Seth Haynes is the author of The Book of Waking Up. He struggled with addiction to alcohol, something he focused on in a previous book. In The Book of Waking Up he continues to share his story as well as the stories of others.
Seth writes that when tough times hit, most of us make use of certain coping mechanisms to get through those trials. Some of these coping mechanisms are illegal, like drugs. Some of them are socially acceptable, like alcohol. Some of them are even applauded, like eating too little. All of us, he argues, have coping mechanisms.
That is, when the sun is withering or the storms are raging we look for something to root down into. We look for something to ground ourselves in. And often what we find is what is readily at hand: some drugs, some alcohol, some pornography, some habits or behaviors that numb the pain.
What Seth argues in this book is that there’s only one thing worth rooting down into. There’s only one thing worth grounding ourselves in:
And when I say waking, I mean both waking from and waking to. Waking from your attempts to self-soothe, to anesthetize your pain. Waking from dependency, addiction, recurring habits that might do you in. What do you wake up to? This is the other part. Waking from addiction and to the Divine Love of God expressed through Jesus, the Christ who wants to repair every frayed nerve, every broken synapse, every jacked up desire. As you wake to the Divine Love, fix your eyes on it. Root into it.” (emphasis mine)
So often, we face scorching sun or raging storms in life. And the best response, the way to survive and thrive, Haynes is saying, is to root into the love of God. Become grounded in the love of God.
David Benner, in his book The Gift of Being Yourself, writes similarly:
“Christian’s affirm a foundation of identity that is absolutely unique in the marketplace of spiritualities. Whether we realize it or not, our being is grounded in God’s love. The generative love of God was our origin. The embracing love of God sustains our existence. The inextinguishable love of God is the only hope for our fulfillment. Love is our identity and our calling, for we are children of Love. Created from love, of love and for love, our existence makes no sense apart from Divine love.
We are our best selves and we have our best shot at enduring the worst times when we are rooted and grounded in Divine love. This is the very thing Paul prays for:
14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Eph. 3:14-19 ESV)
This is Paul’s great desire, that we might experience life as those rooted and grounded in Divine love. That rooting, that grounding, is what makes it possible to flourish even in the midst of hardship. Join me as we continue to explore how to do this and what this looks like.
