That Was Me Trying

I have struggled with addiction the better part of my life. Like many before me, the sting of it’s consequences have shaped the course of my journey. It has been a spiritual battle that has kicked my butt. Many say you have to hit rock bottom in order to start climbing up. I really thought I had. I never took issue when confronted with the fact that I was powerless over my addiction. To me, that was a no-brainer. What had me by the short hairs was everything else. Taking control of one’s destiny is as important to the American culture as apple pie and the Kardashians, right?

The more I open myself to the possibilities of God, the easier it is for me to catch glimpses of the threads of some exquisite piece of tapestry that seems to be being woven all around me. The God I believe in is really big. He isn’t confined by human definition. And, He is far more creatively and intricately involved in the human experience than I can possibly give Him credit for. To Him, what I consider great wisdom is just foolish nonsense.

Most importantly, He is love.

I take a great deal of solace in the idea that there is a reason for everything. It eases my anxiety a lot to know that every decision I make is being worked out for the ultimate good. Everything can be a pretty big word when I make it a point to keep my eyes and heart open, Whenever I am at my most desperate, I am always comforted by that inner voice whispering in my ear, “I got this.”

Also, I am really suspicious of what I would call exit-strategy theology. I think it’s sorta ignorant to view the Bible as just a preface. It doesn’t make sense to me that God’s goal is to be a cosmic buzz kill and that everything is only about tomorrow. The Bible tells me the story of a people experiencing God where and when they are, not sitting on the sidelines waiting for their number to be called. I can’t help thinking that for many, the Gospel is a “we’ll see” proposition, instead of the right now, in your face message; the one that offended so many of Jesus’ contemporaries. To be honest, my immediate need isn’t to be saved tomorrow. I need the power and promises of the resurrection in my life today. Also Jesus talks a lot about His kingdom being at hand, it seems to be a pretty urgent message to Him.

The Greek word used to describe saved is sozo. It is used throughout the New Testament in the present tense. It means “to save, keep safe and sound, to rescue from danger or destruction.” Keeping this in mind, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” means I can expect big things here and now. I am not stuck in some lifelong waiting room. My salvation is not some mystical, unknowable future event.

I think that my very best witness to the world is all about being a resident of His Kingdom that is at hand. For me not to acknowledge the nowness of salvation is to limit all that was accomplished at Calvary.

Last Spring there was this freak hailstorm. I’m not attributing anything magical or mystical to it, it’s just an easy reference point for something sort of unexplainable. I had left my job at the local Mental Health Association just over a year earlier and I was subsisting on my Disability, and other sources of more than morally questionable income. Winter hit hard. That October I fractured my arm, and was asked to move from my apartment of six years because of the disturbance I made when I had to call the ambulance. Yeah, really. The bone had cracked straight through and shifted; it was a dramatic break. Mostly I wasn’t feeling too much pain because I had the perfect excuse to get all that I wanted of the drug that my body craved, as several ERs and local Urgent Care clinics could attest. With the help of some friends, I was able to throw together a place to nest before the first storms hit. I spent the next five months in bed, consuming little else than my opiod companions and the rations of food I could afford. The party was over; I had become isolated and alone.

Then there was the freak ice storm. Chunks of sleet, measured as big as golf balls slammed in to everything in it’s path. For ten very long minutes it felt like the end of the world. Afterward, my apartment complex’s parking lot looked like a war zone; broken glass, pummeled car hoods and car alarms on high alert Even with the passing of summer, a lot of cars still looked like they had been pelted by BB guns. I watched it all from my bed, depressed out of my mind and at the end of my rope.

It was gradual, but eventually, I just gave up. On myself. On Everything.

I mentioned all that stuff about God earlier because when you really truly give up, someone or something has to pick up the slack. I tend to think that everything is a spiritual matter, and has some form of eternal significance, so I threw it in God’s lap:

“Ok, if you are who you say you are, it’s on you.

I’ve lost just about everyone and everything that I ever held dear. I am lost. I am alone. I am empty.

I’m not going to put limits on what you can do anymore, or how you do it, even where other people say I’m out of my mind.

