Marathonology: Facing Life, And Finding Your Rhythm

By Lars Due-Christensen

Feed back from international leaders working with this concept has included recommendations as following: 'We all bring with us challenges, shortcommings, and hurts that tend to threaten our quality of life. This book is a profound insight into human condition. No matter what culture, color of skin or social class, everyone who decides to take the journey towards freedom as suggested in the steps, will receive tools to cope with hurts and destructive patterns.'
For many people this book has been a door opener for the world of great tools and principles of the 12 steps. For people who are already familiar with the 12 steps, it has been a way of exploring the process with Jesus Christ as their higher power.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lars Due-Christensen
• Release date: Sep 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9788799463381

Lars Due-Christensen

I am Lars. Married to Mette with three grown up children. I have Masters degree in Philosophy from the University of Copenhagen and have been working as pastor and counselor for nearly three decades. In 2006 I designed a biblebased twelve step course which has now become a national initiative with all kinds of Christian Churches using the curriculum and course design.I have also been heading the start up of a Christian School in the southern part of greater Copenhagen. At the School it was my task, once a week, to produce a biblebased story that could capture the interest of children aged 6-15. This challenge lead to a new creative way of telling the well known biblical stories. Bart, And The Disappearing Mountain is the first of these to be published.

Book preview

Introduction

No matter how much I strained my eyes, I could not see the path. I saw the beautiful white monastery high up on the hillside - but no way to reach it. The following day I decided to take a ride to the mountain to investigate further, and sure enough, as I drew nearer, I spotted the small path, which was almost hidden. I began to follow the path and experienced in the subsequent hours a lonely but marvelous adventure in the mountains of Kalymnos, a small Greek island.

As I sat and enjoyed the view from the monastery, which earlier had seemed so inaccessible, I wrote the following words in my notepad:

PERSPECTIVE

From a distance,

I see the mountain of freedom

impossible to climb

and yet someone had climbed it.

Drawing closer I see the path;

for each step I walk

I can see a little further,

but only a little.

This was more than an ordinary countryside experience. I found myself on this island because I was stuck in a self-image with corresponding response patterns and habits that were tearing me up inside. I realized that this hike was a message to me from someone who is much bigger than I. There is a path to freedom, and I must walk on in confidence despite not being able to see and understand everything

I invite you to participate in this journey, which sometimes will be anything but enjoyable, but more a struggle with the images and habits that have diminished the quality of your life for too long. It is a wrestling match which sometimes will be fierce and uphill, but the price of victory is worth the whole fight. The price is freedom!

Background for the book

Today millions of people around the world use The Twelve Steps, either because they have a substance abuse or another dysfunctional area of their lives they want to work on. The Twelve Step program has its origin in the Christian Oxford Movement, which emerged during the years following the First World War.

Keywords for the Oxford Movement were:

SURRENDER – Surrender to God for forgiveness and guidance.

CONFESSION – Confession of sins before God and each other.

DO GOOD – Make amends where you have caused harm.

TESTIFY – Testify to the transformation of life, so that others can have the opportunity to experience the same.

Bill Wilson had a major problem with alcohol abuse when he had a spiritual experience which resulted in his immediate liberation from the cravings for alcohol. He began to share his experience with other alcoholics. Many were helped and groups arose which supported and helped each other.

The experience of these people and the steps they took to stop drinking and remain sober became The 12 Step Program. These were published in the book Alcoholics Anonymous in 1939, and The 12 Step Program spread throughout the world.

Countless people have experienced freedom through The Twelve Steps, not only from alcohol dependency, but from all kinds of harmful addictions; drugs (including prescription drugs), gambling, sex, etc.

The program has also proved to be an effective tool to alter destructive patterns of behavior such as inferiority complexes, fear, uncontrolled anger, bitterness and envy. In recent years many churches all over the world have become involved in the program, which has provided them with the tools to help gain a positive and productive lifestyle.

How to use this book

1. To read a map is not the same as taking the journey

By reading the book or attending a course, you can get an overview of the possibility of the freedom you want, but having an overview is not enough. The work is done through a process where you walk through the breaking of behavior patterns step by step, as described in the book.

2. Never travel alone

Reading the book alone will give you some benefit, but when you begin the process described, and are working through the exercises, it is important that you do so with others in a group or with an experienced teacher. The exercises are located at the end of each chapter along with questions for reflection.

3. Exercises

In addition to the exercises which are a part of every chapter, you’ll find some extra exercises in the back of the book. They have been added for those of you who have had some experience with the 12 Step Program and who want to dig a little deeper. Everyone however can get something out of reading through these exercises to get some inspiration for working with the exercises from each chapter.

The importance of the exercises cannot be stressed enough. They are essential tools in turning insight and acknowledgement into significant changes.

4. Personal report

The reports are written by people, with or without a Christian background, who have participated in a destructive pattern breaking course based on Marathonology. They are included as a bonus. This means that they are not included as part of the foundation for questions for reflection or other exercises. They are examples of how different people in their own way have worked with this process and have received help to break their destructive patterns.

5. Things take time

Things take time – and so do people. Don’t try to hurry on to the next step of the process if you haven’t completed the earlier phases. There’s a reason for the chapters and steps to come in the order they do. The steps go together; each one is based on the previous one.

