There are probably as many ways of practicing humility as there are people in the SA Fellowship, but a few are common to all of us. First, we admit we need help daily. Second, we ask for help. Third, we accept the help we receive. The only condition is that I can’t ask someone to do for me what I can do myself at the time of asking.
I helped lead some sessions at a retreat with the Toronto, Canada group in May. It was a great time in a retreat center about 100 miles north of Toronto. Saw some old friends and made lots of new ones.
The sexaholic on the telephone was palpably discouraged. “My lust does not seem to be getting better,” he said. “I still want to type sexual search terms into my computer. I find myself fantasizing about contacting women I’ve seen. Why doesn’t my lusting get better?”
SA members in Washington, D.C., are celebrating the 25th anniversary of an SA meeting that opened its doors in November, 1991, and has met weekly at the same location ever since, Capitol Hill United Methodist (CHUM). Members are grateful for the Friday evening meeting that sets a spiritual tone at the end of the work week with the SA program and Steps.
Recently we had 80 people attending our Saturday morning meeting. Tears of joy welled in my eyes recalling the first meeting I attended over 32 years ago. There were only two of us. After the meeting my mind reviewed the activities we used that led us today to having at least 49 meetings a week in our area.
I’m Bill, a sexaholic from the USA. Last August I arrived in Warsaw for a weekend retreat. We had nearly 50 SA members from Poland, Slovakia, Finland, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Spain for a discussion of several principles of recovery from sexaholism.
It was July 31, 2015, and I was in the shower. Without warning, in the space of about a minute and a half, three different lust images came through my thoughts. Soon after I let the first one go—20 or 30 seconds later—here came another! Soon after I let that one go, there was a third!
Early this year, I was invited by the EMER Regional Assembly to travel and give some talks to the fellowship, at the Poland Congress of SA/S-Anon (October 23-25), in Poznan, Poland; The First Annual SA/S-Anon Retreat in Lille, France (October 30-November 1); and the Fifth annual Russian-speaking SA Convention (November 6-8) in Moscow.
While attending the International Convention in Portland in January, I found myself saying to God that I was ready to be of service again. Shortly thereafter, I ran into an SA member living in Russia.
By the grace of God and the fellowship of SA, I have been sexually sober since August 1, 1985)—something for which I am frequently but never sufficiently grateful.
