It's not HOW, it's WHO

Last Friday marked a year of recovery for me. I have been asked repeatedly by numerous people reading these chronicles: "HOW did you do it??? How did you get to the place you are in?!" Every single one of these dear friends are going through tremendous hardship and pain...they are suffering, and as one who's been there (and will be again, no doubt!) my heart goes out to them, as well as my prayers. 

True recovery is something that must be experienced to be explained, and it's not about what you want but what you are willing to do. When you are shattered, torn, confused, reeling, hurting so deeply that it's a physical ache, it's difficult to hear mere words and comprehend much past wanting the pain to STOP. In these moments it's crucial to not react, to tell yourself the TRUTH. And and as all truth does, it will come back to you in the moment you most need it because God says that His word "does not return null and void." Those are the moments, in the middle of unbearable pain, where your choices will matter most. 

So, how'd I do it? You ready??? : ) **drumroll** The answer is: it's not HOW, but WHO. 

Ok, you can stop with the eyerolls and the snickers and the "Aw, here we go with the Bible beating!" (I can hear you, you know!) You asked, and I'm telling you the simple truth. That's how I did it. Two words: Jesus Christ.

Though I've come a long way, I still have far to go and much to learn. Yet I AM better. I chose, finally, to let go of my obsession with the HOW, the WHAT and the WHY, and focus all my energy and attention on the WHO. Meaning, who CHRIST IS and who I AM in Him. The key to it all is a real, personal relationship with Jesus. His love for us is so ALIVE!!! When we get to know HIM as a real, live person who loves us and wants what's best for us, it is POWERFUL. I wanted to get better for a long time, but it didn't actually happen until I was ready to do what was required in order to do so. That meant surrendering totally to His will. I didn't half-ass it, either... Otherwise, I'd still be in the same position as before. Without Jesus—what I've gained in and through my relationship with Him, the way he made such beauty out of sheer ashes... none of it would have any meaning. "That everyone may eat and drink and find satisfaction in all his toil—this is the gift of God."

I'd love to take credit for all this, but I can't. The only thing I can say is that I DID have to show up; He can knock all day long on the door and it's up to each of us whether or not the knock is answered. As for the rest of it... it's all Him. I'm not smarter, better, wiser, more special or more loved than anyone else. It's not rocket science and it certainly wasn't MY doing! I spent decades trying my way over and over and over and over again, getting the same exact results: CRAP. It didn't turn around until I figured out (because I'm SLOW! As in, Captain of the Short Bus slow!) that, um, gee, my way doesn't seem to be working...? Maybe I should do something different…? If I could have fixed it all myself, I'd have done it years ago. NO ONE can do it alone; hence the need for recovery, for help. It's not shameful; happens to the best of us. The answer is simple: God's way. And even then, if your goal is to follow a bunch of rules (which I also tried, so learn from my idiocy) you aren't going to get any further than if you had never considered God at all. It's our knowledge of Jesus, of who He is, which fosters the wonder at the miracle that He loves us anyway. This sparks a love for Him that runs so deep and so strong that it becomes the motivation for the one thing we MUST do in order to make things better: TRUST HIM. Usually when we feel we are no longer capable of it. Only we can't really trust someone we don't know, can we? And it's impossible to love whom we don't trust.

Consider today's devotion from "My Utmost for His Highest" by Oswald Chambers.


+++++++++++

THE DETERMINATION TO SERVE

"The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister." Matthew 20:28

Paul's idea of service is the same as Our Lord's: "I am among you as He that serveth;" "ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake." We have the idea that a man called to the ministry is called to be a different kind of being from other men. According to Jesus Christ, he is called to be the "door-mat" of other men; their spiritual leader, but never their superior. "I know how to be abased," says Paul. This is Paul's idea of service - "I will spend myself to the last ebb for you; you may give me praise or give me blame, it will make no difference." So long as there is a human being who does not know Jesus Christ, I am his debtor to serve him until he does. The mainspring of Paul's service is not love for men, but love for Jesus Christ. If we are devoted to the cause of humanity, we shall soon be crushed and broken-hearted, for we shall often meet with more ingratitude from men than we would from a dog; but if our motive is love to God, no ingratitude can hinder us from serving our fellow men.

Paul's realization of how Jesus Christ had dealt with him is the secret of his determination to serve others. "I was before a perjurer, a blasphemer, an injurious person" - no matter how men may treat me, they will never treat me with the spite and hatred with which I treated Jesus Christ. When we realize that Jesus Christ has served us to the end of our meanness, our selfishness, and sin, nothing that we meet with from others can exhaust our determination to serve men for His sake.
+++++++++++

Basically, Paul persecuted Christ until he was struck blind, and in his distress and darkness he was forced to see the light. Once he really GOT who Christ is, how much He loved him anyway and who he was in Him, he literally couldn't shut up about it! I'm clearly no Paul, but the one defining difference between me then and me now is that I have had the same epiphany that Paul did. In the dark until I saw the light, and now I can't shut up, either! YAY! I know WHO Jesus Christ is more deeply and completely than ever before, and I know WHO I am in Him. I cut out everything and everyone that distracted or took away from me pursuing a deeper relationship with Christ. I stopped thinking about myself and how bad it hurt and why did they do this to me and why did I do this to myself and if I could just understand perhaps it would be easier, only to sometimes get those answers and it only made it harder and getting angry when I didn't get those answers even though I knew those answers wouldn't make it better... Etc., etc., blah blah blah, yada yada yada, on and on and friggin on til I thought my head would blow off! That's an obsessive and totally counterproductive waste of time. I got over THEM, got over MYSELF and took responsibility for Me, Myself and I. I shifted the focus from them, and me and my pain, and put it on Christ.

