and woman became dependent on man and man became an authority over women. Sin, not God, destroyed the partnership between man and woman. Patriarchy is worshipping the curse. Pg 109

Calling Patriarchy God’s will is like calling pornography God’s will. The analogy between patriarchy and pornography is quite fitting because the two are very similar in their effects. Pornography objectifies persons by turning them into property to be owned, demeans the feminine, trivializes sexuality, and perpetuates violence toward women. This is precisely what patriarchy does. Patriarchy treats women as objects, demeans and trivializes them, and provides a subtle theological framework for the right to abuse women. Calling patriarchy God’s will is theological pornography! pg 114

All quotes from Is it Okay to Call God Mother? Considering the Feminine Face of God

By Paul R. Smith

wow - i'm ordering this book today!

sex - heaven or hell?

Sex - Heaven or Hell? - Johann Christoph Arnold

We live in a society that is constantly talking about sex, but we remain deeply impoverished in our understanding of what it can mean. And it's not just the pharmaceutical industry that plays off our obsession. TV producers and radio hosts, plastic surgeons, film directors, and publishers - all of them play off an unprecedented public appetite for more. The obvious result of all this has been the wholesale commercialization of sex. But it has also meant the gradual disappearance of true intimacy and the degradation of the erotic into the crude and banal. In the space of a half-century, attitudes that were once unthinkable have become commonplace, and what was once classed as perversion is now said to be natural and normal. Yesterday's porn, as the saying goes, is today's advertising.

Some people insist that negative attitudes have merely become healthier; and it is true that much of what our grandparents saw as sin, our own generation sees as freedom. But for many of today's teens, neither view holds true. They regard sexual activity neither as a sin nor as a source of liberation, but as a quick fix for loneliness and boredom. "Sometimes I think the whole world is focused on sex," says Jake, a fifteen-year-old, with a world-weary sigh. "There are nights when I'm locked away in my girlfriend's bedroom while her parents are out…and sometimes I think, maybe we could really be out doing something else besides this." And even those who boast about their exploits often live in quiet fear of diseases like AIDS.

We are leaving our children a world where the very dimension of human experience that was once regarded as the most sacred and heavenly may turn out to be the most hellish. Robbed of the chance to discover sex as innocents, they have little idea of its mysterious capacity to satisfy not only bodily cravings, but the mind and spirit as well. To them,reverence is a meaningless, old-fashioned word; lust something to indulge; a condom the only necessary precaution. But the price is often high: anxiety, self-hatred, confusion, and despair.

How can we rediscover sex as the wondrous, divinely created gift it is? How can we be delivered from experiencing it as misery? There are no simple answers; after all, the sexual sphere is always precariously balanced between grief and joy, fulfillment and frustration - between heaven and hell. But that should not discourage us. Rather than leading us to treat sex as a problem to be solved by moralists and prudes, we ought to grapple with its challenges and enlarge our understanding of it.

more

ashes for beauty?

idelette is grieving a loved ones choices over on her blog. the idea that anyone would choose ashes instead of amazing is baffling.

lies are safe. lies are familiar. lies are screaming so loudly that i am undeserving that the amazing that is being held out for me only makes my shame more real.

i read her blog before bed last night and it drove me from mine this morning. it is the cry of confusion, of frustration and disappointment. many have cried it for me, and i am learning that cry for others now.

shame is a horrible task master. it regularly reminds me that i am wrong, i deserve nothing better. that is not said in any way to gain reassurance from those around me. reassurance doesn't help. i can't hear you. the lies are far too loud.

satan is the master of the bait and switch. he takes what is given by god and bastardizes it just one notch. instead of healthy, healing, god-given guilt the devil steps in and turns it into shame. guilt brings life and restoration, shame only death and separation.

the only problem is that in an addict's mind the two have never been separated. our minds are so clouded by shame and the addiction that the life giving guilt that allows others to make different choices has been bastardized by the devil into one and the same. shame convinces me that i am wrong, that i have no choice.

