"I did not come for the healthy, but for those who need a doctor."
Jesus
"How helpful it is to see sin, like addiction, as a disease, a very destructive disease, instead of merely something that was culpable, punishable, or 'mad God unhappy.' If sin indeed made God unhappy, it was because God desires nothing more than our happiness, and wills the healing of our disease."
Richard Rohr
Mortality works. It's designed to be difficult and to teach us lessons we could not otherwise learn. It's designed to provide us experiences that point to, push, and pull us toward growth. And because of that, it is hard. Of course, not all the time. We've been told that we "are" that we "might have joy." So joy is the very purpose of our life, both now and in the eternities. It always had been, and that's why we're here. But some of of us are slow learners, and apparently I was one of those. And others of us suffer from the disease of addiction, but turn our back on Grace, and never learn from our experiences and poor choices. As I've said before, we are all addicts of some degree...it's in our nature as humans. We each have something we go to when we're feeling tired, scared, angry, disappointed, unsure, or hurt. And especially when we feel that we're not good enough...
Richard Rohr wrote an amazing book titled "Spirituality and the Twelve Steps" and in it he says "...actually we are all addicted to our own habitual way of doing anything, our own defenses, and most especially, our patterned way of thinking, or how we process our reality." In other words, we all need healing, and the healing we need can only come from the Savior. And we get to do the work...along with Him...to experience that healing. As Richard writes, "You cannot heal what you do not first acknowledge." It's time to get real, and it's time to dive into the Twelve Steps of the Atonement.
Step 1: "Admit that we, of ourselves, are powerless to overcome our addictions and that our lives have become unmanageable."
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