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Welcome to the Catholic Sobriety Podcast, the go-to resource for women seeking to have a deeper understanding of the role alcohol plays in their lives. Women who are looking to drink less or not at all for any reason. I'm your host, Christy Walker. I'm a wife, mom, and a joy-filled Catholic. And I am the Catholic sobriety coach. And I'm so glad you're here. Welcome friends. I want to talk to you today the way that I talk to a woman sitting across from me and coaching. Not as a teacher, not as someone who has it all together, but as someone who has lived this and still practices it. Because if I'm honest, for a long time, I didn't think that I deserved better than what was happening in my life. I had made such a mess with alcohol. I had hurt people, I had numbed out for years. And somewhere deep down, I believed this is mine to clean up. And even though intellectually and in my heart I knew that the Lord loved me, I didn't love myself. And if I'm being completely honest, there were seasons where I thought God had abandoned me. And quite honestly, I couldn't have blamed him at all because all I did was thumb my nose at him. I thought, why would he, why would he stay close to this mess? I've screwed things up so badly. Of course, he'll love me, but he just can't be part of my life because I'm just too far gone. But looking back now with clarity and with so many healed wounds, I can see something that I couldn't see then. And that is that the Lord was with me in all of it. I just couldn't see him because there was this dark, thick veil over my heart, a veil that was made of my own sin and shame and strongholds. And that veil was not just about behavior, it was actually what I believed about myself. Now, here's what I want to help you hear clearly. One of the primary ways the enemy is working is by messing with your mind. Scripture tells us this plainly. Saint Paul says, we take every thought captive in obedience to Christ. Why would Scripture say that unless our thoughts were being targeted? The enemy doesn't usually show up with horns and drama. He whispers. He waits. He whispers lies to you at your weakest point because that's when the lies seem to make the most sense. And if you play with the thought and you agree with it, if you let it linger, he knows that he has thrown you off course. Now for me, the lies sounded like this. And maybe you can relate. It sounded like you made this mess, but you don't get to want more than what you have. This is just who you are. You've already gone too far. There's no coming back from this. God loves you, but he's disappointed in you and wants nothing to do with you. Other women are different than you, and they are doing so much better than you are. And here's the thing about lies. Again, in our pain, they sound reasonable, they sound true, and that's how they take root when we agree with them. Jesus tells us exactly who the enemy is. He is a liar and the father of lies. Lies usually don't feel evil, they feel true until you examine them in light. And once those lies took root in me, alcohol made sense because alcohol offered me what I thought I needed in that moment. Relief, numbness, connection, escape, quiet, and a break from those accusations in my head. Now, here's something I wish more women were told alcohol doesn't just numb the pain, it numb the joy, and it can interrupt your healing. Now, there were moments in my life where I was right on the edge of a breakthrough, right on the edge of feeling something honestly, right on the edge of letting God touch a wound. And then alcohol swooped in and said, You don't need to feel this. Take the edge off. And quite honestly, it felt like mercy, but it was a cheap substitute. And here's the truth that we don't talk about enough. Alcohol is a depressant, it's a sedative. What comes up must also come down. So that relief, it never lasts, and it often leaves you feeling more vulnerable to shame the next day. Wouldn't you rather be filled with something that brings lasting joy? Scripture tells us do not get drunk on wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. That verse used to bother me, but now I understand it. Alcohol is the counterfeit intoxication to the true, holy, and fulfilling intoxication of the Holy Spirit. Now, the enemy has a two-step strategy, and here's what I've seen again and again in my own life and in the women I coach. The first step is that the enemy tempts us to sin. It says things like, it's not a big deal. Everyone does it. You deserve this. Honey, your buttons were pushed. If it's just a thought or a fantasy, it's fine. Step two, once you fall, he pummels you. He switches tactics. He says, See, proves it. What's wrong with you? You are never going to change. God must be so tired of you. This is not random. This is accusation. And Revelation names this clearly. Revelation 12 10 says, the accuser of our brothers and sisters. That's who he is. God never accuses like that. Now this next thing changed everything for me. Knowing that God doesn't look at your behavior and say, What's wrong with you? Where the sin took root and he says, Let me heal that. Psalm 147 says, He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. God is not afraid of your mess. He's not afraid of your emotion. He's certainly