A friend anonymously shared a discussion she recently had with someone who was struggling with a serious addiction. His heart was broken. He felt hopeless and defeated and expressed the fact that he was willing to do anything necessary to get past the problem. Regardless of how painful or radical the cure might be, it would be worth it if it meant he could finally be released from the habits, behaviors and thinking patterns that held him captive.
The point of her sharing this discussion with me was this: she realized that he was willing to submit to any number of major, painful experiences—to do whatever dramatic approach recovery required as long as it resulted in the problem being totally removed from him. But, it was clear he didn’t understand what recovery from addiction really entailed. It isn’t a matter of taking a single radical step and being cured. It is a matter of doing a number of small and seemingly insignificant things over a long period of time that really leads to recovery.
She shared the story of Naaman as found in 2 Kings, chapter 5. We read that Naaman was a great man. He was captain of the host of the king of Syria, honourable and mighty, but that he was also a leper. Naaman went to the prophet Elisha to be healed of his leprosy.
The story recounts that “Naaman came with his horses and with his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha, and Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean.”
The story goes on to say that “Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, ‘behold…he will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper. Are not [the] rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? May I not wash in them, and be clean?’ So he turned and went away in a rage.”
One of his servants said to him, “if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? How much rather then, when he saith to thee, wash, and be clean?” Following that reproof, Naaman “went…down, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God: and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.”
This lesson is profound. It relates to all of us who struggle with any kind of addiction or character defect.
Naaman expected some dramatic, huge event that would instantly cure him. Instead, he was asked to do something small, insignificant and apparently unrelated. It didn’t even make sense to him. He couldn’t see the correlation between the action he was asked to take and the problem he had.
Naaman wasn’t just asked to do it once and then be cured—he was asked to do it seven times. …a small and simple act, repeated over and over again. It wasn’t just a “one-shot fix”, but consistency over time.
Looking at myself in the mirror, I can see Naaman reflecting back at me. How many times did I look for some major, dramatic cure for my weight problem. I was willing to spend hundreds of dollars on a weight loss program as long as I would be thin after plunking my money down. I was willing to go on any crazy crash or starvation diet if it meant that I wouldn’t have to be fat any more. What about those of us who go to the extreme of surgery, all with the intent that having once submitted our bodies to that radical procedure we will never have to deal with the consequences of our food addiction again?
Like Naaman, how many of us are "wroth" when we aren't offered a quick fix to our problem? So often we spend our time waiting or looking for a big, dramatic cure—the answer that will free us from our problem once and for all. We tell ourselves that we want to be cured so badly that we are willing to take any action, how ever painful or large. What we don’t see is that we spend our time waiting for something big to happen when the real answer—the little daily steps we need to take—are placed right in front of us. It is the small commitments, repeated over time that bring real healing and recovery.
The miracle of working a 12-step recovery program for me was that it taught me that there is generally no instantaneous cure for an addiction. We find a recovery program. We commit to the actions necessary to get “abstinent” or “sober” from our destructive behavior. Then we use the tools our program gives us and work the 12 steps of recovery as part of the slow process of change.
The significance of Naaman having to dip himself multiple times certainly didn’t escape me. I found a recovery program. I committed to working it. I worked it for a year, then two, then three, then four. But I got so tired of doing the same little things over and over. I felt sure that five years was enough. After that level of effort surely I could be cured. Not so. When I let my program slip—when I stopped doing the daily actions that kept me in recovery—I relapsed.
For Naaman, dipping in the river one time or even five times would not have been enough. He had to consistently repeat the action before his healing occurred. In terms of recovery, I don’t place any significance on the fact that Naaman was commanded to dip seven times, but on the fact that he did it the entire number of times he was told to. In my recovery program I am told what specific actions I need to take every day. I am asked to attend multiple meetings per week. I am told that by consistently working my program I can keep my addiction in remission, but that at any point in time it is ready and waiting to come back with a vengeance. For me, each day of recovery is like a day one, or perhaps a day seven. I need to do it again today. All I need to do is let my program of recovery slip for a day or a week or a month to find I am back in the clutches of addiction.
So for today, I will be willing to do the little things. I will weigh each of my three meals. I will not touch flour or sugar. I will remember my reading and meditation, my outreach calls. And for today, I will choose recovery rather than addiction.
