Letter to Weakness

I have asked a few of my clients if they would be willing to post their stories and other writing they thought would be helpful to other individuals. The following is a copy of M.D.'s "letter to my enemy":

To my countless enemies – Satan and your fellow demons,

You entered into my life just as I became a teenager, taking advantage of my naive nature, tense upbringing, and uncommunicative family. You provided a numbing release that at first seemed harmless and natural. As the weeks turned into years and my childhood passed by, you always stuck around. Many times you weren’t openly aggressive in your tactics, and many times I even thought I had already defeated you just as you undoubtedly wanted me to believe. Yet eventually I always silently slipped back into your grasp. I was often able to resist you for periods time – such as before and after priesthood ordinations, my brother's death, and entering college - yet you always found a way of forcing your way back into my thoughts and actions. Through it all, you always were there – a manufactured way of letting go of my persistent anxieties and promenaded expectations and feeling what I mistakenly thought was a dependable pleasure and release.

Yet ultimately, you have only provided a stinging sorrow instead of pleasure and imprisonment rather than release. If you were supposedly “helping me” in some distorted way, why do I now see you have only caused me emotional and spiritual grief? Through consistent relapses, you continually have gashed away at my self-esteem, making me feel completely disconnected and isolated from others, even those who I love and desperately have wanted to trust. Rather than turning to others for help, I gradually emotionally detached myself from those who mattered most. You turned me into a hypocrite and a liar, teaching me to conceal my problems from others and to put on the mask that everything is perfect and under control. You impaired my relationship with the Lord, and filled that hole inside me where the Spirit should have been with a harrowing emptiness that often made me afraid to simply be alone and think for too long. I’d try filling that void with worldly things such as music or school, yet the despair always reared its head. You contorted and twisted my self-image to a point where I hardly recognized who I was anymore, acting completely contrary to the gospel-oriented life and goals I’ve wanted my entire life. Too many times I have felt like the elephant in the sacrament meeting, the sinner among my friends, and the deceiver within my family. Every time I’d been cheerfully and harmlessly asked why I had not left on my mission yet, I would either want to throw up or just blatantly walk away and skip the rest of church. And now as I progress into adulthood, you have restricted me from continuing on with the only things I want in my life. I couldn’t continue to walk down the halls of BYU knowing you’re still in control of me and that someone else should deserve my place if I can’t live the established high standards, I couldn’t serve a mission because of the amassed crippling shame you had singed into my identity, and I couldn’t even begin to think of being married in the temple with the way you crippled my relationships with others I care for. After seeing my own parent’s marriage crumble before me, all I want in my marriage is to be honest to my wife and the Lord, and with you that simply won’t happen.

But now I declare unto you, Satan and all others who are pitted against my salvation, NO MORE. The satisfaction you seemingly have in destroying and enslaving my life at first makes me furious, but then I realize how sad and pathetic I feel for you, because the one thing you and your countless followers have wanted and have fought for so desperately – to destroy my relationship with our Heavenly Father – ultimately is what will strengthen my relationship with Him to the point when I am one day ready to return to His loving arms, confident with the disciple and saint I have become. I’ve lost to you so many times, yet those lost battles will only make my success in overcoming you that much more sweet and empowering. By tying me down with this addiction, you have forced me to become dependent on my Heavenly Father and my Savior Jesus Christ, preparing me to become a humble and worthy Priesthood Holder, Missionary, Husband, and Father.

It is through the Atonement of Jesus Christ that I will completely overcome you. I have learned the hard way that I am not strong enough to defeat you on my own. That road has only led me deeper into your web of lies and deciet. Yet I will continually draw upon the power and love offered through Christ’s great Atoning Sacrifice, something you cannot defend against and I know is always extended to me if I will only humble myself to ask for it. You are powerless to the infinite effect of the Atonement and the Priesthood, and as I continue to get off my high horse of pride and get to work in living a Christ-centered life, you will have no power to influence my decisions or what stays in my mind. I will continue to educate myself on both your inaudible tactics in order to fortify myself, and, more importantly, on the tools provided by my God that I may use to expel you from all aspects of my life. You’ve had your run, but in the end you will only provide me with more spiritual endurance and acuity than I could have developed otherwise. Leaning on the power and support of my family, friends, fellow Sons of Helaman brothers, and most importantly on Christ, I will eradicate all the doubt and fear you have insinuated within my mind, and filling it’s void will be the love and confidence offered from Christ and His Atonement. I now fight not only for me, but for my future wife and children. Together we will live a happy, spiritual, and probably a difficult life, knowing how much you hate and will fight against my decisions, and through the ordinances of the gospel we will be worthily united and one day enter together into the Kingdom of our Father, sealed for eternity and redeemed through my Brother, Savior, and Redeemer – Jesus Christ. I will never give up or allow you to once again inflict the fear, doubt, and devastation you are so quick to deal.

So go ahead Satan, try your hardest. Rally your troops and amass all hell against me. Because I now fight with the full armor of God, and will always stand victorious as I fight alongside my Savior.