In response to my own unfulfilled needs and desires, I subscribed to a myriad of untruths about my identity and worth as a boy, and those lies continue knocking at the door of my life as a man.
Some of the core beliefs I developed about myself include being defective, powerless, and alone. There’s something inherently and irreparably wrong with me (defective); I lack the ability to effect change or realize a purpose (powerless); and nobody is present to support me (alone).
Now, I don’t necessarily believe these things every minute of every day. I find myself regressing towards them particularly in times of stress or conflict, like a default common denominator. As I grow in my recovery, these feelings have a progressively weaker grip on me. The process for me is to continually do battle with these faulty beliefs so that I can make space for insight into truth about who I am and the living out of that truth.
Identifying my own wounds and how I have historically let them fuel my behavior has been a critical step in recovery. Taking stock of destructive coping mechanisms and their underlying catalysts is key. With that said, insight is not enough on its own to induce change.
The next step is to learn the truth about who you are as a man—your identity and your capacity for new action.
Choosing My Path
Several years ago, I came face-to-face with a decision I hoped I’d never have to make. My double life had been exposed—my secret sins were made known. Up until this point, I was torn between two worlds. Now, I felt I had to choose one path or the other.
One image I projected was that of a good, Christian man. I didn’t drink, smoke, or use foul language (at least when others were within earshot). I was loyal and treated other women with respect and reservation. Even uttering the words ‘sex’ or ‘pornography’ was outside my code of conduct. I was a paragon of integrity. Unlike other people I knew who had abandoned their relationship with Christ and given in to worldliness, I had kept the faith. I was fighting the good fight.
Only, I wasn’t.
Behind this virtuous veneer, I was a slave to lust and addiction. My loyalty was skin deep. I was the worst sinner of them all, and I was steeped in shame.
The dissonance and strain between these two lives was consuming me from the inside out. It’s not easy maintaining a healthy appearance when you have a terminal illness.
From day-to-day, I found myself vacillating between identities. I wanted to believe I was still good and upright. So, I made excuses for myself to myself. Hey, at least I’m not doing what that guy is doing. At least I’m not getting drunk. At least I’ve never been to jail. I still go to church every Sunday and pray occasionally.
At the end of the day, I couldn’t fool myself. I knew I was regularly betraying this façade of righteousness. I couldn’t reconcile my secret sin with my external visage. I tried to avoid thinking deeply about it because it conjured within me unbearable anxiety and shame. I also determined that change was hopeless. I was too far gone.
I had settled on a life of secrecy, hoping and praying that God would be gracious to me in the end. But nobody could ever find out what I did behind closed doors. I compartmentalized my life so strictly that I thought perhaps I could keep even God out of my secret rooms. I projected a lie about who I was, and I was believing it more and more each day. I would dedicate myself to disguising my transgressions and take my secrets with me to the grave.
Despite my Christian upbringing, I had at best a weak grasp on what my identity in Christ actually was. I was seeing my life as black or white, with my perceived predominant behavior as the sole indicator of who I was.
I was so sick of the tension between my public and private life that I tasted a morsel of relief when it all came crashing down. Of course, the term ‘relief’ was far from my vernacular at the time, but I know now that it existed, buried somewhere in the debris.
I knew this was a pivotal point in my life. And I was terrified. I was already overburdened by shame; how was I going to survive with the incalculable amount of shame awaiting me?
In my darkest moments, I considered choosing a path of decadence. Maybe I had been kidding myself all along, thinking I was a child of God. How could I say I was submitting myself to my Creator when I had been indulging in a buffet of sin on the side? Maybe the honest thing to do here was fully indict myself and give up the pursuit of righteousness. I didn’t like the idea of being a villain, but maybe that’s what I always was, whether I acknowledged it or not.
What I didn’t understand at the time was the difference between behavior and identity. I’d thought I understood, but when push came to shove, I believed in a pretty dismal gospel. Yeah, yeah, Christ died to save sinners. But, like, within reason. I felt like I committed especially potent sins since I had not only acted them out but denied, by omission, that I had anything to do with them. Surely, this was indicative of a malignant heart, exempt from divine forgiveness.
