So today brings clearly into focus something I’ve needed to see all my life.  Last night at Celebrate Recovery our testimony was focused on reestablishing boundaries which were either broken for us or sometimes ones we’ve broken for our children because of co-dependency on our part.  Coupled with this, The Holy Spirit living in me has been awakening what I said yesterday about hating not only the effects of sin, but sin itself.  Satan’s deception has a way of allowing us to easily see the ugliness of sin’s effect on others and us, but it keeps us from seeing just how ugly the sin itself is.  The sin itself is something we use to salve the pain we hide, the hurts we don’t want anyone to know about and so on.

(By the way, this is the latest in the day blog writing I’ve ever done.  I had started this early this morning but had an important call and am just now getting back to it.  I needed to go to work for a few hours too.  The meaning is still very relevant to me so I’m going ahead and writing this now.)

Last night in the share group of Celebrate Recovery, I told the men how much I was learning to hate both the sin and the effects of it.  I needed to hate both and see them separate of one another.  Actually, in seeing them differently, I was then able to see how much I’d always hated the effects of the sin, but how much I sometimes craved the sin itself.  I craved it because it was the one thing that either salved the pain or it would replace it for a moment.  Of course, then I’d have the guilt and shame to deal with.  But even dealing with it I would find the sheer bitterness and raw hurt was pushed down at least for a while.  I write all of this because this morning as I was journaling to God He allowed me to see something I’ve not yet seen.  When I started yesterday saying out loud that I hate the sin called porn I found myself with a new boundary.  I hadn’t noticed this until I finally had the sin itself on the outside of me.  It didn’t own me if it were on the outside of me and I seeing it there never wanted it back in me again.  The boundary that had been shattered for me when I was very young is returning.  I’d never seen hate as a boundary, but I do know for a fact that I’ve never participated in many things in my life simply because I hated what I knew it would do to me or what I’d seen it do to others that I loved.  Now, all of a sudden, I knew to hate something I’d not understood fully until now.

So, now back to the first paragraph.  God and His Holy Spirit within me has shed Light on a something I can truly say I hate and never want it to try and own me again.  Praise the Lord!