This is a faith-heavy blog today, and it might not fit everyone’s “understanding” of God, but this one’s me opening up. If it resonates with someone, then all the more reason to hit publish.

Over the past year, my journey in recovery has reconciled me to my faith. A part of that has been picking up my guitar and getting reacquainted with songs of worship. Expression of my inmost being through prayer and worship is part of my 11th step, but it’s what I’m made to do in my eyes. These days, I am pleased to be more a collector of second-hand Bibles than a hoarder of pornography. My life of faith feels a lot more sustainable than my previous brushes with religion.

Forgiveness is key here. To live at peace with this warring world requires a tough commitment to accepting this as a continual process. We live in a world that needs more forgiveness. Each day, we do things or experience things that mean this powerful transaction needs to take place in real-time, not leaving time to ponder and form resentments.

I can’t help but think of the story and film of The Shack when I think about extreme forgiveness. It’s the story of a man wracked with grief, whose pain and anger would tear him apart until God met with him in the midst of his trauma. Mack found that to continue in life and be the father to his remaining children they deserved he would need to find forgiveness even for the man who committed the most evil of deeds.

Jesus lived on the extremes. When he walked the earth, he wasn’t here for some earthly religious institution. He was here for the broken, the lame, the blind, the leper, the tax collector, the adulterer, and the demon-possessed. His message of a welcoming father’s kingdom without pain and sorrow through the full remission of sins was offensive to man’s religious and legalistic thinking.

As a recovering porn and sex addict, I feel like a modern-day leper. In recovery, we can find ourselves on the fringe of society. Being forced to behold the mirror of accountability to own your deeds and the entirety of your being with no spin or false narrative can make you feel in the world but not entirely of it.

I reflect on Desmond Tutu’s book The Book of Forgiving which opens with two statements that could maroon you on an island of struggle:
“There is nothing that cannot be forgiven; and, there is no one undeserving of forgiveness.”
Just reflect on that for a minute, and really sit with it.

My blind consumption of sexual content online was just a stitch in the overall tapestry or a mere pixel of this bigger picture that people don’t want to talk about or admit. Previous posts point to the scale of the problem; this one is to remember that shame isn’t a very good fuel supply. I remember that, as with many things, I sat on a spectrum of progression where I wasn’t the worst but far from where I belonged. “I once was lost but now am found.”

For quite some time, I have donated to Thorn, a charitable organization that works with law enforcement agencies to bring down traffickers and child abusers at the source. With this in mind, I watched the much-acclaimed film The Sound of Freedom.

This film was a tough watch, focusing on the real-life undercover work of Timothy Ballard. The film was very moving and filled me with sadness, knowing that the porn industry fuels sex trafficking and abuse.

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Living with my past is tough at times. Constant reminders and regrets can often lead to a great deal of shame, and it’s here I land at the core of what works in my recovery:
God loves a wretch like me infinitely. There is nothing that I can do that will clean me up under my own will. No amount of amends will fix me if I only look at all this through the lens of judgment and legalism. The invitation through the steps is a life dedicated to union with God and my fellow man.

Even for a wretch like me, the journey from shame to grace through the twelve steps and communion with God has led me to today. I am content, I am grateful, I am in love and loved, I am whole, and I am enough. Today, I am present. I Am sees no wretch when he looks at me.