The journey continues with a new year beginning.  I look outside and see almost a foot of snow and the temperature in the single digits.  I think the journey will continue with me staying far more inside than out for a few days!

I’ve always liked New Year’s resolutions.  However, it wasn’t until Celebrate Recovery came into my life that I had a concrete way of using them.  Resolutions were more like hopes without any substance.  Celebrate Recovery (CR) has given me the means to sort through “the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference”. (Serenity Prayer except).  It has also given me the means to change what I can by learning to surrender rather than “get tough”.  My way of tackling things needing changed was to discipline myself.  The things I’d be attempting to address were impossible to do on my own, like stopping the voices of who I am, self gratifying when I felt defeated or felt I needed to escape, etc.  I never rose above any of these items until I had a team supporting me after I surrendered to what I learned from CR.

I know I’ve outlined this many times but it is very important for today.  What I am writing about are the steps to accountability.  Resolutions need accountability for they are the concrete substance making resolutions possible.  The first step in setting resolutions is the understanding I cannot do this on my own.  This is where we surrender the need to God (step 1).  Secondly, we choose who God is placing on our heart to hold us accountable with the resolution.  Thirdly, we commit to a means of communicating with God and our accountability person/s about how we are doing.  We give permission for our accountability partner/s to question us and pry into what they can see that we may be blinded to.

It was my first accountability person who told me after my first year of CR that I would likely never be able to quit the use of porn if I didn’t go back to counseling and address the intense hurt I was still denying as part of me.  They were SO RIGHT.  I was not able to see this need because I had so many walls built within me barricading this hurt.  This is the permission we want to give our accountability partner/s so they can be a voice of God when we aren’t hearing well.

I sent my accountability partner my resolution for this year yesterday morning so I could start the accountability right off the bat today.  We text twice a day about how we are doing with our goal/s (noon and 9 pm).  Join me if God is prompting you to do the same.  Let these steps guide you into a freedom we would never know possible without taking them.