Befriending Your MonstersSýnishorn

What (Not) to Expect about Your Monster 

Don’t expect your monsters to just disappear—at least not on this side of heaven. The apostle Paul never pretended to have access to a silver bullet. In Second Corinthians 12, Paul writes the church of his failed attempt to remove his monster, telling them that he repeatedly begged God to remove “a thorn” from his side, yet it never departed.

If the apostle Paul couldn’t convince God to remove his monster, maybe we shouldn’t expect ours to be eradicated either. That doesn’t mean there can’t be improvement in learning how to deal with the monster, making the pull less effective. We must not be deceived about our ability to vanquish our monsters forever; instead, we must befriend them. 

Paul prayed for the absence of a thorn but what he received was the presence of a grace that made the thorn bearable. Similarly for us, salvation rarely looks like the absence of the dark pull; instead, salvation is experienced in the presence of a glimmer of light, encouraging us to place our next step in the darkened room. Deliverance reflects itself in our ability to recognize light where darkness once stood. 

Faith gives us the presence of the Holy Spirit Who keeps us moving forward one step at a time. For those still holding to the false belief in a silver bullet, there’s an extra step required for befriending our monsters: we must first mourn the loss that there is no silver bullet.

We mourn that we will never get enough stuff to fill our cracked souls.

We mourn the continued presence of the voice tempting us to identify ourselves with our successes or failures.

Healthy mourning might look like forgiving the parent who gave you the predisposition to this issue, the spouse who helped the monster flourish in your soul, or the boss who manipulated your monster to get you to do as they wanted.

Maybe healthy mourning requires you to forgive yourself.

Maybe it even includes forgiving God, who hasn’t removed your monster.

Once you’ve started the mourning process, you can move forward because a realistic way to befriend your monster exists. I hope our time points you to an unseen Power at work within you, God’s Spirit, shaping you into a truer picture of who you are created to be. My prayer for you is that you would follow His leading.

Prayer: God, help me to mourn what is lost and not mine to possess in order to make room for the life you call me to live. In Jesus’s name, amen.