I would like to share with you two simple truths: there is nothing that cannot be forgiven, and there is no one un-deserving of forgiveness.

Desmond Tutu

During difficult times, my faith has been present as an option to choose life and hope over the option of misery and personal defects like self-pity, bitterness, resentment, and lack of forgiveness. The comfort people find in woe is tragic. (Ironically, that’s coming from an addict.)

I think we all like the idea of forgiveness, but the Instagram vs. reality factor of true forgiveness is rarely explored. The radical concept of forgiveness in the Jesus story is still massively offensive even to believers, with some only paying lip service to it and lacking the courage to practice it.

I come from an alternative stream of Christianity. Before I realised the problem I had with my sexual behaviours, pornography, and the relationship dysfunction at play in all my adult life, I was a fringe figure in church. I had a couple of stints in the Christian space, played and sang the songs, but denied God with my lifestyle.

When I think of all the headaches religion has given me, I believe most of the issues have been with the human defects of other believers. If, as they say, hurt people hurt people, then the communities of organized religion are no exception to this rule.

When I think of the wonderful things about my faith as a Christian, the strongest by far is this message of forgiveness and how when we unpack the meaning of this, it really shows that mercy and compassion will always win over a sense of justice based on anger.

Forgiveness has become a subject that can be studied at a higher academic level but is almost flaky and selective on a societal one.

My Step Four inventory comprised of things I’m embarrassed about, deeply ashamed of and abhorrently disgusted by. My sponsor was the witness of this inventory, and in all honesty, were people to be privy to a fraction of this, I would be sneered at and likely written off by a chunk of people.

I need to forgive and to be forgiven; it’s that fundamental human reality that we all need to embrace. Forgiveness is not about condoning or excusing the wrongdoing; instead, it’s about freeing ourselves from the emotional burden that can weigh us down.

To use a life example, I can refer to my birth father; he was a bully. My earliest memories of domestic violence are traumas that shaped and haunted me through my formative years and have left me with a lot of issues. In order for me to heal and move on with life, I need to forgive him for those things. By holding on to resentment, the only one being held back is me.

I simply say that, despite the hurt and the damage, I am no fit person to judge the man for his worst actions. In my heart of hearts, I do forgive him. I know what it means to need and desire forgiveness. I have to look people in the eye and own my past on a daily basis; their forgiveness doesn’t lessen my punishment.

I’ve heard the words, ‘You are an absolute idiot, but you’re a good man. I’m going to stand by you because anyone can mess up in a royal way, but I can see how much you punish yourself, so you don’t need help with that.’

This acceptance doesn’t let me off the hook; it means I am accountable to do and be better. It permits me to keep moving forward and work on my issues in a productive way.

Imagine if we strived to be slow to anger and quick to forgive; what lives might be spared, turned around, and what healing would we see?

When we hit life’s bumps in the road or those shatter point moments in life, it is vital to pause and breathe. Our reaction says a lot about our ability to deal with stress, and that’s a crucial test in recovery. There are resentments and spot-check moments, and then there are the blunt force trauma moments that can shake your inmost being if you don’t have tools.

In the past, the closest I used to come to pausing and breathing was going outside for a cigarette or ten. I quit years ago, but I wonder if what I miss most about those moments was the standing still, remaining silent, and just regulating breathing. It sounds serene when you leave out the smoking part.

Whether it’s a test result, an accident, or any one of thousands of things that sends your flight senses through the roof, how can we prevent a derailment?

People in the military operating in high adrenaline speak of the short, sharp breaths to focus the senses and give time for training to kick in, to hack the response of emotion or survival.

Such a moment hit me today, and for a minute or two, I was stunned. I felt all four biological responses to danger.

Flight – This response is the panic reaction to run away; horses are flight animals and are easily spooked.

Fight – This is confronting a situation head-on and is the favored response of mine, but in a heightened adrenal state, one can make errors in judgment and react in an emotionally charged way. Fight can be good but not in a defensive, minimizing, or attacking way.

Freeze – This is how I felt initially and is essentially the rabbit in the headlights, not a response useful in many situations unless you’re in Jurassic Park trying not to be seen by a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Fawn – This is being overly compliant and trying to appease an aggressor. In actual danger, it’s likely to lead to an even worse outcome.

