I’m reading a memoir by Caroline Knapp entitled, “Drinking: A Love Story.” This section on the alcoholic’s genuine belief that they need the drink struck me, on how their emptiness needed filling and alcohol seemed to do the trick.
Page 60-61: “Most alcoholics I know experience that hunger long before they pick up the first drink, that yearning for something, something outside the self that will provide relief and solace and well-being. You hear echoes of it all the time in AA meetings, that sense that there’s a well of emptiness inside and that the trick in sobriety is to find new ways to fill it, spiritual ways instead of physical ones. People talk about their fixations with things—a new house they’re looking to buy, or a job they’re desperate for, or a relationship—as though these things have genuinely transformative powers, powers to heal and save and change their lives. Searching, searching: the need cuts across all backgrounds, all socioeconomic lines, all ages and sexes and races.”
“Part of this, of course, is culturally determined or, at least, culturally reinforced. The search for a fix, for a ready solution to what ails, has become a uniquely American undertaking, an ingrained part of consumer culture, as prevalent as the nearest diet workshop or plastic surgeon. In some ways alcoholism is the perfect late twentieth-century expression of that particular brand of searching, an extreme expression of the way so many of us are taught to confront deep yearnings. Fill it up, fill it up, fill it up. Fill up the emptiness; fill up what feels like a pit of loneliness and terror and rage; please just take it away now. Our society has become marvelously adept at presenting easy—or seemingly easy—solutions to that impulse; all you have to do is watch enough tv and the answers come, one by one: the right body weight will do the trick. The right house. A couple of beers.”
“I sometimes think of alcoholics as people who’ve elevated that search to an art form or a religion, filling the emptiness with drink, chasing drink after drink, sometimes killing themselves in the effort. They give up liquor, but the chase is harder to stop. This is why you hear people in AA meetings talk about thinking or acting alcoholically long after they’ve put down their last drink. The search for an external solution goes on: I want something. I need something.”
I suppose I was struck by how relatable these words were. I’ve never drank alcohol, and I suppose it’s for very good reason—what if I’d been one who saw it as the answer to the emptiness? A sobering thought for the rest of my days, I pray.
No, my filling hasn’t come through alcohol but I’ve tried lots of things to fill the emptiness. The latest diet trend. The greatest exercise program that’s sure to make my body goals a reality. I’ve had seasons where I thought a new set of throw pillows for my couches would certainly improve my life; I have linen closets full of folded and stacked pillow covers that never seemed to scratch the itch. Not to mention the “dream house” I was sure would make my life complete. Spoiler: it most definitely did not. I could go on, but I think you get the point (and I’d like to spare myself more embarrassment and vulnerability). While items on my list may not appear to be as damaging as alcohol, I’d venture to say they still represent an empty heart looking in all the wrong places to be filled.
It begs the question—is my life consistently shaped by Jesus? Is my heart open to Him and His ways, ready to be filled with His Word and His Spirit?
It’s no coincidence that my Bible plan had me in Ephesians 3:14-21 around the same time I was reading this section from Knapp’s memoir. Here is my prayer for me and for you—-
“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God, Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.”
I want to be filled to all the fullness of God. We all feel the emptiness here from time to time. When we do, let’s be alert to what types of things or people we turn to in order to find fulfillment. There’s only One person who can bring the fullness you crave—Jesus. He emptied Himself by coming to earth to die on a cross for the sins of the world. Let Him work in you for His good pleasure! There is nothing more fulfilling than that.
