Ball Don't Lie...

If you've followed the NBA and specifically Rasheed Wallace at all, you've heard the term "Ball don't lie"...it used to crack me up when I'd hear him yell it at a Pistons' game back in the "glory days." The most basic interpretation of it is "you missed your free throw therefore you suck" or as it applies to this entry, "if your results aren't what you want, you need to change your method...you're not the way you are by accident"

Yeah I'm going Sheed on y'all today...well actually more on myself. As many of you know, I've been on a journey of sorts the last 6 months or so to "remake" myself in every area of life. I've had some successes in other areas, but most of the "radical" change has been physically. I'm down 50 lbs, able to run 3+ miles at a time, my blood pressure is way down (not that it was high, but it was at the upper edge of normal) and I'm pretty much in the best shape of my life. I also feel better about myself than I have in years (only partially due to the physical improvements) and have more self-confidence than I think I've ever had...Sounds great don't you think?

Yeah I'm on sports theme today

And here's where we get to the point where Rasheed's old "Ball don't lie" yell comes in...I've been ignoring, looking the other way, willfully not seeing, whatever you want to call it, several warning signs in the past few weeks. Just maybe things aren't quite so hunky-dory and I still have some work to do. If The one that really woke me up was 10 extra pounds on the scale (some was to be expected from taking creatine for workout recovery--which it has been a big help with, I'm able to do far more, more often) and almost a full inch added to my waist. It is a whole lot easier to ignore subtle mental/emotional/spiritual changes than it is to ignore a physical change like that. Once I started looking though, I found a whole host of other issues that were just yelling "Ball don't lie!" all of which were issues I set out to improve back when I started this journey in May:

• My Body--definitely the most obvious issue here. Pretty simple too, if I'm gaining weight/inches (not the good kind get your mind out of the gutter! lol) but I'm working out as much or more than I was before and my eating is under control according to my logging, either my logging is off or my body is lying (in the absence of underlying health problems which I don't believe I have)...since the "Ball don't lie" I need to look to my logging what I'm eating. Taking a close look, I notice I've been "cheating" here and there on it...leaving off one thing here, one thing there, maybe showing a smaller serving than I should have, etc. Nothing too major but it all adds up over time. Also, what I'm actually putting in isn't really the best either (especially the great cookie meltdown of 2014 these past few days!). 
• My Career--I've been unmotivated and lazy in this area. True I have some obstacles right now in that I don't know what business my current employer is going to end up in and I have very little to do at the moment. However none of those obstacles are preventing me from getting my skills updated (which I've been doing, but slowly and only when I'm bored) and possibly looking to see what else is out there. What happened to gaining a new skill every week or month? What happened to making sure my resume is completely up-to-date? To going on some interviews just to keep myself sharp?
• My Brain--Also have gotten lazy here (and it does connect with my career issues too). I was reading a book or two a week a few months ago, now if I do read I just reread something so I can just go to the part I know I like. Have spent WAY too much time just playing games on my phone while my brain hibernates.
• My Spiritual Life--I was determined to get back into church and to spend daily time in prayer and in the Bible.  To get back into the close relationship I once had with Jesus where I really felt like He was with me every step of the way and that I was following His plan for me. This is another one of those "part-way" things. I have gotten much more involved in church...I help out with the computer, I sing in the choir and I'm much more diligent about attending...but...I also miss some days, some choir practices, etc because I just don't feel like it. I don't spend time in the Bible much anymore. I don't pray as much now. It really makes me wonder if my big "commitment" because I wanted to get Sandy back (at the beginning) or wanted to go out with Rachel (later on) and thought God would make that happen for me if I just did everything right.  So when neither one of those were on the table anymore for me was I thinking I didn't need to put the effort in with God anymore? Definitely need to reexamine my motives and get myself straight here (and I know my motives weren't 100% bad...maybe not even 50%...but enough that when I lost the "carrot" I was reaching for I wasn't willing to overcome my desire to just sit on my bum)

Obviously there are a lot of other areas I could point to here, but I think the overarching theme here is that I'm just not choosing the option that leads to what I say I want. Do I want to be in shape more than I want to eat that tray of cookies? Not according to my inhaling the cookies one after the other. Do I want to be successful in my profession? Apparently not more than I want to fool around on the Internet and be lazy. Now to be fair in some areas such as working-out I'm doing very well so it's not like I'm just ripping on myself here, but if I'm going to be really honest with myself I've, for the most part, taken the easy road on my decisions.  It isn't a sacrifice for me to go to the gym now because I'm to the point where I enjoy the work and pushing myself. It IS a sacrifice for me to decide to log off of MFP or Google+ and train myself in some new programming skills. I'm allowing myself to take the easy way instead of the hard way in far too many situations and using far too many excuses for it.