By some miracle, I began a path of recovery and redemption. In the primordial advancements of this journey, I began to allow a vital shift in my paradigm of self and faith. I began maturing out of my Santa Clause gospel (I’m either naughty or nice, and this is based on my behavior). The truth is we all have sinned and disqualified ourselves (Rom. 3:23). My sins were just as vile as the next guy’s in terms of what they meant for my status as a human.
I started to see and experience that I could be sanctified and saved by grace and wrestle with sin. My personal efforts to be blameless will always fail. The good news here is that I am not what I do. In Christ, I am forgiven and redeemed, and I will continue to do both good and bad things until the end of my days in this mortal body.
Speaking of forgiveness, I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive my mini-sermon here. I am no theologian or pastor. My story just does not make sense apart from Christ. All of the help I have received in my recovery process—all the perspective, practical tools, and exhortations—will eventually lose merit and salience if not planted in the truth of the Gospel.
To sum up, behavior does not equal identity. And behavior does not gain me an identity.
My behavior ought to flow out of my identity. In reality, I am saved by grace yet continue to have the capacity for good and evil. The hope is that, as I embody the truth of who I am, my actions will reflect this process of purification. I will never achieve sinlessness despite my best efforts. However, I can be used to have a positive impact on the world and further the Kingdom of God in spite of my sin.
You might be thinking at this point, “Well, hot dog. I can be saved by Christ and my behavior doesn’t really matter a whole lot in the grand scheme of things.” A man named Paul nipped this notion in the bud: “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” (Rom. 6:1-2). We do not earn our salvation for our good behavior, but are exhorted to “work out (our) salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12). The call here is to avoid the temptation to take salvation for granted and go on living our lives as we see fit.
I’m writing to convince you, but also myself, that you are not a miserable piece of garbage. You have surely done some regrettable things. I have too. The truth is still this: you are a good man. This was one of the hardest things for me to embrace early on in my recovery, and it can be a struggle in the present.
There’s Fear in Letting Go
I wish I could say that immediately upon disclosure of my duplicitous life, I was overcome with remorse and took full responsibility for my actions. Unfortunately, time revealed I had a death grip on my addiction. I kicked and screamed as I begrudgingly and resentfully dissolved my connections to my lustful addiction and acting out. It was a painfully arduous process for my wife to bear witness to. In my egocentric entitlement, I dragged things out, salting the gaping wounds I had inflicted on her.
Needless to say, I was highly opposed to relinquish the addiction, even when I could see the damage it caused.
In addition to self-centeredness, I think this obstinance was largely grounded in fear.
I didn’t know how I’d survive without my unhealthy coping strategies. I had depended on them for so long to help me avoid and numb my pain. Even more so, I didn’t know who I was without them.
If I’m entirely honest, early on in recovery, I was more motivated by placating my wife than personal transformation. I was still saturated in the attitudes and beliefs connected to lustful consumption.
The gap I was up against was the separation between letting go of the old and grabbing onto the new. I had to say no to my old way of life and yes to a new one. Oh, this was not easy. And it still isn’t easy. But it is getting easier.
The underlying process that was slowly transpiring was one of transformation. For this change to happen, it had to be more than mere behavior modification. Behavior is founded on some sort of belief. I had been subscribed to a plethora of destructive messages about myself for years and years. Now, I was going to just drop all of that?
And there’s the kicker: it’s not a one-and-done operation. Real transformation takes time, commitment, and humility. It is far from a linear process. There are set-backs and failed attempts. I am by no means a saint, now years into this operation. What I’ve found is this is a continual course of refinement.
Recovery is like cleaning a cat’s litter box after neglecting it for much too long. You start by scooping up and sifting out the bigger turds. The medium and smaller deposits are harder to find, but you can acquire them with some careful digging. You eventually are left combing through the sand in broader passes in search of any outstanding nuggets. Ah, finally, the box is at an acceptable level of relative cleanliness. But, wait; here comes Mr. Whiskers to deliver another stinker. The box calls for another quick comb through. Hopefully, this time you’ll be better at upkeep and can manage the excretions as they present themselves.