that is why a feast can be prepared before an addict and they will choose to eat the ashes. i try to explain it to the youth i work with by talking about fishing. i personally hate fishing, but liam and my father love it.

they wade in the water and offer food to those fish. big, juicy looking worms and bugs. but they aren't offering food are they? they are offering bait. there is always a hook involved in bait. satan is the baitmaster. he holds out the counterfeit and says 'hey look, yummy!' and those pre-disposed to bait end up falling for it. the false intimacy of pornography, the mind numbing effect of drugs or alcohol, the quick fix of adrenaline that comes from risky behavior, the lie of feeling less empty with my mouth full of food. it all has a hook. it's not the feast of amazing.

watching someone you love head down a path of destruction is one of the most excruciating experiences known to us. a spouse or child, sibling or friend making choices of death instead of life. it is the most confusing thing to watch.

'why can't they see it? here is amazing, here is beauty, here is life.' i can only imagine what we feel as they make those choices is a bit like our heavenly father feels watching us make our choices. seeing life, but choosing death.

nothing convinces an addict but the bottom. it's different for each of us. my bottom was different for my two strongest addictions. sexual addiction's bottom came when i was so rage filled from my shame that i was physically abusive to liam. my food addiction came the first time when i found myself making chocolate chip cookie dough 2-3 times a week and consuming batches at a time, raw.

the second bottom after a relapse came when i was making jiffy cake mixes every day and drinking them raw while hiding between my fridge and my cupboards so no one would see me. addiction drives us to do things that we know are stupid, we know are wrong, we know are ashes. but the relief from the demons of the past, even temporarily is better than the shame of how undeserving i am to accept amazing.

only grace. unbelievable grace when we grasp it. i am powerless on my own. only grace. grace is the one thing that is amazing enough to overcome the shame.

unfortunately our churches have NO IDEA how amazing grace truly is. they also have no idea how diabolical shame truly is either. so until they can get their act together we have to look to things like 12 step groups and psychology (good psychology - there is so much broken, shame based psychology out there that just churns up the rot and stink and makes things worse). until the church gets it's head out of it's backside and starts to get grace it will have to be found individually, not corporately.

my own journey began with phillip yancy's what's so amazing about grace. in that book i finally began to understand the beginnings of what it meant. how amazing it truly was. if you're not into reading he recommends a movie called babette's feast as an illustration of grace, expensive grace, lavish grace. there is also a new visual edition of the book here, here or here.

it is only when we truly get grace that we will truly get amazing.

daddy's girl - an open letter to fathers of daughters

dear father,

i don't have the courage to give this to my dad, but maybe, just maybe, something i say will help your relationship with your daughter, or maybe even a daughter's relationship with you and her heavenly father.

please know that more than any other person on the planet your daughter wants to be noticed by you. for you to be proud of her, for you to be aware of her life.

so many are hurting and lost and usually it's because their daddy doesn't know they exist, or doesn't have the ability to connect with her.

please remember, you are the grown up. even if your daughter is 38 years old like me, you are the adult in this relationship. it is never your daughter's responsiblity to mend the wall that you've let fall. never. she may begin, but will be unable to move forward without your full participation.

just once i want my father to turn to me with a smile on his face and say 'i am so proud of you!' just once. i know he thinks i know that, but i don't. i really don't. because if he really felt that way, he'd tell me, right? please tell you daughter how you feel, and especially how you feel about her. we are never too old for a hug or a kind word. wrap her in your arms, or hold her face in your hands and bless her with eye contact, deep words and time.

time. for most of us it's in short supply. what and who we choose to spend our time with tells those around us what's important. it appears that the newspaper or baseball game mean more to you than we do. i know you work hard, you deserve a break, and honest, we'll be the first one's to give it to you, but first, can't you please recognize that we are here? that we matter?

