Finding the Answers

Has anyone in authority ever told you, “if you didn’t know, you should have asked”?

Say what???? I’ve always thought that was such a bizarre statement. If we don’t know something, we generally aren’t even aware that there IS a question to ask. We aren’t being stupid or devious, we just didn’t know that we didn”t know.

That can be a stumbling block in recovery as well. Many of the answers that will help us in our quest for complete freedom are locked behind questions that we have never asked.

“Why did I react that way?” What am I really feeling?” “Why does she bug me so much?” “Has anyone ever made me feel this way before.” “Why are the cravings so strong today?” “What do I need to do to make it through just one more day without acting out?” . . .

There are so many questions that NEED to be asked in recovery. It is through those questions that we will finally be able to discover what fuels our unwanted behavior.

Part of the reason we were so vulnerable to addiction in the first place was that, for whatever reason, we didn’t want to look at the questions. Maybe we were afraid of the answer that might follow. Maybe we were scared of the intensity of our feelings and just wanted to find a way to make them disappear. Maybe it just plain wasn’t OK to ask questions (even of ourselves) in our family of origin. Or . . . maybe, we just didn’t know what to ask.

But, by not asking, we learned to make assumptions instead of seeking truth. We looked for something that would distract us from going where we didn’t want to go and feeling what we didn’t want to feel. We got good at avoiding issues instead of resolving them, which only gave us more need and more fuel for those distracting and numbing activities. We figured out ways to keep ourselves safe instead of allowing God to be our Savior and protector.

One of our biggest challenges in recovery is learning to ask the questions. The questions will lead us to the beliefs, wounds, and fears that we have long been avoiding. Acknowledging them is a huge step toward being able to surrender them to God. In the process of releasing our paralyzing burdens to Him one by one, we receive, in exchange, increasingly more peace and freedom than we have ever known. He truly is the answer for every question that we uncover.

“For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” —Matthew 7:8