Remember the Misery

And Israel was brought very low because of Midian. And the people of Israel cried out for help to the LORD. Judges 6:6

In moving recently, I came across an old notebook which I used for journaling while in treatment back in 2014. I miss my family. . . Shame and guilt . . . This is so hard. Those phrases popped repeatedly as I read it. Treatment was only 30 days, but those were the longest 30 days of my life and when I got home, my life was still a disaster. That was a painful time, one to which I never want to return. In that disaster though, I learned a profound lesson – I have self-destructive appetites and if I don’t want to go back to that place, I must daily point my life at God, following him instead of me.

Life goes on though and that crisis eventually passed. Ten plus years later, it’s tempting to let up on my efforts to abandon myself for God. I’m good now. Drugs aren’t a temptation. I can relax a little. As I’ve often said though, drugs weren’t my primary problem. Selfish pursuit of my own appetite is my primary problem. Drugs have just been the most obvious symptom. I’m still selfish, prideful, lustful, and gluttonous. I may be sober, but I’ve got plenty of other flaws on which I must continue working. I know that if I stop growing and working at the Christian life, I’ll slide backwards, and I don’t ever want to go back to 2014.

Remember the misery. That’s my lesson from today’s passage. In it, Israel enjoyed the peace of God’s protection for 40 years, but then eventually wandered away from him (again), at which time God allowed them to be conquered by the Midianites. God’s people resorted to living in caves, watching the people of Midian freely raid their crops and livestock. It must have been a miserable existence. In their misery, Israel finally cried out to God, who heard their cry and set out to deliver them once again.

This of course, wasn’t the first time the Israelites found themselves in this position. They’d been there before. I bet they even promised to never wander from God again. Eventually though, they forgot the misery of following themselves. Eventually, they turned from God go their own way, once again suffering the consequences.

Almost everyone who’s gotten sober looks back at their addiction as a time of tremendous chaos and misery. Yet so many forget the misery, stop working at recovery, and eventually relapse. The lesson for me then, is not to live in the past, but to remember the misery of the past, using it as motivation to daily put in the work of pursuing my faith and recovery.