you more than any other person on the planet will tell your daughter what to think of herself. who she will be as a woman will be determined mostly by you.

scary thoughts.

if you have a problem with viewing pornography or hold that super model up as the standard for all women she'll know it. she'll try to be it, or like me, totally give up and go the other way. even negative attention is attention for the starving.

i can look at the girls we work with and identify the families where distortion is taking place. i can. i can tell by the way the wife dresses, acts and interacts, and the daughter rebels, exposes and challenges that the father is struggling with his sexuality, struggling with pornography or has a distorted image of women. i know from personal experience.

eating disorders, self mutilation, risky sexual behavior - most of it is based in the father/daughter relationship. we watch the way you treat our mother's, the way you touch or don't touch them, the way you talk to them, the way you prioritize them. we watch and learn.

i know when you held us as infants you never realized how much power you would weild over us, but you do. you even have the power to tell us what god is like. our first interpretations of god stand or fall by your example. that's a big responsiblity. what are you telling me about god? is he too busy? is he too distant? is he only impressed by the outside appearance? is he fickle? does he only care about accomplishments? you are telling me about god by your actions.

anything worth doing is worth doing well. fathering above all else is worth doing well. start today. talk to her. tell her you dropped the ball.

can you imagine the healing that would take place if men across the country would begin to apologize for the way they've dehumanized women? brought their wives or daughters up in front of the church and confessed and committed to better. can you imagine the walls that would fall down?

you are a team, you and your family. it's you against the world. act like your daughter is on your team. spend time with her.

for many of you it might be too little too late. the pain may be greater than than a quick apology can fix. but a true commitment to becoming a father that shows her what god is truly like will take time, but it will be worth it. grace, love, patience, kindness, commitment. care about what's happening between her ears, more than what's happening on the outside.

it's about her heart. it's about your heart. when the two connect great things can happen. when they don't things get ugly, distorted and broken. wash her feet. she'll never forget it.

too much information - part two

on june 1st i blogged "too much information - part one". it dealt mostly with my history of sexual abuse, compulsive overeating and sexual addiction.

i'm not sure where to go from there, but if there is a 'part one' there needs to be a 'part two' right? so here goes...

one of the biggest shocks to my preconceived notions was that marriage didn't 'fix me' in the area of sexual brokenness. i truly thought all through high school and college that 'it's only because i'm not married that i struggle'. news flash... wrong.

what i didn't realize is that i was training my body and my mind to be dependent on 'self satisfaction'. that's a dangerous thing to bring to a marriage. mutual pleasure in marriage isn't like the movies tell you it will be. it's difficult and can be very frustrating for a young couple to learn, especially when you are adding in addictions.

any time things got difficult between us, we fought or i just wanted to punish liam i could do that very easily. i would detach emotionally and satisfy myself. i didn't 'need him' and really did some damage to our marriage.

another LIE this world sells is that 'sexual aids' or pornography can bring depth or excitement to your relationship. that's straight from the pit of hell - and i don't mean because it's sinful - it's a lie because of the damage that it does to people.

3 dimensional real people can't compare to imaginary ones with staples in their stomachs, all airbrushed and fake. real people smell bad, irritate you and have flaws. fake is fake is fake. it will never enhance or enrich your sex life. it will truly only ever lead to division.

for liam and i there were times where we messed around with those things as a couple, but more often than not it continued in 'private' for me. viewing it as a 'couple' opened the door to a world of private hell. as mentioned in 'part one' i had an insatiable appetite for pornography. i would hunt for it anywhere i visited or babysat and if i found it i'd sneak it or any dirty literature or movies i could find home.

liam worked shifts and that left me 'alone' for most of my off work time. there were times when we hardly even saw each other. i spent that 'alone' time planning and preparing, sneaking and obsessing. i developed rituals and habits, and the obtaining of the junk was almost as much of a rush as actually viewing it. most of the time the 'junk' left me empty, hollow or disappointed. the thing i didn't realize is that it was programming deep ruts into my brain that i still struggle with today.

