"Looking For The Person That's Looking For Me..." - JR Everhart

I heard this (title of this post) on a podcast today, and I almost started crying.  It hit such a nerve with me.  I’ve felt so alone most of my life.  Even when married, I never really felt like my spouse was looking for me as their husband.  Perhaps they were looking for what I could give them, but definitely not the person I truly was - under all my dysfunction, hurt, and pain.  The podcast talked about how we all feel this way.  Looking for someone that will love us and put up with us.  Willing to travel into the pits of our hurt and pain and support us and love us toward our next higher level of growth and good.  I’ve never had that, and when the guy on the podcast spoke these words, it hit me like a ton of bricks, revealing an emptiness in me that I immediately felt pity for.  I was sad for myself, and that I’ve never truly experienced this ideal.  Hearing all of this opened a wound I didn’t even know existed. 

As I considered this further, God showed me how this desire is far deeper than my romantic life.  My parents chose to not soldier on for me in my weakness or defend me in my times of need.  They were just punching the time clock of life, trying to push through us last two kids of twelve they had between three marriages.  To say our family was dysfunctional was laughable.  Normal, middle-class families were dysfunctional.  We lived well below the poverty line, and our home was toxic and full of layers of decay.  My mom was trapped in a relationship with a man (my father) who was a textbook narcissist.  He was controlling and never satisfied with anyone's performance.  He was also very bitter.  And we defined ourselves as a "Christian Family".  Lol.  My father had a great awakening in his senior years, and we made peace which allowed us to enjoy some good years together.  But my mom was far too damaged and addicted to Valium to really be there for anyone.  She was constantly sick and just wanted to be left alone.  We had some moments of joy here and there, but most of the time she just sat and gossiped about anyone that threatened her world.  She was paralyzed by fear and anxiety and never really knew any freedom in her life.  When she died of cancer, I could only feel deep levels of sadness for her because she took all that junk to her grave, never once finding freedom from her guilt and shame. 

All this facilitated me becoming an adult child that never believed anyone ever really loved him.  I lived most of my adult life searching for something I couldn’t fully comprehend.  Decades of wasted years ensued with me trying to find some form of resolution.  Yes, there were seasons of joy, but they were few and far between.  As such, I was stuck in a cyclical dysfunction.  Time after time I chose the wrong women.  Women that felt familiar to my toxic childhood.  It’s absolute insanity at its best.  Even now after a decade of recovery, to my credit, I still wonder if I’ll get it right this time around.  Time will tell.  At this point, I’m mostly isolated in my life and slowly getting comfortable with it. 

I do see the principles of this idea of - looking for people who are looking for me - playing out in my counseling ministry.  I think that’s why giving it away to the newcomers is so important and fulfilling in our recovery.  “You can’t keep it and still grow…” is a recovery phase I recently heard.  Giving it away has always made me feel better and connected to the brotherhood of recovery.  Especially sex addiction recovery, which is so "hush hush" in so many Christian circles.  I desire to connect with people who need what I know to fulfill the ideas of validation in my emotional brain.  Helping others brings about purpose and satisfaction to my world of doubt and feared calamity.  Here recently, I have found myself walking away from conversations that I knew God was using to help someone along.  This resulted in me feeling as if I was enough, even if the dialogue lasted only for a few minutes, or hours.  I believe this is supported by James 5:16:

 

“Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed…”| NLT

There is great self-healing in helping others.  Because we all need to pay it forward for our own healing and growth.  It’s God's great process of building his kingdom.

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"White Dog / Black Dog" - Scott Tomlin

 

Many of us have been living in a world of “either…, or”.  We get stuck in thinking that something or someone must be either all good or all bad.  An aspect of recovery and emotional health is accepting that in each of us, there is the capacity for both good & bad.  When we expect or need for someone to be all of something, life becomes disappointing & lonely.  We eventually discover that those we love do have the capacity to hurt us, and yet, we can still see the goodness of who God created them to be.  We begin to no longer need the contrast of Black & White, and then, are able to embrace & celebrate the beauty of the gray that is in all of us.  This leads us to discover the power of ‘And’.” ~ Faithful & True 

I lived for 40 years with two men inside me.  There was a really good guy.  Church guy, family man.  Then there was a really bad guy.  Lone Wolf, Rover, who used everything and everyone to get what he wanted!   As I grew up, I tried with ever increasing effort to keep these two guys away from each other.  The Good Guy Scott didn’t want to be seen with The Bad Guy Scott.  He also didn’t want his associates and friend groups (related to these two individual guys) to ever meet each other.  In essence there was the fear that each group would be horrified to discover the other group.  So, I learned to build a wall between the two versions of myself.  My thinking was that if I could build it thick enough and tall enough these two worlds would NEVER have to meet. 

“More right behavior + less wrong behavior = Godliness.

There’s only one thing wrong with this equation, it completely disregards the righteousness God has already placed in us.” ~ The Cure by John Lynch, Bruce McNicol, & Bill Thrall

When did I first discover that something must be wrong with me?  That I wasn’t acceptable just as I was made.  Whilst looking back, it was around age 5; I was rejected on the playground by my Kindergarten Crush.  I can still see the Jungle Gym on that playground and where I ran and hid.  I told my young self that something must be wrong with me.  Why had she rejected me?

Then my 1st & 2nd grade school years didn’t go so well either.  I didn’t learn as fast as the other kids, and I was moved from school to school to school because of this.  During that same time, my father's rage, and the physical abuse that ensued became more intense, and it all came to a head when I got in trouble during a family holiday party that my parents hosted.  My father’s drunken state escalated a spanking session to become a beating session.  Eventually, my screams could be heard over the holiday revelry throughout the house.  In a burst of courage and bravery, my older brother ran into the bedroom and stopped my father; for this I am forever grateful!  However, the damage of this emotional and physical abuse left my little boy believing that something must be wrong with him.  As a result, I became determined to hide the real version of me and instead send my representative.  This became the Imposter Me, the one who was cropped and edited to be the person for which the audience was looking, rather than be the boy for which God lovingly created.

