The Three Leftover Pills I Didn't Flush After My Root Canal
The Three Leftover Pills I Didn't Flush After My Root Canal
I had a root canal three weeks ago, nothing dramatic, the kind of procedure half the people my age have had done without a second thought, and the dentist sent me home with a prescription for something stronger than I needed for the pain I actually had. I took two the first night, none the second, and the little amber bottle has been sitting in my medicine cabinet ever since behind the floss and the old cough syrup, with three pills still rattling around in the bottom of it. I am supposed to flush them. Every pamphlet in every doctor's office says so. I have told myself for three weeks that I will do it this weekend, and then the weekend comes and goes and the bottle is still there, and if I am honest with myself the reason has nothing to do with forgetting.
I am sixteen years sober from a life that nearly ended in exactly this kind of bottle, and I know better than almost anyone what three leftover pills can turn into for a man like me. I also know, from sixteen years of watching my own mind work, that the danger was never really the pills themselves sitting in a cabinet. The danger is that some nights, usually the hard ones, a quiet voice in me starts arguing that this time would be different, that a legitimate prescription for a legitimate injury would not count the same way, that I have earned the right to a little relief after everything I have carried this year. I have never once believed that argument all the way through. I have also never once been able to out-reason it standing alone in a dark bathroom at eleven at night, which is exactly where I found myself last Tuesday, bottle in hand, doing math I already knew the answer to.
Scripture does not pretend that pull is rare or shameful to name out loud. Paul told the Corinthians something I wish I had believed sooner in my life than I did. "No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it" (1 Corinthians 10:13, NKJV). Common to man, not a private shame belonging only to me. A way of escape already built into the moment, before I ever picked that bottle up off the shelf. Jesus warned His own disciples on the worst night of His life about this exact gap between what a man intends and what his body starts negotiating for when he is tired and alone. "Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak" (Matthew 26:41, NKJV). My spirit, if you had asked me at dinner, was completely settled. My flesh, alone in that bathroom with the light still off, was already building its case.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once finished closing that cabinet for good. I can tell myself accurately that I have sixteen years of evidence that this road only goes one direction for me, that my wife would be heartbroken, that I have grandchildren who call me on Sundays and need me sober more than I need one quiet night of relief. Every sentence is true, and none of them have ever once, by themselves, gotten my hand off that bottle. Temptation was never actually a math problem waiting on a stronger argument. It is a pull aimed at exactly the place reasoning cannot reach, and no amount of correct thinking has ever talked that pull all the way down on its own.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit offers that sixteen years of knowing better could never finish producing by itself. Paul does not tell the Galatians to fight the flesh harder with more willpower. He tells them to walk somewhere else entirely. "I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh" (Galatians 5:16, NKJV). Walk, present tense, a direction to keep moving in rather than a battle to keep refighting every single night from scratch. Paul names the same choice in blunter terms to the Romans, the daily decision underneath every other decision. "For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live" (Romans 8:13, NKJV). Put to death, not negotiated with, not reasoned into submission, but handed over to a Spirit who was never worn down by the same fatigue that wears me down by eleven at night.
I did not take anything out of that bottle Tuesday. What actually got me out of that bathroom was not a longer pep talk, it was a half-whispered prayer with no eloquence in it at all, and the memory of a verse I memorized decades ago in a very different kind of room. "Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You" (Psalm 119:11, NKJV). I did not have to go looking for that verse. It was already there, placed years earlier for exactly this kind of night. And when I finally did reach for God instead of the bottle, I was not creeping in ashamed after losing a fight. Hebrews says plainly what that reaching is actually for. "For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15, NKJV), which is why "let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:16, NKJV). Boldly, not quietly, not after the fact.
I flushed the pills this morning, finally, standing in the same bathroom in the daylight instead of the dark. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which bottle, which cabinet, which quiet argument you have been losing to on your worst nights. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on you winning that fight by sheer force of will, and He has promised a way of escape that shows up before you ever finish building your case for taking the other road. He will never leave you alone in that bathroom with the light still off.
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Scriptures used (NKJV): 1 Corinthians 10:13; Matthew 26:41; Galatians 5:16; Romans 8:13; Psalm 119:11; Hebrews 4:15; Hebrews 4:16.