once we got internet service i was done for. there was no 'outside' shame involved - no one else knew what i was viewing, no store clerks or librarians. the internet while it is a wonderful tool to connect us, it is also a horrible weapon to divide us.

what i also didn't realize is that as my appetite for porn increased the level to which it satisfied decreased. just like alcohol or narcotics my behavior needed to be riskier and more ugly to get me 'high'.

i know why ted bundy became a serial killer. that vacuum of need inside us becomes voracious and sucks up everything we throw at it and it is insatiable. nothing satisfies, the hunger just gets hungrier, the desperation more desperate. that is why strip clubs and prostitutes are becoming the 'norm' now, the 2 dimensional doesn't satisfy anymore. soon what is called normal will be so ugly we won't even be able to bear it.

life had become so desperate for me that suicide looked like my only option.

i was sure that i would go to heaven and be free, finally free. i had a plan. while we lived in canada we were very close to niagara falls. my plan was to drive my little mazda to the falls, leave it running in the street and vault myself over the guard rail to be swallowed up by that powerful, deep cleaning flood.

when that man survived last summer i knew exactly how he felt. i wanted to write him and tell him i understood. he wasn't crazy. (well, as crazy as i wasn't...) this was my only 'hope'. i was infertile, haunted, shameful and only wanted to serve god with my life. i was a failure. life was too much to bear.

every time company would come to visit we'd have to take them to the falls, of course. it was all i could do to not jump. it felt like there was a little gargoyle sitting on the rail beckoning me with his long finger, closer and closer to the rail. i would stand in the mist and cry. usually those with us couldn't distinguish my tears from the mist, so no one had any idea of my struggle.

i bore it well. it was hidden, secret. no one knew anything other than i was overweight. we volunteered with the youth group at our church (and we were damn good at it) and spent all of our vacation time volunteering at a camp. all we wanted was to have a family and serve god. and yet i couldn't get it together enough to stop my addictions and want to live.

i knew that it was because i was such a horrible person that god wouldn't give me a baby or a ministry. god the sadist. sick me with these horrible demons and then blame me for it. it was a desperate time for me. 'read your bible and pray more' just wasn't cutting it. god, jesus and the church were unable to bring me any relief or freedom from my pain. i had a bachelor of science in biblical studies and not one ounce of it helped do anything more for me than make me feel like a failure.

and then i met my endocrinologist. she looked at me and said 'bobbie, it is no longer your job to get you pregnant, it is now mine.' it was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me. it was hope. the pressure was off my shoulders and i was pregnant in two months (after 6 years of infertility). that new life within me brought me salvation. not the jesus kind of salvation, but the kind that comes in small packages and is marked 'more abundance'. somewhere along the line i got so discouraged, so confused, and so misled. i will continue this in 'part two' of 'got grace'.

the how and the why of it

tim writes in the comments

'With addictions/compulsions I have found the "why?" question to hard to answer straight up. I have found that a "how?" question is a good starting point. How does this work for me? How does it give me relief? How does it allow me to get revenge? Once I can answer these questions I can start to piece together why I do it. Keep talking. The angels are rejoicing about your choice to enter the light.'

first - thank you tim and all of the others who have been praying for me and emailing me. as i answered anj's email yesterday i said that hitting the 'publish post' button yesterday was like lifting a 500 lbs. weight. afterward i was shaking, crying and exhausted.

but i didn't turn to any addictions to comfort me. i called my husband and he prayed for me, i snuggled with my kids a bit and i guess i did a bit of compulisive blog reading, but other than that god kept me, through your prayers from sin - 1601!

so, just for today, i choose to breathe, to unclench my teeth, relax my shoulders and enjoy today for what it is. a lot of cleaning and lawn work. :) i choose to integrate myself into my community instead of withdrawing. feel my feelings, even if they are scary and maintain my constant contact with god.

