Finished but not over

Miss Ame makes a very good point and I need to straighten out a few things about my last post.  That post was about the infection inside of me being cut out and now is over.  I have a long, long way to go before I am no longer sick.  There are anti-bio-tics to take to help heal the residual infection.  There is the physical therapy to rehab the trust and faith.  There will be hours of very uncomfortable conversations that will open the wounds to clean them out again and again and they will have to be salved and re-wrapped for protection.  There will be more minor surgeries that are necessary to get every thing back in line and bones to set. 

Folks I have been in a train wreck.  This is not a quick process where I confess and every thing is done.  That is how God heals our spiritual lives but not our physical ones.  There is a woman who is in incredible pain right now who is wondering what kind of monster she was married to and how she was so blind as to not see it.  There are children who still know nothing about this and may never find out.  Telling them will be up to the mother, but if she wants me to tell them anything I will tell them.  I must do what she wants.  I have always wanted her to be happy but I have never taken the responsibility for what I was doing or did concerning this one sin.  That would have been the right thing to do and the right thing for a very long time was not in me.

So y’all pray for me and I will keep going to the meetings and working the 12 steps.  I will also be making some decisions soon about how much longer I want to stay here.  I really love the job but there are some things about it that are trying push me back into this sin.  I know that I cannot avoid every situation that will make me think about it but there are ways to get myself out from under the temptation.  That is what I am practicing right now.  So maybe I need to stay right where I am for awhile until I get a firm hand hold on the process of what to do as soon as I am tempted.  You have to run from temptation not fight it.  If you are stuck and cannot run you have to call for help IMMEDIATELY.  You don’t wait until you have clicked on the site or walked down to the local strip club.  You call your sponsor to meet you at Denney’s because you are in the midst of your battle and need some one to tell you better.

So this is my plan and I have put it in place.  Right now the temptations are small because of all of the regulations and safe guards in place over here.  But the time of going home is coming and then the evil in our society will be ready to jump on me the minute that I land.  Pray hard please.  I know that I am.

A Real (still sick) Man

It is Finished

The same words Jesus used on the cross seem appropriate here.  I have told my lovely one all of the sick, salacious, sordid, and sad details of what her husband became but is no more.  Folks I am so very tired right now I can barely type.  My mind is tired of all of the sickness.  I had to get it out.  I had to get it out and tell the one person to whom I should have always been accountable, my wife.  The woman who has stuck by me through all of the deployments, delays, bad pay checks, good pay checks, sicknesses, LIES, and every thing else.  If I had done this in the first place I could have taken care of this a long time ago.

Why do we lie?  Why do we tell those who love us the most the most bold faced lies?  Are we thinking that it will protect them?  Do we think that the truth will hurt them so badly that they will run screaming into the night and never return?  Do we really think that the Bible is not true?  I believe that Jesus said, “Your sins will find you out.”  It may have been Paul.  I am sorry I am so tired I do not know where to even look to find the passage I am looking for.

So here I am free of the lies but now I have to deal with the wrath of my L.O.  She can be a she bear when she wants to be.  Proverbs 17:12 reads, “Better to meet a bear robbed of her cubs than a fool in his folly.”  I have been a fool and a terrible sinner.  I have been not only a liar, but also an adulterer, a pornographer, and a murderer.  I have murdered the love of a woman who only wanted to be loved.  I have given evil for good.  I have shown myself undeserving to live in the same country much less the same house with this righteous woman.

I am feeling lighter but I am also feeling a great deal of pain.  My pain is caused by the realization of what I have done, how much pain I have caused to my wife and how much I have taken the Grace of God for granted.  The Bible says that God is patient towards us and not quick to give us the punishment that we deserve.  I am amazed at the patience he has shown me in the past and the way he has allowed me to be up to my neck in sin without killing me.  He could have allowed any number of deaths to befall me at any time.  Yet in His good mercy and grace He preserved my life.  He also stopped any kind of disease or pain of my many sins from coming upon me or my Lovely One.