Psychologist have determined that a child begins to leave the Concrete Stage of thought - where life is as it appears - around age 7.  We then enter the Concrete Operational Stage from 7 to around 11 years of age.  At this time, we begin to be able to consider ourselves and how other people might think and feel about us.  We begin to understand that our thoughts are unique to us, and that not everyone else shares our thoughts, feelings, and opinions.  It makes sense that when I was this age, and could not reconcile all the chaos that was happening in my life, I went looking for something to help me gain a sense of control.

“Guilt says, I did something bad.  Shame says, I AM something bad”.~  Brene’ Brown

As I consider the above narrative, and what was going on within me at this time, I can understand that all of this served to motivate me to create my False Self.  Guilt that I was feeling, transitioned into Shame that I was believing, and I began to build my wall to separate my two halves, as well as the separate worlds they existed within.  In short order, the lie that I was not enough began to be believed implicitly.  From there, hiding my true self became paramount.  In time, the pain of not being my true, combined self began to grow, and I began to even further disconnect from the authentic person whom God had created me to be.  Because of this I sought out ways to numb the pain as a means to control the chaos this created. 

It was around this same age that I discovered my goto sleep aid and pain medication.  These manifested in the form of the chemical reaction in my brain of Epinephrine, Adrenaline, Norepinephrine, Serotonin, Dopamine, Oxytocin and Catecholamines.  Like with any drug abuse resulted in tolerance to be built, and the chase for more began.  I would chase this dragon for the next 40 years - continually returning and thinking that THIS TIME it will fix everything.  But like a thirsty man in the desert who discovers a pitcher of water, I gulped it down only to find that it was Salt Water.  Not only did it NOT quench my thirst, but it left me even more thirsty!

Through the next 40 years, I would wrongly assume that something would save me from this dragon.  Girls became the regular place that I looked.  What began as exploration with girls soon became objectification of women.  The more I used others the more guilt I felt and the more need for numbing agents accrued.  These conflicting feelings caused me that much more confusion and self-hatred for which my will power and self-discipline could not stave off.  I would gain extended periods of victory only to find myself returning.  By God's grace, during my Sophomore year of college, I came to a Saving Knowledge of Jesus.  As a result, I naively thought that Jesus would be the answer I needed to rectify this situation.  Naively I believed that if He could heal people in the Bible, then he could clearly heal me lickety split, and I fully expected Him to do it!  Once again, I experienced victory for an extended period of time, only to find myself later returning.  I privately began to believe that the magic wand that I expected Jesus to wave must have been broken, or I assumed that Jesus just didn’t want to heal me specifically.

Soon thereafter, I met my wife and we married when I was 24.  Not only had I found my best friend for life, but I believed that she would solve this insatiable appetite within me.  From everything I had heard from other naive men my age, marriage would supply endless amounts of sex, all the time, and I would finally be delivered!  Eventually, my acting out returned.  From there, I began to believe that there just wasn’t any hope for me, and that this was going to be my existence for the rest of my life.  From this point on I simply tried to do my best to limit my use, to hide my acting out, and to keep the wall between my Good Guy & my Bad Guy amply supplied with mortar and bricks to never allow a comingling.  Women hadn’t saved me, Jesus hadn’t saved me, and my wife hadn’t saved me, so I resigned myself to this defeated existence.

“Heal the boy & the man will appear.” ~Jim Cress 

Living life to numb my pain, pain originating from the belief that I was not enough, kept me securely disconnected from my true self.  Being disconnected from the knowledge of who I was kept me from being connected to God.  I believed that I couldn’t measure up to God’s standard which simply felt like a vicious set up, and the rich soil of shame allowed resentment to grow.  I believed God didn’t love me, and I hated myself.  

What I had always wanted was to be fully loved, but in order for this to come to pass, I would have to be fully known.  It took Discovery Day for me to be flushed out of hiding.  What I thought was the worst day of my life became the best day of my life.  It was the beginning of me becoming vulnerable, and I began to no longer need the contrast of Black & White.  I was able to accept that the Good Guy & the Bad Guy are safe to be the same Guy, and I became able to embrace & celebrate the beauty of the gray that was within me.

“There is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace, my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God.  If I find Him, I will find myself, and if I find my true Self I will find Him.” ~ Thomas Merton

When I joined the Samson Society, I found a safe community of men who were serious about recovery, yet they were not on a death march of sobriety.  As such, I found that it was low-pressure safe to be myself.  It was safe to actually be who I was created to be.  In the company of these men, I was allowed to return; to go back in my story and to grieve the loss.  Man there was a lot of that to go do!  So, so much to be grieved. However, I no longer felt the need to limit and lie about my story, and I didn’t have to face it alone.  Other men stood with me.  They did not judge me or attempt to fix me as I embraced my story:  all the pain, all the confusion, all the isolation.  It was a heavy load!  

These men helped me begin to deconstruct the wall of Self Protection which I had built between the Good Guy & the Bad Guy.  The burden that I had carried alone for so many years was now being shared by other men who too were aware of their own brokenness.  For the first time in my life, I was allowed to simply BE.  These brothers stabilized me as I faced all of my story, and all that had happened to me.  As Aaron & Hur held up the arms of Moses, so these men have supported me as I discover my true self, and as I discover myself, I have found the true Jesus who has never left me. 

Thanks - I’m Scott