You pretty clearly promise to provide for all of my needs, so I am going to hold you to that.

I will do whatever is in front of me to do, even if it makes absolutely no sense. I am going to trust that when a door closes it’s you, and when you allow one to open, that’s you too.

I am trusting you to hem me in behind and before.

I am just going to live in the now and let you lead the way. Unfold the path before me.

I am going to be looking for you, in every conversation and in every situation, like a bride waiting for her groom. I will strain to hear that still small voice of yours.

I will spend my time focusing on things as they are, instead of how I want or expect them to be.

I will be looking for you in every face I encounter, and every opinion expressed, whether I agree or not.

I can’t deal with the guilt of always falling short of the impossible should-be’s at every turn. I am going to take it literally that it was for freedom that you came to set me free, and that everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial, and that you write your law on my heart.

I will make every effort to obey that which you have written on my heart.

I promise not to take your incredible forgiveness for granted.

I will accept and love the me you made me to be instead of trying to be the me everyone else says I should be.

I will live like I believe that my life is precious to you and therefore it is to me too.

I am going to believe that I have earned my place on this earth and that my reality is as valid as anyone else’s.

Most importantly, I will apply the law of love to everything I do and every decision I make. Even if it’s inconvenient or downright annoying.

I will express your overwhelming grace at any chance I get, even if it’s just a smile or a nod to someone I pass on the street.

I will forgive as radically and love as extravagantly as you have me.

and, when I fail, and I will fail, I will keep trusting that you’ve got that too.”

My giving up was not simply throwing my hands in the air in disgust. Mine was more like when you quit job. And you give your boss the finger. That’s what my faith had become, a job. Instead of living like a free man, my truth was that no matter what I did, it was never good enough; feeling like a constant failure and carrying around guilt, like dragging a two ton rock behind me everywhere I’d go. Giving up means that I am defined by this moment, not the one before or the one after. I am not a failure, I am not out of God’s good graces just because I did something regretfully stupid only two minutes before; I am not a victim. Christ’s death on the cross was big enough to cover all that. There is little place for worry or fear because I don’t have to deal with what’s coming or what’s happened. It’s all part of an intricately, beautiful and perfectly timed down-to-the-second plan that I am not in charge of executing. I don’t work there anymore.

Unlike fasting or quitting smoking or even prayer, you don’t have to work at giving up. There’s no follow through because there is nothing to follow through. My failure is when I try. The difference between surrender and giving-up is that surrender is a conscious, hopefully well thought out decision. Whereas giving-up is more like sinking to the bottom of the ocean and gasping out your last breath.

Taking each day as it comes and expecting that even the minutia in life is just another piece of a well thought out puzzle is very specifically what I see the New Testament message is all about. Maybe that’s why trying so hard to be a good Christian never felt right to me. We know that God’s chosen people had no solid clue what Messiah was supposed to be. Perhaps we are in a similar boat; majoring in the minors. Giving up is the best thing I could have ever done. Things like traffic and over due bills and even bouts of depression are just parts of the puzzle, no more no less. I don’t have to attach morality to every belch and hiccup. How I react is my choice, and I don’t have to give wit, because you see, I gave up.

I’ve known for a while now some of the roots of my addiction, and much like the habit itself, I was powerless to shake myself free. Out of nowhere, on the day that malicious balls of ice reeked havoc everywhere else, my desire to hide behind the narcotic facade began to disappear, I just didn’t care anymore about keeping appearances or living other peoples’ realities. Months passed and pill-obtaining opportunities dwindled and I just stopped using. The desire was gone. It’s totally mind-boggling to me, but I am experiencing crazy freedom, honestly, for the first time since becoming a Christian over 30 years ago. Turns out, The Gospel isn’t just good news – it’s GREAT news! And without the opiate haze, everything seems just a little brighter, and better.

The law screaming from my heart now is an edict to stop and smell the roses and to live and enjoy the life He has for me. Stop sweating the small stuff. Chill out. On earth as it is in heaven, dude.

My friend asked me the other day, “if this new approach of yours, which actually seems to suit you pretty well, is you giving up, what was all the craziness before?”

THAT, was me trying.