When you walk out of the darkness and into the light you suddenly realize where you were and you ask this question:  How could I have been so blind and stupid?  Every one asks that question in one form or another when they realize what they have done and where they have been if they come back to their right mind.  Remember the prodigal son?  It was told by Jesus that the young man came to his right mind and found that he was in the wrong and wanted to go home.  When he did what did he find?  Did he find strife, pain, indignity, suffering, and humiliation?  No he found a father who loved him waiting to welcome him home with gifts and a party.

He found a brother much angered but a Father much relieved and loving to both of his sons.  He came home in humility not arrogance. He came home expecting the worst and received the best.  He expected the lash and received the robe of righteousness and was raised up to the loving arms of his kindred.  What a beautiful ending.  It gives me the feeling of times when it is very cold out side and the wind is blowing and the rain or snow is coming down, yet we are safe and warm inside the house.

God I am so very sorry for the sinful life I have lived.  If you still want me I will live for you from this day forward.  I rededicate my life to you right here right now before these witnesses.  I ask that the blood of Jesus wash away all of my sins and that you forgive me of all of the sickness that I have wallowed in.  I ask that you raise me up to your loving arms and let the sins of my past be thrown into the sea of forgetfulness and let me live again.  Let me live in and for you again oh God and Father.  I have walked through death and hell on this earth tasting all of the fleshly sins and I now ask you put my mind in the right again like it was when I was young.  Wash me oh God and I will be clean.  A broken and contrite heart oh Lord you will not despise.  Renew a right spirit within me.  Oh God please do not reject my earnest plea my cry from the depths of my soul oh Lord my God.  In Jesus Name I pray.  Amen

A Real (clean) Man

First Step

I attended my first 12 step meeting with some AA guys here on the camp.  It was great to hear their stories of overcoming.  They will be the first ones to tell you that they have not beaten anything.  What they have done is turn their lives over to their higher power or God and let Him take over the addiction. 

I have also taken another first step.  I have begun, at the beginning, to tell my lovely one all of my past.  How do you tell of a life lived as a lie?  (sigh) I am really sick.  I am very very sick.  I cannot get better without the help and support of those nearest me.  What I do not want to do is kill those who love me and whom I love.  My Lovely and beautiful wife really needs your prayers.  Please hold her up in prayer.  Bombard Heaven with petitions for strength for her.  She has heard some of what I have done but the worst is yet to come.

She is about to walk through a place so dark and hopeless that she will feel as though she is being drowned in filth.  Ladies and gentlemen, what I became is some thing like a pig wallowing in dung.  That is about as descriptive of what I did as I am going to get.  There is no light in sin.  Sin is only darkness and pain and ugliness.  The tempter has come around a few times but I have simply said, out loud, NO! GET AWAY FROM ME!  He leaves immediately.  I have strength now because of the help around me and the prayers of the saints.  Hold her up please.  Hold her up to the light of the King of Glory and let Him fill her with His love, power, and strength for the battle ahead.

The path I have chosen is steep right now.  I am walking up a hill that seems endless.  The poison inside is making the burden heavier than it has to be.  As I have let the poison out the load has been easier to carry.  I know that all of the poison has to come out like gangrene.  When the infection is gone there will be healing of the tissue and scars that will never fade or at least not for a very long time.  Right now I need some healing also.  I have to write to her today about the progression of my journey into hell that I took.  The worry, the shame, the abject humiliation, and the betrayal I perpetrated on her and our marriage.  How can I tell her all of this?

She is insisting on a full disclosure.  I am going to take the advice of a wise woman and give it in little doses.

Thank you all for your prayers.

A Real (sick) Man

Revelations

The title is misleading.  I am not going to reveal anything to the Blog-O-Sphere just yet if ever.  Probably never because my goal is not to give ideas about where to go and sin it is about where to go and get help.  I do not agree with some places that gather together and tell people about where they went and what they did.  That just adds fuel to the fire.  A professional counselor is the only person to whom those types of confessions should be made.  One on one or with the offended spouse.  Not PARTNER I hate that word when it concerns relationships.  The only people who should be having sexual relations are husbands and wives.  ANY other sex leads to the kind of pain that I am in and my lovely one is in right now.

