Addiction and Withdrawal

I’m probably not even qualified to draw the analogy I’m going to in a few lines. Among the list of people I call friends or acquaintances, I can name more than a handful who are more qualified to speak to the subject than me, because I have never been addicted to anything before. But…

God makes me feel like an addict.

I’ve been trying for some time to think of another way to describe how I react to God’s involvement in my life and my pursuit (or lack thereof) of Him. Sometimes I feel guilty because that’s the only way I can put to words how He makes me feel. Every aspect of worship makes me feel like what I imagine being high feels like. When I’m truly listening to God and doing what He commands, I don’t have a care in the world. I’m happy, no matter the circumstances. It’s not euphoric, but my mind is definitely lighter. I know it’s all because of this amazing, merciful, powerful, just God, but the only words I (me, a lover of words, whose writing is often too wordy) can find to describe it are “God makes me feel like an addict.”

There’s also the other end of the spectrum. When I’m withdrawing from God, life seems to get off kilter. I get depressed, things go wrong, life seems beyond my control (or anyone’s). I imagine that’s what like going through withdrawal from a drug feels like. It’s the worse feeling in the world, and all I want to do is go running back to the source of comfort, the one thing that makes me feel better. But after awhile, the feelings of withdrawal fade and I don’t feel quite so much like I need to go running back to anything for a fix. Addiction never really goes away -- it’s always something a person has to deal with – but the power to manage the addiction seems more and more attainable.

That’s kind of what I’ve been feeling recently. I’ll admit that I’m struggling where I currently am. I’m addicted to God, but recently, it’s been easier and easier to manage that addiction. I have no accountability here, no real church home, no one asking if I’ve gone to church or who I’m making friends with or what I’ve been reading. (It seems that P.T. may have been right about me needing to be where my relationship with God is most encouraged.) Lately, I’ve been getting pretty good at pretending God doesn’t have my heart. At the end of the day, I know He does, but each day away from Him gets easier for me not to run back for a fix.

I wonder sometimes if I could ever walk away from God. I wonder if I’d miss Him, how often I’d think about Him, if I’d ever really give in to the addiction again. What scares me most is that I think I could walk away from Him, and I know what the Bible says that means. I might be utterly miserable if I walked away but I think I could manage the addiction. Even though I know it’s not (because I’ve been there before), sometimes life without His standards seems so much easier, so much more attractive. For now, perseverance is really a struggle, but I’m doing it. The going is slow and I can’t help but wonder if my floundering relationship with God is at all related to my ability only to describe Him like an addiction. Do I really understand so little about my Creator and Savior that I could just walk away from the one thing that has changed my life for the better in so many ways?