Today's #DangerDays guest post come from my great Twitter friend Robert Damron (@RLDamron). Robert and I share a love of Jesus, of classic comedy movies and of the greatest rivalry is sports- Duke/UNC basketball. But being a believer in grace, I forgive him for being a Duke fan! I so appreciate his willingness to share his dangerous story with us today, and I know you will be blessed by it...
At times the most difficult issue I have is how do I
introduce myself. Do I just walk right
up and firmly shake hands? Do I get up
and do my best Monty Python lines? Or do
I stand on top of a chair and proclaim my never ending support for my beloved
Duke Blue Devils (after which Carl swiftly kicks the legs out from underneath
my chair). When Carl laid the invitation
out there for his Danger Days blog topic at first I chose to remain silent, but
after much consideration and a little nudge- okay, shove- from God I told Carl I
would love to share.
I wake up every morning and crave that cup of coffee. You see I've been drinking, what I consider
the sweet nectar of the god's, since I can remember. For my sanity (or lack thereof) I have to
have it daily. But do I really? That to me is classified as an addiction, a
battle that I give into daily. I have
many other “addictions” as well....golf, college sports and Duke
basketball. But there is one addiction I
fight every day of my life, and that is my addiction to pornography.
This is not something I'm proud of. I like to portray myself as one whose life is
in constant order, without chaos or turmoil but there are days I lose on
this. These days are few and far between
now but needless to say they still exist. It was this addiction that led to my infidelity and separation. (By the grace of God she took me back)
And I ask myself how does this tie into Danger Days? Well here's the skinny...
Danger Days for me were when I came clean. Our biggest- well my biggest- fear was how was I going to be looked upon after
letting people know my struggles. And
although I cannot see your faces while you read today, this is my fear
still. There is a certain danger when we
let others know about us, I mean truly know about us. God calls us to be a part of a community
where we can grow with each other, live life with one another and pray for
those that are in need. After all was
said and done and my skeleton was out of the closet so to say, my days weren't
nearly as dangerous as I thought. It
was through community that my so called danger days were actually days of
growth.
I tend to ramble in my writings and my thoughts (my ADD kicks in). But I'd like to close on this note. n the C.S. Lewis book Voyage of the Dawn
Treader, Eustace has been changed into a dragon and meets Aslan. After three failed attempts at trying to
remove his own skin the following transpires:
“Then the
lion said – but I don’t know if it spoke – ‘You will have to let me undress
you.’ I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly
desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it. The very
first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart.
And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever
felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of
feeling the stuff peel off. You know – if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore
place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away. Well, he
peeled the beastly stuff right off – just as I thought I’d done it myself the
other three times, only they hadn’t hurt – and there it was lying on the grass:
only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others
had been. And there was I was smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller
than I had been. Then he caught hold of me – I didn’t like that much for I was
very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on – and threw me into the water.
It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly
delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the
pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again.”
Thank you so much for sharing your heart Robert. Risking requires courage, and writing this post is very courageous. Blessings to you! ~Chris Cooper
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