STEP 1

CHAPTER 1

Recognition

We admitted we were powerless over the effects of our destructive pattern – that our lives had become unmanageable.

"We sat in a circle in a small room in a big mansion in the middle of Sweden, far away from the normal everyday grind. The teacher came into the room and without saying a word; he put his hand into his bag and rummaged around until he found a small object: it was an unevenly cracked clay jar which he gently placed on a table. Still without saying a word, he took a candle, lit it and put it into the cracked jar. The light-filled jar then revealed contours of the cross through the jar lip. We can see God in many ways, he finally said. Some of us see Him as an evil master who makes impossible demands that we, in vain, struggle to meet. While we stand and look at the pieces of our failed attempts, He comes with His words condemning us for our failures. In the Bible we see a very different picture – the image of God who meets us in our damaged, broken, imperfect and fragile state or condition. He even chooses to take residence in the midst of our failures in order for His light to shine in us.

This kind of life is described in The New Testament:

"For God who said, ’Let light shine out of darkness’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us."¹

Denial

The first step on the way to breaking destructive patterns is to see and be aware of my own fragile reality. Many of us have been so afraid of the truth about ourselves that we have spent enormous amounts of energy denying the truth to ourselves and others. We have learned to deceive ourselves by explaining away problems and by giving all sorts of excuses. I have had a bad day … a bad week … a bad time … tomorrow will be better … I am not addicted - I could easily stop … if I wanted to. If only this and that falls into place, everything will work out and things will be fine. Lots of other people do this even more than I do … they over eat, drink too much, are too controlling, full of fear – after all, I guess, I am just normal.

We try to hide our destructive pattern, but we are really embarrassed, being aware of our own weaknesses. We continually condemn ourselves because we have not been able to cope with our lives in a better way. Therefore, we are convinced that if others discovered the truth about us, they would condemn us to the same degree.

At this stage of breaking the destructive pattern you will often be able to experience relief and a new vitality. The relief of not having to cover up the truth about yourself with a layer of lies and also a new vitality because the energy you previously used covering up the destructive behavior is now available for new positive uses. Instead of running away from reality, you are now facing it.

Dependency

Those of us who have decided to break our destructive behavior patterns come from many different backgrounds and have different reasons and motives for participating in this process. What is common to us all is different kinds of destructive patterns; it’s all about the way we act, the bad habits, the feelings, the thought patterns or the kind of relationships that provide us with the distraction from the pain or pressures we are experiencing. It’s like a vicious circle that keeps repeating itself. Some have described it like this:

The vicious cycle

And the cycle repeats itself.

Powerlessness

The words hit me like arrows piercing deep into my stomach. I was reading a book that I accidentally had brought with me. When the author described his own powerlessness, it was as if he was describing my life. It seemed as if the words were more than words in a book - they became a voice from above, lovingly and directly telling me why I was stuck in life. It was like being surprised by an encounter with a floor to ceiling mirror, like having a strong light shone in a place where I had not expected it. For me, it definitely did not feel like a moment of liberation-more like the hour of truth, a truth that didn’t look attractive at all. It showed me that in this area of my life, I had reached rock bottom. I was powerless to free myself. In truth, I was a fragile clay vessel with large scrapes and scratches.

I once watched a movie about an American who spent his holiday driving around in England. In his confusion over driving on the left, he strayed onto a roundabout, from which he simply could not get out again. To break his right-hand traffic pattern was quite impossible for him, so he ended up just driving around and around in circles - even though the exit was so close. This movie sequence became very real to me. Here I could see an area of my life in the rear-view mirror. There had been opportunities to exit the roundabout, but I had not been able to break the pattern, sometimes because I didn’t know better, other times because I was nervous about what would happen if I changed from my normal way of reacting.

When I googled the Web and searched roundabout, I came across a picture of a road sign for a roundabout in the countryside. One exit led to a wonderful amusement park, another to Hicktown, and finally, an exit without a name apparently leading to nowhere. This might well illustrate why we stay on our roundabouts. We would really like to exit, and we would really like to take the exit to the land of freedom; but the risk of driving to nowhere, or Hicktown is scary, so we just stay on the roundabout. We would rather maintain the illusion that we are not stuck on the roundabout, and that we can cope with life, but eventually we discover that there is a huge gap between what we want and our failing ability to act. We decide that it is the last time we are going to get angry in that way, but after a short while something unexpected happens, which leads us to lose our temper. We decide not to drink alcohol anymore, but shortly after we find ourselves with a glass in our hand. We promise ourselves that it is the last time we say yes when we actually mean no, but shortly after we hear ourselves saying Yes again, while the inside is crying: No! We do not want to smoke any more so once again we decide to stop, but after a short time we have more desire than ever and suddenly find a cigarette between our fingers hearing ourselves saying, Tomorrow I will quit. We decide that we must put a stop to the overeating, but after a short time, we are again consoling ourselves with a bar of delicious chocolate. We decide that now is the time when we must give more priority to our family, but after a while, work and other important engagements again fill the hours and days of the week.

We decide this is the last time we watch porn on the internet and we are convinced that this is the end of it, but after a while, we just happen to click the mouse on those sites again.