seek and ye shall find

But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness;
 and all these things shall be added unto you (Matthew 6:33)

Lately I've had a few hopelesss conversations with frustrated friends who are struggling to find their way out of addiction. One of them recently threw his hands up to the heavens and begged for mercy over his alcoholism, shrugging with tears in his eyes, "I am waiting on Him."

While it looked like an act of surrender, and I felt sorry for him, I recognized this kind of waiting as too passive to be called seeking. I have seen him walking to the corner store for beer with more enthusiasm.

I know how he feels.

When I quit smoking 15 years ago, I had no idea I was quitting an addiction. I thought I loved cigarettes; and that made it very hard not to pick one up. The first days were almost impossible and, if it weren't for my 6 year-old daughter urging me to soldier on, I might have thrown in the towel on day 2. I kept going for her sake, not wanting to disappoint her and be a loser mom. 

For over a year, I fought the urge to smoke. "I want a cigarette" repeated over and over in my mind like a mantra or computer program, running constantly in the background and draining me of all my energy. It was a haunting and merciless craving to smoke, my constant companion for a year, and my first thought upon waking: "I want a cigarette". I became depressed wondering what the point of quitting was if I was going to be miserable and tortured for the rest of my life. (Today, I know this is called "white knuckling", the long suffering way to sobriety. I do not recommend it)

While my quit lasted and my nicotine addiction did finally give up on me, I had not learned how to give up on it, or on anything. That came many years later, when I had to face another dependency: my grip on an addict. That was killing me worse. He got under my skin right down into my heart and all the way back up again into the folds of my besotted brain. I was stuck for years in a relationship going nowhere. One day my sponsor said to me, discouraged, "You have a grip of steel". Before that, a Buddhist mentor had also tried to warn me, "There is nothing to hold on to" but then he ghosted me, which only caused my grip to tighten. 

I did not know how to surrender or to "let go" (to this day I hate that expression). I was a lost cause.

Here is what finally helped. I stopped waiting for someone or something to help me loosen my grip on the things I held on to. I sought recovery. I sought it hard, with all my heart and soul. I worked the program and I prayed, neither of which I believed in, but I did whatever I was told to do by people who had succeeded, and I did it wholeheartedly. 

In the Song of Songs the Shulamite woman says, "I must rise now and go about the city; in the streets and in the squares I must seek him whom my soul loves" (3:2). It reminds me of PD Eastman's baby bird in the desert searching for his mother in the classic book for children "Are You My Mother?" A quest motivated by necessity not courage.

Another Bible passage says that "few will find the way", and that is daunting. 

Here is what I have discovered: the way is found by going through the gate or, in the case of sobriety, by doing sobriety. Go through the motions and you will find that muscle builds, just like you lose weight by following a diet. It works if you work it, as the saying goes. And remember, as Winston Chruchill once said, "If you are going through hell, keep going."

We need to be hot on the trail of whatever we are seeking, like a hound or deer panting (psalm 42)*

Nothing else will do.

* The origin of the word "seek" is actually secan or zieken which closley resembles the Greek zeteo in the expression "seek and ye shall find". It means to perceive by scent!