back to tim's comment. the 'why' of it all didn't come until years into my recovery, slowly bit by bit (and i still don't understand it all). but he's right - the 'how' is a good start, so how does this work for me?

it's only as long as it was 'working' that i kept habitually participating in active addictions, when it ceased to work i hit bottom. until that point what i traded was 'worth it' to me. it was only when i realized the full impact of what it was doing to my marriage, my family and myself - especially my relationship with god, that it finally stopped 'working'.

my addictions also stopped working for me when i finally began to understand god's grace.

it's only when we 'get' grace that we can break through the shame that motivates our addictions. up to that point god was some sick, twisted masochist (i didn't admit this to my brain, but that's truly what i believed when i started to pull it all apart). grace breaks the cycle.

it seems so backwards, if we have grace we're going to sin more - but that's not true. that's what the grace police (mike yaconelli's term) want us to believe - but it's a lie.

grace breaks the shame, it shatters it - not instantly, it's still a lot of work to replace the lies with the truth, but when you begin to fully understand it it's like a virus spreading through your computer - but this one fixes things instead of making them broken.

the word picture that explains what it felt like during my deepest darkest moments was that i felt like i was flushing myself down a huge toilet, and as i circled the bowl, that big dark tunnel at the bottom was just sucking me down. grace took a net and scooped me out. (what a stupid word picture, sorry - i wish i was jen lemen then i'd have a beautiful picture here - but that is truly what it was like for me).

that dark tunnel was suicide for me. i will post on that soon, but i don't want to get sidetracked (again).

how does it give me relief? two words - instant gratification. that's what it was all about. i didn't have to do the work it took to have real intimacy - i had 'it' instantly. and because i never had experienced real intimacy this forgery was 'good enough' and i couldn't imagine ever trusting anyone else enough to have real intimacy, so why should i give it up?

real intimacy is hard, it's work, and it's SCARY as hell. i have been married for almost 17 years, and i've known my husband for 20. do we have intimacy? sometimes. when our addictions don't get in the way. we've been in couple's therapy this past year to try to re-learn what other people know automatically. stuff that was never taught in our homes growing up. trust, respect, honor, intimacy, communication. stuff like that.

if you are an addict there is almost 100% surity that your significant is an addict - and if you're single, unless you 'fix' things you will always attract an addict. it's some broken eternal principle. healthy people stay away from unhealthy. they can spot us miles away. i fought the idea that my youth pastor husband was an addict with my therapist for years. she was convinced he dealt secretly with sexual sin too. he doesn't. not that he isn't tempted at times to view something innappropriate, it's just not his thing.

it was then i remembered that he finished his degree in 3 years instead of 4, worked crazy long shifts for years in our lives, left me with two tiny babies alone in the middle of nowhere while he worked 'part time' for a church and nearly full time at the job that paid our bills... hmmm, do you think he might have work issues??

bunny trailed again... sorry. how does it give me relief? for me it was about control. i still have HUGE control issues. our sex life is fully under my control. yuck. didn't like to have to write that, but it's true. because of my freaked out survivor stuff and the fact that i'm abstinent, living like a nun would be just fine with me most of the time.

control during the addict years meant that i didn't have to wait for him to meet my needs. i punished (this answers the next question - about revenge) him (and all men) by not needing him. fulfilling my own needs, and not being present during the times we did have sex.

side note - there was another 'persona' that was the sex kitten and uninhibited about sex that did visit at times. i don't think it was an alter (like mpd or anything that formal) but there was definately an altered state that i would sometimes allow myself to achieve where i became the whore. neither the nun or the whore was a true representation of 'bobbie' - i am not present in either of those personas. (even further off track side note - this is why many abuse survivors turn to alcohol and drugs - so that altered state during sex can be achieved more easily).