I had a root canal three weeks ago, nothing dramatic, the kind of procedure half the people my age have had done without a second thought, and the dentist sent me home with a prescription for something stronger than I needed for the pain I actually had. I took two the first night, none the second, and the little amber bottle has been sitting in my medicine cabinet ever since behind the floss and the old cough syrup, with three pills still rattling around in the bottom of it. I am supposed to flush them. Every pamphlet in every doctor's office says so. I have told myself for three weeks that I will do it this weekend, and then the weekend comes and goes and the bottle is still there, and if I am honest with myself the reason has nothing to do with forgetting.
I am sixteen years sober from a life that nearly ended in exactly this kind of bottle, and I know better than almost anyone what three leftover pills can turn into for a man like me. I also know, from sixteen years of watching my own mind work, that the danger was never really the pills themselves sitting in a cabinet. The danger is that some nights, usually the hard ones, a quiet voice in me starts arguing that this time would be different, that a legitimate prescription for a legitimate injury would not count the same way, that I have earned the right to a little relief after everything I have carried this year. I have never once believed that argument all the way through. I have also never once been able to out-reason it standing alone in a dark bathroom at eleven at night, which is exactly where I found myself last Tuesday, bottle in hand, doing math I already knew the answer to.
Scripture does not pretend that pull is rare or shameful to name out loud. Paul told the Corinthians something I wish I had believed sooner in my life than I did. "No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it" (1 Corinthians 10:13, NKJV). Common to man, not a private shame belonging only to me. A way of escape already built into the moment, before I ever picked that bottle up off the shelf. Jesus warned His own disciples on the worst night of His life about this exact gap between what a man intends and what his body starts negotiating for when he is tired and alone. "Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak" (Matthew 26:41, NKJV). My spirit, if you had asked me at dinner, was completely settled. My flesh, alone in that bathroom with the light still off, was already building its case.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once finished closing that cabinet for good. I can tell myself accurately that I have sixteen years of evidence that this road only goes one direction for me, that my wife would be heartbroken, that I have grandchildren who call me on Sundays and need me sober more than I need one quiet night of relief. Every sentence is true, and none of them have ever once, by themselves, gotten my hand off that bottle. Temptation was never actually a math problem waiting on a stronger argument. It is a pull aimed at exactly the place reasoning cannot reach, and no amount of correct thinking has ever talked that pull all the way down on its own.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit offers that sixteen years of knowing better could never finish producing by itself. Paul does not tell the Galatians to fight the flesh harder with more willpower. He tells them to walk somewhere else entirely. "I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh" (Galatians 5:16, NKJV). Walk, present tense, a direction to keep moving in rather than a battle to keep refighting every single night from scratch. Paul names the same choice in blunter terms to the Romans, the daily decision underneath every other decision. "For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live" (Romans 8:13, NKJV). Put to death, not negotiated with, not reasoned into submission, but handed over to a Spirit who was never worn down by the same fatigue that wears me down by eleven at night.
I did not take anything out of that bottle Tuesday. What actually got me out of that bathroom was not a longer pep talk, it was a half-whispered prayer with no eloquence in it at all, and the memory of a verse I memorized decades ago in a very different kind of room. "Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You" (Psalm 119:11, NKJV). I did not have to go looking for that verse. It was already there, placed years earlier for exactly this kind of night. And when I finally did reach for God instead of the bottle, I was not creeping in ashamed after losing a fight. Hebrews says plainly what that reaching is actually for. "For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15, NKJV), which is why "let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:16, NKJV). Boldly, not quietly, not after the fact.
I flushed the pills this morning, finally, standing in the same bathroom in the daylight instead of the dark. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which bottle, which cabinet, which quiet argument you have been losing to on your worst nights. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on you winning that fight by sheer force of will, and He has promised a way of escape that shows up before you ever finish building your case for taking the other road. He will never leave you alone in that bathroom with the light still off.
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Scriptures used (NKJV): 1 Corinthians 10:13; Matthew 26:41; Galatians 5:16; Romans 8:13; Psalm 119:11; Hebrews 4:15; Hebrews 4:16.
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