The Peculiar Flow

I want to tell this story honestly, even if honesty exposes me.

For the past few months, I’ve been smoking weed.

And for a while, I kept trying to figure out what I was supposed to feel about it.

I expected some massive conviction. Some dramatic moment where God thundered, “Stop.” I expected shame to become unbearable. I expected Him to distance Himself from me until I got myself together.

Instead, something completely different happened.

I met the heart of God there.

Not because He was endorsing everything I was doing.

But because He refused to abandon me while I was doing it.

And I think that distinction changed something in me forever.

There were moments when I felt dirty.

I knew I wasn’t always showing up as the clearest version of myself. I knew there were times I was mentally impaired when I could have been present. There were things I wanted to pray about, create, write, build, study, hear, or simply sit with God about—and sometimes I had already altered my ability to fully do that.

And yet I kept waiting for Him to disappear.

I waited for the rejection.

I waited for that cold spiritual silence I thought would tell me, You knew better, so now figure it out yourself.

But He didn’t leave.

He came closer.

And that wrecked me more than condemnation ever could.

Because I realized God wasn’t standing at a distance waiting for me to become clean enough to deserve His presence.

He was loving me while I struggled.

Patient with me while I wrestled.

Gentle with me while I figured out why I was reaching for something outside of myself in the first place.

He wasn’t scared of my mess.

And His love wasn’t fragile enough to be destroyed by my struggle.

That is the part I don’t want to dilute.

I thought my imperfection would introduce me to God’s rejection.

Instead, it introduced me to His patience.

I Still Don’t Have the Testimony People Might Expect

Here is where I need to be especially honest.

I still don’t have some huge conviction that marijuana itself is this inherently evil thing.

That isn’t what happened for me.

My conviction became more personal than that.

I began realizing that God created me whole.

And every time I told myself I needed weed to feel creative, peaceful, spiritual, relaxed, inspired, interesting, or like myself, I was quietly agreeing with the idea that sober me was somehow incomplete.

And I don’t believe that anymore.

I am not less creative without it.

I am not less deep without it.

I am not less funny without it.

I am not less capable of rest without it.

I am not less connected to myself without it.

And I am certainly not less capable of meeting God without it.

God made a whole person before I ever picked anything up.

I think I needed to remember her.

Then Another Question Started Bothering Me

What if God needs me?

Not because He is incapable without me, obviously.

But what if there is something He has entrusted to me?

A word.

A person.

An idea.

A prayer.

A piece of writing.

A moment of discernment.

A conversation.

An assignment.

What if I am supposed to be available for my Yah’s business and I have intentionally made myself unavailable?

That became difficult for me to ignore.

There are things I cannot do at full capacity when my mind is impaired.

And I don’t want to spend my life asking God to bless the portion of me I happened to leave available.

I want Him to have all of me.

Clear.

Present.

Listening.

Available.

I Don’t Want to Keep Giving God My Leftovers

This may sound strange, but eventually I started thinking about my work differently.

God has given me things to create.

Words to write.

Ideas to steward.

People to serve.

And I don’t want to continually hand Him work created through a fog and say,

Here. I hope You like it.

I don’t want to submit what feels like dirty work simply because I know He loves me enough to receive me anyway.

His grace isn’t permission for me to give Him less.

His grace makes me want to give Him more.

That’s the part I was missing.

I spent so much time thinking giving something up for God was supposed to feel like deprivation.

Like God would point at something I loved and say, Give Me that so you can prove you love Me.

But this feels completely different.

I’m not walking away because I’m terrified He will punish me if I don’t.

I’m walking away because I fell in love with the heart I met while I was struggling.

And now I don’t want to hurt that heart.

I don’t want to abuse His patience just because I discovered how deep it is.

I don’t want to treat His unconditional love like an excuse to live beneath what He’s calling me into.

Love Did What Shame Couldn’t

That’s probably the biggest revelation in all of this.

Shame couldn’t make me surrender.

Fear couldn’t make me surrender.

Rules couldn’t make me surrender.

Trying to force myself couldn’t make me surrender.

But love?

Love made me want to put it down.

Because when you finally understand that God isn’t threatening to abandon you, obedience starts feeling different.

I’m not frantically cleaning myself up so He will stay.

He stayed.

That’s why I want to change.

I’m not quitting so He will love me.

He loved me through it.

And now that I know what His love feels like, I want to be free enough to respond to it completely.

There may be people who read this and judge me for ever smoking.

There may be people who think I shouldn’t say this publicly.

There may even be Christians uncomfortable with the fact that I can talk about marijuana without turning it into some dramatic testimony of evil.

That’s okay.

Because this isn’t really a testimony about weed.

It’s a testimony about God.

About the God I expected to leave.

The God I expected to reject me.

The God I thought would become disgusted when I couldn’t immediately force myself into obedience.

And the God who instead sat with me long enough for me to discover that I didn’t need the thing I was afraid to surrender.

I thought surrender would reveal how much God wanted to take from me.

Instead, the struggle revealed how unwilling He was to let go of me.

And now?

I want to be available.

I want a clear mind.

I want all of myself present for whatever He’s asking me to build.

I don’t want limits on my obedience when His love for me has had no limits.

So I’m putting it down.

Not because God left me there.

Because He didn’t.

And I love Him too much to pretend that didn’t change me.