How to Set Captives Free

There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall into this vice–the demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and of generosity.”

Abraham Lincoln

Several years ago I was at a party where I encountered friends I had not seen in in a long time. One friend in particular had gained so much weight I did not recognize her. I suppose she thought me rude when we were talking because I didn’t engage as I normally do with an old friend. Sure, she seemed familiar but because I wasn’t aware of our shared history, I politely conversed with her in ignorance, too embarrassed to ask her name.

After talking to her husband, I mentioned to mine that I was looking for her. He said, “But Margaret, you’ve been talking to her for the past half an hour.” I was mortified. She was so physically altered that I simply did not know what to say; especially in light of my radical weight loss.

I know all too well the helpless feeling of gaining weight and running into someone I haven’t seen in a while. The freight train of negative thoughts was always quick to crush me under its wheels.

Please don’t mention my weight. Please don’t ask me what happened; I don’t know what happened myself. I don’t want to talk about it. Please don’t make me talk about it. All while smiling and trying to reminisce.

If the person was a close friend I would make excuses. “I’ve been under a lot of pressure at work. The baby isn’t sleeping. I’ve been sick. I had surgery. I have a slow metabolism.” When I look back at all the excuses I made over the years for why I gained weight, I consider them fuel for the fire that burns in me now to maintain my liberty from that wicked master: Gluttony.

Abraham Lincoln hated slavery. He despised the man in chains, held captive by a militant master. He saw alcoholism as no lesser an evil. As I read his speech to the Springfield Washingtonian Temperance Society on February 22, 1842, I couldn’t help but wonder what he would think of my fellow American’s and their propensity to eat. Would he ask for the “temples and altars, where the rites of his idolatrous worship have long been performed, and where human sacrifices have long been wont to be made” to be “daily desecrated and deserted” as he did of the vice of drink?

The addict does not generally view his addiction with such dire terminology. We kiss the monster that curses us for another hit of bliss even as we die in its embrace. While enthralled, we are blind to the chains that bind us even as we secretly long for someone to set us free.

Discipline is the key to freedom.

Discipline has been a dear friend in recent months as I encountered challenges both mentally and physically. A Tuesday night last week found me stressed out and in the aisle at Sam’s Club craving peanut M&M’s. I touched the large container on the shelf and started to salivate. I had been crying over an especially awful encounter with my son’s principal and his unkind treatment of my son when I dropped by the store to buy dog food. Instead, I stood sobbing in the candy aisle while I considered how comforting it would be to drown my sorrows in sugar-soaked drops of chocolate. Instead, I immediately stopped and texted my friend Becky.

“Pray for me! I am sorely tempted to flush this sh*tty day down the toilet with some M&M’s.”

She responded, “Get out of there now!”

And I did. I didn’t even pause to wonder what all the shoppers thought of the galloping girl with the 30 pound bag of dog food slung over her shoulder. I did this because I know candy will not heal the emotional pain, it will only add another burden to a load that is already too heavy to bear.

Abraham Lincoln is rightly revered for his dedication to abolish slavery. I was unaware, until today, of how favorably he viewed the temperance movement. But what most struck me about this speech was how he viewed the religious ilk of his day in response to that epidemic. He said, “They [are supposed to] have no sympathy of feeling or interest with those very persons whom it is their object to convince and persuade.”

And he empathized with those afflicted.

For the man suddenly or in any other way to break off from the use of drams, who has indulged in them for a long course of years and until his appetite for them has grown ten or a hundredfold stronger and more craving than any natural appetite can be, requires a most powerful moral effort. In such an undertaking he needs every moral support and influence that can possibly be brought to his aid and thrown around him. And not only so, but every moral prop should be taken from whatever argument might rise in his mind to lure him to his backsliding. When he casts his eyes around him, he should be able to see all that he respects, all that he admires, all that he loves, kindly and anxiously pointing him onward, and none beckoning him back to his former miserable “wallowing in the mire.”

Abraham Lincoln

Discipline has taught me that denial of the gluttonous impulse is the highest form of freedom. I asked God to give me a deeper love–a love that would satisfy the true longings of my heart the way candy, soda or fast food never did. In order to break the chains of that horrible addiction, I had to repeatedly deny my baser instincts and cling to something good. I clung to Jesus who promised to “never leave or forsake me”. This true love was more powerful than food or drink. It still is. And I had good friends, like my Becky, who surrounded me with love and support.

Today, if you are that friend who has put on so much weight as to be unrecognizable, if you feel the weight of years held captive to cravings of unnatural appetites that refuse to be satisfied, take heart! Pray for God to teach you discipline. Pray to be an avid pupil. And begin the thrilling and rewarding journey that will forever transform your life.

Abe Lincoln was a warrior who fought valiantly to free slaves. I like to think he is cheering me on from Heaven. If you are reading this and trying to find hope, I believe he is cheering you on too!

And when the victory shall be complete, when there shall be neither a slave nor a drunkard on the earth, how proud the title of that land which may truly claim to be the birthplace and the cradle of both those revolutions that shall have ended in that victory.

Abraham Lincoln