Well, that was another analogy far from being watertight. But I think it paints the picture of the messy work that is recovery—an ongoing refinement that has no definitive end.
My recovery began very messily. I had to root out my bad behavior, yes. But, simultaneously, I had to root out the lies I believed about myself.
Refuting Lies, Embracing Truth
I have had to identify what falsehoods, exactly, I believed about myself before I could replace them with truth. Is it true that I’m a defective human being, bereft of capability, hopelessly and utterly alone? How do those statements fit into God’s view of me?
The truth is that I am fearfully and wonderfully made (Ps. 139:14). The truth is that I am made in the image of God (Gen. 1:27). The truth is that I am capable, hopeful, and connected.
What kind of distorted beliefs about yourself do you have? Maybe you feel you’re not good enough—attractive enough, successful enough, fit enough, smart enough (fill in the blank). Maybe you believe your needs don’t matter—or worse yet, that you don’t matter.
I’m here to tell you that you are enough.
You matter.
Your needs matter.
You have a voice and are worthy of being heard and understood.
If it feels awkward and cheesy to even entertain the idea of embracing these truths, know that you’re not alone. I was fortunate to work with a life coach early in my recovery who graciously let me struggle through my reluctance to accept the truth of my identity. I couldn’t argue with the fact that I could readily jump aboard the shame train and believe that I was stupid, worthless, and hopeless. So, why was it so hard to embrace the opposite?
Despite all my transgressions, God loves me. If I am chosen and accepted by the creator of the universe, maybe I can extend some compassion to myself and begin telling a new narrative.
The challenge here is to catch your automatic negative thoughts when you get triggered. Take a good look at them. Roll them around in your mind. If your best friend told himself what you just told yourself, would you agree? Would you tell your friend he is a miserable piece of garbage?
I think that harsh inner critic is overdue for an eviction.
Try on truth. Next time you are caught in a downward spiral of negativity, take notice. Challenge it, head-on, with the truth of who you are. What does God say about you?
Choose To Show Up Differently
Empowered by the truth of who we are, we have the freedom to behave in a new way. Instead of being critical, maybe I become curious. Instead of avoiding/numbing out, I stay present. Instead of shaming myself, I get to value myself.
I’m sure this sounds all fine and good…and impossible. That’s the mindset with which I started when I was introduced to this way of regulating my emotions and changing my behavior. Like everything else in recovery, this is a gradual process. My mind believed lies and acted on those lies for my whole life. There’s going to be natural resistance to change, especially this profound.
The cool thing is that operating out of the truth of who I am actually reinforces that truth. If I believe I’m a powerless victim and let other people do things for me I could do myself, I end up with more evidence that I can’t take care of myself. Conversely, if I believe I am empowered and capable, and then I exercise those notions, I achieve new things that fortify that truth.
If we take an honest look at how we spend our time, we might see just how often we are coping by numbing out, distracting ourselves, shutting down, etc. By avoiding pain, we end up avoiding life. I want to learn how to be increasingly present with real life: the joy, the pain, the mundane. I can remain in the here and now, showing myself that I am resilient, I am designed with purpose, and I am courageous.
Integration
Secretive acting out is a huge part of my history. I chose to indulge in reprehensible activities in a futile attempt to decimate my pain, which merely numbed me for a short time. The fleeting nature of the numbing led me to restlessly chase down my next fix again and again. I ended up with unaddressed pain that compounded as I added shame for my behavior to the mix.
I am perpetually in process of embodying the truth of who I am, so I can live life wholly, resorting to coping less and less. We are not meant to be internally divided, living a confidential dichotomy. I am learning how to live in an integrated manner, showing up as my whole self.
I commission us to continue integrating our personas so we can become men of integrity—honest, reliable, and safe.
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