how does it allow me to get revenge? it wasn't until i read the wounded heart by dan allander that i began to understand the anger that i had toward my abuser that i was channelling at liam (the fake name he's chosen to be called here) the term allander used was 'surrogate abuser' - i treated him like he was the man who raped me. i couldn't get in touch with the anger i felt at that man, so i directed it at him.

i know that's where the physical attacks came from. i didn't know it then, but i was attacking him like i wanted to attack my abuser years ago.

one of the things that has brought me great healing is being involved with an incredible ministery called the international justice mission, gary haugen and his associates tour the world looking for victims to help, free and rescue - praying for them regularly and supporting them financially allows me to get that 'revenge' on abusers, those who steal innocence and victimize the weak.

replacing those broken areas with real live truth has helped bring healing to my life. real intimacy, control in areas of my life that i'm supposed to have control over instead of trying to control everything and everyone around me, seeking justice for wrongs committed. participating in reality, instead of brokenness has brought me much peace. thank you for reading my stories.

i don't want to i have to - part one

'i don't want to i have to' is a joke my husband and i have for those tiny little compulsions you just can't seem to escape. things like placing something in it's 'exact location', straightening a picture or pushing a clear button every time you walk past a public blood pressure monitor at the pharmacy where i used to work. i didn't want to, i had to. compulsions are strange things.

i titled this post purposefully to echo the feelings i'm having in addressing this issue. my sexual addiction. i don't want to blog about it, i have to. breaking the public shame is enormous if the church is ever going to be able to help people trapped in the addiction of sexual behaviors.

james 5:16 says 'confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.' - i want healing more than anything, so i confess to you of my addictions. please if you are prone to pray, pray for my healing.

as stated below i started masturbating at a very young age, it truly had nothing to do with sex, it was comfort. i had no idea what i was doing. it felt good while i did it, but it brought me natural shame, i mean innate, from within kind of shame. not the kind that comes from others or teaching. somehow within me i knew it was 'wrong'. i didn't do it in public, it was hidden, secret. i don't know how my 11 year old mind knew this, but it did.

pornography was also readily accessible to me from a very young age. my parents became christians when i was 7 (shortly after the rape) and they immediately stopped drinking. they exchanged their alcoholism for most 'christian' addictions like workaholism, religiousity and food.

but i can remember that there were playboy magazines in our bathroom from my earliest of memories. it was the early 70's and women were told by the culture that it was now socially acceptable for their men to publically view pornagraphy.

i can't imagine how my mother survived this. i hate hugh hefner. i pray the grace of god is never extended to that man. i know it's horrible, but i blame him for many of the abuses i have had to suffer as a woman. he made it 'socially acceptable', broke through the stigma and made it 'normal'. but that's another post for another time.

after my parents became christians the pornography was removed from our home (i'm sure my mother was relieved). but i sought it out anywhere i could find it. something about it was titilating, naughty and exciting.

it wasn't about the images, it wasn't about the women, it was just about the obsession i had for sex. somewhere in the brokenness of my childhood sex = intimacy. and that is what i longed for (still long for) more than anything.

that's the diabolical nature of pornography - the devil just distorts things a notch to take was is beautiful and make it obscene. (i don't mean that in the xxx way - but the obscenity that comes from the gross distortion of something beautiful).

because of my own parent's addictions (i suspect they had sexual addictions of their own too) their shame prevented them from ever educating me in any way about this matter. and this is the key here - shame.

shame is what drives every addiction - (i will be posting my theories about shame in detail soon) and what keeps us from talking/teaching/addressing this issue in particular. our own sin in this area makes us feel as if we can't address because it cuts too close to the bone.

the nature of obsessions and compulsions is that we do them without thinking - because thinking is exactly what we are trying to avoid. if we have to think, we have to feel, and the feelings are just too enormous and painful to acknowledge. so we become programmed into the behavior and participate without being able to break through to the why.

