If you’ve been following my blog lately, you may have noticed a pattern. I wrote about my approval addiction. I wrote about my ongoing battle with resentment. I’m working on a post where I share the full transcript of a talk I gave at my church about my sexual addiction (it’s now published: My Rescue Story). If you’re thinking my blog is starting to sound like a therapy session… fair point.

So why do I keep posting my L’s? Why does a guy who literally wrote about being an approval addict keep hitting publish on posts that are almost guaranteed to make at least a few people think less of him?

I’m asking myself the same thing.

The short answer

My life verse is Romans 8:28:

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

All things. Not the polished things. Not the highlights reel. All of it. The mess, the shame, the patterns I wish I didn’t have. God is in the business of using all of it.

My favorite thing about God — and I say this as someone who has a lot of favorite things about God — is his unmatched ability to redeem. Beauty for ashes. Purpose from pain. A story worth telling out of material no one would have chosen.

Joseph said it to the brothers who sold him into slavery:

"You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people." (Genesis 50:20 NLT)

I come back to that verse a lot. Not because my life has been Joseph-level dramatic, but because the principle is the same. God doesn’t waste the hard stuff. And if he’s working it for good, part of my job is to not “hide it under a bushel. NO! I’m gonna let it shine”. (Sorry, not sorry. That song is a banger.)

Almost 20 years of talking about my mess

I’ve been involved in Celebrate Recovery since 2007. For those unfamiliar, it’s a Christ-centered recovery program built on the same 12-step framework as AA, but expanded to cover all of life’s hurts, habits, and hangups — not just substance addiction.

In CR, we talk about our stuff. Out loud. In rooms full of other people who are also talking about their stuff. It’s what we do. Every Friday night for almost two decades, I’ve been in a community where honesty about your brokenness isn’t just acceptable — it’s the point.

That changes you. After that many years of sitting in circles where people share the real version of their lives, you start to lose your taste for pretending. You also start to notice something: every time someone is honest about their struggle, at least one other person in the room exhales. Because they thought they were the only one.

That’s the gift. Not the confession itself, but the “me too” that follows.

You’re not alone (and neither am I)

One of the most powerful sentences in recovery is: “I thought I was the only one.”

When I shared my story publicly for the first time — standing in front of my church at CR talking about pornography addiction, of all things — I wasn’t doing it because I enjoy public humiliation. I was doing it because I remembered what it felt like to believe I was the only one dealing with that particular brand of shame. And I remembered the overwhelming relief when I found out I wasn’t.

That’s the hope I’m trying to pass along. Not “look at how brave I am” (trust me, I don’t feel brave). More like: “Hey, if you’re dealing with something like this, you’re not defective. You’re not alone. And there’s a road out.”

Step 12

The twelfth step in recovery says this: “Having had a spiritual experience as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”

Carry this message. That’s the deal. You don’t get healed so you can keep it to yourself. You get healing so you can turn around and help the person who’s a few steps behind you on the same road.

Russell Brand — not exactly a theologian, but surprisingly quotable on recovery — wrote: “This manual for Self-Realization comes not from the mountain but from the mud. Being human is a ‘me too’ business.”

I’m not writing from a mountaintop. I’m writing from the trail. Some of these posts are about things I’ve gained real ground on. Others are about things I’m actively wrestling with. But that’s the whole point — I’m not waiting until I’ve “arrived” to share what I’ve learned along the way. In recovery we call this “giving back.” It’s not optional. It’s part of the design.

The math on vulnerability

Here’s what almost 20 years of recovery have taught me about vulnerability: the return on investment is absurdly high.

Yes, being honest about your struggles costs something. It costs comfort. It costs the illusion of having it all together. It costs the idealized version of yourself you’ve been carrying around in your head. Sometimes it costs relationships with people who preferred the polished version of you.

But what it gives back? Real connection. Relationships with actual depth instead of surface-level pleasantries. Freedom from the exhausting work of managing an image. And a kind of wholeness — the “who I am” and “who I want to be” circles from my post on integrity actually start to overlap, because you’re not maintaining two versions of yourself anymore. Plus, more often than not, a chance to help someone else who’s stuck in the same place you were.

Vulnerability has given me far more in 20 years than it has taken. It’s not even close.

