A New Resolution

Kicking the habit — and much more.

by Nancy Searle

It was a warm June evening, and the colors in the back yard had muted to a soft green. I spoke slowly. “God, I’m sorry that I tried to run my life without You for so long. I’m giving my life back to You. Do whatever You want.”

I looked around the porch. I didn’t feel any different. I wondered, though, how I’d look back on this moment. How much would my life change because of the decision I’d just made?

Fix-it list

I looked down at a piece of paper on which I’d listed the major problems I’d created in my life. God was certainly going to have His hands full with me. One item was smoking. I’d smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for the past fifteen years.

I folded up the list and shook a cigarette out of the pack. Smoking, I assumed, would be the first thing in my life that God would have me fix. Then God would have me work on other items on my list — my relationships with other people maybe, or how I felt about myself.

I had a lot to learn.

God did eventually heal me of smoking, but it didn’t happen in the way I thought. Cigarettes weren’t that important; learning to be in a relationship with God was essential. First, I needed to learn to wait on His timing, listen to His guidance, and depend on His strength.

His timing

“Should I quit smoking?” I asked my Aunt Nancy a short time later. She was a safe person to ask; I knew she often prayed for God’s guidance.

She looked at me for a moment with her calm gray-blue eyes. “Wait until God tells you to,” she said.

I thought about that. People were always telling me to quit. “Shouldn’t I go ahead and try?”

“Learning to listen to God is more important than anything else we can do,” she said. “You can trust Him, honey.”

I closed the screen door slowly as I left. Instead of quitting smoking, I had a new resolution: Learn to listen and wait for God.

His guidance

Over the next few months, I tried to give each small dilemma in my life to God. I wrote down problems that bothered me and then asked what He wanted me to do. I found that when I sought His guidance, He had no trouble communicating what He wanted. His solutions just weren’t the kind of changes I’d had in mind.

One afternoon I lied to a woman at work. When I got home, words began to thrum over and over in my mind: Call her and tell her that wasn’t true.

Call her now. God seemed to be talking to me. I knew there was no way I could be hearing my own voice.

Words appeared in my mind that I could use to ask her forgiveness. Finally, I knelt on the carpet. “God, if You want me to do this,” I said, “please make me.”

I stood up, lit a cigarette, and picked up the phone.

One night, I argued with my husband. Part of the argument was that I refused to admit I’d done anything wrong. As I stomped downstairs, I felt the impression of God’s voice inside me. Go upstairs and ask him for forgiveness.

I took my cigarettes with me as I trudged back upstairs. They seemed to help.

Discipline

God guided me into strange, new, and difficult behaviors. He led me to confess lies and ask for forgiveness. I had to learn how to treat other people with humility and truth.

It was an appalling experience.

A passage from Hebrews comforted me, and I read it over and over:

No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it (Hebrews 12:11, NIV).

Discipline, it seemed to say, was a form of love from God. It would never be easy, but I could hold on to a promise of a different life — that all the broken things inside me, one by one, would be healed.

New perception

By the time two years had passed, I could see waves of changes God had made in my life because of His guidance. I was gradually learning to be more real with other people. I still smoked, though, as much as ever.

But strangely, smoking wasn’t fun anymore. I started to hate being a bad example for kids. Plus, I was growing scared of the racking coughs that shook me in the morning. I realized that God was making another change in my life: a new perception of the habit itself.

Hopeless

Finally, I quit — but only for a week; it was harder than I’d thought. Six months later, I stopped for three days. A year later, I quit for two months. Like a baby who has learned to stand up, I could pull myself up and even take a few steps. I just couldn’t figure out how to walk.

One winter afternoon, I sat, slumped on the couch. The next day I planned to quit smoking again, but I had no faith in my ability to stop for good. It seemed hopeless.

I lit a cigarette and shook out the match. Here I was, a Christian now for five years. It was shameful, I thought, to be a Christian without any willpower.

His strength

I was glad when my friend Angie called. “I’m quitting smoking again tomorrow,” I told her, stubbing out my cigarette. “But I don’t know if I’ll be able to quit for good.”

“When I quit drinking,” she said, “I couldn’t do it either. I had to admit I couldn’t do it by myself.”

“Then how did you quit?”

“I prayed,” she said. “God’s job was to do the rest of it.”

I looked at the cigarettes next to me on the couch as I set down the phone. What had Angie said to do? My job was to pray; God’s job was to do everything else. “God,” I said aloud, “quitting smoking is too hard. I can’t do it myself. You’ll have to do it all for me.”

And He did.

Friends swept in with ideas of how to think about time, providing sourdough starters, fishing destinations, and Bible studies. My mother-in-law prayed for me daily, helping me keep going through long weekends. Aunt Nancy said a prayer for me. Afterward, the constant torment inside me seemed to be gone, replaced with a new kind of quietness.

Slowly, miserably, I moved toward a life of more freedom and health.

Rebellion

However, one afternoon on a long car trip, I felt rebellious. I’ve had enough of this, I thought, and veered off the highway toward a convenience store.

I asked the man behind the counter for a pack of cigarettes. “You know,” I told him, “I haven’t had a cigarette in eight months.”

The store clerk looked at me stonily over the register. “I once quit for two years,” he said. “I started back again. Now I smoke as much as ever.”

His words made me pause. Did I really want to do this? I looked blindly around the counter and found a pack of mints instead.

In the car, I opened the mints and thought about the conversation with the clerk with a kind of wonder. How did it happen that at the one store I’d picked along the highway, the store clerk would warn me against smoking? Who had given him the words?

Transformation

Quitting smoking turned out to be like all the other changes God had made in my life. The change itself was good, but it wasn’t as important as learning to trust Him.

Years ago, after my prayer on the back porch, I’d wondered how people transform as Christians. Now I knew. The answer is that we don’t change ourselves at all. God does: in His time, way, and strength.