But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.

Romans‬ ‭6‬:‭21

This hurried pace, this frenzied mind.

Look back, further. There. Who has not grown in thought and in understanding? Even a little.

But in addiction, it does seem as though we become stuck in time. Fragmented. Moving forward but with the stuttered consequence of repeated choices going nowhere.

We skate on the surface of things. We dip down and pierce through the thin relationships that coalesce infrequently. In cycles and circles we age and live, but emptily.

Look back. There. How could that have been? We lunge toward freedom once we taste its possibility. How much time is now gone? Is it really gone? Why’d we wait so long?

And it seemed so fulfilling in vivid moments caught in memory. Reflection is blurred but not all terrible. What is joy? Was it there? I think so. Do I know what joy is?

Where does this addiction end if not death? Death of the possibility of fullness and freedom and peace. Do we need peace if we never know it?

What is addiction if it’s never confronted? Never identified? Is it damning to fail to seek a way out? Is it bad if it’s never too bad?

I know the sweetness of breathing freely on the other side of bad habits. I know the bitter resolutions that finally stick. I know the years’ wait till harvest.

God, keep me patient in the waiting and diligent in the seeking.