"I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing." (Romans 7:18 - 19)
Somehow I don't think Paul was referring to (literally) feeding one's emotional state but it fits nonetheless. Of course, I think it applies equally well to other, self-destructive behaviours. Mine happens to include carbo-loading. Oh, and chocolate. Can't forget the chocolate.
I've had a lot of time to myself the last couple of days, trying to get my head around some existential questions that come to us all at some point in time. When I came up against some answers I didn't like - I ran straight for the chocolate and potato chips. I know better. All the Cadbury's Milk Chocolate and Ruffles in the world isn't going to make me like the answer better. All I'm left with is a really awful feeling in the pit of my stomach that comes from knowing that rather than face the truth, I decided to self-medicate, and that it didn't work. Again.
Someone once told me that we keep running to our idols, knowing they will fail us, knowing they cannot save us, because the alternative is too awful to contemplate. No, this isn't going to be a "God loves us anyway" kind of blog. That sort of thing makes me want to gag. Not because I don't believe it's true: quite the opposite. It's because I can't get my head around a God that big. I can't get my head around a God who loves me so much He won't leave me where I am and He won't let me be content to wallow in the pig sty when He has fine robes waiting for me, and He won't let me settle for a numb, half-life of existence when He created me for so much more. Too often, we reduce the intangible to a greeting card sentiment that does Him a great disservice and minimizes the depths of our own struggle.
My idols are too small. They are too weak. They are too fickle. But I keep fooling myself into believing that this time I'll have the right combination of sacrifices ready, this time I'll say the magic words with enough sincerity that this time my idols will answer me.
In Hosea, God says (speaking metaphorically of Israel): "Therefore, I am now going to allure her, I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her." It reminds me that I demand much more from myself than God does. All He has ever asked of me is to "Be still and know that I am God." (Psalm 46:10). I look for God in the wrong places. I expect God to be huge, and He is, but I forget that He is also very small. A whisper. A tender touch. A breath. A thought. I Kings says that when Elijah was hiding in the caves, the Lord passed him by. There was a mighty wind that brought the mountain down, but that wasn't God. There was an earthquake afterwards, but that wasn't God either. After the wind and the earthquake, a fire roared past, but the fire wasn't God either. But after the fire, a still, small voice. And that was God.
I read a personal account from a musician I admire a great deal, in which she recounts the anxiety, and fear she felt when her daughter was born. She had messed up a lot and she worried that her baby girl was going to pay the consequences for all of her mother's messed up decisions. And when that child was born perfectly healthy, she wrote she heard God whisper:"See? I'm not what you think I am."
What do I think God is? And more to the point, do I think He is stronger than the idols I run to when I don't like who I am?
