It doesn’t seem as if any two words have been scarier to me than those two. What if? Your “what ifs” are limited only by the stretch of your imagination and mine stretches pretty far. Every addict I know struggles with the constant desire to control their world. We want perfection, however that looks to us, and we want to know that life will go however we planned it. Ironically, all our striving only serves to spin us further out of control. Into our plans and delusions creep the realities of life and, even if real life might seem to be on track, there are always the “what ifs”. They lurk in the corners of our mind reminding us that what we’ve managed to hold together today will completely unravel if only… And, so we try harder to be someone who could manage that as well and then there are more what ifs and more trying…
Step one tells us to stop and admit that we are powerless and our lives are unmanageable.
It’s not easy. But it’s true. I guess I keep coming back to step one because it is where I am at. Maybe I am a slow learner but I have a hard time giving it up. But, when I can get there I will find that God is doing for me what I could not do for myself. He’s got it in his hands. Beth Moore said, in her Bible Study on Esther, we need to learn to let God have all our what ifs. If this or that happens, then God will carry me – PERIOD. If that, then God. Anything else is an illusion.
If found this song yesterday and am loving how much it captures this for me. Enjoy it.
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Nothing could change in this world
O nothing could change in this world
To take me to a place where I’m alone
To take me to the place where I’m alone
***
How did I live before you breathed on me,
wrapped in a great dark blanket of fear?
Life speeds by in a crazy endless cycle
They said it was all for nothing
But something – Something Sang Out – from the inside
And I know there is more
Now, nothing could change in this world
Let the whole world come apart
crumbling towers crash down
This, my rock of pasture rests safe
Always safe in the crook of your wings
Rest dear souls – rest in the God of peace
There is a purpose in your life
There is a purpose in Life
Rest dear souls and let all the pain draw you closer
The tear in your heart opens you up
Let it help you feel – melt away the numbness
Stop and let the blood run life to the places where it never was
To take you to a place where you’re alone
To take you to the place where you’re alone
Darkness has always bothered me. There is something about the stillness of night that can take all the fears and insecurities and “what if’s” of the day and compound them. I remember fear of the dark as a child. I remember knowing it was something I was supposed to “outgrow”. I remember being increasingly frustrated when my fear continued to grow with me. What used to subside by holding my bunny blanket and thinking about the CareBears eventually became completely unmanageable. By the time I was in high-school I was dealing with pretty consistent insomnia. Fear is a formidable enemy. It easily overpowers fatigue for those who have no resistance against it. So many days I spent in a fog of exhaustion only to be deprived of sleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. My mind would start buzzing with an unstoppable flood of thoughts. Tiredness would give way to uneasiness, anxiety, and even terror as I was pulled further and further under a blanket of fear every night. I don’t really know why or how it started but I know that the darkness fed my addiction. I know our minds are absolutely a battlefield. I know if we can’t stand our ground here we will eventually buckle under the weight of such things. I did.
I began to feel a deep desire to numb my mind… shut it down and shut it off – whatever it takes. My medication of choice was food. Food avoidance, food control, purging, whatever it took. (It could have been any number of other things.) But, like all addiction, it wasn’t long before my “medication” backfired and began controlling me. The darkness I felt at night began to take over my days as well. Which, of course, demanded more medicating… Self implosion is how I describe it.
step 1. We admitted that we were powerless over “insert you issue here” and our lives had become unmanageable.
step 2. We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Step one was obvious. I knew I was a mess. Step two was a bit harder because step two takes faith… and trust. But there is hope when we can get it. There is relief that doesn’t increase the emptiness, that doesn’t wear off and leave you feeling alone and ashamed, relief that doesn’t demand you destroy yourself. “A power greater than myself can restore me to sanity.”
Psalm 139 7-12 says of God,
Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
If I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
If I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to You; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
1John 4:18 says, “perfect love drives out fear”
There is no greater remedy for fear (or pain or emptiness…) than knowing the perfect, penetrating, and absolutely powerful love of God. When I lie down I am not alone. And, He who watches over me is not at all thwarted by darkness or anything else this life has to offer.