Credibility comes from the mud

There’s a practical reason too. When I write about the stick — the idea that your strengths and weaknesses are two ends of the same stick — it carries more weight when you know I’m speaking from the “weakness” end of my own stick, not just theorizing about it.

When I write about the performance treadmill, it means more because you know I’ve actually been on it. When I talk about resentment, it’s because I’m fighting it, not studying it from a safe distance.

The principles I share didn’t come from textbooks. They came from inventory worksheets and hard conversations with accountability partners and a lot of prayers that started with “God, I can’t do this.” Writing from my own journey through hurts, habits, and hangups is what gives those principles their teeth. The personal context is what moves them beyond nice ideas.

Where this is heading

I’m moving toward something new. I recently completed my certification as a Primal Question Coach, and I’m building a coaching practice — which involves an uncomfortable amount of putting yourself out there.

The blog posts I’ve been writing are partly me processing my own stuff, but they’re also bread crumbs. They’re me saying: this is who I am and this is what I know how to do.

If someone hires me as a coach, I want them to already know what they’re getting. Not a guy who’s figured it all out, but a guy who’s done the work, is still doing the work, and has picked up some hard-won tools along the way.

I’m also hard at work on a coaching website, so stay tuned for that.

Leading from vulnerability says something words can’t: I’m not above you. I’m with you. And if I can find some freedom in this area, you can too.

Obedience over comfort

The biggest reason I write about this stuff is the simplest one: I believe God asked me to.

Not in a dramatic, burning-bush kind of way. More in the slow, accumulating kind of way where the same theme keeps showing up in your life until you stop ignoring it. The doors that have opened in recovery. The people who’ve told me my story helped them. The persistent nudge that says: don’t waste what I gave you.

Genesis 50:20 again:

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people.”

I take that seriously. Not because I think my blog is saving lives (let’s keep some perspective here). But because I believe that every time someone reads about another person’s honest struggle and thinks, “okay, maybe I can deal with mine too” — that’s God doing the Romans 8:28 thing. Working all of it for good.

My job is to be willing to share. What God does with it is up to him.

The part where my approval addiction throws a fit

Now. I’d be lying if I told you this was easy. As a card-carrying approval addict, publishing these posts is like willingly poking myself in the eye.

I know what some people think when they read this stuff:

Main character energy much?
Writing about your own issues for the whole internet to read? Must be nice to think you’re that interesting.

He thinks he’s got it all figured out.
Another blog post where Justin teaches us all how to live. Cool.

That’s… a lot of lore, bro.
Some people read about sexual addiction or approval addiction or resentment and they’re not inspired — they’re embarrassed. For me. They’d rather I kept it to myself.

He must not be very strong.
In some circles, talking about your weaknesses is just confirmation that you have them. Real men (or real Christians, or real leaders) don’t air their dirty laundry. Or have any.

But the one that gets me the most? The quiet one. The one my Primal Question whispers when nobody’s reading, nobody’s responding, nobody’s sharing:

What if I put all of this out there… and nobody cares?

That’s the real fear. Not judgment — indifference. For someone whose core question is “Am I wanted?”, silence is worse than criticism. Criticism at least means you were noticed. Silence means you weren’t. And that’s when the scramble kicks in — the urge to perform harder, share more, do whatever it takes to force a response. To prove that the vulnerability was worth something. To prove that I was worth something.

I hear all of those voices. Some of them are real people. Some of them are the internal committee in my head that meets every time I hover over the publish button. And I’d love to tell you I’ve learned to ignore them.

I haven’t. I just publish anyway.

Because here’s what I’ve learned: the people who think less of me for being honest were probably never going to be the people I could actually help. And the people I can actually help? They need to know somebody else has been in their shoes.

The approval addict in me wants everyone to like me. The recovered part of me knows that’s not the goal. The goal is faithfulness. And sometimes faithfulness looks like hitting publish while every kid-logic alarm in my head is screaming at me to scramble.

So here we are

My blog is a bit of a therapy session. Guilty as charged. But it’s also an open hand. It’s me saying: here’s what I’ve got. Here’s where I’ve been. If any of it helps you take your next step, it was worth every uncomfortable moment of writing it.

And if it doesn’t? Well, at least my therapist will have some new material.