You Are My Liberty

I'm incredibly grateful to live in a time and place that grants me so much freedom.  I seriously couldn't be any more blessed than I am now.  Every morning I wake up with the opportunity to choose what I will do that day--will I go to school or not?  Will I go to work or not?  What music will I listen to?  Who will I hang out with?  What will I eat?  Will Twinkies be involved?  How many Twinkies will be involved?

There are obvious right/wrong answers to several of the questions above.  Of course there are serious consequences if I choose not to go to school or to skip out on a day of work.  Consequences are a topic for another day though.  Today, I'm simply grateful for the existing ability to choose, a gift that I take for granted on a daily basis.  

For me, it has taken tasting a sampling of bondage to understand how incredible of a gift freedom truly is.  Addiction is a nasty master, and one that does not let go of its slaves easily.  I suspect I have many friends and family who can understand how difficult it is to get out from under the thumb of addiction--whether it's pornography, drugs, alcohol, food, social media, video games, etc, addiction can function to ruin a person's life by consuming every thought, action, and choice.  Once one is far enough into addiction, there is no longer such thing as a choice: one's actions become entirely centered on addictive fulfillment.  That is it.  There is no other option.  The freedom to choose is stolen away. 

But hope is not lost!  This is the beauty of recovery through the Atonement.  No matter the addiction, there is a way out.  Again, the slave master is not an easy one to escape.  It may takes months or years, therapy, group support, and even the loss of friends.  But there's always a light at the end of the dark tunnel of bondage: the light of freedom (that sentence sounded a lot more epic in my head, but let's roll with it).    

I think we all reach our freedom through different conduits.  It's important to distinguish between the means of reaching freedom and the source of the freedom itself.  They are two different things.  For instance, I find a lot of peace in music, both playing it and listening to it.  It can help me sort my thoughts and understand/express my feelings.  It is a powerful conduit to freedom.  It's a path.  But it's not the destination.  Music does not equal freedom, though it does help me to arrive there.  Others I know find great freedom through physical exercise, writing, sports, art, school, and other hobbies/activites.   Again, these are routes to freedom, but cannot function as the actual source of freedom.  None of these things by themselves are enough to truly help one escape addictive bondage.  

The source should be obvious.  You all know me!  Surely you know where I'm going with this by now.  Of course it's God!  There can be no other answer!  There can be no other way out!  God gives us the means to escape addiction; he gives us the skills, hobbies, and activities that give us the strength and the focus to escape.  But He is the source.  He is the escape.  He is the Master--not of slaves, but of free people.  He is our liberty.  

I truly feel bad for people who have no place in their hearts for God.  I just can't imagine life being completely fulfilling without some sort of conviction that there is a loving, omniscient God who cares.  I am grateful that I've been blessed with this conviction.  Heavens only knows I have my fair share of issues that I'm working out; but a firm belief in the existence of God is not one of those.  I know He's there.  Something inside me just knows.  

I hear God in beautiful, uplifting music.  I see Him in the majestic mountains that I've lived beneath for all of my life.  I feel Him in the Spirit that resides in my home.  I hear him in the voices of my mother and father.  I speak to Him through prayer.  He speaks to me through scripture.  He's loves me so much, that despite my overwhelming weakness, he allows me to choose what to do with each moment of my life.  And when I mess up, He doesn't abandon me.  Rather, He picks me up and tells me to keep going.  I find peace and freedom through many different outlets; but only because these outlets lead me to the One Great Being who is the source of freedom.  God is the breaker of chains.  God is the liberator of the addiction-ridden slave.  God is my liberty.  

Incredible progress is being made, and that simply would not happen without the love of God.  And to Him I am eternally grateful.  My name is Spencer.  I am a recovering addict, but a loved son of God who grants me freedom everyday.  With that freedom, I soldier on.  

I set these broken bones to cast

Stitch my wounds with holy sutures

Every saint has got a past

But every sinner's got a future

And only you could free my soul 

-Switchfoot 

The Greatest Men I've Ever Known

Can I start by saying I feel so incredibly blessed?  Seriously though.  As I look at my life, I see a lot of aspects that appear very empty.  I'm working on getting those filled; yet I can't help but be comforted by the notion that everything is going to be ok.  Somehow, despite all the things that are hard and lonely, I sit here knowing that everything will turn out the way it needs to.  I thank God for blessing me with that conviction.  It's what keeps me moving forward everyday.

God truly does know what we need.  I've been amazed to see this in my own life the last couple weeks.  He has given me a few special opportunities to spend time with some incredible friends who have inspired me and blessed me with their strength.  If there is one thing I've come to learn through these visits, it's that nobody is leading a perfect life.  We may put on the mask of perfection around our  friends or family, but behind closed doors we all face struggles that nobody could even dream of.  Life is no respector of persons; difficult things will/do/and are happening to each of us.  

As I walk the trail of my own recovery, I'm learning quickly not to judge other people based on what I observe from the outside.  Granted, I'm not perfect.  I don't forsee myself becoming perfect in the near future.  But I'm trying really hard to give people the benefit of the doubt and understand life from their eyes.  It's so easy to judge somebody based on their life situation, the choices they've made, etc.  One of the greatest ironies of ever, though, is how quick we are to judge one another when heavens only knows what it is we're struggling with in our own lives!  If we could only know, if we could truly understand what each individual around us is going through, I think we would all be ashamed of the judgemental thoughts that had previously passed through our minds.  

Again, I'm learning this lesson all the time because I'm far from perfect at this.  But as I've had the chance to talk to some good friends and hear their stories, I've realized that the greatest men I've ever known in my life are the broken men.  Whether they're broken as a result of their own choices or circumstances outside their control, it doesn't matter.  It's their brokenness, and their willingness to get up and keep pressing forward (sometimes against the waves of naysayers) that inspires me.   

How silly it is to expect our fellow human beings to live at some incredible standard of perfection while we sit by struggling with our own vices!  How silly it is to be soldiers in the single greatest fight over the souls of men and expect our fellow fighters to come out unscathed.  What if Helaman had judged the quality of his stripling warriors based on who had received wounds and who had not?  Not a single one of those soldiers would have remained in his army for long.  Though none of them died, all came out wounded, some having bled to the point of fainting.  Yet he commended each for his strength, for his valor, and for his willingness to continue fighting.  

So it is with life.  Some of us will walk off the battlefield at the end of the day with gaping wounds, and others with scratches.  But both need to be attended to, and both require sympathy from friends.  At the end of the day, though, not one of us will be judged for the wounds inflicted by others or by oneself; rather, we will be judged for a willingness to stand back up, bandage the wounds properly, and get back into the fight.  

To my friends in recovery, I say this: don't hate on yourself for being a wounded fighter.  Get up and bandage that wound (i.e. repentance process man!) and get back into the fight.  And if it takes bandaging wounds over and over again until you figure things out, so be it!  Feeling unworthy for having to repent multiple times is like refusing to cast a broken bone because you've broken several other bones before.  That's just stupid.  So never feel unworthy.

The greatest men I've ever known are fighters.  They've been knocked down, but they get back up.  They don't profess perfection; in fact, sometimes they're far too hard on themselves.  But they keep going.  They keep standing.  They can take hits and deal them back.  And that's why they're the greatest.  I want to be like those men.  Thank you for being my heroes.  

My name is Spencer.  I am a recovering addict, and I hope one day to be a force like the great men and women around me.  And so I soldier on.