I’ve been watching a lot of Intervention lately. It’s a show that centers around someone who is an addict. They think they’re in a documentary about addiction, but really it’s all a rouse for their friends and family to stage an intervention. All the shows start out the same way, “My name is (fill in the blank), F-I-L-L-IN-T-H-E-B-L-A-N-K. And I am addict”. The addictions range from methamphetamine, to pot, to pornography, to gambling, to shopping, and the list goes on and on. They addict does interviews as does their friends and family. They often show the addict using, or cutting, or whatever the case may be. They go to great lengths to show the addict in what seems to be their worst state. They show them full of rage, lashing out, getting back to their most primal state. Then they show the intervention led by the trusted interventionist…and Jeff Von Vandren happens to be my favorite. Something always strikes me about the show though. When talking about their children, the parents always start off talking about their child with, “She was a bright child. She loved to learn, and she was brilliant. She was reading as a newborn, and by 6 months was putting together strings of sentences. By 9 months she had potty trained herself, and by 2 she completed high school”. Yes…I just and it seems a little absurd, and maybe it is, but the fact is that I’m noticing a trend. The brightest ones fall the hardest. The ones that seem to have everything going for them are the ones who just a few years later are the dropouts. The White House intern who got asked to return three times has now become addicted to pill popping. The guy who was a promising musician has now become addicted to smoking crack. Why is that?
Often times, tragedy strikes in ways and times people least expect it. Generally, from my observation, these once bright minded kids are easily influenced by the evil around them. They are the product of things like abuse, and rape, and abandonment, and accidents. But here’s the thing: My story isn’t much different than theirs. They’ve got abuse, I’ve got that too. They’ve got hurt, I’ve got that too. They’ve got abandonment, I’ve got that too. They’ve got molestation, I’ve got that too. The list goes on and on and on. So what’s the difference then?
You see, I’ve just graduated with my Master’s Degree a couple weeks ago from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. It was a long, hard, arduous, but so rewarding two years. So rewarding in fact, I’m considering going back for more. My time at Fuller has changed me…and will continue to change me if I let it. In the Book of Ruth, when Naomi is returning to Bethlehem, she urges Orpah and Ruth to go back – to turn away from her. She wants them to go an find a better life for themselves in their home land, in what they know and what’s comfortable. Orpah turns away, albeit not without tears, but she turns away. Ruth on the other hand doesn’t. And in her sticking it through, we read some of the most beautiful words of scripture:
“Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.”
There’s the reason! Did you catch it? Ruth, Naomi, and Orpah were not without tragedy. Their family and their land was Moab. Yes…the Moab. You know, the people who came from a incestuous relationship. I mean, they lived through a famine, through the death of their husbands and faced a life of fear, regret, and bitterness. That sounds an awful lot like those addicts I see on TV. And to be honest, it sounds like me at times too. There have been times in this season of change I’ve been walking through that I wanted to be like Orpah. I wanted to turn around. I wanted to understand that going forward was scary and unnerving, and I had NO idea what the crap was happening next. But you know what, I do know what’s happening next. Unlike the addicts who have no idea that they will get an opportunity to absolutely change their life by getting treatment, I know I have that opportunity every day.
One of the things I love about Intervention is that when all the family gathers together and they bring the addict in. Their thrown off their guard. But the family often will read letters to them telling them how much they love them and how much they mean to them, reminding them that if they didn’t care, they wouldn’t be in that room. Then, they start talking about the “special gift” they will receive today, if they choose it. That gift, for them, is treatment for their addiction.
For me, my “special gift” that I received was Fuller. And I knew going into it that there were going to be dry spells and heartache. I knew what I was getting into when I started, just as Ruth knew what she was getting into with Naomi. Ruth knew exactly what she was doing. She walked whole-heartedly into that foreign land, claimed a God to be her own, and asked for death to be brought upon her if she turned back. She knew she had a choice, just as me and those addicts do. So while I may have once been in some of the same positions as those addicts, overcome with abuse, pain, and heartache, I know that I’ve been given a special gift. I’ve come from the land of Moab, into the land of Promise. My name is Karen….K-A-R-E-N, and I am no longer an addict.