Addition III: Returning Home

What is it like to begin, like the Prodigal Son, to return home? To recognize the attachments that kill desire for God, and to run the other way?

...continuation of thought from Gerald May's chapter on The Theological Nature of Addiction

When we realize how our desires have been misplaced, and how we continue to choose those things which keep us bound, "we begin to reclaim our primary desire for God. But at this point, after years of displacing desire and of adapting to addictions elsewhere, home will not seem normal. Thus we respond to God's homeward call with a mixture of hope and fear. Something in us knows that this home is where we belong, but in many ways it also feels like alien territory. the journey homeward, the process of homemaking in God, involves withdrawal from addictive behaviors that have become normal for us."

"We feel no real consolation when we experience the inevitable withdrawal symptoms that accompany letting go our attachments. There is real pain here. If I am withdrawing from addiction to a relationship or possession, it will not easy my sense of loss to know that the person of thing will continue to be present in my life or in my heart. I will not even want to hear that my love will be stronger if I let it go. What I cling to most is my use, my idolization of that person or thing."

"When we first reclaim our spiritual longing, we usually do not know that the journey homeward will involve such relinquishment, that the homemaking process will be so painful. Perhaps this is just well. No that such knowledge would cause us to choose against God; on the contrary, I think the greater danger is that those who think they understand the process are likely to try to make it happen on their own by engaging in false austerities and love-denying self-deprivations. They will not wait for God's timing; they will rush ahead of grace."

Do you try to make change happen on your own?

...More coming...