The question was posed last night: Do you really think this pain and suffering
of addiction is part of God’s plan for your life?
The man I was talking with is new to recovery, a few months
in I think. He’s been ex-communicated
from the church and is facing the reality of losing his wife to divorce. We were talking after attending an SA meeting
last night. My heart goes out to him. He’s
facing a difficult situation and has a long way to go before it’s over.
I stumbled a bit last night in answering that question. Am I better because of my addiction? Yes.
Have I learned more about life because of my addiction? Yes. Am I closer to
God, closer to Christ, have more patience and empathy for other people? Yes,
yes and Yes. So do I feel that this was
God’s plan for me to have this horrible addiction, to hurt others and be hurt,
to violate covenants and allow myself to be used and abused? I wanted to say yes last night. I wanted to say that this is God’s plan. That is how I felt instinctively.
But today, I think and feel differently.
I believe I lived with my Heavenly Father before I came to
earth. It was there that I started to
learn and grow. I’m sure I learned some
things faster than others and had gaps in my knowledge and experience that only
my Father could see. Being an
all-knowing God himself, He understood more than I did. His vision and experience were greater than
mine. I believe all of us that have ever
lived on the earth were there and that we talked and learned from each other as
well. We learned how to filter and
evaluate information as it was presented to us.
We had agency and choice there, just as we do here. And I believe there were differing opinions
and thoughts there, just like here. There
were things, though, that I couldn’t learn.
For those things, it was essential that I have a body to learn “that
there is an opposition in all things” (2 Nephi 2:11).
Coming to this world to gain a body and live out of the
presence of my Heavenly Father was a choice I made. I don’t think I came naively believing that it
would be easy. I don’t think any of us
did. There were sure to be warnings and
information about what life on earth would be like. I’ve heard many theories about how and why we
end up with the particular challenges and trials we do. Some believe we chose every single one of
them, from the circumstances of our birth to the person we marry, to our children
and even our callings. I’ve never been
able to buy into that theory. I can’t
imagine we sat in a big room and Heavenly Father said, “Who would like to
volunteer to lose a child at birth?” or “Who is going to choose to be born into
poverty?” or this one “Who would like to volunteer to be sexually abused as a
child, raped, and then brutally murdered?”
No one would do that.
As a child, my dad would sit me down every month and have a
Personal Priesthood Interview or PPI. He
would ask me questions about life, school, church, and our family. As I grew older, I came to hate those
interviews. But now that he’s gone, I
miss them more than I can express.
What I can imagine is my Heavenly Father requesting a PPI
with me prior to coming to earth. Maybe
it was close to my time, or maybe it was thousands of years before. Maybe we had regular interviews where he
asked me about my life, friends, learning, testimony, concerns and
thoughts. As it came closer to my time
to come to earth, Father asked me if I was ready. I probably hugged him and said no. He asked if I was willing to do whatever it
took to get back to Him. I told Him I
was. I signed up the Celestial
Experience. Knowing me better than I
knew myself, having a broader, wider vision, experience, and understanding than
me, he designed a unique experience for me here on earth. There were things I needed to learn, people I
needed to meet, experiences I needed to have, and challenges I needed to
overcome in order to return to Him and be like Him.
Do I believe addiction was part of that from the
beginning? Maybe. But maybe not. I think all challenges, temptations,
struggles, losses, and even our joys are designed to drive us to our Heavenly
Father. Maybe there were times along the
way that I could have gotten off the addiction highway earlier. Who knows?
But what I do know, is that wherever I find that off-ramp from
addiction, or hate, envy, strife, selfishness, resentment, or any of the many
defects I have, He is there waiting for me.
Missing one or two opportunities ultimately doesn’t matter. He will always provide another one waiting
for me up ahead. It is the actual act
of getting off and then staying off that count.
In the process are we going to hurt other people? Unfortunately, yes. And I think it pains our Heavenly Father to
see it happen. I don’t believe it is His
will that we hurt or injure one another.
But that is why the Atonement was provided. It not only provides the off-ramps for those
of us struggling with addiction, it provides repair shops for those that get
hit and knocked around due to no fault of their own. It provides healing to those who were victims
of our addictions. By tapping into the
power and grace that our Savior provides through the Atonement, they can find
the peace they need as well.
Speaking of the Atonement, Elder Boyd K. Packer said: “He by choice accepted the penalty in behalf
of all mankind for the sum total of all wickedness and depravity; for
brutality, immorality, perversion, and corruption; for addiction; for the
killings and torture and terror – for all of it that ever had been or all that
ever would be enacted upon this earth.
In so choosing He faced the awesome power of the evil one, who was not
confined to flesh nor subject to mortal pain.
That was Gethsemane!” (“Who is
Jesus Christ?”, Ensign, March 2008, pg. 15)
There is no doubt in my mind now that “there shall be no
other name given nor any other way nor means whereby salvation can come unto
the children of men, only in and through the name of Christ, the Lord
Ominpotent” (Mosiah 3:17). It took an
addiction, causing personal pain, anguish, grief and loss to get here. I know there were others hurt in the process
along the way and it saddens me that I was the cause of others pain. But it also makes me more grateful than ever
that the Atonement offers all of us what we need to heal and
become better people.
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