My wife and I are in Montenegro at the moment.
It’s a small(er) country off the Adriatic Sea, East of Italy.
The goal of this trip for us was to disconnect from our very busy lives in the U.S.
During this time, we’ve spent time reading, in prayer, and enjoying the “slow” life — and one of the things that both my wife Sierra and I hoped to get from this trip was back to a good spot in our spiritual lives.
Not that one needs to take a trip to do that, but we just thought with the crazy year we’ve had with my Cardiac Arrest, ups & downs for work and relationships that it would be a nice experience.
As I was reflecting today (which is now 9/7 12:46PM) and reading I had an interesting thought and connection.
My most viewed YouTube video (just over 700K views) is about a topic that many in the world struggle with.
Lust.
My video is not very deep — but it was meant to be a short and quick encouragement to those who are dealing with it actively.
One biblical example that people usually give when talking about lust is the story of David & Bathsheba.
If you’re unaware, while David was supposed to be at war and leading the armies of Israel he stayed back and fell into lust with a married woman, in whom he had her husband, Uriah, murdered as a cover up.
Now, this example is often used to talk about lust & the consequences of it, as David’s life turned to shambles for awhile afterwards.
But as I’ve been reading about various topics while I’ve been on this trip, one of the places I stopped at was about trauma.
Trauma in the sense that there are events that transpire in our lives, either as children, or adults or in between that can shape our identity and how we think about ourselves and react to certain situations.
When we are stuck emotionally through these traumatic events and haven’t found the time and space to heal, it can lead to rash decisions.
And as I was reading and reflecting… This stood out to me:
Lust usually stems from something deeper.
It’s the symptom of the problem, and not the problem itself.
I think this is exampled if we re-look at the story of David & Bathsheba.
David usually handled the trauma in his life well.
We tend to think that David didn’t have a lot of it because we usually think of his victories — but he had a lot.
He was overlooked by his Father.
Despised by his oldest brothers.
Saul tried to pin David to a wall with a spear.
David’s promised wife, and actual wife were given to other men.
David lead the armies of Israel in battle then were pursued by those same armies.
David defeated the Philistines yet had to hide with them to avoid being captured.
There’s many more examples of the things that David had to go and live through.
For the most part, he handled these pretty well.
But there was one traumatic event that he was emotionally stuck on that lead to a huge hold onto his life.
On David’s wedding day, Merab, the daughter of Saul that David was supposed to marry, was given to another man.
We see how hurt David was in 2 Samuel 12 as he responded to Nathan’s parable.
David had done what he bitterly judged and what he refused to give.
What King Saul had just done to David while he was King, David had done to Uriah, Bathesheba’s Husband while he was King.
The consequences of David’s actions that costed him almost everything was more about David’s unforgiveness and judgment toward Saul, and his inability to heal from that trauma than the lust that was present.
If we’re unable to heal, forgive, and move past these events in our lives, sometimes we are bound to repeat the same things.
Even if it will cost us dearly.
—Nils