The following is a guest blog post from Chris Mars who by day is a High School Learning Specialist in Colorado, and who regularly staffs our Restoring Freedom Intensive. Read more from Chris or contact him through his blog Sex Addiction SOS.
It’s winter, and I’m finding myself doing what I always do during winter. I want to “just get through it”, to just “survive”. And it strikes me that when I do this, somehow I’m missing God’s plan and intent for my life. In other words, What might God be trying to teach me through the struggle that is winter? What might I be overlooking? Is “survival” what life is about?
What if I learned to enjoy the journey of winter? What if I let go of my control, my desire to know what’s coming? What if I simply, humbly appreciated each day of winter for what it is? Whether it’s 50 degrees and sunny or zero degrees and snow blowing sideways, I could be free, content, even joyous. Wow! Try living life this way the next time you’re stuck in snarled traffic because the roads are a mess and the snowplows are nowhere to be seen.
Recovery from sexual sin is the same way. How long before this “weight” is lifted from my shoulders? we wonder. How long must I suffer through recovery before I can start really living? Why does it seem as though God is nowhere to be seen?
But what if, as Sheila Walsh has said, your recovery is “a gift that makes your hands bleed when you open it”? What if God wants you to trust Him one day at a time in your recovery? To enjoy and be at peace each day, even in the midst of your addiction that feels like the overwhelming shroud of winter?
Living this way, be it winter or recovery from sexual addiction, requires humility, trust, and surrender. Surrendering to the rhythm of His process. Surrendering to His goodness. Surrendering to…Him. One day at a time.
Winter “is what it is”. So is your recovery. Peace to you, in the midst of both.
Question: In what ways do you relate your personal recovery to wintertime which you “just want to be over”?
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