Early in the process our Pure Desire counselors, Harry and Debby Flanagan, suggested I journal during recovery. At the time of this first entry, my wife and I were six months into recovery with Pure Desire and ten months since my unguided and staggered disclosure. I struggled with the concept that recovery isn’t about performance. 

I am attempting to find balance. I struggle with performance vs. grace. I am doing homework, calls, sobriety, etc. Is it works, performance, or what? Also, I struggle a lot with staying on task. I don’t want distraction in the form of ‘self-care’ to become my new escape.

Journal entry 6/5/14

I have always wanted to please others, to make decisions and behave in a way that meets or exceeds expectations. This desire to please came from the core belief that I am what I do. My identity was found in performance. When I fell short, real or imagined, I would either try harder or give up. Giving up would involve covering up. I wasn’t acceptable or pleasing to God and others. Like Adam and Eve, my shame drove me to hide.

According to Harry and Debby, rewiring my brain would be a three to five-year process. Three to five years. I told my wife I was determined to be the one-and-a-half-year guy. I set myself to do everything necessary to get this process over with and move on. I recall thinking, “C’mon, Matt. You’ve got this. You’ve got a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy. If anyone can do this quickly, it’s you.”

I was determined to check all the boxes: attend my Seven Pillars of Freedom group and call the guys every week, stay committed to the Pure Desire counseling, do homework, read books, listen to podcasts, and prioritize self-care. I was racing through the process as quickly as I could. It was as though there was a certificate waiting at the end of it all. This approach to my recovery had the opposite effect. I wound up being the five-and-a-half-year guy. My preoccupation with performance and the desire to please others supported the addiction.

Ironically, at the one-and-a-half-year mark in my recovery, I experienced a shift from performance versus grace to having the grace to perform. I was incredibly frustrated with my lack of progress. Sure, I was experiencing greater levels of sobriety, but I was tired and disillusioned. Boxes were checked, but I felt my recovery was measured by my ability to meet expectations. 

From this place of disillusionment in my self-effort, I began to slow down and pay attention to all I was learning through my Pure Desire experience. Throughout all the counseling, groups, and events, I was invited into a new way of understanding identity. I began to lean into trust. I started trusting God and others with me. In this place, I began to experience grace in a new way. Shame resilience, self-care, and authentic relationships went from concepts…to striving for…to a lived experience. 

Grace. It is true; grace is amazing. Grace is also terrifying for someone who has spent more than four decades performing or hiding. If grace is unmerited favor, then grace does not measure me by my performance. So then, how am I measured? If God loves me regardless of what I do, how do I move forward? How do I perform the way I need to for my wife, my kids, and myself? How do I do what needs to be done?

As I trust others with me, I allow them to know all parts of me. In this newfound place of trusting God and others with me, I began to experience the grace to perform. I am then free to be me. I am free to live out of my identity as a child of God. Christ’s redemptive work invites me to live out of this identity: as a child of God, my sin is not in keeping with who I am. The more I trust Him and who He says I am, the less I sin.

Grace is not static. Grace is a call to movement. According to the Oxford Dictionary, one definition of grace is, “Simple elegance or refinement of movement.” Think of a time when you found something to be graceful. It could have been a piece of architecture, music, art, or something in nature. Even a stone sculpture can capture graceful movement. God’s grace is simple yet profound. He is calling us to move out of our new identity. And, as we move, He is refining us. It truly is God’s work to refine us in movement as we live our lives day by day. 

I have begun to experience this simple but monumental shift: yes, work is required in my recovery. However, it is from trusting God that I perform my best. I don’t do the work to please Him. Instead, I please Him by trusting Him in the process.