The fact is these are mostly realised in existential threats, but I mention them as they are also trauma responses, my feeling all four in one moment made me realize that the program has equipped me with experience, strength, and hope to have the option to choose how I respond, I respond by working my program.

A dear fellow shared recently how sheep will panic and flee in snow storms and ultimately get stuck in ditches where the sturdy cow hunkers down collectively and embraces the conditions and comes through in one piece.

I have found that taking some time to process, to breathe, gives me time to take the next right step, and that’s all there is to recovery.

I called my sponsor, checked in with my therapist, which will likely form the basis of our next catch-up.

One of my favorite bands is Enter Shikari, and their song “Sssnakepit” says, “when the weight of all the world is pushing down, just push right back.” That’s the invitation; if fear, anxiety, or compulsivity ramp up, then with our program, we get to fight back. If those dials are up to loud, just crank your program up to full. Be louder.

My secret is to take time out and literally breathe. As a Wim Hof practitioner, I am very grateful for breathwork at difficult times. It’s my version of two sharp breaths to give myself time to be calm and not react instinctively but rather trust God to do His job and deliver me in my circumstances and not from them.

He may not spare me the fire, or the lion’s den, or the belly of the whale, but He will be present with and spare me in it.

Feelings of inadequacy have been at the heart of my life before landing in recovery. I often shudder with thoughts of how I failed to present authenticity for fear of rejection. When mixed with the flammable nature of toxic shame, my acting out, there was little chance I would have ever been able to put my hand up and say, “I have a problem and I need help.”

The years of isolation this led to left me feeling like I was a castaway on an island. I’ve written about this analogy before, but to use the illustration of an island, I kept myself hostage with the countless promises of “one day,” not the one day at a time, but the decades-long kicking the can down the road lie that I will have a handle on my addiction, I could tame the beast in me, and no one need ever find out.

Whether it be that job, or when I achieve this goal, or if I get this or that type of girlfriend, if I lose weight, if I can just pay my debts, if I just stick to this and not that, all were excuses to avoid the mirror of accountability.

My addiction was propped up with cognitive distortions and unaddressed trauma. However much the world and even myself at times tried to make it a moral failing, the fact remains there was a narrative or a story I needed to discover. I got triggered by that word before, “narrative,” like it was somehow thinking up an excuse to minimize or wriggle out of owning my deeds. The truth is no human in their right mind would spend the time in obsession, sleeplessness, and fantasy that I called home.

My partner and I recently parked the camper van along the coast. I decided I would nip to the shop, and when I realized the one I had in mind was closed, I rang her up to say I would be a bit longer. We still have the boundary that we keep in touch closely. Since being in a dark place of seeing my own demise as an option or justice, it’s a consideration on my part to check in and not leave too much room for fear of the worst.

“I won’t be long, babe. Hang on a sec; there’s a lad here playing some worship songs.” I teared up at the memory of a younger me singing love songs to a higher power I wasn’t ready to surrender to in deed. Those songs of my youth were sentiment but lacked the substance that my rock bottom would give me. I was young, well-meaning but already on a path of addiction back then.

This sparked a thought about the concept of one’s inner child. In my years of working numerous jobs, I have a pile of old business cards. Why I kept them, I don’t know. Perhaps the hoarder in me didn’t chuck them out.

One of the business cards featured a picture of a much younger me, eleven years old, wearing my Granddad’s flat cap, a look I still rock to this day. I stared at the face of little me, and at eleven years old, the thought that that kid in a years’ time would start pouring limitless amounts of top-shelf magazines and within a further year make the jump to VHS and all sorts of hardcore content.

When I get angry at myself and overwhelmed with shame, I have decided to look at that snap of my younger self and remember that I am that young lad. I never set myself up for my path. That’s not to say I didn’t run with it and take it to places of my own doing. I have to own and live with certain things. My diagnosis of being an addict doesn’t let me off that, far from it. Ownership, consequence, and amends are mine to carry like a limp for the remainder of my life.

But I don’t have to despise myself to learn, change, and carry the message to others. Patrick Carnes wrote the book “Out of the Shadows” in 1983, the year of my birth. Forty years on, and the challenge is to come out of the shadows and safely start to own our truth.

I’ve traded the “one day isle” for “today I am sober, grateful, content.”