Addicted to Love

Total Solar Eclipse 9-21-17

Pss. 72:13 “He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy.”

Addicted to Love

Do you know of an addict? Whether to drugs, coffee, alcohol, food, pain, or the internet? There are many different addictions in this society all of which we either ignore, embrace, dive into and believe we are exempt, we just call them habits.

I’m a habitual addict. I’ve been addicted to alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, you name it but the one that has lasted the longest is my addiction to God. Yup, you read it right, I’m addicted to God. I know the signs, I’ve lived with addictions all of my life and God is one addiction I don’t want to be released from. God is Love so in essence, I’m addicted to Love.

Can a person be addicted to God? I know some of you are probably rolling your eyes right now and saying I’ve gone too far but seriously, Jesus was my first crush, my first love! If any of you have had a first love while you may have loved many other people in your life, none other is remembered as the first love. Like a marker of how far you’ve come in life or how much you’ve loved and how much you’ve been loved.

As you know, since I’ve told you my story over and over, I paint a bleak picture of my life as a child, I color my family (bloodline) in a dark light because I know no other shade to paint them. A perfect example is that I tell members of my family that I have a disease that many have accepted as a killer disease and a disease that has taken a good portion of family members over my life, but no one has shown signs of caring for me. Except for my niece, a cousin who offered money, compassion and prayer and maybe my sister care but that’s it. I come from a big family and they are so consumed with their money and living their own high life or low life that the peon Joni warrants no thought.

Now I know some of you will say that maybe they don’t know what to say in this circumstance or that they don’t know how to approach me but please don’t try to make me feel better here, these people care only about themselves and are addicted to their own lives. Eleven months is a long enough time to show some sort of heartwarming response. They are the very reason I had all of those other negative addictions in the first place, I looked for love and found it nowhere except in drugs and alcohol. I raised up an addictive personality, so when I accepted Christ into my life, I craved, yearned, sought the completeness that no other addiction gave me.

I gave up the negative addictions and quietly replaced them with the non-life threatening ones like God, writing, books, the Internet, and food. Yes, you can be addicted to food, look at society, the ones not addicted to the harmful substances are more than likely consumed with a non-lethal substance consuming their life. As we all know, too much of even a good thing can be bad for us but note, for ME, I’ve never found anything bad with drinking the richness of God except that I may have lost a few friends along the way.

I overindulge myself in the Word to the extent I may come off as self-righteous when really all I am is a human being in love with the Lord. It’s hard sometimes viewing the world and seeing friends as equals when all I see is a blinding Light shining in my eyes. Squinting and peering through the slivers in my eyes doesn’t allow me to see much of anything and in the New Year, I aim to work on looking around and making a note to find anything out there that makes living worth it all.

Now don’t get me wrong, my memory hasn’t allowed me to memorize scripture verse by verse. The drugs and alcohol addictions damaged brain cells so much so that I have a hard time retaining input. I remember the essential parts of God and that is good enough for Him and I. In the beginning of my faith journey, I dissected the love of my life with a fine-toothed comb, from the beginning to what I perceive as the end times, but honestly, I don’t do the dissecting anymore as it takes my eyes off of my final destination.

Our addictions shape us, literally! Food shapes us, our consumptions mold us, and often times we can’t see past the roadblocks that we’ve placed neatly around to ‘protect’ us from the outside world. It is during the Christmas season that people get a small glimpse of the outside world and what is really going on around their protective layer of their space. Compassion crawls in the door, lights shine in the dark, joy warms the heart, hope inebriates the soul. Have you ever thought as to why this happens around Christmas? It’s because for one brief moment in time people can actually get a glimpse of Christ in action throughout the season. The world opens their eyes and beholds… the Love of my life!

Jer. 31:3 “The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.”