Hungry, Hungry Hippo – Dealing With Our Addictions
Marbles go flying everywhere and you pound on the lever as fast as you can to grab them. There are squeals of laughter and groans of disappointments as the marbles are counted. It is how the game is won. Those hippos are lunging out to grab marbles, as many marbles as they can hold and collect to win the game. It is funny that as soon as the game is done we dump all those marbles in the middle of the board and start grabbing again. It is a very addicting game when you are playing it with your kids. They love watching you count everyone’s marbles at the end of each game.
That is how addictions usually sneak up on us. It is all about having a little fun and then all of the sudden we find ourselves trying to grab as many marbles as we can. The strange thing is that in the game we will go crazy trying to grab all the marbles that we can put in our hippos mouth. It is a fun game to play and the excitement of grabbing up marbles can simply take over your brain and emotions. You just have to grab one more marble and then another and another until suddenly all the marbles are gone. That is when it all hits home and you realize a count is taken and then all those marbles are dumped back in the middle and someone yells go and you are off grabbing marbles and trying to get all of them that you can get before someone else gets them.
That game can be very addicting and fun. But, it can also be a metaphor for life and the struggle many of us find ourselves in each day. Addiction is tough word to talk about, but an even harder way to live a life. We see addicts and think how horrible it would be to live that way and yet we can all fall prey to a temptation that takes over our lives. We can see addiction in others but sometimes we need to take a closer look at ourselves addiction is only a decision or two from being our story.
In the book of Judges chapters 13 – 16 is a story about a guy who’s addiction ended up costing him everything. You may have heard about him, his name is Samson. He was born to a couple who could not have children and they prayed. God gave them Samson and they dedicated him as a Nazarite back to God. That meant he could not cut his hair, drink wine or touch a dead body. They raised him following this vow, but as Samson grows his desires get the best of him.
Samson had a problem with an active libido that had him chasing women and catching them whenever he could. He first sees a woman and begs his parents to set them up. He falls in “love” but she betrays him to her country men. Being one to believe that if you fall off a horse you get back he sought out another Philistine woman and that ends badly for him and several other people. Then here comes Delilah shuffling down the street. He falls madly head over heels in love with her. The Philistine leaders find out and go to her so they can find a weakness in Samson. They offer her money to find out the source of his strength. She begs and he tells her a couple of stories and she ends up embarrassed when he gets up and crushes his attackers. Then she pulls the whole guilt trip and cries and says he doesn’t love her.
Samson then breaks down and tells her that his strength is based on never having his haircut. Really it was in keeping the vows that he had made as a Nazarite. She gets him some wine and then he falls asleep. While his is sleeping she has someone give him a haircut and then he is stuck. His addiction to the love of a woman ends up costing him his eyes and later his life. It is the story of a man who could not control his lust and in the end it was his undoing. Samson’s story is not just his story but it is one that is lived out every day all around us. Sometimes we are even the stars of the play.
Samson is not alone in getting caught in the trap of addiction and having his life ruined by a desire that he could not control. Once again though that is our story and can be our story if we do not stop and take a breath. Addiction comes from a desire that goes unchecked in our lives. Samson’s was a love of women. Some people become addicted because they are looking for something to fill a hole in their lives. They were not given what was needed as a kid or later in life they are trying to find some meaning to all the things that go on in life. It is a desire that goes bad that leads us to a path that is hard to recover from. Those marbles just keep taunting and calling us to grab them.
These desires grab our wills and our hearts at times and we just cannot help but keep grabbing those marbles. It is just a part of us, and it does not matter why we are addicted. It is to face the fact that we are addicted to something that is either controlling our life or will soon be what turns our life upside down. To wake up to the fact that we are just a couple of choices away from having our lives go in a direction we would have never believed possible.
I just have a feeling that addiction does not just happen to us at times. It does not make addiction worse if it is a choice or something we inherit from our families. Becoming addicted is a nightmare that many times we just cannot wake up from.