Coming Alive And Growing In Healing Doesn’t Mean An End To Pain
This week has run the spectrum for me. i have felt exceptionally alive; desperately lonely; unspeakably sad; and quietly victorious.
It’s a common misconception among men i have worked with dealing with pornography addiction that being healed of the addiction will mean escaping from the pain life has to offer.
Not so. But i have to admit, sometimes i can be lulled into that false belief myself.
In fact, the truth is coming alive will actually increase your experiences of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain. For it is only an alive person who can feel those things. Being alive does not mean an absence of feeling; as though you have risen far above the fray and you are no longer affected by life’s exigencies and vicissitudes. The difference for me is this: those things no longer control my life.
When i was living in my addiction i was dead and numb to real love and honest passion. i was cold and detached from the pain of my own life, and that of others. But even still, those emotions and situations still had an effect on me. i may have been numb, but i was actually very much at the mercy of life’s stresses. i was easily swayed by life’s ebb and flow of joy and sorrow, which was so often mixed in my circumstances.
But as one coming alive, i have progressively become more attuned to the life of my own heart and the hearts of others. So now i can rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep, rather then simply spout that as wisdom others should follow even as i remain self-absorbed.
If i will enter in and engage with life, i will not escape the pain, the joy, the loneliness, the togetherness and everything else that passes between people as they truly relate to one another.
Sometimes coming alive feels very powerful, almost overwhelming. But i cannot go back to being a cold and timid soul who knows nothing of either victory or defeat.
Intentional Warriors 
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