There were multiple times in my life for months, maybe even years, where I would not view pornography. And you could look at that on the outside and say, "That's great. That's fantastic. Good, you must be a different person."

But it was lacking the actual healing. I had tried to live the same life and just look better. I went three months before my mission without looking at pornography, and it didn't really do me much good. I had stopped using pornography when I was in high school, but I still carried the shame and the baggage of that clear up until I started going to group at the age of 22. I would go to bishops, and I would stop the behavior. And I was being sober, but I was not in recovery. Recovery is not about sobriety and abstinence. Real recovery is a lifestyle change. It's learning how to do life differently. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Thinking back on my mission, I thought that that was a time of sobriety, that that was just a time where I was good. I had no issues. I was clean as a whistle. But the more I look back at it, I still had the same thought processes. I still was worried about the same sort of things. And I was still trying to look for the same sort of escape. When I came home from my mission, I was still kind of in the habit, I guess, of not looking at pornography. That slowly went away. Pornography addiction started to creep back into my life when the stresses of being engaged weren't there anymore and we were married. And it was just regular life. And I would make these deals with Heavenly Father like, "If I can go a week or two weeks, can that count towards helping me be forgiven for this?" But it just continued to get worse. No matter what I did, it got worse and worse and worse and worse. I'd set up goals or rewards that I could get if I went a certain length of time with sobriety. And we had a list of punishments, too. I started to base my recovery on all the wrong things. Sobriety is very black-and-white. It's either "I am sober and doing well, and I haven't made any mistakes," or "I'm not sober." They need to be process-oriented, not outcome-oriented. So it's not either "I'm either good or bad." It's "I am in process." You can't go in this thinking, "I never want to have another slip again," because we'll never realistically know that until the day you die. So it's not a measurable goal. It's positive, it's probably attainable, but it's not realistic. So it's not something that we can really factor in. It's perfectionistic. We certainly can say, "Where can we improve? Let's go back to the drawing board." But when you have a slip, you're not back to ground zero. You're not starting all over again. Tracking personal progress--that's usually my journaling and how I progress, or track my progress. Recently I had a relapse. It was a cool experience in my recovery because I was able to recognize all these influences and to go back and to write down, "Well, my relapse didn't start when it happened. It started, like, four months ago, when I wasn't really working my recovery." And so it helped me to be more aware and more honest of, "This is a change of life." It's not just, "I'm sober for three years. I'm good." No, it continues. Otherwise, you're back to the behavior. It took two years for me to finally see that there was more to repentance than telling a few people and saying a prayer. It took two years for me to finally understand that repentance meant change. [MUSIC PLAYING] Recovery is a process. It's a lifestyle change. With that process, there's time involved. There's tremendous effort involved. There is a willingness to be honest along the pathway. Recognize that it's a steep climb and there's going to be bad days. There's going to be days when, "Is this really worth it?" And the answer has to be yes. We're saved by that healing power of the Atonement, and it heals us after all we can do. Reading books, and going to meetings, and getting exercise, and eating healthy, and praying, and working on our relationship--that's the work I needed to do. Praying and journaling, going to counseling. I started going to the Church's 12-step groups every week. I started to experience healing and realized that Christ is mighty to save. Confidence and forgiveness doesn't come with perfection. It doesn't come with sobriety. Confidence comes with recovery, when you know you're trying your best, when you know that you've done all you can do. And then you have the liberating feeling of giving the rest to God and letting Him take care of it. Success is progress. Progress is success. And sometimes people feel like the only success is total success at the end. But there's also success along the way. And I think just progress in having greater and greater self-control and choosing the right more and more often. A steady striving in the right direction, even with failure. If you're striving, the Lord respects that. And He's willing to forgive when we repent, each time. If one is consistent in working on it, it becomes sort of a periodic struggle. You go from constant battle to kind of on guard, and you have a skirmish from time to time, but it's not a constant battle. "One's very heart and desires change, and the once-appealing sin becomes increasingly abhorrent." That's the picture of success. And it doesn't happen overnight; it comes over time. But as you feel yourself becoming a morally excellent person, that's success.