So hearing that call of "Ball don't lie!" after seeing the ball clang off the side of the rim, what do I do? Do I sit here and tell myself I'm a victim of bad luck and that next time I'll make it? Or that it was those people making too much noise while I shot it distracting me so it isn't my fault? In other words deciding I'm a victim of circumstance and there's nothing I can do about it. Or will I choose to put in the time and energy, practice my free throws, and so start making more than I miss? That's the big question...

You know what?

I'm choosing to work on my free throws!

Let's keep things in perspective...

Sorry unfortunately it has been a LONG time since I've posted here, I've had a lot going on and got to a place where I really didn't think I had anything to say that anyone would care to read (still might be true, I just don't care now lol). I originally posted this to my blog on MyFitnessPal, but I decided to cross-post it here since it applies to more than just weight-loss/getting fit issues.

I just had to remind myself of this fact this morning so I thought I'd share it...No matter where you are on this journey, whether you're buff or blob or somewhere in between, never forget that you are more than your weight or what your body looks like and especially more than what others see in your physical appearance (good or bad).

Who you are inside matters much more than all of this. So go easy on yourself if the scale jumps up a few (or even more than a few) pounds, or your clothes start getting a little snug because you've cheated some...if you've been good to those around you, helped out friends or strangers in need, and did your best to live as a person of honor and integrity, then the extra pounds aren't going to matter in the big picture...and if you haven't been a person like that, then your wonderful, muscled, buff body doesn't mean a hill of beans...in the end after it's all said and done, that buff body of yours is going to turn to dust just like the body of the 400 lbs person will. What will last, what will stay as your legacy, is how you've lived your life out and how you've treated those around you.

As some of you know, my dad passed away last year. He was an elder at his church so we naturally expected a decent amount of people at his memorial but nobody was prepared for the church to be completely packed out and having to bring in extra chairs. We weren't prepared for such a list of people wanting to talk about what he meant to them and actually had to cut it short. I say all that not to toot my dad's horn, but to mention that not one of them talked about the great shape he was in (and for a man in his mid-60s, he was in terrific shape before the cancer took hold). Time and time again, people would come up and tell how he helped them out. How he'd give them the shirt off his back if they needed it. How he would give up hours and even whole days to help out someone. How he lived with honor and integrity so that if he said he was going to do something, you could take it to the bank that if he was breathing, it was going to happen.


So while I do think working-out and eating right and getting fit are incredibly important, I just think it's important not to lose sight of the things that are a higher priority, of much greater importance. How you live your life out to others, how you treat others, the mark you leave on the world...for better or worse...that's what will live on, and that's what you should base your self-esteem and self-worth on.

Attack of the Zombies - Part One

As some of you know, +Sandy Boyd and I were zombies in a zombie 5K a couple weekends ago, as I was thinking about what I was going to post today, it hit me: I have allowed a lot of zombies to roam around in my life.  I'm thinking of things that are dead and gone, there's no life in them for me, but I still allow them to hang around. All they do is wander around trying to eat my brains, smash things and generally stink up the place. The verse that keeps coming to mind lately for me is Isaiah 43:18-19:

“Do not remember the past events, pay no attention to things of old.

Look, I am about to do something new;even now it is coming. Do you not see it?
Indeed, I will make a way in the wilderness,rivers[a] in the desert.

What I didn't realize is that the zombies I had allowed to hang around in my life were stopping new things from coming in. Just as in a zombie apocalypse, you have to clear out the zombies to make it safe for the living to come in.

My Boss Zombie...