Earlier this week I caught an interview with Dr. Anthony Bradley on the topic of black liberation theology. Being a person who is interested in just about everything, I turned the radio up a bit. Probably like most people, I first heard about black liberation theology during the 2008 presidential election. Voice clips of Rev. Jeremiah Wright preaching from the pulpit on the evils of “rich white America” sang out everywhere. And, I summarily wrote him off as one of the “crazies” with whom I have just about nothing in common. I’m not rich and I have friends who are all different colors so I get pretty upset when people who don’t know me try to pin me down with the race card. I am, however, always fascinated by how people think and where they get their worldview, so I was very interested in what Dr. Bradley had to say. I was not prepared to see something in myself and in my addiction that forced me to relate with Rev. Wright. It is what Dr. Bradley calls “the major flaw of black liberation theology”. It is victimology. Their worldview and theology is infused with reinforcing the victim mentality. Wow. Doesn’t that just sum up addiction on so many levels? I run to my addiction to medicate and numb myself against what life throws at me. We all do it. Whether we were shoved into our pit or we chanced upon it and stumbled in unknowingly or whether we dove right in of our own accord, it is the victim mindset that often keep us there. “I can’t cope with life”, “I don’t know how to deal with what has been done to me”, “I deserve a break…” I am in a twelve step group right now and one of the things we read at the end of our meeting is “we will no longer depend on other people to provide us with an identity…” My identity does not need to be tied down to what other people have said or done. It does not have to be wrapped up in what I have perceived others have said or done to me. My identity is not what happens to me at all. I do not have to live as the victim of my life. If I do, I will always have a ready excuse to return to my disordered thinking and my destructive choices. I was so interested in what Dr. Bradley said that I bought his book, “Liberating Black Theology”. In it, he suggests developing a “redemptive-historical” approach as a remedy to the victim mindset. As a Christian I would say this is essential. My past has been redeemed. Christ has taken the ashes of my life and made something beautiful out of them. He is still doing this. Victimology in it’s essence is antithetical to liberation. You cannot be a victim and be free at the same time. Life is hard. Things happen. Some times we get up, rub our bruised knees and keep going. Other times we stay down where we have fallen and make our existence there. Like I said before, it doesn’t matter how we fell or even if we were pushed over. We have a choice. We cannot control life – only how we respond to it. Give me a choice of redemption or victimology and I would rather have redemption. Some days it’s not so easy though.
2 Cor 1:3-5
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. 5For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows 6If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. 7And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.
One of the biggest lies I’m tempted to believe when doing daily battle with my addictions is “What kind of person are you? You have nothing to offer! You’re useless!”
Very often we have believed those words. We think, “I want to be a witness for my savior, I want to speak truth into the lives of hurting people around me, I want to be a leader in my church and my community, but… look at me. I’m so messed up. If anyone new the real me they would realize I’m a hypocrite.” Having then believed the lie we are immobilized to take action in life. The actions we do take are half hearted or worse a prideful front to mask our weakness and insecurity.
We don’t believe we have anything to offer anyone and so… we don’t offer anyone anything helpful. Our halfhearted words are seen for what they are, and our arrogant ranting is disregarded for what it is and we truly are purposeless and without a mission in life. A shadow of a person who drains others of energy and enthusiasm.
BUT ITS A LIE!!!!! Its not true! What kind of person are we? We are a hopeless mess that has been wash clean by Christ Jesus! And now Christ himself has commissioned us to go out and share the hope of cleansing. We are equipped with the sufferings (hurts, habits and hang-ups) we have received, empowered with the same power that has raised Christ from the dead and sent out to spread the comfort of Christ to ALL!
Many times our suffering becomes a parking lot in the road of our life. We were moving along and then suffering enters and we hit the brakes, pull over, and put the car in park. We can’t believe that God would allow that to happen to us, or that we could do such a thing, or that so and so had the audacity to say what they did. We are stunned and immobilized by the hardship and so many of us never move on from there. But God’s plan is for our suffering to be a bridge not a parking lot! As we move along the road, suffering enters and along with such suffering comes the comfort of the Lord. God’s desire for us is that we will continue forward through the suffering, receiving His comfort through it all. Reaching the other side of our trial, we then move on with Christ’s Comfort to share with others.
When can we share this comfort? At all times, for it is an overflow from the thankful heart of those who have received such a hope!
Who can we share this comfort with? Everyone! This is a message for all, young, old, rich and poor! Most importantly many who have long ago received Christ as Savior have not yet received His comfort! They need this message because they are paralyzed to take action and numb without compassion, like many of us have been for so long.
The amazing truth is we have a mission and a purpose in life that is meant to touch the lives of everyone around us!
Don’t believe the lie!
~ Scott Fraley
These were the words of a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, describing himself before he was “restored to sanity” by the principles and practices of humility contained in the Twelve Steps.
