We still hadn’t even finished writing out the thank you notes for the wedding gifts when the effects of my husband’s lust addiction first hit hard. We had been married for less than three months. It was a rainy Friday night, and I’d made it home from work first. I’d heard from so many people that nothing beats the first year of marriage for the frequency of a couple’s physical intimacy. Since we had “waited until marriage,” people waggled their eyebrows at us and made references to how, now that we were married, we must be “making up for lost time.”  Our relationship wasn’t playing that ..read more

I remember being at a Catholic spirituality conference the summer before I got married. The conference included a time of Eucharistic adoration, and so in the silence of that space, I did what any faithful Catholic fiancée would do and opened up to God about my fears. I was a child of divorce myself, and so was my fiancé. I so desperately wanted to avoid making the mistakes our parents had made. I had my misgivings about getting married but everyone told me that was perfectly natural and to look at the future with my head and not my impulsive emotions. Doing so, I saw how good my fiancé and I ..read more

My forty-sixth birthday had just passed. I looked in the mirror on my husband’s side of the room. He was in the bathroom, and his was the only mirror available. I pressed my fingertips to the sides of my cheeks. There was no denying it: my laugh lines, the parentheses God and joy had placed around my mouth, were shifting.  I wasn’t even sure I could call them “laugh lines” anymore. I looked at the cheeks starting to sag on both sides of those widening furrows. What had once been sharp, delicate lines etched from decades of smiles and laughter had become a pair of wider, deeper troughs th ..read more

Ever since I can remember, there was always something about Mary that drew me in. I would never share this with any non-Catholic but the truth is I’ve only recently felt drawn to God the Father and Jesus. The Holy Spirit, despite being somewhat nebulous and undefinable, was the only person of the Trinity that I managed to look to; but even then, only occasionally. Perhaps my lack of resistance to the Holy Spirit was because the Spirit is hard to “pin down.”  It has only been in recent years that I have discovered why Mary was my lifeline and why God and Jesus seemed so distant and unappr ..read more

When I had been dating my husband for about three months, I told him I was getting concerned about our relationship. I was feeling like he wasn’t listening to me as much as I was listening to him, and I was wondering if we could address this so we could work things out. He told me, “Well, everyone else tells me I’m a good listener.” Having been raised as the family scapegoat by both of my lust-addicted parents, I had been trained well for this turn of the conversation: when people say that my reaction, and not their behavior, is the problem. I had been taught that I must be the problem, and i ..read more

The leaves are off the trees. Thanksgiving has come and gone. And stores and shops are playing Christmas music. As Christians, we are preparing now for the birth of our Savior. And specifically as Catholics, we are in the midst of Advent, which marks the end of the Year of St. Joseph.  Those of us in our recovery journey can learn so much from St. Joseph and, if we haven’t already done so, we can make this Advent an opportunity to offer special prayers and devotions to him. Indeed, what a beautiful way to prepare our hearts for the arrival of the birth of Jesus! St. Joseph was more than ..read more

In the first article of this two-part series, I shared with you the benefits of regularly participating in an hour of Eucharistic adoration and offered some advice on how to fully experience freedom from sin, temptation, and addiction. I want to now explain how Eucharistic adoration has offered a type of spiritual “therapy” for me. After a few weeks of making a Holy Hour before the Blessed Sacrament, I decided to write down any spiritual insights or divine inspirations that came to me. I had experienced a deep conversation within my heart that my rational brain was trying to explain. I knew t ..read more

In his writings, Saint Thomas Aquinas describes sight to be the principal and primary of all the senses. His reasoning is that when we open our eyes and look at something, we are immediately abstracting—taking into our minds—what we see and rearranging it in an understandable way. To him, the eyes were the quickest way to the intellect. So, we can say quite literally that the eyes are the windows to the soul. For it is through the eyes that we take in all things that are around us and discern what they are as well as recognize the good of their existence.  It is for this reason that peop ..read more

In my previous article, I discussed how Dante made his descent into the depths of Hell to not only witness the torments of unrepentant sinners but also face down his own sin and personal hell. At the end of Dante’s Inferno, at the very bottom of the ninth circle, Dante beholds Satan in all his ugliness and torment. Lucifer is frozen up to his waist in ice and every time the ice begins to melt, and he attempts to escape, the gusts from his flapping wings refreeze it, keeping him stuck for all of eternity. After beholding Satan, Dante and Virgil must climb down the beast’s haunches to exit Hell ..read more

How can each gift of the Holy Spirit help us stay sober in our recovery as well as grow closer to the Lord? As Saint Thomas Aquinas illuminated, God helps humanity in its process of perfection with particular habits. These habits or instincts enable us to transcend the limitations of our human nature and participate in the very life of God. Moreover, these gifts are necessary for our salvation.  The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are indispensable resources in our struggle to establish the kingdom of God in the midst of spiritual warfare. In our journey of recovery, we must use all the s ..read more