and until we get to the 'why' we will never be free. i don't eat because i'm hungry, i eat because i'm lonely. i didn't masturbate because i was horny (sorry, but that's the only word i could think of...) i masturbated because i was ashamed.

it wasn't until i had some victories with my food addictions that i was even able to begin to address my sexual addictions.

the times in my childhood that i used masturbation were times when i was in bed, either daydreaming, fantasizing, feeling afraid or wanting to fall asleep and not have to have silence for my thoughts. my mother was the queen of 'go away, no come back'. it was like i had an elastic band in my back that she would yank any time she wanted me around, and then she would smoke to get rid of me. it worked.

when she smoked the only place i could get away was in my room. i hated cigarette smoke, no really, i HATED it. the man who raped me was holding a cigarette/cigar right next to my head during the whole thing. so any time i was able to gasp for a breath it was smoke filled. smelling smoke makes me fill with a rage that took me a long time to identify.

so time in my room became escape time. my reality was so distasteful that escape was my way of freeing myself. fantasy became my life. the world i created in my head was so much more real and wonderful to me. but it left me very lonely. horribly lonely. and masturbation made me feel (for the minute it took) like i wasn't alone, or like i was 'in control' somehow. (gosh this is harder than i even dreaded it would be).

it wasn't until jr. high (i think the movie porky's was the 'key') that my fantasy life became sexual. and that masturbation was linked (or even defined) for my young mind. (i just googled porky's and it didn't come out until 1981, so it must have been something else... i'll have to ponder what it was).

well, i best get my real life started for the day. i'll blog more later. thank you for your prayers.

fighting temptations

so much has been written on this subject i hesitate to even address it, but i've never heard my little rituals taught or spoken on before, so maybe they might help other people who struggle with addictions or compulsive behaviors??

today is day 1599 of my abstinence. tomorrow will be 1600 days linked together, but for today, just for today i commit to my abstinence.

the first thing i did was realize that it can only happen with baby steps. when you have a mountain to climb looking at the whole thing is far too discouraging. and i work better with tiny little steps that bring me victory - and then the victory spurs me on to another tiny step.

my first step was to eat three meals a day. i know for you without food issues this sounds so basic and stupid. duh. but for me i would always skip breakfast, always. i was too busy, not hungry, whatever - so by forcing myself to sit down and eat breakfast i was taking control of my food/appetite first thing in the day. ritual is important, it builds rhythm and starts to build positive habits to replace the negative destructive ones.

i did that for 2 weeks. then the next move i made was to limit myself to those three meals and a snack. and this was when it began to be more difficult. so i broke the day down. i would pray from the time i opened my eyes "dear god, please get me to breakfast without binging", and if i had to pray that prayer 10x i did. and at breakfast i prayed "dear god, thank you for getting me to breakfast without binging. now please get me to lunch without binging." and again, every time i was tempted i prayed, changed what i was doing if it was too hard or went out on the porch (or outside at work) to get a breath of fresh air, and prayed. then at lunch, well, i think you get the picture. breaking up the day into 6 sections (wake-breakfast, breakfast-lunch, lunch-dinner, dinner-snack, snack-bed, bed-wake) gave me manageable portions in the day, and small victories to power the engine of my recovery. one day at a time.

that's all i kept telling myself. i can do this just for today.

once those two weeks were up i headed toward chocolate. i knew it was a trigger food for me, and that when i ate it it was like a drug, i became emotionally affected by it, i knew it had to go. so, just for today i can not eat chocolate. i ate everything else (candy and junk food i wanted as part of my meals) but i didn't eat chocolate.

this was the most difficult part. i couldn't watch commercials, go shopping or have anything in the house. you need support, really strong support at this point in your recovery. my husband did the grocer shopping for me, and i watched tv with the remote in my hand. i cried, i spit and i prayed. once i got it out of my system though it wasn't as awful as i thought it would be. it's never easy, but it did get easier. when i did have to go into a store i would sit in my car and pray "dear god, you know i have to get these 3 things. please get me in and out of that store without buying anything not on my list and binging."

