A little over two weeks ago, I made the decision to finally stop drinking caffeine. I have been addicted to coffee for 21 years and Diet Coke for a few years before that. I have known for a while that the Lord wants me to let this addiction go.
And yes, it is a full-blown addiction. Anytime we say “I can’t live without…” it is an addiction. While caffeine is a socially acceptable drug (even popes have spoken well of coffee), the Lord has made us for freedom. Total freedom includes not being addicted to coffee.
Oftentimes in prayer we discover that our addictions or crutches come from somewhere. I became fully addicted to black coffee and mochas specifically while I was dealing with PTSD from being a 9/11 relief worker. A combination of SSRIs and trauma led me to rely on sugar and coffee to make it through the day. As the addiction set in, my day started to center around getting my first cup of coffee or a mocha.
A few years ago, the Lord started putting it on my heart that I needed to abandon this addiction. Five miscarried babies, a period of illness for my husband, periods of my own illness, the death of my father, and a whole host of stressors over the years kept me clinging to a mocha a day. When the grief was most intense, it would be two mochas a day.
Grief and pain often lead us towards the things of this world for comfort, pleasure, and relief from the pain. While this may be acceptable on occasion, it becomes an impediment to our deeper spiritual, psychological, emotional, and physical healing when it becomes an addiction. It doesn’t have to be coffee. For some people it is social media, television, pornography, overeating, sex, shopping, gossip, alcohol, anger, illicit drugs, or a whole host of other worldly things that either become disordered through our abuse of them or are gravely sinful.
As I stepped out of campus ministry and collapsed after a very intense 14 months of death, family emergencies, and health issues on top of ministry, it became clear that the Lord needs to heal deep places within me. As I spent time in mental prayer at home and at Adoration, this nagging sense that I need to give up mochas and caffeine kept tugging at my heart.
Finally, a few days before I began my detox, the Lord made it plain to me at Adoration that I needed to let this addiction go. I asked for a passage from Sacred Scripture to confirm what I was hearing. I opened Matthew 19:16-30:
Now someone approached him and said, “Teacher, what good must I do to gain eternal life?”
He answered him, “Why do you ask me about the good? There is only One who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.”
He asked him, “Which ones?” And Jesus replied, “ ‘You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and your mother’; and ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
The young man said to him, “All of these I have observed. What do I still lack?”
Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to [the] poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
When the young man heard this statement, he went away sad, for he had many possessions.
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and said, “Who then can be saved?”
Jesus looked at them and said, “For human beings this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”
Then Peter said to him in reply, “We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us?”
Jesus said to them, “Amen, I say to you that you who have followed me, in the new age, when the Son of Man is seated on his throne of glory, will yourselves sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times more, and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.
This passage has resonated deeply with me for a few years. The rich young man is the example of someone who is following the law, but who is still attached to too much of the world. While wealth is the example the Lord uses, this lesson can be applied to any area of our lives that we don’t want to let go. The Lord has made us for full freedom and a life of abundance in Him. Anything we cling to ultimately keeps us from being completely free in Him.
One of my favorite quotes from St. John of the Cross is:
The soul that is attached to anything, however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of divine union. For whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird, it matters not, if it really holds it fast; for until the cord be broken, the bird cannot fly.
In that moment at Adoration, the Lord infused me with His love and a deeper desire to fly spiritually to Him.
I needed these graces. When I started my detox, I became very ill. I had the worst migraine I have had in 25 years. The headaches lasted well over a week. I have been in an intense brain fog for two weeks that is finally starting to get better as I write. I had conversations with people that I barely remember, and I walked away feeling like I talked way too much because I couldn’t focus. I haven’t felt like myself at all.
The first lesson I learned was that quitting cold turkey was making me violently ill, so I had to drink 1/4 to 1/3 of a cup of coffee each day initially. I also ate a lot more sugar in the beginning, which I only allowed to get through the withdrawal symptoms. This experience taught me that what I was doing to my body wasn’t good for it. I am highly sensitive to caffeine and medications. It’s why I got so sick from the detox. There is no way the Lord wanted me to ingest something that was impacting me this much. It has been a humbling experience.
The second lesson I learned is that it is only love that frees us from deeply held attachments and addictions. I couldn’t muscle my way out of the addiction or simply will it. This particular addiction is wrapped up in deep grief and pain. It is only the love of Christ that gave me the strength to finally cut ties with caffeine. When the withdrawal symptoms were at their worst, I was driving by one of the local Catholic churches, and I said to the Lord in the Tabernacle that I wanted freedom to love Him more and draw closer to Him. That prayer propelled me forward and continues to do so. Love is the only path out of this addiction. He has to be the reason I sever the cord keeping me enslaved to caffeine.
Christian asceticism is not a self-help project based on sheer willpower. We are weak and sinful. There are wounds that lay dormant or hidden within us until something brings them to the surface. Some of our attachments and addictions are tied to pain, grief, trauma, and wounds that the Lord wants to heal. We have “cords” that are keeping us from flying to deeper union with Christ. It is only love for Him and His love for us that can ultimately heal and free us. A heart on fire with love for Him can conquer any obstacle by His grace. It is love that will lead us to surrender everything to Him.
Photo by Lex Sirikiat on Unsplash
