Making my Desires into my Allies

A while ago my wife had an interesting conversation at a recovery group meeting. After she mentioned that I'd been sober for (at the time) about four months, the woman she was talking to said that was usually the amount of time it took her husband to relapse.

I don't know if that's a universal thing, but I sense I've started to plateau in my recovery a little bit. It's not just the slowing down in my posting to this blog (though I've started three posts since my last post--one about a story in the D&C, one about video game addiction, and one about general conference talks). It's also probably in part due to outside influences making my life crazy: we're moving in less than a month, we're in the process of buying a house to move into, I'm finishing up this semester of teaching, and I'm preparing to teach two new classes/take three classes in my PhD program next semester. And then there's the usual insanity that involves having four boys.

But, more importantly, I've become lax in certain areas of my recovery. I've let other interests, including video games, crowd out the actions that lead me to feel like I'm making progress in recovering myself. I want recovery. I know trying to escape my stresses and insecurities with video games and drown them with ice cream isn't going to work. But at the end of a long day after the kids go down to sleep, I'm having a hard time making that acknowledgement part of my daily routine.

It all comes down to what I desire. Here's an amazing quote from Neil A. Maxwell, in a talk from this last conference by Randall L. Ridd:

"What we insistently desire, over time, is what we will eventually become and what we will receive in eternity. ... Only by educating and training our desires can they become our allies instead of our enemies!" Ensign Nov. 1996

I do want recovery, but do I want it enough to "educate and train my desires" away from the path of least resistance and towards the path of recovery? If so, I know what I will become and where I will end up. I sense there's a long-term video game ban in my near future, but I'm going to give it a week to see. Instead, I'm going to do something that I think will help me be more in tune with my desires and where my heart is.

In a recovery meeting a week and a half ago, I felt an amazing outpouring of love and the spirit. It was an amazing experience. Afterwards I called my brother (who's further along in his recovery than I am) to share some ideas and excitement about it. One of the things he mentioned was how much journal writing has helped him. We talked about using the journal to better understand our thinking, and not just a place to record what's happened (something I've done in the past).

This week I'm going to explore where my heart is in my journal every night right after the kids go down. Because right now, my desires are working against my long-term well being, and to successfully be in recovery I need my desires to work for me.