When trouble comes, do not say: “Why should this happen to me?” Leave yourself out of the picture. Think of other people and their troubles and you will forget about your own. Gradually get away from yourself and you will know the consolation of unselfish service to others. After a while, it will not matter so much what happens to you. It is not so important any more, except as your experience can be used to help others who are in the same kind of trouble.
- Meditation portion of the April 7 entry of Twenty-Four Hours A Day
I read this Saturday, as many in recovery did, and I am not about to say it is wrong. That's because it's not. It's good advice. Much like it's good advice to play the movie through when tempted to pick back up the chains of bondage. Play the movie through is great advice much of the time, and will help during times of temptation. Until it doesn't. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink (p. 24 Alcoholics Anonymous) or drug or whatever addiction or habitual sin has had us bound in the past. At those times, our will power, memories, determination and coping techniques will not be enough. We need God.
Just as there will be times when trouble comes that thinking of others having it worse, or what a relapse will do to others or even throwing ourselves into service for others will not be sufficient defense against relapse. When life doesn't just throw a curve ball, but beans you with a sucker pitch right behind the eyes and you can't think straight, you need more than the fact that someone else may have it worse to pull you from the pit of despair and the trap of self pity. It is good to remember that we are not the only ones who have it rough, and that others may even have it worse. It is very good to deny self and serve others. We are called to do that. But when these things are not enough to relieve the fear and despair of life, we need to know what to do. We can't put our hope in relief through service or distraction or seeing someone else's pain as worse than our own.
At those moments when life has kicked us in the gut and we can't breathe and we're scared to death we're going to die if something doesn't change, when all we want is to wake up from the nightmare and have someone say this isn't real or escape the giant we are facing, no coping technique is enough. Not even good things like helping others. It's not that it's bad advice. It isn't. It just isn't enough.
The whole purpose of the life of Christ was to serve others. Yet this service did not take the anguish and the fear away from what He had to face. When preparing for the nightmare to come in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed and asked for another way. His solution to the problem did not come in remembering the suffering of others or in focusing on how what He was going through would help others. His answer came in surrender.
And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw, and knelt down and prayed, saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.
- Luke 22:41-44
Did you catch that? He surrendered His will to Daddy's, and then He received spiritual strengthening. The circumstance didn't change. His stress level didn't go down. In fact, it was after He was strengthened that He sweated drops of blood. So how do we know that He received strength? Because He rose from there and faced His fear and followed through with what He was called to do. A short time before this moment, thinking of us was enough for Jesus to to tell the disciples He must go to the cross and, knowing that, to go to Jerusalem. But when the real pressure came, relief only came in crying out to Daddy for help and in the surrender of the will, even in the face of the most extreme fear.
When self pity nudges us for attention and invites is to the pity party, throwing ourselves into service of others is a great way to decline the invitation. But when fear and despair come in like giants, bludgeoning us with their huge, spiked clubs, the only place of refuge and strength is to run to Daddy. Just as when reminders of what has gone wrong in the past and what might go wrong in the future are insufficient as defense, surrendering to the Spirit is the only power that can defeat the siren's call of our old nature.
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