I always was like, "Today is the first day when I'm going to be clean from pornography, and I'm going to maintain it for the rest of my life." When I went from that mentality to "My ultimate goal is to be clean and free from this problem. And in order to do that, every time it happens, I'm going to be perfect about going back and working on it again, repenting of it, recognizing my weakness"--when it shifted from "I need to maintain perfection," to "I need to maintain a relationship with Christ so that He can perfect me," then it made all the difference in the world. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Shame is a funny word in our language because a lot of times we mix up shame and guilt. Guilt says, "I'm a good person. I have high values. I expect a lot from myself. I've done something to violate my own internal standards, my own sense of right and wrong. I want to make that right. I want to change my behavior, apologize to whomever I've offended, let the Lord know I'm sorry, and move on in my life in a better way." Shame is a little different. In my mind, shame is sort of Satan's counterfeit for guilt. Shame says, "I'm a bad person. And if other people knew about me, that I'm not living up to my values and what they expect from me, they'd be really disappointed and embarrassed about what I'm doing. They wouldn't understand why I got myself in this situation. I'd better hide what I'm doing, not let anybody know. I'd better keep it private, keep it secret. And so then I get to move forward with my life, feeling like maybe other people will still like me, but inside I'm feeling like, 'No, they're not going to like me. If they knew who I really was, they wouldn't like me.'" So shame contributes an enormous amount to hiding rather than changing, and to feeling lonely and misunderstood rather than meaningfully connected to the people around us. I misunderstood what the ideal was about and what it was there for and what we were all striving for. All members of the Church want to get there. We want to become perfect. What recovery has taught me is that it's not about learning how to maintain everything in a perfect way, but it's about perfectly understanding our weakness and being perfect about coming back to Christ and letting Him take that. I think it would be very self-defeating for anyone to somehow think, "Because I'm not perfect, then I'm obviously, then, just a failure." Let's not talk about perfection here. If we're moving and trying and praying and weeping, that's what God applauds. And that's what He'll help. I think that the thing that God loves most about being God is the chance to be merciful and see the gratitude in the faces and in the hearts of those who didn't think they could find mercy and probably didn't think they were worthy of it. Without compromise or equivocation, no one can ever say that they are beyond the pale of the Atonement. No one can sink lower than the Light of Christ shines. That is not possible.