In many video games (especially the MMOs and RPGs I used to play) you'd have to clear dungeons of what were called "trash mobs" before you'd get to the "Boss" where the really good loot is. The boss zombie in my life is pictured at the top of this post...no not +Sandy Boyd herself, but the relationship we had before (we dated pretty seriously for about a year).  I'd been clinging to it like well a zombie clings to brains and it was destroying me.  The relationship was such a great one for both of us that when Sandy broke up with me based on God leading her to get herself together (we dated way too soon after both our divorces), I couldn't imagine that we wouldn't be back together before too long. Surely God wouldn't leave two people so well suited for each other apart! Poof! An undead relationship...we still wanted to be (and are) great friends so we were still talking, but here I was looking for any little sign that it was "time" and we'd be getting back together. The truth was that deep in my heart I knew it was over and that there wasn't anything to "fix", but I refused to admit it.

The thing about a zombie is that you can't control it and this one was particularly violent.  It smashed all of the peace and joy I had, and left me writhing in anxiety. One minute I'd be OK with us being apart, the next I'd be certain she was lying to me and was dating someone else. An hour later I was sure that we were on the road to getting back together, five minutes later I felt like there was no way we'd even be talking in a few weeks. EVERYTHING about my mood and self-esteem were based on how our interaction was...if it felt like we were getting closer, everything was awesome! If not, well it was pretty ugly. This went on for months and there's a pretty easy scriptural reason for why I was so messed up too in Matthew 6:33-34 (funny thing is that in the Holman Bible it is listed under a heading of "Cure for Anxiety".)

But seek first the kingdom of God[q] and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you. Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Every time I changed my focus to Sandy and our relationship, the anxiety would hit. The real kicker for me, and I noticed this but refused to consider it, is that the times that I completely let go and let myself believe it was really over were the most peaceful ones I had.  If I'd have had sense enough to listen to what I was hearing deep down in my heart, I would've saved myself a LOT of anguish.

Everything finally came to a head the weekend I was in Texas.  I felt a couple of weeks earlier that I should ask Sandy out on a date.  Much to my surprise, she said yes! In my head, this was either the start of something new or the end of the old relationship.  I didn't know which it was going to be but I was going to give it my best shot.  I got a haircut, professional shave, new clothes, I put on the cologne I knew she liked and basically did everything I could to "impress" her and convince her to go out with me again. While I needed the clothes anyway, the rest of my attempt to impress was worthless. I could have morphed into Adam Levine and it wouldn't have happened. There just was no life in that old relationship anymore.

We did the zombie run and had an incredible time...this was both the most fun and most exhausting thing I've ever done. Had a great time during dinner and the movie (which we ended up leaving early because it wasn't that good and we were really tired), and on the drive back from Dallas I thought I'd bring up the subject of dating.  That didn't exactly go as I had planned, I kept trying to get her to agree to another date...even trying to phrase it in as innocuous a way as I possibly could...no dice.  Only one tiny crack of the door was open, we were going to church the next morning...surely God was going to tell her we belonged together there!  After all I'd prayed in faith about restoring our relationship, how could He not fix this?

Well...cue the Price is Right "you lose" game show music here. Not only did God not "fix it", He put on Sandy's heart the thought: "what if you're only ever going to be friends from here on out". Of course I seized on the "what if" part as "He didn't say for sure", even though I knew better inside.  Finally after a long talk and tears from both of us, I accepted the fait accompli that we only had friendship in our foreseeable future and that I needed to make a decision if that was going to be enough. It sounds easy enough to say yes to, I mean of course I'd rather have our friendship than nothing, but I knew that meant I'd probably have to watch her date someone else, possibly fall in love and marry someone else, without any surety that it would happen to me in the future.

Even knowing that, it didn't take me more than a minute to say yes to being friends. Sandy is one of the most wonderful, kindest, funnest to be around people I know.  There was no doubt in my mind...we were friends for life if I had any say in it.  So what about the prayer I had prayed? I really felt like it was something I was supposed to pray, felt like it was going to be answered, and had faith rise up in me as I prayed.  I knew it was going to work.  In truth it did work, I was praying for a restoration of our relationship...and got it.  Our friendship was completely restored and all of the awkwardness, nervousness, anxiety that I'd let get between us was gone. It took a few days before it finally all "took", but it did take hold...and just in the nick of time.

