Buried Treasure

By Jenny Svendsen

 Addictions of all varieties plague many the world over, and the world has offered many solutions with modest success, if any. Once entangled with the tentacles of addiction, might one ask if God offers a more permanent and lasting solution?

 

As a result of her husband's particular addiction, this author found herself

• Language: English
• Publisher: GENESIS PUBLISHING HOUSE
• Release date: Feb 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9798987499603

Book preview

Greetings, fellow prisoners! I’ve been incarcerated in a prison of my own making for nearly fifty years now. I say this to my shame because the first twenty-five years of my life were lived in relative freedom from unwanted pounds. Occasionally I would try to lose a few pounds to boost my ego while I attempted to match the svelte figures in the teen magazines of my day, but food never had a stronghold in my life at that time.

I grew up in a home with loving parents and the world’s best sister, in middle America in the 1950’s hearing church bells ring every Sunday morning. It wasn’t until I married that I encountered personal dragons in life and chose food to alleviate my heartache as I dealt with the sins of my husband and his addiction.

God did equip me for this challenge though by drawing me to himself two years earlier. Although growing up in a church, it wasn’t until my sophomore year at Purdue University that I fully grasped the gospel message and surrendered my life to Jesus Christ upon hearing the testimony of a former Chief of Police from Indianapolis.

He shared a verse unfamiliar to me, Revelation 3:20.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him and he with me.

An artist depicted this verse in a painting that hung in my church, but no one ever shared its meaning or this verse with me. The unusual detail of this painting is that there is no handle on the outside of the door upon which Jesus is knocking. The only handle is on the inside and can only be opened by the one hearing the gentle rapping on the door.

That February night in the solitude of my cold air dorm on the upper bunk at the AOPi house, I opened the door to my heart and surrendered my life to the only One who sacrificed his life for mine.

God fostered this new relationship with the loving care of a pastor and his wife, Ray and Alice Joseph, who patiently introduced me to Bible study, prayer, scripture memory, and the basics of discipleship. One and half years later, Ray married Rog and I, we completed our studies at Purdue and graduated. Six months later Rog was commissioned by the US Army, which sent us both to Germany for three years of Roger’s four-year commitment.

But I digress. Simply know that I am without excuse when I dealt with the unexpected dragons in my marriage, i.e., my husband’s addiction, in my way apart from God.

Instead, I chose food to alleviate my heartache which at the time seemed a better choice considering other options. I was not inclined to choose alcohol or drugs. I kept my vow of faithfulness to my husband and did not choose the companionship of other men. Food seemed the safe choice as a comforter and companion, but it came with unwanted consequences. It wasn’t long before I doubled in size, which seemed to only push my husband even further from me. Indeed, I had created my own prison one forkful at a time.

As I look back on so many years of unhealthy eating, I’m inclined to think that addiction to food is perhaps the most difficult of all addictions to overcome. One can live without alcohol, drugs, gambling, pornography, etc., but one cannot live without sustenance. When addicted to the only means of sustaining life, how does one return to normal eating? Eating to live rather than living to eat?

God has given us a map to follow, which is what this book unfolds for us. Like a treasure map, it leads us to the buried treasure He placed within each of us.

It could be argued that overeating was the original sin. When God created the world and everything in it, he left Adam with only one rule to follow.

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. Genesis 2:15-17

Eureka! The act of wrongful eating ushered sin into the world and now we all suffer. As sin progressed, God later added ten commandments to help man better understand how to live in the world He created and the standards God required.

Scripture clearly tells us what happened next in the Garden of Eden.

Then the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him. So out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Genesis 2:18-23

After God completed his creation of the world with the addition of the woman, Satan lost no time entering the scene. Only three verses later, he approaches the woman and challenges her to question what God said. But remember? She had not yet been created when God gave his instructions to Adam. She only knew what Adam passed on to her, but she did understand there was one tree in the center of the garden which was verboten, off limits.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’? And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Genesis 3:1-6

Satan is adept at challenging God’s word and loves to twist it to his advantage. This he did with Eve, persuading her to eat from the forbidden tree, and Adam, who was also right there, joined her.

Bingo! Their eyes were immediately opened and shame flooded them. They experienced a spiritual death that separated them from God. Their physical death followed much later.

This journal grew out of failure, my failure to seek solace in food