i maintained that for a couple of months before i addressed the sugar. and i did the sugar in the exact same way.

once i was able to get rid of the sugar i had serenity.

this for me was not about loosing weight, not about diet, not about getting thin. it was about recovery, healing and mental health. if the other stuff happened it was a side benefit. i wanted to create something that could be maintained for the rest of my life.

please know that i was in a support group and counseling during this time. i eat for emotional reasons - not because i'm hungry. those reasons are the causes of my addictions. my need to self comfort came from an ugly place of loneliness and anger, fear and self-loathing. shame and loneliness are my two biggest triggers.

it wasn't until my second abstinence (when i got pregnant with my son i wasn't ready for it and 'fell off the wagon' and we moved at the same time to a horrible little town in nowhere ontario canada) that i was able to deal with a sexual abstinence. i will explain that process at a different time.

this abstinence i currently have consists of no chocolate, no sugar (i do allow myself an occasional muffin or piece of banana bread, jello salad at a pot luck - but they don't cause me to binge) daily reading/devotional time with god and no masturbation/pornography.

(yuck, i didn't like having to type those last two words...)

i think i'm going to have to bite the bullet tomorrow and start to blog about my sexual addiction. please pray for me. i know that this is necessary, but it is mucking up a bit (okay, a lot) of shame, and as i stated above shame is a big trigger for me. i have been struggling with my food (not off limit stuff, just portion sizes, etc.) since addressing the more difficult subjects). thanks.

too much information - part one

one of the reasons that i've started to blog was to challenge myself to write, and to write about the most difficult things in my life. i'm going to attempt something that i've been putting off for weeks (months??) here on the blog. i am going to try to process my addictions.

boy, this is harder than i thought it would be... hmmm. where to start?

hello, my name is bobbie, and i am a recovering compulsive overeater and sexual addict.

there... it can only get easier from there, right?

no, didn't think so.

well, i best start at the beginning. i was raised in an alcoholic home. both of my parents struggled with life in general and my mother struggled with undiagnosed depression and mental illness. i was the eldest of two girls, and at a very early age i realized that i was pretty much on my own.

during my father's 35th birthday party (i was 6) one of my father's friends (or possibly an uncle) stumbled into the bathroom of my home as i was using it and trapped me in there and proceeded to orally rape me. because of shame or secrets (i don't know which or both?) that memory was lost to me until 2 years ago (almost to the day). the only memory i had was my mother finding me curled up and crying under my bed. she dragged me out to the party and told everyone that i was all red-eyed and puffy because they decided to put creme de mint in the ice cream they were making, and i thought i couldn't have any.

as a child i knew more about sex than santa. you see, even though it was a horrible incident it was attention. i was so starved for attention as a child that even something so horrible and damaging left it's mark in my life and began a life long obsession with sex that i have battled my whole entire life.

one day at a time... i have had some victories though. through wonderful therapy and amazing recovery programs i have linked those 'one days' into 1,598 days of abstinence.

closely linked to my sexual addiction is my other battle of food addiction. i will write more about what it was like during the active addiction days (this is what i have been avoiding) but i will say that coming 'off' chocolate and then sugar has been a godsend for me. i have serenity (most days) and nothing tastes as good as that feels.

they (sex and food) are so closely linked for me that i know that if i was to slip in one area the other one would come crashing down with it. that is the constant fear of the addict. i heard a well-seasoned mentor tell me that during sobriety his addiction was doing push-ups. he knew if he slipped that he would be facing a behemoth of addiction or even death.

so, just for today i breathe, i pray, attempt to maintain constant contact with god, keep my lists short and work on my recovery, and replace the lies with the truth. some days it's shaky and precarious, others it seems so natural and calm. it's never easy, but some days it does get easier.