It is easy to think of the spiritual life as one dominated by a series of problems that are confronted, conquered, and forever vanquished. But life is more like a play. There are a handful of leading personalities that are there from beginning to end and only the bit-players come and go.
So it is with the spiritual life. A hundred and one temptations come and go —- like spiritual spam:
“Help, I’m being held hostage by Russian gangsters.”
“Quick send your banking information, I have money to give you.”
“Hi, my name is Kitten…”
But the ones that lie closer to the defining struggles of our lives go around and come around…
“I could never please you…”
“You never loved me…”
“I never heard you say I am proud of you…”
“You are a disappointment…”
“You are ugly…”
“You can’t succeed…”
“You aren’t good….”
“You are stupid…”
Those earliest messages never go away and, sadly, in an effort to exorcise them, we draw people into our lives over and over again who will tell us the same stories that we heard when we were small. They are familiar, so they feel right. They cut us, so we try to conquer them.
But they don’t go away. What goes around, comes around.
Still…there is hope.
Name the wound.
Name the way in which it controls you.
Ask Jesus for freedom from it.
Live into the freedom you are given.
What goes around will come around. But it won’t come around as often and it won’t have as much influence as it did the last time.