The Escape Hatch

Every year on Halloween my children come home from trick-or-treating with bags full of goodies and being the well-trained minions that they are, they dutifully set to work sorting all the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups from the bag to set aside for yours truly. (My book on successful parenting drops next month.) Once they extract every last piece, they bag them up and place them in the fridge because they know I prefer to eat them chilled. (There is nothing more disappointing than a mushy, melted peanut butter cup.) Last year, no less than 24 hours later, my daughter emerged from her bedroom and said, “I bet Mom already ate all the Reese’s we saved for her, didn’t she?” I sat there, offended at the insinuation. (If you must know I had only eaten HALF the candy. Still an exorbitant amount but it required a ridiculous amount of self-control on my part.) I asked my daughter why she’d accuse me of such a binge. She said the Christmas morning story made her think of it.

My love for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups dates back to Christmas morning, 1989. I was seven years old. My parents gifted me a big, beautiful holiday tin filled to the brim with bite-sized peanut butter cups. After all the gifts were unwrapped and the excitement of the morning wound down, I quietly slipped upstairs, toting an empty cardboard box just big enough to hold me and my tin of Reese’s. I confess it was a premeditated moment of weakness. My parents were busy cooking Christmas dinner in the kitchen below and my brother was hard at work constructing a new Lego set down the hall. I tucked my box in a corner, out of sight from everyone. After carefully folding myself into the box and closing the flaps around me, I enjoyed a moment of solace, just me and a container of peanut butter cups the size of my lap. At the age of seven, I had no idea what it meant to savor a good thing. The taste of creamy peanut butter nestled between smooth milk chocolate was more than I could resist. Less than an hour later my belly grumbled unpleasantly and I sat, filled with remorse at the sight of the small mountain of foil wrappers in front of me. I had eaten every….last…piece. Later that day I pushed my Christmas dinner around on the plate, unable to make room in my stomach for anything other than a glass of milk.

My daughter loves hearing that story. Her sweet little rule-following heart can’t even fathom being so sneaky and indulgent. Food, no matter how good, has never been a weakness of hers, so she finds the whole binge-eating thing truly perplexing. She budgets her money, takes one bite of candy and saves the rest for later, and she waits months to read a new book or open a Lego set until she’s on holiday break. She excels at weighing the consequences of her actions. Self-control is her middle name. She couldn’t be more different than me, but then, she’s a firstborn and she’s adopted so are we really surprised? (I have not, however, shared that story with my son. The minute he discovers hiding in a box is a great way to keep your parents out of your gluttonous business it’s over for me.)

After that Christmas, I woke up to the notion that portioning out my favorite treats would lead to fewer bellyaches. I resolved to use more self-control. Whenever we’d go to the movie theatre I’d mentally portion my package of King Size Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups: one for the previews, one for the beginning of the movie, one for the middle, and one for the end. It was a brilliant idea in theory, but old habits die hard. One time in fifth grade I came home from school and declared I was a vegetarian. I’d learned something about endangered animals and launched myself onto a soapbox in front of the captive audience that was my family. I promptly made ‘Save Water. Save the Whales’ signage for all our bathroom faucets and graffitied my neighborhood with sidewalk chalk propaganda. The next night my parents ordered pizza for dinner. I stared longingly at the pepperoni, glistening with grease and sinking into layers of melted mozzarella. I threw all my convictions about saving the animals out the window. My vegetarianism lasted all of thirty-six hours. I blame Pizza Hut.

Now that I’m an adult I don’t keep Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in the house. In this case, showing self-control is refusing to welcome temptation in the first place. When I do have Reese’s, I still find it hard to eat just one (the trick-or-treat plunder my case in point). The desire for immediate gratification gets the better of me and I get tunnel vision, failing to see the consequences that will befall me if I indulge my flesh. This is the case for so many of us, isn’t it? We see something we want online and we don’t need it and we didn’t budget for it, but it’s on sale! We must click and purchase! We overhear a juicy piece of gossip from a co-worker and we think we’ll keep it to ourselves, but then it’s just too hard to resist sharing it with the next person we see! We turn on the tv to watch just one show and before we know it, it’s 1 AM and we’ve binge-watched the entire season. The list goes on and on. In 1 Corinthians 6:12-13, Paul reminds us that everything is permissible for us, but not everything is beneficial. In other words, just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.

“No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it,” (1 Cor. 10:13). This means that every time we DO give in to temptation, it’s not because we had no way out, but because we chose not to take it. The escape hatch God provides is often hard to see when we’re settled comfortably in the darkness of our sins. It’s so much work to navigate our way through the tunnel and push open the door that will lead us to our rescue. By now we’ve spent so much time in the dark we’re kind of used to it. So instead of exerting ourselves, we sit back and relax. We allow the temptation to consume us. No one can see us here in the dark. We believe here our sin is hidden.

When my son was two years old, I found him in the kitchen with all the lights turned off. He was sitting on the floor in front of an open cabinet, stuffing his mouth with jelly beans. I flipped the light on, catching him by surprise. His little eyes were as big as saucers. A trickle of rainbow-colored drool ran down his mouth. Busted. Temptation often rears its ugly head when we are alone. Whether we walk into the darkness willingly or by accident, the enemy takes advantage of us the second we arrive. No one is there to witness our choice. We give ourselves away to our flesh's desires and keep it to ourselves. But God knows. God sees. “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,’ even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you,” (Psalm 139:11-12). He’s there, shining a bright light on the escape route He’s so lovingly provided.

In the grand scheme of things, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups may seem innocent enough, but I can assure you they are a gateway drug. I could make a solid case for how Reese’s has led me to do harder things. (They could stand to put a warning label on the Reeses wrapper. Would that be too much to ask?) As I grew so did the temptations I faced, and I’m sorry to admit that I succumbed to them just as quickly as I did that Christmas morning in 1989. My weaknesses have expanded beyond Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups to include shopping, eating, and scrolling my phone. What are yours? Our weaknesses are natural, common even. Let’s own them. Let’s boast about them even, because the Bible says that is where we find our strength. But let’s not let them master us. Let’s not be content to leave live a life yielding to temptation. “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses […] For when I am weak, then I am strong,” (1 Cor. 12:9-10).

Self-control is not something we can achieve in a moment. It is a muscle we must exercise over and over again until it becomes strong. I have prayed many times for the Lord to give me self-control, and He is quick to answer those prayers by giving me opportunities to practice it. This is why I can say that I now exercise self-control more often than not. While I’m far from calling self-control a strong suit of mine, most days I have more wins than losses. This is the power of Christ in me, made perfect in my weakness. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12 that he pleaded with the Lord to take away his torment from the enemy, but the Lord said to him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” God’s grace is the light that shines onto the escape hatch we desperately need in the throes of temptation. It is enough to get us out. Imagine what God could do if we showed a little self-restraint. Imagine the feeling of victory when we leave the darkness behind us, push open the escape hatch, and step into the light.

Justice, age four, exhibiting self-control.