You know, I wasn't sure how I was going to begin this post. Having felt prompted with the subject for the last few days, I knew what I was going to write but could not for the life of me, think of how to begin... so I googled "Dependence". And what came up was exactly what I hoped would not, but what I knew to be true and ultimately what this blog is about- our complete misunderstanding of what it means to be dependent.
What is dependence? There are so many types of dependence, good dependence, bad dependence, needed dependence, unnecessary dependence, deceptive dependence, and healthy dependence. By no means an exhaustive list, but hopefully an illustration of the spectrum across which "dependence" spans. From baby and mother, to deep, long lasting friendships.
My definition of dependence has adapted, grown, deepened and intensified since working in the substance misuse field though. Prior to my current job, if you had asked me to define dependence to you, I would have told you that it was a source of security, or contentment, of necessity- what you depend on is something that provides you with something that you think you need. It takes on negative connotations in our teenage years- it oozes a sense of inability, a lack, a flaw- dependency means you can't do it on your own. At least I thought it was teenage years that invoked this. I realise now that the source of that sense is far stronger and considerably more dangerous. It is our culture-our world.
I had understood dependence on a basic level to mean what we should have with God, but I didn't understand what this meant.
Humour me, and stop reading this blog, open Google, and type in "Dependence". Have a look at what the top 5 or so links show. Then click "images" and see what you think takes up the majority of the images.
Drugs. Pills. Syringes. Alcohol. Tragedy.
Independence is good right? We are taught to hold ourselves up from a young age, to walk on our own, to speak for ourselves, to stand up for ourselves, to earn for ourselves, to make our own way in life, to succeed at making our own way. And we try our flippin' best. Some of us are better at this than others. But independence can be poisonous if we don't understand the limit and pitfalls of it. It is important in us becoming our own person, in finding our identity, and most of all, in understanding who we are in our relationship with God, and making the decision to have that relationship for ourselves. But, if we let independence go so far, we lose sight of what independence means, and isolate ourselves. We run the risk of coming to a place where we think we our enough for ourselves, and go so far until we have only divisive and destructive tools to comfort and restore us because we think they'll fix things because in a temporary, troubling way, they do.
Complete independence must therefore be, ultimately, the severing of all relationship, thus any input of love.
What strikes me most about addiction, is that it has come from a place of such independence, that it has transgressed into severe dependence on something so destructive and so completely of the enemy. It is said that binge drinkers often are not physically dependent on alcohol, but suffer psychological dependence on it. The longer that this goes on, the longer the binges get, and the shorter the time becomes between them. It is at this point that the dependence transforms from one of the mind, to one of the body, it becomes biological. The matter in our bodies cannot cope without it, because it becomes a necessary part of our functioning. How frightening is it to think that it becomes a part of your physical being? That your ability to say, "no, I don't need it", disintegrates altogether until you cannot remember being without it? The addiction sucks the individual into a black hole, dark and frightening, isolated and cold. It pulls those around them in too, until their dependence becomes a relationally destructive hurricane. What is more upsetting, is the reality that those who love and try to support those struggling in the ways they have always known best, can sometimes be more destructive, because it feeds into the dependence. It can feed into accepting the behaviour, accepting that this loved one has become dependent and that they are never going to recover. That seeming free nature in a person's independence becomes toxic.
But consider, if dependence can be so powerful, to cause a person (who had found their independence, made a decision as to who they wanted to be, what they wanted from life, and what they would do to change the world;) to change their identity, hurt those around them and destruct all that they had constructed, imagine how much could we do to change the world if our dependence on God was as strong?
What is it that we need to understand about our heavenly father that will make us that much more dependent on Him? Dependence on a God that is only good, dependence on a God that is only love. I long for that.
Perhaps you're thinking, sure, don't go too far one way or the other- everything in proportion, etc etc etc. But that's not it at all. There will be other things, people that we are dependent on, simply for being human. My primary love language is physical touch- my husband-to-be, my friends, my family understand this- I suppose to an extent, I am dependent on people showing me love in this way to feel most loved, or perhaps loved most naturally. This however becomes unhealthy if I begin to believe that the only way to feel loved is physical touch, because as soon as this isn't fulfilled, like a drug, I need more to get the feeling of contentment from it and there is stemmed a destructive dependence on something that was so beautifully from God.
Do you know what the 12 steps of AA are?
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become
unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to
sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we
understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature
of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make
amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do
so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly
admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with
God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us
and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to
carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our
affairs.
Copyright A.A. World S
AA works because not only does it acknowledge the source of where we need to find our dependence, but it does it through having "sponsors",whereby a person who has experienced the same addiction will stand side by side with another who is struggling and fighting a real life threatening battle, to love on them and pull them through. I love how Rob Bell and so many before Him worded it, but it really does come down to the one solid truth- Love wins. AA works because it sees the person, not the illness. The illness is of the enemy, but the person underneath is still loved.
A relationship with God, and receiving infinite amounts of love from Him is one thing that I want to be addicted to for the rest of my life. His love is infectious in a way that fulfills me, contents me, deeply satisfies the thirst and hunger in my soul.
A friend and I had been chatting over the weekend about where we looked for that deep contentment, that sense of being in younger years, in our "fighting for independence" days. The truth of those apparent sources were that they were hollow, and that it wasn't long before we saw that. It is now time for us to fight for dependence. Fight to have dependence on our God, when so much in this world will push us the other way. It will try to convince us that we need only to be independent, and that this will make us happy- only to become dependent on something so far from what our Daddy wants for us.
The only thing I want to be dependent on, is my heavenly dad. Everything else is added bonus- knowing that He will satisfy my longing and hunger is enough. If we can get this right, we can obtain a healthy interdependence on one another, in our marriages, in our friendships, in our families. An understanding that one cannot fulfill the other, but that we will help each other to find the source of dependence that can, our Jesus.
