Welcome…in this room I believe you can find life and I know you can find love.  No matter where you have been I want you to know that I sincerely believe you can find your way back.  As
we go on this walk together I will share with you scripture and tools
which have changed me from the angry, raging, swearing, mean addict of
my past, to the man I am now.

 

 I received a note a few weeks ago about a transaction in my business which did not go very well.  The
other person in the transaction sent me a note which said “Steve, I
just wanted to thank you for remaining so calm the other day during a
most difficult error our company had made.  I so appreciated your kindness as we worked through the problem; it made it easier on all of us”

 

24 months earlier, that would have been very different.  Everyone knew that Steve had a very explosive temper and a tongue just as sharp.  It is how I always got my way; it is how I thought business got done.  It was also how I raged at my own children and my wife so they knew I was the ruler of the kingdom.  It is also that same anger which kept them at bay while dad acquired an affair partner.  The blue elephant was in the room and living large.  In the end, it would almost kill me.

 

At the end of Porn Boulevard
for me, I agreed to go to a place called the Meadows, where I checked
in for 5 weeks and met a counselor named Victoria and great friends
like Eric and Clark.  In those 5 weeks I would face the damage my actions had done to my wife and kids.  There
is something very powerful when you are sitting face to face with your
daughter and she says “Dad, I don’t even know who you are anymore and I
don’t know if I want you in my life”.  When you
sit in a room surrounded by other patients and some of their family
members and you hear those words from your 16 year old daughter…with
tears running down her face…it was brutal, but I had to go through that
fire.  But the Meadows gave me the strength and the tools to change my life and that is what I did!

 

Today I am a member of a great fraternity in this world.  It is a fraternity of those whose present successes have been built upon the wreckage of past failure.  People
who belong to this fraternity, which exists without a formal
organization, have a common bond of experience…They help one another.  They help others who come to them in trouble, seeking the strength and guidance which comes only with experience.  This fraternity is made up of people who have known the locked doors of mental institutions.  Among them are those to whom the seamy side of life is no strange garment.  The language of the clinical institution, the jail, the penitentiary, are well known to members of this fraternity.  Among them are some of our most respected citizens. 

 

As a group, members of this fraternity are perhaps the most sane individuals in our society today.  They know how to give.  They know how to love their fellow man.  They understand their own weaknesses and are tolerant of weakness in others.  They
are at home in the heaven of their newly-found serenity because they
once learned in all honesty to face the inner hell of their own
confusion….(Search for Serenity by Lewis Presnall)

 

From here my friends, this is where I want to start…being real and helping each other.  I will do my best and then I will let God do the rest; He loves you ya know!  I remember what it was like for all those years when I thought “If you really knew me, you would not like me”.  I
truly understand that feeling of loneliness…but not here…not ever…Jesus
came to this earth to show compassion….this is what you will find here
from me.

 

God bless you, Great men of God.

 

Steve