Themes
Addictions, Wounds, and Surrender
“For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him.”
~ Psalm 62:5 ~
Themes are categorizations of discernible patterns. I know you didn’t ask. But that’s what I was just thinking about. Themes.
My prayers have themes. Sometimes even my writing. Which frustrates me. It probably wouldn’t as much if it was intentional. But when I open my journal or activate my laptop my introspection unfolds with predictability. Prompted by similar patterns, stubborn wounds, and predictable questions like, “What am I feeling?”
It’s not common I answer this with, “Great! Absolutely wonderful.” I wish I did. I think. Or maybe I don’t. I know people that always answer with the positive, and I’m not always sure they’re honest, with themselves or the inquisitor. Maybe, they think, “If I answer ‘Great!’ every single time I’m asked, eventually I’ll conjure the state of being into existence.”
Now, I do believe words create worlds, at least that’s what I learned as a kiddo in Sunday school when the creation account unfolded on the flannel graph—God said, and it was. But I’m hesitant to apply this to my internal world. Sure, even when I’m having a bad day, it isn’t hard for me to smile and act cordial, maybe even jovial, especially if you’re a stranger. In fact, I find that easy. An obligation, maybe. A theological commitment, really. A belief birthed from Christ that everyone deserves dignity, a smile, and a “thank you,” regardless of how I’m doing. But to say “I’m great!” when I’m not, feels blasphemous.
“What am I feeling?”
Usually some sort of “out of sorts.” Struggling from poor sleep; marathoned by scenarios of “if this happens, then I’ll…;”or a combination of confused and victim-searching. Now, I’m not typically the victim I seek. But I do have this addiction to protecting someone. Anyone. At times even everyone—enemies included. This probably stems from feeling helpless and without a hero as a child sexually abused by multiple people in multiple locations over multiple years. And, over time, I’ve learned that what you lacked most as a child becomes your superpower as an adult. I lacked protection. So, I’m obsessed with protecting.
My addiction, however, cascades from a slightly distorted definition of “love” or “gift.” I can’t dream of a greater gift of love than someone protecting me. So, I offer it to everyone. Anyone. Even those that don’t ask for it or want it. At least from me. Which frustrates me, because if my “gift” is slighted or they ask for the receipt, I feel rejected. Or at least displaced. I guess, on some level, then, my addiction is more self-serving than I presume. Which is confusing. Or maybe just exhausting.
When you’re addicted to protecting, you are always searching for some wrong to confront. Some person to fight for. My wife and kids are obvious targets. Any slight, however severe or subtle, will set off my addiction and fill my journal with cries of justice. Indeed, for a time, I thought I was alone in this neurosis. That is until I read David’s psalms a bit more closely. In comparison, I’m far more tame, even if equally obsessed. I mean, I’ve never prayed for babies of my enemies to be dashed on rocks. Then again, I’ve never had my babies treated as viciously as David’s were.
“What am I feeling?”
I want to break this addiction. I think. Which I’m sure is the constant struggle for any addict. A desire to kick the habit with a noncommittal caveat affixed to each statement like a price tag attached to a winged plastic strip announcing, “At any time, I can just return this to the store.” Sure, I still want to protect, but like all addictions, it disrupts my deepest desire: my ability and capacity to completely surrender to my Lord.
That’s the true theme of my soul. The core of who I am. The bedrock of all my actions and the foundation of all my addictions: I want to surrender to my Lord.
I wonder if that’s what an addiction actually is: a distortion of our innate desire to surrender to something beyond us. To cede control is, indeed, holy and to some extent quite simply human. Jesus in Gethsemane taught me that. But who or what you surrender to is the rub.
Rarely do our hearts attach to something benevolent. We seem far more attracted to objects and persons more comfortably situated somewhere on the spectrum of parasitic. We surrender, so the story goes, to that which demands ever more of us; never satisfied with all of us. And we label this “addiction.” Properly so. Unless the object of our addiction is actually God himself. Then, surrender is not a threat but a descent into the Spirit of divine Benevolence and Beauty.
Capitalizing those words seem to bestow a degree of gravitas fit for a King, even if grammatically intrusive. Writing is filled with those anomalies. Rules and themes passed down to us at the earliest of ages that beg to be confronted. That deserve to be warred against. That must be broken like fetters to liberate the bounty of true expression. Or maybe that’s just my addiction again, this time targeting the imperialism of grammar and syntax. Will it ever end?
“What am I feeling?”
That seems to be a theme of my prayers as well. Longing for an end. An end to the past’s grip on my present. An end to worry’s chokehold on my future. An end to the disturbance that disrupts my patterns of “Great!” with something more like melancholy or just “pretty good.”
“Will this ever end?” haunts me like turbulence.
Confession: I hate to fly. With all that is in me: I hate flying. I’ve worked hard to conquer this phobia—a fancy word for theme or addiction, just of a different sort. For years, my stomach would tighten days before I knew I was going to fly, raising the floor of my emotions much too close to the ceiling of improper outbursts, reducing the emotional onramp from zero-to-one-hundred to something more like ninety-to-one-hundred. I knew the statistics by heart, especially the one comparing the likelihood of dying in a car wreck to a plane crash. But as I often retorted, the difference is: you can get in a fender-bender in a car and proceed without a problem. Not so in the air.
From security to “our initial descent,” I follow every instruction and regulation pristinely, believing, on some level, such legalism proffers greater protection. But when turbulence occurs, I feel betrayed. Sitting by a window doesn’t help much, because these potholes aren’t visible. Just unexpected, uninvited, impossible to predict lurches that elicit some form of prayer from my lips, exorcism or otherwise.
Indeed, to my shame, I’ve negotiated some remarkably poor deals with God on choppy flights, promising a list of impossibilities if he would just make the turbulence go away. And when it doesn’t, my trust in God wanes, my frustration rises, and my prayers vacillate from grateful to “why won’t you protect me!”
“What am I feeling?”
I don’t know. But I think it’s something along the lines of: a soul’s themes evidence unresolved wounds still in search of healing. Or maybe I’m just being lazy.