Not everyone has the capacity to put a stop to the kinds of unhealthy addictions they are burdened with. Compulsive eaters, gamblers, hoarders, alcoholics, and those hooked on drugs sometimes eventually reach the point where they realize this. It's tough to change your own habit patterns, let alone your own personality traits. It's the lucky ones that overcome, and so often this is done with outside help from counselors, clergy or in extreme cases psychiatrists. But there is no guarantee that anything can help someone help themselves, and that's what it takes to overcome an unwelcome trait. And no one really knows how or why this comes about, if it ever does.

          Very often people just get confused. They don't know which way to turn. They don't know what's right from what's wrong. And they do things they ordinarily wouldn't do and think about things in a way that is not their custom. One great purpose in life might simply be to try to overcome the stresses associated with plain old living. The Rev. Kathy McCarthy has some ideas on the widespread and sometimes overwhelming stress so many of us find ourselves experiencing, which might be one cause of some of the bad habits we put up with.

        The Reverend thinks maybe all of us are simply wondering "how to retain a calm and peaceful mind." And one thing we need to do in this search is to "stay grounded in truth" which "takes discipline and courage", then not doubt that truth. We should hold this truth dear, and recognize our role in what we can accomplish, not what is out of our reach. It would be wise to recognize that Universal Truth is hard to locate, let alone understand. Focusing on what is true as we see it, in our life, should be one goal. There is so much happening nowadays, so much confusion, so many conflicts, in our lives and on the battlefields around the world. Half-truths and outright lies spoken by people we should be able to trust. We all know these sources of our anxiety: the economy, the breakup of the family, even more, the re-defining of marriage, mindless slaughter by young people in schools, vindictive lawmakers, judges inconsistently failing to enforce the rule of law. The list never ends!
        Rev. McCarthy may have some good advice, taken from the scriptures. Go to some "deserted place and rest awhile." Maybe this will be a path to the "stilling of the outer storm of so many mixed messages and so much distress." To find a little well deserved inner peace, maybe it's our job to find such a place, to go there, and rest awhile.