not shocked by your coping mechanisms. And he's not waiting for you to get cleaned up before he comes closer. I couldn't see that for years because shame distorted my vision. And once that veil began to lift, I realized I've been listening to the wrong voice. Now, most of us were never taught this, but spiritually speaking, there are three voices at play. There's God's voice, there's the enemy's voice, and there's your human voice, which is the one that is shaped by wounds, habits, stress, trauma, and learning. And the problem is that the enemy almost never shows up sounding evil. So how can you discern between those voices? Here's how I generally explain it. God's voice is calm, it's specific, it invites you forward, it preserves your dignity, and it leads you closer to Him. And even when God's voice convicts, it sounds like, let's do this together. And then the enemy's voice or our human voice are harsh, they're vague, they attack our identity, they create this sense of urgency. It pushes us into hiding. It sounds condemning and it can fill us with shame. Romans 8:1 says, There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. None. So if a thought leaves you feeling hopeless, ashamed, or far from God, that voice is not from Him. Now, even after years of sobriety, of living alcohol free, I still had wounds that needed to be healed. And this is where everything began to shift for me. I learned to wrestle with my thoughts instead of just letting them roam around unchecked in my head. Hear this. Not every thought deserves your attention. Not every thought deserves your agreement. So now when a lie shows up, I don't debate it. I say often out loud, I renounce the lie and I claim the truth. Jesus did this in the desert. He didn't argue. So I will renounce a lie, like God doesn't love you, he's disappointed in you. Then I will claim the truth that I am a beloved daughter, that he is patient with me, that I'm learning, that I'm becoming the woman he created me to be, that nothing is wasted, that God can make old things new, and that grace is active and alive. Truth isn't meant to hype you up, it steadies you. So if you're listening and you're exploring a new way of living, of untangling yourself from the strongholds that hold you down or keep you in those thought loops that just are not serving you. If you're committed to freedom on the other side of the lie, if you're committed to persevering through discomfort, so that you can loosen alcohol's grip on you and you are ready to question your old patterns, then I want you to hear this. You are not weak, you are not broken, and you are not failing. You, my friend, are waking up. And waking up means that you are starting to notice the voices. And this is where real freedom begins. Jesus said, You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Not willpower, not white knuckling it, not punishment, but truth. So let me say this to you the way I would if you were sitting right in front of me. You don't have to wait for it to get bad enough before you make decisions to improve your quality of life, to improve your relationship with God, with your family, to find your identity, not in what you do, but in who and whose you are. God is with you in it all, even when you couldn't see Him. And the more you learn to reject the lie and claim the truth, the clearer your vision will become. Freedom isn't found in numbing out. It's actually found in seeing clearly, in bringing to light those things that might be kind of hard to look at. And you're learning how. You are becoming a woman who makes choices from peace, not reaction. And this is the last thing. You don't need to silence every negative thought. You don't need to stop agreeing with the wrong ones. God is not disappointed in you. He's not waiting for you to improve before he loves you. He's not measuring your progress with impatience. Scripture tells us the Lord is compassionate and merciful, slow to anger and rich in mercy. Learning to discern God's voice and reject the voice of accusation is not just spiritual growth. It's healing, it's joy-filled, and it's peace. If this episode resonated with you, if you recognized yourself in some of what I shared, I want you to know that you do not have to work through this alone. Learning to recognize God's voice, rejecting lies, and rebuilding self-trust is something we practice together inside my sacred sobriety lab. It's not about perfection or pressure. It's about study support, faith, neuroscience, and a community walking right alongside of you. If you're curious, you can learn more about the lab through the link in the show notes. I also have a special listener discount available through January, which you'll find there as well. Whether you join us or not, I hope today reminded you of this truth. God has not abandoned you. And freedom really does live on the other side of a lie. I'll talk to you again soon. Well, that does it for this episode of the Catholic Sobriety Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I would invite you to share it with a friend who might also get value from it as well. And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss a thing. I am the Catholic sobriety coach. And if you would like to learn how to work with me or learn more about the coach that I offer, I think the Catholic Sobriety.