A ray of hopeSteve's road to recovery is long
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By COREY TAULE
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ctaule@postregister.com
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EDITOR'S NOTE: Today is the final day in which the Post Register will be running stories examining the impact of pornography and sexual addiction on eastern Idaho and one local family, whose real names aren't being used. These stories contain adult content. The boy's eyes light up as his dad's car pulls into the driveway. "Dad, get your clubs," he says with enthusiasm, dancing around the car. "Steve" fetches them, and the little boy is soon chipping Titleist Pro VI golf balls across the yard. Steve coaches him on his swing and his grip. "Don't break the window," Steve says. "Good job, bud." "Rebecca" watches from the window. Steve is tender and attentive, helping put his kids to bed every night, telling them stories about "when you were little." Watching him with her children is all the good she'd hoped for when they married. They've been married 12 years, but Rebecca's faith in him has been tested over and over. When doubts gather, she slips into her safe place, a big old maroon chair, where she reads her Book of Mormon and prays: "If I'm supposed to leave, let me know." The answer? Keep fighting. She loves her husband, he loves her, and she still wants to fight for her family. Sitting there one day, she remembered something Steve's mother had told her. At a family reunion, Steve's uncle "Kurt" made a startling announcement: For years, he told his brothers and sisters and their spouses, he'd battled a sexual addiction. He'd spent years looking at pornography and cheating on one wife after another, four in all. Twice, the Mormon church excommunicated him. But Uncle Kurt had emerged victorious and now, along with his wife, served a church calling by leading a 12-step pornography addiction support group in his hometown, in another state. "We're calling Uncle Kurt," Rebecca told Steve when he got home that day. That weekend, Steve, embarrassed and ashamed, and Rebecca, crying throughout, heard a tale that sounded awfully familiar. Steve and Rebecca had passed through the front office of his uncle's rental storage business to reach a tiny living room. There they saw dozens of religious and addiction-themed books piled on cream-colored carpet. Kurt flipped the sign on his front door, "Closed. Be back in an hour," and settled into his old La-Z-Boy chair. Kurt's wife hugged Rebecca close and then plopped down in her own La-Z-Boy. Kurt told his story. He had been introduced to sex when he was 6 years old, an encounter with three other children. Porn wasn't easy to come by in those days, and when Kurt went beyond childhood curiosity to addiction, he obsessed over underwear advertisements in the Sears catalog. Kurt thought marriage would eliminate his compulsion. It didn't. Even Kurt's first trip to a counselor sounded familiar to Steve: "Come down off the cross," he was told. "So you like pornography and you like to masturbate. That's natural." His bishop told Kurt to cut it out. Try as he might, Kurt couldn't solve the problem himself. "I couldn't pray it away. I couldn't study it away." What he said next amazed Steve. Kurt now ran a Wednesday night support group that drew 50 to 70 men every week. His Thursday group filled two rooms at the local stake center. The Internet made his affliction a common one. He had concrete suggestions for Steve: Fill idle moments with inspirational music or church talks to limit exposure to media where sex saturates billboards, television, magazines and newspapers. Read the books on this list to help "replace your bad thoughts with good thoughts." Kurt warned Steve that unlike an addiction to booze and drugs, which leave your system, a sexual compulsion is always with you. Graphic images have been burned into your mind, Kurt warned. They'll always be there. "When you can have no disposition to indulge in that, then you'll know you're in recovery," Kurt told them. And that's how Steve had come to be driving down Bellin Road, hands clammy on the steering wheel, looking for the Charlotte Drive Stake Center where the Idaho Falls version of Uncle Kurt's recovery meeting took place. He was 30-something, married with four kids and had been excommunicated. He gripped his rolled-up LDS Family Services Addiction Recovery workbook and followed the signs into another High Council room. But this time in Idaho Falls, and these men were trying to help Steve get back into the church. They sat in a circle, 30 men. The long rectangular table had been pulled back against the wall. Some men spoke comfortably to one another. Newcomers like Steve kept their heads down and mouths shut until it was time for the meeting to start. Steve listened to others, told his own story and prayed this would help save his marriage and family. This was embarrassing, but Steve was ready to try anything. When his uncle told him about a 70-year-old man who wandered into his recovery meeting one night, Steve realized with a jolt that his problem might not just go away. "I don't want to be that," Steve thought. "I want to be done with that. I want to be over that." When the meeting ended with a prayer, Steve quickly got out of his soft-backed, wooden chair and prepared to bolt for the exit. One of the regulars approached Steve and told him to hang in there. "It was once my first time and I felt much like you probably feel right now, scared," the stranger told Steve. "Stick with it. I'd like to see you back here next week." Thane and Marjorie Lords, serving a church mission by running the 12-step group, see newcomers almost every week. Some return. Many do not. The Lords grieve for those people because they