Hi, my name is Kristen Gooch and I’m a recovering addict. Addicted to approval, perfection, structure. Addicted to being “on time” (which means 15 minutes early), addicted to constant improvement, helping others, condemning myself after standing up for my rights, needs, or personal boundaries, addicted to making everyone else happy while neglecting my own happiness. These are all addictions that I’ve struggled with.
There are addictions that we don’t talk about yet that are as strong as an addiction to alcohol, pornography, or drugs. We often overlook seemingly “harmless” addictions but there is pain, emptiness, and loneliness that comes with each of them. We’ve all been broken in one way or another and we find ways to attempt to fill the void. Until we hit rock-bottom.
Rock-bottom is the place where we have to surrender and recognize what’s trying to kill from the inside out. It’s the place where we realize that we can’t do everything in our own strength. It’s the place where we need someone else to remove the veil from our eyes because even though the Holy Spirit has been speaking to us, we find every reason to avoid His voice and fill the void with the next high.
Rock-bottom is where the vicious cycle can end or it’s where we choose to start the process all over again, just to find ourselves in the same place a few weeks, months or years later, emptier and emptier each time.
Change comes at a price but we often make it harder than it needs to be. God doesn’t complicate things but when we try to figure everything out on our own, we end up complicating things ourselves. But when we’re at the end of our rope, God can get our attention.
Psalm 34:7 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” The word “delight” relates to enjoyment, pleasure, and fulfillment. The opposite of “delight” relates to sorrow, discontentment, and misery. Proverbs 10:22 says, “The blessing of the Lord makes one rich and adds no sorrow with it.” So if we’re experiencing sorrow, it’s because something is wrong.
God wants us to genuinely enjoy our lives, and not just to say that we do because we’re supposedly “people of faith”. We can enjoy a life free of sin, striving, trying to be enough, or stressing over what we can’t control. God wants us to enjoy what we do for work, our hobbies, our studies, our projects, and our efforts to serve others.
God wants to fill every void and erase the pain that comes from our own efforts to fill the emptiness and brokenness that we may feel. But again, this only comes through surrender. When we take our hands off of what we’re trying to control and simply let God lead us with His perfect love, we begin to understand the purpose of life and how to truly find fulfillment in everything we do.
