What happened when I made ‘peace’ with a bad habit...

We’re only human. It’s impossible to be perfect... right? by Matthew Nordquist from ‘The Narrow Way’

Nov 14, 2026

If you’re anything like me, there was a point in your life when you had a bad habit you wanted to quit.

So you gave it a valiant effort. You tried to quit.

It didn’t work.

Frustrated, you told one or two people close to you that you wanted it gone. You even prayed about it. On your knees beside your bed, eyes fixed on a crucifix, you begged Him to take away this sin that was hurting everyone around you.

Somewhere between distress and a creeping hopelessness, you made your peace with it. You made a few “tolerable” concessions and moved on with your life.

Months went by. Then years. We learned to live with it.

“I’m only human,” you probably thought. “I’m not a saint. Everybody has to deal with this. Every normal guy has to suck it up and admit he’s not perfect. I’m no exception.”

That’s exactly where I was: coasting through life, uncomfortable, carrying serious habitual sin. Until the day it caught up with me in full. It was like water rising in a sinking boat, unnoticed until it’s too late.

My comfortable little sin had taken me to rock bottom.

I was a guy who looked at porn once a month, sometimes less. I figured I was safe from eternal punishment and immune to any real danger in this life.

I was wrong.

Sin separates us from God. And serious habitual sin keeps us from bearing real fruit.

Think of sin, any sin, as a kind of spiritual contraception. It keeps us from being fruitful for God’s kingdom. If that’s true, then we can’t settle for just trying to stop sinning.

We have to let Christ make our lives whole again. To be integrated is to be chaste. To be chaste is to be whole. As Bishop Erik Varden writes in his book Chastity, chastity “is a function of wholeness sought and healing found.”

If you’re like me, you’ve probably given up on chastity a hundred times.

Let me ask you: consider it one more time.

Rock bottom is a blessed place, strange as that sounds, because there isn’t much further down to go. It’s a place of real poverty. For most addicts, it’s spiritual poverty first: despair.

Here’s the thing about humility: either we choose it, or it comes and finds us.

When I hit bottom, I had no choice left but to get better.

What God is asking of us is to repent, to humble ourselves, and to be converted every single day.

It’s a daily choice. Will we take the narrow way, or the way of the world?

And the fight against lust isn’t just about not doing the wrong things. Chastity is more than a list of things we avoid. Jesus is calling us into a bigger story, the story of His redemption. The choices we make, in our minds and in our bodies, decide how much freedom and wholeness we’ll actually find.

Here’s three questions to ask yourself today:

Have I made concessions to for a habitual sin to stay “comfortably” in my life?
Do I consider the end of my life and the final judgement for the concessions I am
making?
What do I need to do to humble myself and allow the Holy Spirit to renew my mind? (spiritual direction, coaching, daily prayer, confession, rosary, therapy, working out, etc.)

Let’s pray for a renewal of our minds. And let’s start walking, not just alongside Christ, but with His life alive in us.

Matthew Nordquist is the founder of The Narrow Way, a Catholic recovery coaching ministry. As a Certified Sexual Addiction Recovery Coach (CSARC) Matthew guides men to freedom from compulsive sexual behavior, leads recovery groups, speaks around the country, and writes frequently on the subject. He lives in Minnesota with his beautiful wife and beloved daughter. Learn more at nrway.org.