Recovery is a word we throw around a lot on this site. It’s something that we read about but sometimes don’t fully understand. As someone who would consider myself to be in a continual state of porn and sexual (not necessarily in that order) recovery (because true recovery is a lasting process), the first thing that came to my mind was the definitions of it.
One is “to get back or regain (something lost or taken away)”. Another is “to make up for or make good (loss, damage, etc., to oneself)”. Still another is “to reclaim from a bad state, practice, etc.” and another is “to regain the strength, composure, balance, or the like, of (oneself)”. Finally, another one is “to regain health after being sick, wounded, or the like”.
So let’s recap:
Before recovery, you are lost (or you’ve lost something).
Before recovery, you are damaging yourself.
Before recovery, you are in a bad state or practice.
Before recovery, you are weak and imbalanced.
Before recovery, you are sick and wounded.
Gee. That’s…a lot. You know, there’s a wise man who once said “The more you deny, the more you can be controlled by what you deny.” (Tweet This) When we talk about recovery in the sense of getting freed from an addiction, it is my personal belief that we tend to spend so much time on the addiction itself that we’re not really thinking about what led to it in the first place. We’re looking at “the tree” without getting to “the root” (or roots).
So, if you’re someone who is currently battling with porn addiction, stop and think about it for a moment. The very first time that you watched porn, what was the root cause? Curiosity? Boredom? Stress? Loneliness? Horniness? Then take it a step further. The first time that you sensed that you were becoming addicted to it, how did you know? Because it was taking up too much of your time? Because it was costing you your relationships? Because you were ignoring your convictions? And being that you are still “caught up”, why is that? Why are you damaging yourself? Why are you in such a bad state or practice? Why are you allowing it to imbalance and wound you?
Remember, the wise man said that what you deny, you are controlled by. That said, if you’ve been telling yourself all this time that you’re not addicted, then that’s just how much porn is controlling you because again, as someone in recovery herself, I don’t know of one redeeming factor that participating in porn brings to my life. And a part of being a healthy person is doing what will make you…healthier.
Not only that, the more time I spend away from porn, the more I see that porn was a distraction from so many other things that I needed to be in recovery from. My low self-esteem had me lost. I was still healing from childhood abuse that had damaged me. I was co-dependent in a lot of ways (and trust me, that is truly a bad practice!). And those three things alone were causing me to feel weak and imbalanced…sick and wounded. So really, porn was a “temporary getaway” from so many other things that I needed healing from. And here’s the thing: now that I am in recovery from those things too, porn isn’t an issue for me.
I hope this post motivates you to dig a little deeper into yourself. I hope it causes you to reconsider what recovery actually means and entails. Because at the end of the day, porn may be one of your problems, but it’s not the only thing that you’ll need to recover from.
Oh, and hold Psalm 147:3 close in this season. It got me through.
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Do you have story about recovery – share it.
What I Needed to Recover From by XXXchurch.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.