As I said at the beginning, most of the time you have to let go of the old before you can bring in the new. It was definitely true in this case. My holding on to the old relationship would have stopped a new relationship, two actually, from starting.  The first new relationship was a restart to my friendship with Sandy. This has already been an incredible blessing to me, I didn't realize how much I had missed being able to talk with her about anything and everything until it was restored. I can guarantee that it wouldn't have been restored if I hadn't "killed" the zombie of our old relationship. The second new relationship I'm not going to go into details about right now, but at the very least it is the "beginning of a beautiful friendship" and at best...well the sky's the limit here. None of it would have been possible if I hadn't given up the old, undead, zombie relationship and if Sandy hadn't stuck to her guns when I know it was killing her to see me in that much pain. What does the future hold from here? God only knows, but I know it is a better one than the one I had waiting for me if the zombie was allowed to live.

Part 2 will talk about other zombies that I and other friends of mine have had to fight. Stay tuned! :)

Integrity

I know I haven't posted in a while, I got off track with other things and lost focus a little bit (I have several posts started, it's the finishing that I'm having trouble with!).

This post comes from a couple of conversations I've had recently with my daughter and +Rachel Harrell. My daughter triggered my thoughts here earlier this week with a conversation about returning the vacuum she bought.  A few months ago, our vacuum broke and Katelyn decided she'd replace it for me.  As a waitress she doesn't have a whole lot of money so naturally she went for the cheapest that looked like it would work.  Unfortunately when we got it home it turned out she had accidentally gotten one that required bags instead of a cyclonic.  Well long story short, we really needed the vacuum right away so she decided that we'd keep it.  Fast forward a little while and finding vacuum bags has been a pain for this (why the places that sell that model don't carry the bags that fit it is beyond me) and Katelyn was definitely regretting the purchase.  She mentioned it to a friend of hers that works for the grocery/superstore that we got it from and she told Katelyn "You know if you tell us that it doesn't work, we'll take it back even without the receipt".  Later on that day Katelyn mentioned it to me, and I said simply "well that sounds good, but you'd have to lie." She thought about it for a moment and answered "I don't want to do that, never mind."

Thinking about that conversation later, it struck me how cheaply we sell our integrity for these days. How many times, for $50, $100 or even more do we sell out the thing that is much more valuable than money can ever be. We have our rationalizations of course: "they're a huge corporation they won't miss it" "they don't pay their people enough they deserve it" "I got cheated out of money by them, time for payback" or whatever, but at the end of the day, we're valuing that money (whose value is guaranteed to decrease over time due to inflation) more than our own integrity.

Another example I can give (and this time I'm calling out myself) is I got called out for something I hadn't done at the end of last week.  There was a report I was supposed to be sending out (the data had to be manually imported every morning so I couldn't automate it), and it just completely slipped my mind.  Now even though there weren't going to be any real consequences for this, when I was asked why it hadn't been sent out, a million excuses, well lies really, came to my mind. Every single one of them was absolutely plausible, a great reason why it wasn't done, completely provable (if I needed to), and of course a complete falsehood. There is no way anyone would've known that I lied and the incident would've been dismissed as if nothing happened.  I was writing the email with my best "reason" when I came to my senses and realized that no job, no praise/criticism from the boss, nothing was worth losing my integrity over.  I changed the email to the real reason (I was busy with other stuff and completely forgot), sent it, and haven't heard about it since. Maybe that loses me points on my review or has further ramifications in the future (though I doubt it), but I don't care. I honestly am ashamed that I got as close as I did to lying about something that is, in the grand scheme of things, utterly inconsequential.

I may be a bit old-fashioned, but I think that quote says it all. What do you do when you and God are the only ones that will know? I know cheating a store out of $5 or a "white lie" to get out of trouble doesn't seem like much but the problem is little things matter.  Anyone who has been married (and especially divorced) knows that the little things add up, for good or for bad.  More important is the effect on your character.  Just about every person I've read about that was arrested for embezzling millions of dollars from a company started small with a few bucks here and there that didn't get noticed.  From there it just grows.  As it says in Luke 16:10

Luke 16:10  “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much."

 It doesn't matter how small the issue is, if you're willing to sell out for that little, seemingly inconsequential thing, the next time you'll stretch to something a little bit bigger and there will be more places you decide to cut corners. Eventually this will spread to your entire life.  While your friends, co-workers, and family may not know what exactly you're doing, that lack of integrity will show up in your relationships with them as well.

