Mental Torture (Easter - Day 39)

(Based on James 5:13-18)

As I sit in my recliner, I'm divided. My soul longs for healing while my mind tells me healing is not necessary. I've been editing the book I'm working on, and yesterday I went through the chapter on sex. It brought back a ton of memories and always seems to put definition into my current mental processes. The truth is, I'm physically monogamous and monotheistic, but mentally polygamous and polytheistic. My heart yearns for contentment with one while my mind grabs for as much as it can possibly attain. 

The smile on my face and the energy in my conversations may portray a man who's content and full of life, but the opposite is going on in my mind. Behind the smile and the good times are the thoughts that just won't go away. I am sick in need of healing from a God whom I cannot see nor touch. Mental polytheism. 

The other day, I let the cat out of the bag with my girlfriend. I lent her all of my recovery work, all the writing that I've done over the last few years since I walked into the rooms of A.A. It wasn't pretty. She got inside my head and saw what goes on up there. It scared her and me. It scared me to know that she now had the burden of un-erasable memories, and that I have to change. The problem is, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. If I could snap my fingers, or pray, or do anything to get my mind to stop playing the videos and images from my past and present - stop my mind from preying on the females around me and be content with just one - I would. And, I am. The problem is, I can refrain from letting my thoughts turn to action, but I can't control my mind. It does its own thing, and the best I can do is catch it and turn my thoughts over, and over, and over again. 

Life seems eerily familiar to the very beginning of my journey as a recovering alcoholic. There was nothing I could do take away the obsession of wanting to drink. I was left to the unknown, unseeable, untouchable, and unaudible God to take the obsession away. And I'm here again, left to the mercy of this God. My heart and soul long to be content with what I have, while my mind screams and pleads for what I don't have. This is the essence of lust, or greed, or discontentment. I'm worn out and tired of fighting myself. A part of me wants to just say fuck it and go on a sex binge, calling it quits. I haven't hit the bottom yet because there's still more to discover down there. My mind wants to keep digging while my soul wants to throw the shovel out. 

What does James say about all this? He says that if we're hurting we should pray. I'm hurting and I'm praying. Although I'm not feeling any better, I've succeeded so far in not giving in to my mental obsessions. James also says that believing prayer will heal us, and Jesus will put us on our feet. It sounds so simple - just believe and pray and wah-lah! We're restored and put on our feet again.

The nerve-racking thing about quitting anything, whether it be looking at pornography, drinking, smoking cigarettes, eating fast food, or hoarding, is not knowing how long it will take for the obsession to go away. We're left to wait, and hope, and pray, and wait, hope, and pray. All the while, we're forced to combat the appetizing, deceiving, and cunning thoughts in our heads that invite us to partake in whatever it is we're giving up. 

I can talk a good talk when it comes to theology and belief, but when it comes time to get into action, I'm no more knowledgeable than anybody else. Anybody can talk about God and religion and Jesus, but the true character of a man or woman is how well they are able to put those beliefs into action and live it out, even in the middle of intense struggles. We all have struggles. They come and they go. 

I don't have any advice on how to overcome anything. It's by the grace of God that I've overcome any struggles in my life, and once I overcome one there's always another waiting for me. That's just how it's been. In order to grow and mature, I have to be able to see my defects of character, call them out, tell people, pray, and do whatever it takes to get them out of my life. There is adventure in this. It's not just a life of gloom and despair. I am thankful for the challenges. If I didn't have things in my life that I was powerless to overcome, then I wouldn't have the innate desire to learn, grow, and seek the truth more. 

What struggles and challenges do are wear me out to the point that I give up trying to fight them. I run out of energy trying to rationalize, justify, and create formulas trying to make them seem better than what they are. What happens when I run out of energy is, I get to the end of me. And that's where I am right now. I'm done. I'm tired. I'm powerless. It's in this place where a new kind of adventure happens. It's the wonder of not knowing how I'm going to get through, yet knowing that I will get through. It's the conflict, the pain, and success all wrapped into one ongoing story of death and resurrection. It's the not knowing when the new life will come, but knowing it will. Just when it seems that life is a veil of tears and blackness, we get a sense of hope and a psychic change occurs. We all of a sudden are reminded that this life is so short, yet so full of meaning and purpose that we don't want to waste any of it. 

As we face challenges today, and as we continue on with challenges that have been here for days, months, and years, may we remember that death happens before resurrection. Resurrection is coming though. May we see our own fears, struggles, and failures not through the lens of a snapshot but through the lens of a panoramic picture. May we embrace our struggles - as dark and hopeless as they seem - and find adventure in the journey of seeing them through. In order to continue seeking, growing, and learning, we have to experience conflict, death, and resurrection over and over again. 

Today's Action: No matter what our "keynote" struggle is in life right now, thank God for the struggle. Thank God for the failures and the successes inside the struggle. Thank God for the "death" involved and also for the coming "resurrection." Keep our eyes open for ways to get out of ourselves and help someone else.