The following comments were sent to me by a dear friend. See if they ring true in your life experience.
Perfectionism Is At the Core of Almost All Addictive Behavior
I know it sounds like a glaring contradiction, a cruel paradox, but it’s absolutely true-most addicts are obsessed with perfection! They perceive that in order to be of any real value; to be loved and accepted, they have to be perfect. And when the pursuit of perfection wears them out, they seek escape through addiction. This then piles on the guilt and shame, and once again they clinch their fists and grit their teeth and start the whole perfection thing again-and so goes the cycle, over and over again.
I think we react so negatively and mercilessly to imperfection in ourselves and others because we have fallen for a lie that suggests there can be no allowance for learning by our own mistakes. We are constantly shaming and blaming ourselves for not being perfect and we are filled with disgust toward anything less-than-perfect about ourselves or the world around us.
If you think about it, this is really a kind of “perfection idolatry”-worshipping perfection as the only way we can be valuable, loveable or “good enough.” The irony is that this harsh and unreasonable approach to ourselves and others, only separates us from God, others and ourselves. The fact is, our chance to experience imperfection in this life is exactly the way God intended it to be.
I couldn’t agree with my friend more! She is absolutely right–perfectionism often triggers and fuels addictive behavior. Many of us (I suffered with this for 30 years and I still feel the residue) believe that if we do “everything perfect” then maybe, just maybe we will be “good enough” for God and others to accept us.
When we set total “perfection” as the daily level of performance we “must” attain to be acceptable to ourselves, God and others, we set ourselves up for failure. Why? Because we have placed a rigid, unreasonable, unattainable burden on our own back that we can only bear for so long until it wears us out. And, it also wears out those around us because we often require the same level of perfection from them as well. Then, when we are exhausted–physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually, our “perfectionist–all-or-nothing” attitude says, “If I can’t be perfect, then why try?” So, we seek out self-medication to help sooth our feelings of unworthiness, shame and guilt–and to simply have an outlet and get a reprieve from our internal “merciless dictator/critic.” If we don’t release in this way, we will simply collapse under all the pressure.
Then, after we escape and self-medicate (which comes in many forms including substance abuse, pornography, food, anger, depression, as well as outlets that are neutral or even healthy) we feel “guilty” for failing to pursue perfection so we start the whole process over again.
The grand key is to realize that there is only one overriding feeling we should have for ourselves and others-unconditional love. Our Creator’s love for us is completely unconditional-we cannot earn it, nor can we make ourselves unworthy of it. It is always there, unconditional and constant.
With UNCONDITIONAL LOVE as the motive and fuel for everything we do, we realize that we and all of us are in this life to learn by our own experience, by our own trial and error. And hopefully, over time, baby-step by baby-step, we are “becoming” better at choosing that is which is good; that which is light and love.
If you go back to the origins of the word “perfect,” it means “complete” or “whole.” Each of us has our own unique potential–our own place of “completeness” to be evolving toward. It is a process of making mistakes, learning from them and moving forward. In some things, it may take us 763 of the same mistake before we finally say “I get it! I’m ready to move on!” Does that make us evil, hopeless, flawed or “not one of the good ones”? Of course not-it makes us “human.” It’s called “life.”
Does all of this mean we shouldn’t try to improve. Certainly not. But, we would all do well to lighten up and be far more gentle, forgiving and compassionate with ourselves and each other. Amidst all our noble efforts to learn and grow and overcome, let’s not forget to notice and embrace all of the simple joys and wonders along the way.
Visit this authors website @ http://www.candeocan.com
Thanks, Scott.
My Family and I visited Church on the Rock Homer this morning. It’s was an awesome service of communion and commitment! We sang this song and I LOVED it!!! here are the words...
And now the weak say I have strength By the spirit of power that raised Christ from the dead And now the poor stand and confess That my portion is Him and I’m more than blessed
Let now our hearts burn with a flame A fire consuming all for your Son’s holy name And with the heavens we declare You are our king
We love you Lord, we worship you You are our God, you alone are good
You asked your Son to carry this The heavy cross our weight of sin
I love you Lord, I worship you Hope which was lost, now stands renewed I give my life to honor this The love of Christ, the savior king
Let now your church shine as the bride That you soar in your heart as you offered up your life Let now the lost be welcomed home By the saved and redeemed those adopted as your own
I give my life to honor this The love of Christ, the savior king