know they're out there, suffering alone with a problem they cannot solve themselves. But Steve had found something to grab onto. He'd gone into his first meeting fearing he would be rejected. He'd done some pretty awful things to confess in a room full of fellow Mormons. But he found safety in their company, and love. Steve walked out of the Eagle Rock Stake Center feeling hopeful, as though he'd carried a heavy load into the room and emerged without it. As soon as Steve got into his car, he called Rebecca. He relayed every detail he could recall from the meeting and her heart leapt as for the first time she could remember, Rebecca heard hope in Steve's voice. "I think this is going to work," Steve said to her. "Help my daddy to baptize me." Steve and Rebecca's 5-year-old son kneels on his bed. A Book of Mormon sits on a table next to the bed and a basketball hoop is mounted on the wall. The little boy says his prayers and finishes with: "Help my daddy to baptize me." Every night, it's always the same: "Help my daddy to baptize me." Children are baptized into the Mormon church at 8. The boy's two older siblings were baptized by their grandfathers. Steve has three years. "Dad, why don't you take the bread and the water?" Steve's daughter asked. Rebecca answered judiciously, but honestly, "You have to be worthy to do it and Daddy's taking care of some things right now." Others notice as well. "Why doesn't Steve wear his garments?" someone will ask a family friend, who replies that "you need to ask them." They never do. Life is complicated for an excommunicated Mormon. Steve attends church faithfully with his family but is unable to speak up or take the sacrament. Mormons believe families will be sealed together for eternity. But because Steve was excommunicated, the couple's youngest child is not sealed to the rest of them yet. If Steve doesn't make it back into the church, Rebecca believes, he won't share the Latter-day Saint version of heaven with her and their children. Being sealed to his family is a driving force in Steve's efforts to beat his addiction. But he vows not to apply for reinstatement until he is worthy. Rebecca has developed thick skin. Whenever she leaves Steve, Rebecca prepares for the worst. She doesn't expect Steve to fall but never again will she be surprised by bad news. A couple of months ago, Rebecca was gone somewhere with the kids and Steve relaxed on the couple's bed, comfortably ensconced amid 10 decorative pillows, flicking through the channels on a large television set placed in an elegant armoire. He was sleepily looking for a ballgame when he came to rest on an adult pay-per-view channel. The family didn't ask for instant access to pornography. It came with their cable package. "That's supposed to be blocked," Steve thought as he hit the "select" button. And there, on the television set, was his drug of choice. He was like a drunk finding himself at a bar, or a crack addict waking up at a shooting alley. "Holy cow," Steve said to himself, turned off the TV and hurried out of the bedroom to call Rebecca on her cell phone. If he didn't, he worried, in 10 minutes, enough excitement would build within him that he'd be glued to the TV, restarting his old cycle. "Why did I even hit select?" Steve said to Rebecca, furious with himself. But he didn't indulge, which thrilled Rebecca. "Do you see what you just did?" The alarm beeps, beeps, beeps at 5:30 a.m. Steve yawns, stretches, reaches over to his bed stand, turns it off and stumbles to the shower. He gets dressed and boils some eggs. Then he heads for his home office, hits his knees in prayer and spends the next 30 minutes reading the Book of Mormon, Scriptures or working through his 12-step notebook. Thus begins another day. Relapse is part of recovery, and for Steve, success depends on being honest with himself and his family, and sticking to daily rituals. He hates his moments of weakness but is determined to keep fighting. He looks around his office, at family pictures, knickknacks, two swivel chairs and Steve's favorite, a picture of Jesus pulling Peter out of the water: O ye of little faith. On this day, he starts in on Jacob Chapter 5 in the Book of Mormon. He's squinted through these 77 passages at least 25 times and come away with nothing but a confusing parable about some fruit, trees and branches. But today, for some reason, the words speak to him and in one of those fruits-of-the-spirit moments he rarely knew as a child, Steve thinks, "Oh my gosh, I guess this can apply to me." Inspired, Steve writes in small cursive on his bookmark: I feel like I am the tree that has brought forth bad or bitter fruit. The Lord has grafted into my life my bishop, Rebecca, the 12-step program and loving friends to help me bring forth good fruit or a change of heart. He's been so patient with me, lots of digging and pruning and nursing, if I'm to relate myself to a tree that brought forth bitter fruit. Steve places the bookmark back into his marked-up Book of Mormon, snaps it shut and sets it on a shelf next to his printer. He walks through his dining room, kitchen and bedroom and steps outside onto a balcony overlooking an empty field. The sun has been up for an hour and a half and blazes bright red in a clear blue sky. Happy children noises reach him. Steve takes a deep breath and heads back in. Steve knows his struggle will never end, but unlike the past 25 years, he now understands the battle. There are no secrets between Steve and his enemy. The addiction is stronger than he, and without the help of family, God and for now at least, his 12-step group, he'll lose the fight. Rebecca, the late riser, stares up at him through sleepy eyes. "Good morning," he says to her with a big smile, and means it.
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