Hi, my name is Jacob and I’m a grateful, recovering sex and love addict. I’ve been sober over ten months. Thanks for visiting.
First, allow me to offer my apologies for being absent for the last several weeks. There has been too much going on to post regularly. However, I recently completed my work for Steps Two and Three. I’ll write a bit more about that in another post, but thought I’d share part of the work I did in that effort – the most important of which is my letter to my Higher Power, whose name is God.
Here’s the letter:
Dear God, the Holy One of Israel, the All-Sufficient One, Father of Mercies, Jehovah,
I first learned about You through my experiences with Mom and Dad at church. Sunday school stories taught me about the Bible and the heroes of faith throughout it. I came to view you as an old – though stately – grey-haired being with a long beard, sitting on a gold throne – far away in Heaven. You were very distant, and I suppose I thought that Your holiness required that.
I had very positive experiences at my Mom’s church – a small-town Presbyterian church. The people were friendly, and the minister was very kind and generous toward me. One of the men in the choir used to give me peppermint lifesavers when I stood behind Mom in the choir during services. Those memories are very warm and comforting.
At my Dad’s church – a very conservative evangelical church a few miles outside the town we lived in– the people were more distant. The preacher was harsh. The sermons were always about Hell. I never liked going with Dad to church. I wanted to go with Mom to her church.
When Mom gave in to the pressure to leave her church and join the church Dad attended, I was stuck. Our whole family went to the church of Dad’s choosing. There was not a lot of love in those churches. There was a lot of judgment. I learned that if you didn’t measure up, you were doomed.
I came to see you as an angry God, Who was always watching for the tiniest slip-up in me. Any failure put me on the express train the Hell. I spent many of my childhood years fearing You – not honoring You; just being utterly terrified of You.
In my tweens, I started to understand the real difference between right and wrong. I guess that was an initial understanding of the concept of sin. I reached the “age of accountability” as that fellowship called it. This left me with the (accurate) understanding that my sin had separated me from You. I felt like You were VERY angry with me (a “sinner in the hands of an angry God”) and that, had I died in my sleep, I would have certainly awakened in Hell.
I spent several years terribly afraid of everything because death from any cause would have led to eternal torture. I look back on those days with a huge amount of stress, maybe even some ptsd (BTW, I can’t use the all-caps acronym – I reserve that for those who have gone through Hell in service to our nation).
When I was twelve, the fear of death and Hell completely overtook me. I walked down the aisle at the church we attended at the time, and was baptized by the preacher there. I got into the water because I was terrified of You, not because I was seeking a relationship with You. I came out feeling that I had escaped Hell by the skin of my teeth. I was saved – at least for the moment.
Then, I’m certain it was only hours or days later, I failed at something. I cursed, or lied, or talked back to my parents. And there I was again – a sinner in the hands of an angry God. Baptism had washed away all of my prior sins, but now what? I had to say a prayer of repentance or, had death come, I would have awakened to the grinning face of Satan himself.
For the next umpteen years, it was much the same story. Constantly failing – at worse and worse things – and hoping that I could do enough, be right enough, say prayers enough, go to church enough or do something enough to make things right with You. Your love was conditioned on me doing everything “right” and doing it the “right” way. If I did all the right things in the right way, maybe – just maybe – you might let me into Heaven.
I got pretty good at doing the right things the right way: I went to the “right” church, read from the “right” translation of the Bible, did worship the “right” way, gave 10% of my salary away, hung around with the “right” kind of people, judged those who didn’t do things the “right” way, and was always “fine”. I taught Bible Class and served as a deacon and an elder.
Oh, yeah. And I lived a double life as a sex and love addict.
So, there was a self-righteous me that got very good at doing the right things and feeling pretty good about it. Yet always wondering if I was doing enough to earn Your love. And there was the addict me, treading farther and farther from the core value system that I (accurately) learned from those around me.
The self-righteous me started doubting the “do enough” system two or three years ago, but never could figure out what to do with it. And the addict me was saying “Fuck it. Just do whatever you want. You’re screwed any way you look at it.”
Then I hit bottom. You know the story. Life was spiraling out of control, and I didn’t care about anyone or anything but me.
As it turns out, discovery was the best thing that ever happened to me. It made me realize how broken I am. And how broken I will always be – at least without You.
Once broken, I was open to different thinking. I am so very, very thankful for Richard Rohr’s book Breathing Under Water for many, many things. The most important one – far and away – is that You love me because of WHO YOU ARE, not who I am or am not, or what I do or don’t do. And second only to that one is the fact that Jesus came to do for me what I could never do for myself – restore my relationship with You.
You have become to me a God I want to know and be with. You always were that God, I just couldn’t fathom it.
But I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to have a relationship with You. I want to spend time with You, but I seldom do. I know that only You can make me whole, but can I trust You to do that? I know that You have forgiven me through Jesus’ sacrifice, but is that really enough? I know that I have to live in Your Light, but what if I mess up again? (it’s funny I wrote that – I know I will.) How do I live as a son of the Most High?
So, I guess it’s up to me to take a step – or leap – of faith and determine once and for all if You will catch me. I know that You have been waiting for me for years, just as the father waited for the Prodigal. My head knows it but my heart struggles.
You are Holy. You are Worthy. You are Merciful. You are Love. I think it’s fair to assume that You are Trustworthy. So, I’ll put my trust in You and see where this goes. Will You be with me every step? I need for You to stay with me, for I fear where You may lead me. I can do it if I know You are there.
As I mentioned earlier, discovery has been the best thing that’s happened to me. It forced me to deal with my own failures. It forced me to deal with my past. It forced me to come clean with my wife. It forced me to find a support system that works. It forced me to deconstruct my faith and start over. It forced me to do a lot of things I never would have done without the pain and embarrassment of discovery. And You are using all of those things to create a better me.
I no longer have secrets to hide. I no longer have something that keeps me alienated from my wife, my family and my friends. I have been freed from the shackles of my addiction. It seems kinda crazy, but freedom comes from surrender. The battle is not against someone or something else. The battle for freedom is against myself. And the craziest thing of all is that I’m learning these things from a bunch of sex addicts!
While there is great freedom, the clarity that comes with that freedom makes it much easier to see and understand how much I have hurt my closest friend on earth, Amy. My secrets and my actions have been devastating to her. We are working on rebuilding our relationship and redeveloping trust. We both need Your guidance and Your Spirit to be with us every day. I pray that my working my recovery and our working together on our relationship will bring about restoration and an even deeper relationship than before.
I have great hope for the future but know that I cannot make a successful future alone. My future must be found within You and Your will. I must surrender myself, my pride and my agenda to Your will – every day. Only in doing that will I find the peace and serenity I desire. (Why is that so hard to do from day to day?)
Father, I ask for Your help in all of the things I rambled about above. But I especially ask for Your help in these specific areas:
- Help me fight the daily battle against this addiction and its companion, sin in general
- Help Amy as she works through the betrayal and pain I’ve caused her
- Be with us as we rebuild our relationship, this time with true intimacy, honesty and oneness
- Help me to be open, honest and trustworthy in all of my relationships
- Help me to live in humility, knowing that everything I am, everything I have and all that I will ever be comes directly from You
- Help me to live every minute of every day in the present and in reality
- Help me help others with their struggles
- Help me share what I am learning about You and the freedom found within You with others
Fill me with Your Spirit. Fill me with Your Love. Pour Your Mercies out on me, for I am a sinner in need of all of Your Mercy I can get.
Your Servant, Jacob
Jacob The Addict 