Surely we’ve all seen them by now, or at least heard about them. The smoker who, despite being on oxygen, can’t stop smoking. They wheel their tank around with them, looking for somewhere to get their nic-fix on. They can’t smoke in the hospital, so they go outside and sit on the benches, IVs still connected, tubes still in their noses to give their abused lungs the oxygen they need, and yet, they still need their cigarettes.
I don’t point these people out to pick on them. I’ll freely admit I’m a non-smoker, and I can’t tolerate the smell of smoke. I try not to breathe around smokers. It’s not that they aren’t entitled to do what they want… it’s that I’m an allergic asthmatic, and my body is already having to compensate with every breath I take. The added challenge of smoke literally makes me ill. My lungs can’t cope with the same level of stuff other people’s can. I take medicines to help get me to functional, but that also means I have to take steps to protect myself… and one of those is that I actively avoid smokers.
But… this isn’t about smokers versus non-smokers. You see, when it comes down to it, it could be said that we are all addicted to something. Sure, some addictions are easier to see. Some are more obvious. Look at the wreck left behind by addictions to illegal drugs… meth labs, meth mouth. Crack babies. Heroine addiction. The danger of sharing needles. Bad trips. Overdoses. Oh, yeah, those addictions are easy to call out as dangerous and detrimental. And by the time smokers get to the point that they’re huddled outside in the cold, wheeling their oxygen tank behind them, outside the hospital, and still desperate for a drag, yeah, it’s easy to see how addiction is in control of them. Or when an alcoholic has drunk through their liver, their skin and eyes yellowed from the jaundice of liver failure, their families and job gone because they drank them away… yeah, it’s easy to see addiction there.
But… addiction isn’t that simple. It wears many faces. It comes in many shapes. Sure, there’s the obvious ones… the gambler who loses everything he has at the tables and in the slots. The sex addict who is a walking textbook of STDs but has no one to keep her warm at night, or who has killed his wife but can’t bear to tell her that the child they conceived is almost certainly HIV+ because he picked it up, and he’s passed it on to them both (and yes, passing on HIV is the same as killing your partner, because HIV is incurable, and it will progress into full-blown AIDS and kill them, every single time, unless they meet death sooner by some other, more violent means).
Addiction comes as the spouse that’s so busy with work and community that the marriage is forgotten. Or the parent that wraps their children’s lives up with activities, but never engages with them individually, too busy shuttling them from one practice to another, from one activity to the next that there’s never time to stop and and just BE with your child. It’s the golf game, or tennis, or fishing, or hunting, or NASCAR, that devours your time. It’s the TV or internet that devours your attention instead of other people.
Addiction is any person, thing, activity or interaction that steals attention from where it properly belongs. It’s what throws a life out of balance. And we all have them. How do I know? Because we’re all human, and we’re all imperfect. Oh, sure, we all work hard to keep life in balance, and some of us are better at it than others, but there’s always something that creeps up, something we have to check ourselves on and make certain it doesn’t overtake the balance.
In my life, the only means I’ve found to counter addiction with any amount of success is to depend on an active, living relationship with the God who has everything in perspective. The idea is that God, from outside the limits of time, from beyond my small perspective of my life, beyond my momentary crises, can see what the larger balance looks like. God knows which things are paramount, and which things can slide. And if I’m in an active relationship with God, then I’m in communication with Him, and He can help me keep things balanced. If I seek His will in my decisions, then I find that my life begins to find balance. It evens out. I keep things in the right perspective… my position to other people, my relationships with my friends, my family, my church, the world at large. I am able to look at my life and see where I’m unbalanced and trim back. More than that, He influences me in ways that naturally bring me into greater balance… for instance, I’m more creative when I’m reliant upon Him, because my creativity is a gift He gave me for the benefit of others.
Am I perfect? Far from it. I suffer with my own addictions. Just last week, as we were headed out for an evening, I HAD to have chocolate ice cream. HAD TO. As in, instead of driving south to the event, we drove north to the store so I could get a little single serve dish of chocolate ice cream. John teased that if he didn’t know better, he’d have thought I was pregnant! And that’s just one example. I’m forever working on keeping addictions at bay and life in balance. But I can’t do it alone, and neither can you.
Just because your addiction isn’t as obvious or as obviously destructive as some doesn’t mean it won’t take everything you have away from you. All addictions end the same way: the addict is broken, alone, and a slave to something they thought they mastered. Your story doesn’t have to end that way. If you can recognize your addictions, you can begin to overcome them, with the help of the Savior who’s got it all in perspective.
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