The world in which we live says that every thing is OK.  If it feels good do it as long as it does not hurt anyone else.  That kind of thinking has left millions bruised, bleeding, and hopelessly desparing of ever finding true love in this world.  The divorce industry has fostered so many children because of greed that the kids have no direction in life.  A lack of responsibility on the part of fathers has caused children to grow up almost as if they were orphans.

What is the root of all of this?  There are so many answers and reasons behind them that I could not begin to even start to list them.  I will take one shot at it.  Sin.  Sin is the one thing that we are born into.  We are born naturally into sin therefore we have a sin nature about us and we cannot change it on our own.  We have to have the Blood of Jesus washing away our sins daily or we will fail utterly and completely.  We can be raised to know the right things to do and we can do many of them but our sin nature is going to catch up to us.  The Bible says that your sins will find you out.

I titled this revelations because I have started to reveal some of my addictive behavior to my Lovely One.  She may even be reading them as I am writing this.  I kind of doubt that, it is late where she is and she is probably sleeping.  But none the less I have revealed some to her.  The lying MUST be stopped.  I must never give into it again.  She must know every thing and all.  She will be hurting for some time so please pray hard for her.

I am going to post this now and hope that she will comment in a way that will allow me to post it.  She is a very private person and will not want every thing or some times anything that she says posted so we will have to see.  Thank you all for your prayers who ever  you may be.

A Real Man

Comments from the L.O.

My wife has written to me on this here Blog and I am impressed with her courage.  If you want to read a comment from her read the comments on “I Hope, I Hope” and see if you can guess which one she is.  You get two guesses and the first one does not count.  She has decided to try to go through this with me.  Folks it is not going to be an easy road and she is not very strong right now but she will be.  She has asked for all of the “gory details” of my addiction.  Well…not yet will I put her through that.  Please believe me I am not hiding from her just delaying the intense pain that will come her way. 

More than anything else about the comments she made is that she loves me despite the pain and she has the courage that would shame a Medal of Honor warrior.  Jesus said, “The truth shall make you free.”  I know but it will also hurt.  But as my Lovely One has said the truth only hurts when you find out that you have been lied to in the past. 

OK no more lies.  No more hiding in the dark.  No more.  You hear me devil, NO MORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  You have shamed, tormented, humiliated, and lied to me for long enough.  I am through with you and your fleshly lusts.  I am through with you and the degradation you brought into my life.  Was it my choice?  Yep it sure was and this is my choice also, G E T O U T.  Do not come back. 

I had a choice when it was a choice.  But when it became a habit and then an addiction I had no more choice and you kept it going.  But no more.  No more will I be surfing the Internet while my lovely one is sleeping peacefully in our marriage bed.  No more will I be making up lies about where I have been with out her, I will be taking her every where I go when I leave the house.  No more will you tempt me with inappropriately dressed female co-workers I have learned to bounce my eyes.  No more staring at female joggers as they run by me, I turn my head.  But the best part of all is I AM NOT ALONE ANY LONGER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

I have a woman who loves me on my side and I have men, courageous fighting MEN on my side to help me stay pure and away from you and your disgusting touch.  I despise you and I rebuke you in the name of Jesus Christ!  I come against you not in my strength but in the power of HIS might and I don’t come alone.  I am declaring war on you.  Not on me or my addiction but on you.  I need healing not battle, my addiction needs recovery not artillery.  But you are going to be dealing with a quietly determined man with friends and you are going DOWN!

 I cannot believe how angry I am right now.  My anger though is not at me or even my addiction.  My anger is at the liar and the father of all lies.  My anger is also righteous and it will burn for a long time.  Not as a furnace but as a volcano that is just smoking and only occasionally produces a little lava.  But lava burns everything it touches so I have to be careful who or what that anger touches. 

I know that I have caused a great deal of pain to others and I take that responsibility.  How many others have hurt those they cared about the most or who hurt those no one cared about and not repented of it?  The first duty of the strong is after all to protect the weak.  How many of them are going to pay dearly for not healing the hurts that they caused others?  I want to heal those I have hurt.  Before I can do that there will come a cutting out of the infection.  That will hurt tremendously but after that is gone the healing can begin.

God Bless you

A Real (repentant) Man