During the summer of 2005, I took a week’s vacation with my wife. While there, I experienced some difficulty in dealing with the mass of bodies, often partially dressed or dressed in a way which I found provocative. Coming home to a normal way of life was a relief, a liberation.

I subsequently thought about what had happened during the week’s vacation. My eight years of recovery in SA has taught me that lust resides deep within me and not in what I see. So just what happened during my vacation? Of course, I had looked—enough to become unsettled spiritually, even though I hadn’t let myself slide into obsessive fantasies. I decided to reflect on what happens to me deep inside when I look at a woman.

Why can’t I simply look and enjoy the beauty which God created, just as long as it goes no further? Why? Because I’m a sexaholic, and I am powerless over lust! Because it’s painful at the time, but I must accept my condition as a sexaholic. Just as with the alcoholic, I can’t do things which others can. Because the image which I seize contains the potential for lust, and that’s precisely what my illness drives me to seek so desperately. Because if I open the door to lust, be it just a little, lust will invade me—always. Because the image I have seized has the power to spring up again without my calling for it, probably in a moment when I’m most vulnerable or tired.

My spiritual preparation must already be in place, be ever present, and be renewed daily. It’s my inner attitude and the level of my spiritual condition at the time of temptation which will dictate the choice I will make.

When temptation arrives during the day, the following miracle occurs, though I might not even be aware of it at the time: God becomes present, I spontaneously surrender to Him and I don’t have to fight lust as I would have expected to. God does it for me.

If I neglect my daily spiritual exercise:

1. I expose myself to being caught by a surprise lust attack,
2. I am less able to spot lust in its many disguises, and
3. I probably won’t feel like turning away from ‘just a little lust.’

I now realize that that’s precisely what happened during my vacation. I had taken a break not only from work, but also from my spiritual program. And I was suffering the consequences.

I know that I am totally powerless over lust and that I can’t win by my own power. All I can do is welcome God into my life every morning and decide to surrender to His will completely, and in every aspect of my life.