Did We Just Become Best Friends?
Brennan is fun, energetic, has a great job and is easy to be around. We have been meeting now for almost a year and, over the past few months, he has seen freedom from his struggle with alcohol. He is free to be who God created him to be and to no longer project a false image.
At Brigham Young University, psychologist Julianne Holt-Lunstad has been looking at the positive effects of relationships, trying to answer the simple question: Does social connection reduce the risk of premature death?
At Unbound Grace we believe that relationships are paramount to healing — we all need healing and we all need relationships. Our focus is relationships founded in grace and truth (John 1) and free of judgment (John 8).
Holt-Lunstad spent over a year analyzing more than 140 studies, and when the results came in, she was amazed: according to her findings, people with strong relationships are not just less likely to die early than those with weak relationships; they are a full 50 percent less likely to die early.
To put that into perspective, the impact of weak social connection is pretty much equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. And it’s a greater risk factor for early death than obesity.
Remember Brennan? Not Will Ferrell’s character from Step Brothers but the awesome guy I meet with.
He was lonely.
His loneliness manifested itself through drinking, social media binging and self-bullying (or negative self-talk).
Brennan was using alcohol to hide shame; his shame was thriving in loneliness. His social media abuse was perpetuating the downward spiral of false identity. His dignity and value as a human degraded to the point that he could not be in social settings without alcohol and, at the same time, alcohol was sabotaging his life. Brennan’s life was a wreck; the lies he believed from social media left him to feel desperate and hopeless. The lies of comparison blew up his:
Self-image / self-worth – “I’m not as good looking as…”; “I’m unattractive and gross compared to…”
Gifts from the Lord – Comparing your blessings (house, car, clothes, etc.) with the blessings that someone else has…
Fun – “They are always out at a party or dinner…”; “Why didn’t I get invited…”
You get the idea. We’ve been there to some degree.
We all have the tendency as humans to
Tell ourselves lies
take these lies as truth,
build on this false truth and
create our narrative from this brokenness then
spiral into some form of addiction (sin) for comfort.
None of us are above this pattern. Most of us can immediately think of how we have experienced it.
Our youngest daughter, Kate, is 18 months old. She is a blast! She runs through our yard like Derrick Henry through a defense. She loves to run down the sloped walkway and, after some dramatic falls, she understands she needs help.
In the way only a young child can, she holds out her hand and I am drawn to it like Joe Biden to an ice cream cone. As she ambles down the walkway clinging desperately to my hand for stability, she knows she will not fall. Left to her own strength she will certainly lose grasp of my hand – but like any loving father, I will NOT let her go, and she could not escape my hold even if she tried.
In “Gentle and Lowly”, Dane Ortlund writes,
“So with Christ. We cling to him, to be sure. But our grip is that of a two-year-old amid the stormy waves of life. His sure grasp never falters. Psalm 63:8 expresses the double-sided truth: ‘My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.’”
We are like Kate grasping our Father’s hand. We are the ones prone to wander. He is the one who give us his unbound grace.
Praise God that our friend Brennan is doing so well. His loneliness has been met with Christ. In his imperfect recovery, much like ours, Brennan now understands that as his soul clings to God, and it is God who upholds him.
What is your story?
Would you like to work with people like Brennan? We need your help!
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Would you like to start a conversation about recovery or mental health? Please contact us.
FYI — because of the generosity of others, all of our services are completely free.