I stopped doing recovery as a means to an end of stopping the pain and started doing recovery as a way of getting to know Christ. I stopped searching scripture and praying to God looking for MY answers, and started searching and praying looking for HIM, because He is the answer to every question. In short, God went from being my spare tire to my steering wheel. It was a subtle process, until one day, roughly 6 months into recovery, I became aware in a very difficult moment that it no longer mattered WHY it happened, WHO had done it to me or WHAT I was going to do or not do about it... it only mattered WHO God wanted me to be as a result of it, which is always more like HIM. When did that happen??? I wondered. I was SO focused on stopping the pain. But somewhere along the way, Jesus became very REAL to me in a way He never had been before. Discovering Him became more important to me than merely surviving the moment. As I became less engrossed in why I was there and how I was going to live through it, and more engrossed in WHO I was getting and becoming out of it, it stopped hurting as much and I had made progress without even noticing it! SO FREAKING COOL.

This process is not an easy one...but it IS simple. And thank GOD for that! Because when I was in the dark and didn't know my ass from my elbow, I couldn't have comprehended anything complicated! Plus, it was entirely too complicated already! Crikey I was DROWNING in how complicated and confusing and infuriating it all was! At first I didn't buy into the simplicity of it; it just seemed a little TOO easy, you know? And, of course, it pissed me off (because that was my first reaction to everything I didn't understand). But I kept at it, and eventually I could no longer deny it, twist it, spin it or hide from it. It was this simple and this TRUE. So I stopped fighting Christ and just ACCEPTED IT. It was a beautiful thing! Even though it made me look bad and feel worse to do so, it took all the power and fear away, giving me a solid foundation on which to start rebuilding my life and the tools to start putting all the pieces back together.


In addition, while there may be gray areas in life and in people's ethics, God's truth is absolute. Truth is truth. You mayn't agree with it. But it doesn't change a thing. That used to frighten me. Now it's very comforting. And it means that the same truth that works for me and for others who are living in recovery will work for you, too. So, I suppose real healing isn't just about what you are willing to do, but also about what you are willing to accept. Someone recently said to me, "It's great that this worked for you, and too bad it didn't work for him." While I get what this person was saying, it's incorrect. Truth is truth. It remains absolute, and whether or not it works is entirely up to the individual. You get out of it what you put into it. The sooner you accept that you're not in control, the sooner you get better. End of story.

The key to true healing is a bigger concept than mere survival... It’s going moment by moment and being IN each one, no matter how bad they SUCK, remembering that each moment builds on the ones before it... and those moments turn into minutes, turn into hours, turn into days, turn into weeks, turn into months, and so on and so on... and all those moments culminate in a DIRECTION, on a POSITIVE ROAD, which, if you stick with it, head toward a DESTINATION—one of healing and hope! You hold on in the shiznit moments because you KNOW that there is a moment coming when living through all the crap moments will have all been worth it. As each season of moments come and go, you get stronger, and it becomes second nature, and you don't have to think so hard anymore.

NO ONE—and I don't care who or how badass or tough you are—NO ONE can hang on through the crap without hope. You can't hope in yourself, because that got you here, didn't it? You can't hope in other people, because they all hurt you and let you down, didn't they? You can't give up hope, because you've tried that and all it did was make it worse. So at this point, what have you got to lose? You CAN hope in Christ, because He is BIGGER than all your crap and mine combined! He's the only one who will never leave you, never let you down and never leave you alone in the dark. He will also never require you to go through anything painful without a good reason that is in your best interest. Because HE LOVES YOU.

When you fully realize that He IS there, that He DOES love you, that you ARE valuable to Him and that you CAN trust Him... well that's when the relationship begins, and the love starts there. If you keep at the goal of pursuing Christ for HIS sake rather than your own, then you are well on your way to true healing. The pain will either stop or you'll be able to deal with it in a way that doesn't cripple you. Either way, YOU WIN. 

So that's the answer. That's how I did it. It's how I will continue to do it. The answers do not lie in HOW or WHAT or WHY. They rest in the WHO—Jesus, that's who! Life will continue to come my way with the same crap everyone else deals with. And thank the Lord and praise Him for his mercy and grace, loving Him and knowing Him better each day is how I will continue to live until I die or He comes back, whichever comes first.

Amen.