SAY HELLO TO YOU

Say Hello to You 

We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

—Step Four from the Twelve Steps

 

 Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord.

—Lamentations 3:40

 

Complain if you must, but don't lash out.

Keep your mouth shut, and let your heart do the talking.

—Psalm 4:4 MSG

 Stay alert; be in prayer so you don't wander into temptation without even knowing you're in danger. There is a part of you that is eager, ready for anything in God. But there's another part that's as lazy as an old dog sleeping by the fire."

—Matthew 26:41 MSG

 

                  Sexual addiction is about escape. The addictive acting out we have done made it possible for us to temporarily avoid uncomfortable and painful feelings like inadequacy, fear, hopelessness, loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted or unloved. But we could not escape these painful feelings forever. Sooner or later they always returned, usually with a vengeance. And, because most of us grew up having painful feelings we could not escape, we may have grown callused to them, and not realized we felt like we did. We often even trained ourselves subconsciously to avoid our feelings through thoughts, fantasies and other intoxicating experiences, thereby losing connection with what was really going on inside us. It’s like we had unknowingly developed our own world of make-believe and become lost in it. But this will never work for long. Anyone who wants to recover will have to leave their fantasies behind them, and accept the real truth of who they are and the reality of their lives.

            Making an inventory of our feelings, beliefs, attitudes and actions is a pursuit of this reality. It is a commitment to recognize and acknowledge one’s personal truth, so that our wounds can be healed. Personally, I would have much preferred to do someone else’s inventory, but I was the one who needed recovery, so I stuck with taking inventory of myself. It was not fun and it was not easy.

This is an excerpt from When Lost Men Come Home, not for men onlycopyright, david zailer 2012

Click link to purchase

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=when%20lost%20men%20come%20home%2C%20not%20for%20men%20only