“Deliver me, O Lord, from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue”

Psalm 120:1-2

In our addiction, whatever form that took, we lied and lied and lied. We lied to ourselves, we lied to our families, and we lied to our friends. Lying became second nature.

In recovery we learned if we were going to make it and not die in our addiction we have to become brutally honest with ourselves. Without that brutal honesty recovery can’t happen.

The first Step says: we admitted that we were powerless over (fill this space with your addiction), that our lives had become unmanageable.

This is probably the first and most difficult truth we had to tell ourselves because we thought we could control our addiction (whatever it was) and finally, finally after many attempts we realized we couldn’t. We had to admit powerlessness and that our lives had become increasingly unmanageable.

BUT…there was hope and that hope lay in crying out to our Higher Power: “Deliver me from lying lips and a deceitful tongue”.

And when we acknowledged our complete helplessness, the God of our understanding led us into that healing process where we find ourselves today.

How grateful we are to no longer have to live our lives lying to those who are most important to us. And, how grateful we are to no longer have to lie to ourselves.

Deliverance began with a gut wrenching cry: “Help me. Help me. I can’t live like this any longer.”

And there it was…the deliverance we had craved.

Prayer

Thank you God from rescuing us from our lying lips and deceitful ways and leading us toward living lives of brutal honesty. Amen

Rev. Al Dungan is a retired ELCA pastor and a recovering codependent.