It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye
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I kissed my father goodbye as I left that January morning to spend the day with friends. When I got back home that evening, my sister greeted me at the door with the news that dad was dead. Less than two months before, the cardiologist, a relative, had told him: “The cigarette you smoked before you came in is to be your last one, if you want to live much longer.” Some forty years of smoking had caused too much damage, and on this January day a massive heart attack took his life. With his death, he joined his father and four of his brothers, all of whom died of the same condition.
You would think that with that family background one would never touch a cigarette, and yet, within a few weeks of his death, I smoked for the first time. I was nauseous, dizzy, the color drained from my face. My mother saw me and asked if I was OK; I lied: “Yes,” I told her, “I’m fine…must have been something I ate.” I didn’t like that feeling; and yet, that was the first of hundreds of cigarettes I smoked during the next few years. I did my best to quit several times, only to begin again. I could echo the words of Mark Twain: “It’s easy to quit smoking. I’ve done it hundreds of times.” Within a few hours of making that resolution, and of throwing the last pack of cigarettes away, I was driving to the store to buy a new pack before I would go crazy. I can’t count the times I followed that ritual: Quit, throw pack away, buy a new pack, start again.
I never went to a Five Day Plan to Stop Smoking, or any type of treatment program. I tried to do it alone… and continued to fail alone. . . until the Spring of 1976 when I started attending the Seventh-day Adventist Church. No one told me I needed to quit; I knew it. No one told me how to do it; but this time, for the first time, I wasn’t doing it alone! This time there was no struggle! This time I didn’t quit for myself; I quit for Jesus – or Jesus quit for me! For the first time in three or so years I was free, no longer an addict to nicotine. Jesus removed the addiction, and more importantly, the desire.
Nicotine is the tobacco plant’s natural protection from being eaten by insects. Its widespread use as a farm crop insecticide is now being blamed for killing honey bees. A super toxin, drop for drop nicotine is more lethal than strychnine or diamondback rattlesnake venom and three times deadlier than arsenic.1 Each puff on a cigarette sends nicotine to the brain within 10 seconds. Soon the brain’s chemical structure actually changes; it becomes hooked into wanting more and more nicotine to make the effects last. Over 13 million smokers try to quit each year, yet less than 5% of those who attempt to quit unaided are cigarette-free after 6-12 months for one simple reason: a nicotine addiction is harder to beat than most people realize. Nicotine from smoking changes the structure and function of your brain. When the brain stops getting the nicotine it’s used to, you begin feeling strong withdrawal cravings. You think you want a cigarette when, actually, your brain wants nicotine.
More difficult to break than the chemical dependence is the psychological addiction because the repeated action has built very strong pathways between the neurons in the brain causing the person to continue to reach for the cigarettes in their purse or in their pocket even when they know there aren’t any there.
As a pastor, I had the great honor of helping many people win their victory over cigarette addiction as they prepared for their baptism. I encouraged them with several texts from the Bible, beginning with the words of John: “Whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith” (1 John 5:4). Because God gives us the victory, we must accept it as a fact. Paul wrote, “Reckon (consider) yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus, our Lord” (Romans 6:11). At the same time, because God has given them the victory when they ask (Mathew 7:7-8), they must dispose of all cigarette materials and paraphernalia (cigarettes, ashtrays, matches, etc.), or as Paul writes, “Make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts” (Romans 13:14).
Yes, for those addicted to cigarettes it’s hard to say goodbye to that deadly habit; and yet, as a young orphan I can testify that it is much harder to have to say goodbye to a loved one who has died because of their addiction. Think of what making this choice will do to you and to your family.