The beauty left behind addiction

I’m at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon as I write this. The family is still asleep, and other than a young family with three rambunctious children I’m pretty much alone with my thoughts. I’m sitting at the end of a trail on a solid rock and staring down a drop thousands of feet deep with millions of years of geological history exposed.

I came here seeking God. A member of our family is going through a rough patch that felt quite overwhelming a few days ago and my wife needed to get to her happy place and this is it.

I’m also here seeking inspiration from God on my next step in life as taught most recently at bootcamp. I’m praying for connected-ness with God instead of treating Him as a cosmic vending machine for a list of orders but with no way to pay.

The message He is giving me is that He loves to create, and rather than give me some new opportunity He wants to create with me.

At first I thought this may be the wrong spot. The Grand Canyon is nothing without millions of years of destructive erosion. But this morning, as I sit perched on a rock at the end of a lookout point, I instead see millions and millions of years of sediment stacked one layer at a time and then the sculpting of wind, water, cold, and heat to carve away the miracle beneath.

All around the Grand Canyon is flat ground. What makes it amazing is the carving, sculpting, cracking, and weathering. It is the removal of what isn’t necessary that reveals what is inspiring and beautiful.

Not lost on me is the irony of my first name, Peter. In Greek, Πέτρος (Petros) means rock or stone. ‘A foundation’ is a common translation in the Christian world. What I see in the rock here today is what life clings to. Trees intertwining their roots into small crevasses. Small plants finding a way. Squirrels, insects, birds, and humans all exist here because of the rock left behind.

About 12 years ago, I canoed the Green river which leads into the Grand Canyon. The water is a murky brown-green and full of silt. To use it for drinking we had to let it sit for a long time and then use our filters for further refinement. That’s what the water looks like coming in. I haven’t seen the water coming out, but assume it is removing even more things as it goes through the Canyon, given the deep channels where the water has done its magic.

And so I return to the title. Addiction isn’t fun. It is baffling, confusing, and a misery for those it affects.

But in hindsight, I can see how the weathering in my life is leaving the essentials. And I find beauty in what has been constructed with all the carving away.

God, please continue to carve away that which is not necessary. I give everything and everyone to You to do as You will. I seek to create new beauty from ashes, and I trust You in that process in Jesus Name, amen.

By Pete, Writing Team

Relapse

My kids have been struggling with their behavior lately so my wife made a behavior sticker chart for them. The idea is to motivate my kids to exhibit positive and uplifting behavior by giving them a sticker for each moment of goodness they create, and once they get enough stickers they get to choose a prize. For example, despite my flawless parenting, my daughter has a hard time listening to instructions. When we try to give instructions she will start to sing a song, ignore us, or run away. Our solution to this problem is to reward her with a star sticker when she listens and follows through with whatever it is we are asking of her. When she earns enough star stickers she gets a toy unicorn, of course.

Last week she had an amazing day. She was full of smiles, had open ears to everything we said, and was simply a joy to be around. Over the course of a few hours that evening she was able to earn 4 stars! She was ecstatic and the happiness on her face was unmistakable.

Then, the next day she forcefully pulled the rug out from under us as her 3-year-old tantrums kicked in. I was in shock at how well and for how long she could ignore me. My frustration peaked and I almost said, “I’m going to take away all of your stickers if you keep acting like this!” Right before the words came out of my mouth, I felt God tell me, “What about all of the progress she has made? Have I taken away your stickers when you made mistakes?” That hit home and my frustration melted away. How could I discount her progress? Those stickers on her chart are evidence that she has made good decisions that have brought her closer to her goal. This experience with my daughter took me a while to understand and even longer to connect to my own journey.

Children must sometimes be parented in this merit-based way and I have assumed that God was parenting me in the same way. I have often thought that God would take everything away from me if I made one more mistake. If I relapsed one more time then I would not only be out of His reach, but I would be kicked down the stairway to heaven to start all over again. This has been an agreement and a core belief I’ve had for most of my life. And what better time does the great liar have to reinforce this way of thinking than right after I relapse - just as I was about to do when my daughter turned back to her tantrums?

Fortunately for me and my family, I have learned that this is not true. God does not withdraw His love, His mercy, His passion, or His grace when I mess up. There is no stairway to heaven that I can climb by checking another box or moving onto the next step. God wants to be with me, He is on my team. Would God really leave during this crucial time? No, He does not leave. He does not give up. Surely, He does not take away my stickers.

I know relapse is not something I should let occur frequently or even be comfortable with. I know it can be the catalyst for a deepening of my addiction if I don’t appropriately address it. However, I have come to accept the reality of relapse and know its place in recovery. I know that God does not turn from me. I know that my progress in recovery does not restart upon relapse, but that instead it can be a place to learn. I can see where I went wrong. I can see what strategies did or did not work. I can stay in a healthy area of recovery as I choose God’s love over the lies that await in the dark corner behind me. My perfect Father has no intention of taking away my star stickers. My Savior has shown me a better path, a mightier goal to reach, and a clearer perspective on my journey in recovery.

By Adam, Guest Writer

Struggling with Change

In my recent post, “Love that Changes”, I grappled with the statement “Love that doesn’t try to change you, changes you.” (author-unknown). I concluded with the idea that God’s love may be like a bonfire in that it changes me without coercion. His love is not bound by the need for my transformation yet still manages to change me. If this is true, then I could also conclude that the only way I can remain unchanged is to keep my distance from Him, but this hasn’t exactly been my experience. It seems there’s still a missing piece to this puzzle.

There are behaviors and aspects of my character that I would like changed. After decades of trying a mix of prayer and self-help to make these changes a reality, I’ve come to a point where I have to admit that I must be doing something wrong. It’s not that I haven’t seen any success. In fact, I once experienced and now live a miracle: years ago, God healed me of my decades-long pornography addiction in a single moment. I wish I had journaled a little better back then because it’s clear that something was different.

Going back to the conclusions from my previous post, I could believe that I must have gotten closer to God at that point than I have gotten since. That’s not the case though. I’m closer to Him today than I’ve ever been. So I’m left wondering why, in such proximity to the Love that changes, these other behaviors and character weaknesses are not changing.

A lot of prayer and pondering has left me with one idea: I don’t want it desperately enough. Just prior to the aforementioned miracle, I could visualize what life without porn would look like and I wanted it as bad as a drowning man wants air. I had also come into possession of a measure of belief that God could make the change. One day as I entered an intersection on my commute home, I ventured to ask God to ‘help my unbelief’ and then asked for healing. I rolled out of the intersection in tears because I knew it had happened. I had felt it happen.

I don’t currently want any change as badly as I wanted that change. And if I’m honest, I’m a little terrified of the possibility of these changes. I think it may be because I can’t yet visualize life without these crutches and the safety they provide. I have to wonder if these fears aren’t overpowering my desire for change and shielding me from the transforming warmth of God’s love.

And so, I’m left with an understanding of the bonfire of God’s Love that changes without coercion and also of its patience and willingness to wait until it has burned enough vision and desire into my heart. I commit with a little hopeful curiosity to being more open to this.

By Ty, Writing Team