For years I have struggled to balance:
• Happiness and depression,
• Happiness and the need to be right,
• Happiness and OCD,
• Happiness and anxiety, and any other similar combination of paradoxes related to the feeling of being, well … emotionally filled.
Last summer, as I was having lunch with a friend, I was beaming. I explained to her all the ways I had finally found happiness in something. Something that made me laugh where I hadn’t felt true laughter in a long time. Something that made me smile from the inside. Something that I felt I just needed more than anything else.
Like most friends do, she encouraged me to go for it. She wanted to see me happy.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but that something would provide only a short burst of fulfillment and create a negative path of destruction all around me.
Most addictions do that.
They pull us in. They light a fire inside of us. They give us hope for happiness in an area of life we are struggling in or they provide an escape from a reality we no longer want to deal with. They seem like the perfect fix to the problem we are facing. Then, like a tornado, they ruthlessly let us down, and the aftermath of their destruction is all that’s left. Sometimes the pieces can be mended, and sometimes we have to accept the consequences of living and trying to rebuild or move on from the debris.
It’s an awful cycle really.
Why?
Because addictions are only bandaids, and bandaids don’t heal. When you rip them off, the scars from the original problem can often still be seen. But the immediate and temporary relief they seem to provide make them so attractive, and we give up a part of our soul for that instant moment of gratification.
Addictions take many forms. There are the common addictions that come to mind … drugs, alcohol, cigarettes. There are the addictions we don’t often classify as addictions … friendships that lead to affairs and destroy families. There are addictions we normalize as okay … being a workaholic.
I think the best description of an addiction is “anything you put before God to worship and bring happiness into your life”.
Simply put, addictions are idols. Idols are often a means of attempting to satisfy our insecurities. They’re replacements for God that we use to give us a sense of control, security, and happiness.
And the truth is, only God was meant to be worshiped. Only God was meant to be the source of our happiness, the meaning for our purpose, and the one to whom all glory is to be given. But rarely is He the only idol we have in life.
The root of idols often start with pride. It’s been said that “pride is the mortal enemy to love” and love is at the heart of any successful relationship. I would argue that relationships are the starting point for happiness, and therefore figuring out how to overcome pride becomes a centerpoint for overcoming idols that destroy our relationships.
August 22, 2021 was the start of a true turning point in my life. It was the first night of the ReEngage class my husband and I attended together. I went into that night with a list in the back of my mind of all the things he needed to change. If you’ve been married for any amount of time, chances are, you have a similar list.
God had other plans.
On the first night of class, we were told to draw a circle around ourselves. For the next 16 weeks, we could only fix what was inside of the circle ⭕️.
Ponder these words from the ReEngage website:
“When conflict arises, is it ever your fault?
“It’s easy to see the mistakes of others or recognize their flaws. After all, the problem is literally staring you in the face. Your spouse is the reason your marriage is in shambles. Your friend is the one who started the argument. Your child is rebelling against your authority. Your boss is unreasonable. And so on. It’s always somebody else’s fault; someone else is always the source of the problem.
“Of course, that’s not true; you’re not the only perfect person to live since Jesus. It’s just that you don’t automatically see your own role in the problem. Partly, that’s because you can’t see yourself, but it’s also because you don’t want to accept responsibility. It’s so much easier to blame others. It’s easier to ask them to change instead of doing the work to change yourself.”
Those 16 weeks forced me to do a lot of self-reflection. They forced me to spend a lot of time in prayer and scripture as I looked for the roots of the problems in my life, as I identified the idols in my heart, as I looked back on how I had allowed the stories of my past to control and write the narratives of my future.
There were a lot of broken things the idols had never been able to fix. There were also a lot of broken idols, namely people, who I had hurt along the way as I sought to use them as a means to happiness that they could never provide.
God planted a seed. For the first time in my life, I realized that I had a pride problem.
**** Matthew 11:29 ****
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
****
I read this recently, “The proud are inflated with who they think they are; the humble are content with who they really are.”
Since August, I have said a lot of prayers that God would give me the eyes to recognize my idols and transgressions, the wisdom to overcome them, and the grace to be able to seek and receive forgiveness.
Even though I theoretically understood everything, I hadn’t accepted it. There were times I would want to revert to my old ways.
Feeling stressed, grab a glass of wine 🍷(rare occasion) … or in my case, much more frequently, a bar of chocolate 🍫. My natural response was never, “Just pray about it.”
This week, as I really struggled with happiness in all areas of my life again, I asked God, “Please help me figure out what’s missing from the things inside the circle I have been working on.”
Last night, as I was reflecting on the internal struggles again, I felt the answer.
“It’s me, I’m missing from your circle,” God answered.
💡
He was right.
Earlier I mentioned relationships are the start of happiness, but I didn’t mention the most important part. The most important relationship you will ever have is a solid relationship with God. As you work on building, repairing, or maintaining that relationshp … everything else will fall into place, but it can’t fall into place when you have other things you’re worshiping more than God.
I realized last night I was still turning to those other things for happiness.
So I redrew my circle, and I wrote “God” smack dab in the middle of it.
God has given me everything I have ever needed, and I know He always will. There are times in my past where I may have felt he had forsaken me, but years later, I could look back and understand entirely how and why they happened.
Like I did in the fall of 2021, when I find the roots of pride trying to destroy the tree of life inside of me, I will stop 🛑 and turn to the person at the center of my circle. I will ask God to takeaway the idols I am putting before Him. I will seek to put Him first and to continue to grow in humility.