This quote pretty much sums up a couple conversations +Rachel Harrell and I had recently. We were talking about being "old-fashioned" and what exactly it meant. Rachel was talking about values like integrity, honesty, faithfulness, honor and how important they are to her and how that made her a bit old-fashioned.    After talking along these lines for a while, I suddenly had the epiphany that "these aren't old-fashioned...they're right vs wrong." Truly they aren't old-fashioned, it's just that we as a society stopped caring about them.  The people that still follow them (and sadly I haven't always, but I'm learning...my dad was a great teacher of these principles) are the ones everyone count on. The ones that people implicitly trust their word, that a handshake is as good as a contract.  I think we just need more of them, and need to start electing them (or rework the system so they can get elected...a system where you expect every politician to be a crook doesn't seem to be a healthy one to me). I don't know that returning to these values would solve all of the problems in our society, but I do know it would solve a lot of them.

Welcome...Part Deux

So are you all fixed up yet?

This was the question I had for Sandy just about every other day. I was just so in love with her (and to be honest because of the anxiety I definitely veered into an unhealthy obsession at one point), and thought she was so perfect for me that I couldn't imagine that God wasn't going to fix this up right away. After all, I had done what He wanted, I put my coin in the God vending machine, it was time to get my prize, right?

Of course that isn't the way it works at all. That surrender to God was only the first step in what is going to be a very long road for me. Nope, I didn't get the girl, and bags of money didn't fall on me, and the anxiety and insomnia still plagued me. What I did do, slowly but surely, was start trusting God and stop trying to figure everything out myself. Over the weeks since that moment, I've learned just how much I'd been missing all this time and just how much of a mess I really was. Little by little as I leaned more into Him, God showed me the real me.

I learned just how much I screwed up in my marriage and what never to do again. I learned that I'm capable of trusting God and taking leaps of faith (like joining choir at church) that I couldn't have done just a year or two ago. I learned just how many idols I had in my life that took my focus off of God and got me in trouble in the first place. Tremendously important for me, I learned just how much my self-esteem and sense of self-worth were based on whether or not I was in a relationship, who I was in a relationship with, and my job and the work that I do.  Finally, and most importantly, I learned just how much God loved me and how willing He was to stick with me until I finally "got it."

Well thanks for telling us about Sandy, but are you fixed up yet?

I guess I'm on my way to being "fixed", but I don't think I'm there yet by any means. With the massive anxiety and insomnia that hit me I decided to work on spirit, soul and body.  For the spirit, as I've already mentioned, I went to God and dove in deep with my church. For the soul (mind), I went to a Christian therapist and starting reading books about fixing the mind (Battlefield of the Mind by Joyce Meyer has been by far the most helpful).  I also started spending a lot of time watching various Bible teachers (once again Joyce Meyer being the most helpful in this area.) and got to work applying what I was learning. For the body, I went to the doctor and got put on Zoloft and Xanax (to help me sleep).  My goal is to be off the Zoloft by the end of 6 months and I've already gotten off the Xanax (amazing how quickly you become dependent on that stuff!).  In addition to the medicine (and to that I've added some very helpful herbal supplements), I've also started exercising a lot (which has been very helpful in warding off the insomnia. 

I'll go into more about my fight against anxiety & insomnia in later posts but for now I'll say I honestly think I really did need all 3 of these areas worked on before I got relief.  Without the Zoloft I'm not sure I'd have gotten calmed down enough to start reading the books I needed to get "a hold of myself". Without the counseling and the books it probably would've taken a lot longer before I got at some of the root issues behind this.  Finally, without God all of the other issues I've had would've still been there, I wouldn't have had the base of peace that got me through, I certainly wouldn't be on my way to recovery now, and of course my life would've been heading for disaster still. 

OK I think this is enough for a beginning...

I have a lot more to add in the future, but this will do for now I think.  I just needed to get my feet wet, and get comfortable with this whole baring my soul thing.  Sort of hoping not to have posts this long (1 and 2 combined) in the future, but knowing me, there's a pretty good chance I will. 

Part One of this post is available here

Welcome! :)

Starting is the Hardest part...

