THE TREASURE OF THE PAST

“Showing others who suffer how we were given help is the very thing which makes life seem so worth while to us now. Cling to the thought that, in God's hands, the dark past is the greatest possession you have -- the key to life and happiness for others. With it you can avert death and misery for them.”

I read this today, and I want to believe it so badly. Need to believe it. And to some extent I do. I do believe that my past experiences can help me help others, to show them that I’ve been where they have (maybe even worse places), to show that I truly understand how they feel and what they’re going through, to prove that God loves them and can help them.

How, one might ask, is that last part true? How can anyone prove God can do anything. Simply put, anyone who takes a halfway objective look at my past can see God’s hands all over it. I should be dead so many times over. There’s no way I should have been set free from the traps I so willingly walked into. I never could have stopped living my life a slave to my addictions had God not intervened on my behalf in just the same miraculous power as He displayed when he parted the Red Sea to free the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Moving some water around may have even been easier than changing my heart and mind and giving me my much-needed escape route. And if God loves and saved me, there's no one too far gone to be forever outside the love and help He wants to give.

And lately, as I have been struggling, helping others has been the main thing that has given me purpose, helped me to focus on something other than my own problems and fears, quite frankly kept me sober and clean. It does work. For a while. But it is not the long-term solution. My long-term solution is my faith, connection to, and relationship with my God. There is no other path for me that leads to success and a life worth living. I know, because for more than a quarter of a century I tried every other path I could think of. I served the God of self as fanatically as any cultist follows their leader to the punch bowl. And with just about the same results.

My problem at the moment is, just to be totally honest, a lack of faith. Has God freed me from the chains of addiction? Yes. And I fully believe He will continue to do so for as long as I seek relationship with Him and refuse to willingly put them back on. Has he changed my life in positive ways that others can see? Absolutely, and I am grateful, so very grateful, for that. I feel blessed to have been able to help a few others because of the miracles that have happened in my own life. Am I happy, joyous and free? Occasionally, although the stretches in between those times have been increasing lately. The problem is I am starting to feel about the miracles in my life and the positive aspects of my recovery much like I used to feel about the grace of God.

I used to believe grace was God giving me just enough relief to want to get up after being knocked down and just enough strength to get me on my feet so that I could be knocked down again. Not a very flattering portrait of my loving Creator and not a true one, I know. But it’s how I felt for years. It reached the point where discussions about grace with my pastor/father immediately triggered tears and a plea…don’t talk to me about grace. Thankfully I no longer feel that way on the subject, at least not often.

But now I question and feel a little like I have been given, and will be given, just enough of the promises that come with recovery, of the strength, joy, peace, etc. to keep me going, to stay sober, and to help others. No matter what, I believe God can and will give me enough of the strength, wisdom, courage, and whatever else is needed to be a servant and be used by Him to reach and help someone who may not find that help anywhere else. But the personal freedom and fulfillment I seek, that may never come.

Once again I repeat that I know not everything I think or feel is true. And at my core, I know that it isn’t true that God will leave me lonely and hurting and broken forever. But right now, all I can see is loss. I feel the weight of wreckage in my past, wreckage that I caused, that can never be cleaned up. I see obstacle after obstacle serving as road blocks on the highway of dreams I have for myself. And I can’t help but ask myself how to give up, how to walk away from what few dreams I have remaining and still have a life worth living. When I begin to back away from one possible path where the future is clearly not going where I feel I want and need, I time and time again find I have exited onto another road with just as impossible a destination. Then what? Do I make a U-turn and return to the road I left? Do I try to force things? Do I risk trying yet another road? How fast do I give up? If I quit too easily and early I may miss out on the miracle that clears the roadblocks and makes it possible to reach my destination. If I stay too long before giving up how much more wreckage in my life and the lives of those I care about will I cause? And if I simply give up on the dream destination and go a completely different route, will I find my destination obscured by the fog of regret. I don’t know. And unfortunately, the wheels keep spinning even as I seek the answers. There’s truly no such thing as standing still in life.

The key, I believe, is to find the path that God wants me to take. If I do that, then whatever roadblocks I come across will eventually be cleared away or a detour will be provided. But right now I am so confused, afraid, and filled with regret that I can not see which way God wants me to go. I can not find the faith to believe that the wreckage of my past that is obstructing my progress in the present and destroying my hopes for the future can ever be cleared away. I feel like the man who told Jesus, "I believe. Lord, help me with my unbelief."

Today I pray that I may not be weary, disillusioned, or disappointed. I pray that I may not put my trust in the ways of the world or myself, but in the way of the spirit.