The interchange went something like this today:
"It's really weird. The more I tell my story, the more I find I am helping others who are suffering like I was, to come into their own freedom, and the better and more solid I am in my recovery. I can talk about my past without becoming angry and upset, and God has given me a compassion for those who injured me in the past, and a burning desire to help those who are still living in suffering and denial."
He smiled. "Telling one's story is a truly powerful thing."
We went on to talk about how after a certain time, one who is being healed of so many things in his or her inner life comes to the point where going back to the pre-recovery lifestyle is repulsive.
I believe one book says this about that: "For by this time sanity will have returned. ... if tempted (to go back to the old lifestyle) we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this new attitude has been given to us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality, safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky, nor are we afraid. That is how we react as long as we keep in fit spiritual condition. ... We are not cured... What we have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition."
I shook my head. "It really is repulsive to me now, the life I once thought was so righteous, so 'Christian.' I wasn't real at all; I hid inside my rules and regulations, isolated myself from the very people who (like me) were in desperate need of God's touch on their lives. And the whole time I deluded myself into believing that being "right" was better than being happy, being free. Now that I'm free ... I don't need to be right, to win every argument any more. God is opening more doors than I ever thought possible. My family, my marriage is restored. I'm way more accepting of people, and I have more of a sense of where they start and I stop, and vice versa. I'm ... happy, for what feels like the first time in my life."
He nodded - his eyes sparkling with ... were those tears?
"What a difference this last 2 years has made in my life," I continued. "And you've been a part of that healing, and I am so grateful."
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