Two years into the program and growing more and more cocky about my power over myself, during my first major crisis I slipped into my old patterns. Caught by the trance leading up to masturbation, I ended two years of what I would now call abstinence. In the carelessness brought on by thinking I was in control, I acted out. I was more conscious of two years I had spent without acting out than of the SA program that made sobriety possible. A week with no meetings, without a call to my sponsor, was inviting a relapse, and it happened.

Each day of abstinence had brought a dwindling of my shame at choosing my lust pleasures. I was really thinking I had stopped acting out because I had told myself I would never do it again. I acted out without even thinking about it, not even noticing how I had lied to myself.

My relapse was born in the false belief I was impervious to temptations of lust. Only two years of sober time and I was wondering if I needed the program anymore. The rituals of my acting out were just below the surface waiting to claim me. Sobriety was inviting me to be consciously aware of all the ways that the tease of those rituals could still exercise power over me and I was not noticing. I was in denial.

The recovery of the four years since that slip, working the program, has brought a difference. Now every time a temptation rears its ugly head, I am aware of the need for victory over lust. No longer am I wondering how many victories I need before I have the final victory. Now I know that each victory can only speak for itself. No victory is the final victory until we are eight days in the grave and there is no life left in us.

I see victory over lust in the victories I am having now. I am grateful that lust is not my every thought because I am aware of how terrible life was when my freedom was lost to the trance of lust. Each temptation is now set to rest in the surrender to the Higher Power. The God of my sober life tells me if I would love him, to keep his commandments. Each victory makes the choice a little easier because evil no longer holds as powerful an attraction for me as before. Each victory is an act of love for God when I am choosing God over what once ruled my soul. This is how our program becomes a Spiritual Program.

As I replace patterns of my life that once chained me to lust with new patterns of the program, I realize that final sobriety belongs to heaven when I will see God as God, and all the allurements of life will have been put in their proper places. I am not surprised that I can be tempted in this world of mine. I am chilled by the realization of how powerful those temptations can still be, but in surrender I am content in the realization that no temptation will ever be stronger than the help of my Higher Power. The victory over lust that my Higher Power gives me is my daily newfound sobriety. God does not ask me to trust in myself. Trusting him will keep the progressive victory over lust coming.