A couple of months ago, I retired. Finally I came down to the last couple of days and it was time to say goodbyes, which would include some affectionate goodbyes. That was good and bad, because ¾ of my co-workers were women. I was looking forward to some hugs and not entirely in a healthy way.

I am a sexaholic. Part of my disease is that I become a predator. I can creep into the life of a needy woman and “help.” I want her to trust me, to appreciate me, to want me. It looks like I’m being there for her, but it’s all about me. It seemed that every day I would be grooming or wanting to groom some woman or at least wanting to groom somebody. Yet they trusted me. Silently I said, “You fools! How can you not see through my act! My heart is craving you, lusting after you, and you seriously don’t even know?”

During the last couple of days, the hugs began. Then, unexpectedly, it seemed that God spoke to my heart—a spiritual experience.

God said something like: “you have this low opinion of yourself, and a few dozen people seem to have a high opinion of you. All these people aren’t dummies—they have intuitions, they are probably pretty good at spotting a con. Instead of believing that you are fooling every single one of them, can you possibly believe that they are accurately seeing goodness and trustworthiness in you?”

I have a friend and former sponsor who believes in “the rule of 1800.” This rule says that the truth is the opposite of whatever he is thinking. Remembering the rule of 1800, and recognizing God’s voice, I was suddenly able to trust these other people.

How could this be given my cravings and manipulations? God gave me the answer to that one also. God was doing for me what I could not do for myself. Not only that, God had been doing so for a number of years, and I had not even realized it.

I knew my own predator’s heart; but perhaps there was a huge secret that I had been missing. Miraculously, it seemed that God was greater than my heart. Me, a trustworthy man? An honorable man? I had trouble believing it—and the evidence is that my co-workers believed it!

My heart melted. “God, you are great. God, I truly never expected this. And God, I can believe what I’m hearing, that I’ve been being honorable—entirely by your surprising grace because I know where all my instincts were heading.”

At the end of the day, I gathered my last box of belongings, went out the door, and pushed the elevator button. A young woman, who had in truth been a target at times, came bursting out of the office door, running to catch me and to hug me goodbye. I chose to believe the story that she was telling, that all of them had been telling: they trusted me and they liked me. God had been working miracles for years, and I hadn’t known about it until the day I retired.