I sat at the kitchen table, staring at a pack of cigarettes. I took one out of the pack and lit it. After tomorrow, I thought, I will never light a cigarette again. Tomorrow I’m going to quit smoking.

I had good reason to hope for this. When I had given control of my life to God two years before, He had straightened it out as if it were a broken bone that needed to be reset. He had changed everything, it seemed, except for my addiction to smoking. I had assumed that cigarettes would be the first thing to go, but it seemed that God and I didn’t always have the same set of priorities. Only in the past few weeks had He begun altering my attitudes toward cigarettes. He did this by making it harder to shut out the truth.

Daily denial

I woke up every morning with the same thought: I had to quit smoking. I’d lie in bed, listening to the air wheezing in and out of my chest. Was I getting emphysema? Cancer? It was becoming hard to breathe. I’d sit up in bed, push the thoughts aside, and reach for a cigarette. But the ideas glimmered right under consciousness, and they were growing stronger.

The reality of actually quitting, though, frightened me. I had smoked since I was 17. At 33, I averaged two or three packs of cigarettes a day. I couldn’t smoke at work, so I chain-smoked the rest of the time. I’d get up an hour early in the morning to get in a half pack of cigarettes before I left for work. When my mother underwent chemotherapy, I’d leave her and go smoke by the back door of the cancer center, avoiding the eyes of the patients as they came in the door. I was good at that. Lord knows I had avoided the thought of what I was doing to myself for years.

I sat now at the kitchen table and smoked, trying to imagine a life without cigarettes. I had never quit for more than a few hours. How could I drive to work without smoking? What would I do with my hands at a party? Maybe God would feel sorry for me and give me an instant cure. I ground out the cigarette and prayed under my breath, “God, please help.”

Withdrawal

But quitting smoking was much worse than I’d thought. The days were endless. The maddening thought of cigarettes screamed over and over in my mind, like an alarm that couldn’t be turned off. Smoking was all I could think and talk about. Mostly I’d drape myself over the bed at the end of the day and cry and go to sleep by 7:30. It was humiliating to be so pathetic. It certainly wasn’t the final victory over sin for which I’d hoped.

By the seventh day, I caved in and bought a pack of smokes. I never wanted to quit again. It was too hard.

Quitting might have been hard, but I found that I wasn’t happy smoking anymore either. Over the next two years, I stopped and started five more times. I was like a little kid with a loose tooth. It hurt to wiggle it, but I couldn’t leave it alone.

 Do You Want to Quit?

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States. More than 440,000 people die each year from smoking, resulting in medical costs of more than $75 billion annually. Sadly, because 6.4 million children today will decide to smoke cigarettes in their adolescent years, they will die prematurely.

Regardless of these facts, many never attempt to quit their addiction to cigarettes or become discouraged in trying. If you’re one of these folks, plenty of help is available. The CDC Web site (www.cdc.gov/tobac-co) is a good place to start, with educational materials about tobacco use and resources to quit smoking. Among the titles of guides you can read online are “Pathways to Freedom: Winning the Fight Against Tobacco,” “Don’t Let Another Year Go Up in Smoke: Quit Tips,” and “I QUIT! What to Do When You’re Sick of Smoking, Chewing, or Dipping.”

The CDC Web site offers links to other sources that can support you in the fight against cigarette addiction: American Legacy Foundation – Quitting (http://women.americanlegacy.org), National Cancer Institute (www.smokefree.gov/), and the American Cancer Society (www.cancer.org). The American Lung Association (www.lungusa.org/) is another good resource for those who want to quit.– BA

Acceptance

Finally, I sat in church one morning, completely defeated. I should have been far enough along as a Christian to be able to give up something as stupid as cigarettes, but I wasn’t. I was afraid to ask God how He felt. He might make me instantly hurl my cigarettes on the altar and undergo another painful and spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to quit.

“God,” I finally said, “will You still love me if I’m never able to quit smoking?”

I stood up to sing the invitational hymn “Just As I Am.” We sang it every week, but this morning, for the first time, I really heard the words. I felt as though God were talking directly to me. I wasn’t supposed to clean myself up for God; that was His job. That was why Jesus died. I just needed to relax and let Him be in charge.

Quitting smoking, God seemed to say, is like losing baby teeth. As we grow as Christians, our old habits start to come loose. They are forced out by the new life within us, just as a new tooth will make a baby tooth loose. Each time I tried to quit, it was like wiggling a loose tooth, making it a little less attached at the root. I could trust that God was supplying everything I needed for growth: new life, new desires, and the increased ability to endure discomfort. My only job was to keep wiggling.

Sufficient strength

The next year, having given up on my own ability to quit smoking, I quit for the last time. When I abandoned reliance on my own strength, God could supply all the willpower I needed.

But it was still a miserable experience. Instead of an easy miracle, God gave me enough strength to get through each day until finally I didn’t think about cigarettes anymore. Looking back, I think that the very wretchedness of those six months had a purpose, creating a moat between cigarettes and me. I have never wanted to smoke again, because I never wanted to go through those months of withdrawal twice in one lifetime.

And so, after 20 years of heavy smoking, I was finally free. I learned that we grow just because we’re God’s kids, just by being around Him. Knowing Him is the truth, and the truth, after all, is what sets us free.