Hi and welcome to my new blog! I've been struggling with starting this for the better part of a month now, and I'm finally getting this first post out of the way. Why has it been so difficult to get moving? Mostly because I cared (way too much) about what everyone thought about me.  I know I have a lot of non-christian friends out there and I'd just as soon not scare y'all away. At the end of the day though, I have to be true to what I feel God has placed on my heart and have to go forward no matter regardless of the consequences. That doesn't mean that this blog or my posts will be all-God all-the-time, I'll still post just as many pictures of my grandson, horrible puns, and bad engrish as I did before.  I just also will be posting my journey and struggles along with it in the hopes that maybe there will be one or two people out there that'll see this and think "if God could reach him, maybe I can make it too!" Oh and I apologize for the length of this, they won't normally be this long and rambling...I promise (mostly lol).

How did I get here???

As some of you know, beginning in mid-May I was hit with severe anxiety and insomnia to the point that I couldn't function either at work or home. It was the cumulative effect of knowing the company I worked for was about to sell (so the job I'd had for twelve plus years was going away), residual grief from my dad's passing in September, and the end of the best relationship I've ever been in (combined with a horrible weekend when we broke up that included one of my dogs getting hit and killed by a car). My mind simply couldn't handle it all and went into overload trying to "fix" everything (of course none of it was fixable).

This was the question I asked myself over and over..."how exactly did I get in this mess?" My mom and dad had passed away, my best friend (my girlfriend), was done with me, I was twice-divorced, and the job that I had devoted half of my working life to and had put my heart and soul in (I wrote probably 65% of the applications in use at the company) was going, going, gone. What did I have left? (now is the point where I'll mention things weren't that bad, millions of people have it far worse, but as anyone who has been through a moment like this can tell you--you don't look at the good stuff at that moment...everything sucks!) I drove home the Monday after this horrible weekend (and a anxiety-filled day at work with several panic attacks) at the lowest and loneliest point I've ever been. At that moment I believed even God was done with me (and why wouldn't He be...I'd been pretty much ignoring Him since Dad passed away...and before that I gave Him only lip-service). That was it, I was completely alone (of course forgetting my wonderful daughter & grandson, my step-mother, my cousins and everyone else around me...like I said, I was in a bad place).

Driving home that night I was overcome with grief and loneliness--grief for the father and the girlfriend (who to that point in my mind had been my future wife) I'd lost, my plans for the future that were ruined, the loss of by far the best relationship I'd ever been in...and tremendous loneliness.  I felt like I was on a ship that was sinking and everyone had taken the lifeboats. In desperation I cried out to God in anguish and tears "Help me God...I need you.  Jesus I need you, I surrender."  I spent the rest of the drive home crying (can't imagine what I looked like to cars driving by me on I-94) and being shown exactly where I'd gone wrong over the years...confessing the litany of sins and missteps I'd taken was one of the most freeing moments of my life.  Knowing at that moment that God loved me despite all that I had done, despite ignoring Him for years, despite spitting on every gift He'd given me the most wonderful, precious thing I've ever experienced. That was the moment everything changed for me...

Tahquamenon Falls, Paradise MI

So everything is perfect now, right???

So of course now that I've completely surrendered to God, confessed all my sins and fully committed to Him that means everything gets fixed right? No more anxiety, I get Sandy back, and immediately my career is back on track, right? I mean I wasn't looking for miracles here, didn't expect my mom and dad to show up at my front door, the things I wanted were all easily doable (especially for God!) and of course I was going to get that right away! 

My brain...my brain under construction, any questions?

Not so fast there...

I called up Sandy all excited when I got home, thinking that this HAD to mean that we were back "on". Yeah, not so much...while she was happy for me, the reason for her ending our relationship had to do with her and things she need to do for herself--not anything to do with me getting "repaired". And oh yeah, the anxiety...it got worse, not better. Insomnia was added on to it too...and my job situation started looking worse too.  Those storms were all in my mind though, underneath it all I had a calm I hadn't felt in years.  Still the storms took their toll...and slowly I realized that this was going to be a work in process.  That I wasn't going to get everything I wanted right when I wanted it. 

Some things I did get right away though...I had a bad temper, especially at work, that immediately was gone.  I had gotten into a habit of swearing a lot, it was gone completely too, without me even trying not to.  Most importantly for me, a 27+ year addiction to pornography was completely eradicated. This was something I had battled for most of my Christian life, hating it, hating myself for doing it, getting some temporary freedom from it occasionally through a lot of study and restraint but always having to fight the urge. Even the urge was gone now...this was one of the greatest victories I'd ever experienced...and I had almost nothing to do with it!

So where did I go from there???

You'll have to stay tuned...this post is long enough as it is!