Wayne Leeper

Preface

God's Way for Finding "Every State Contentment"

This October I will turn sixty-eight years old. For sixty-five of those years I was a pain carrier. No, I didn’t refer to myself that way; in fact I didn’t even know what a pain carrier was. I believed that living a life of alternating between contentment and discontentment is just the way it is and there is little if anything we can do about it. This belief is the norm in our society. I was a little surprised, however, when I learned that according to the American Psychiatric Association, ninety-eight percent of the people in our society are carrying emotional pain to one degree or another.

We live in a society which places more importance on things than on people. From our earliest childhood we are taught that we must prepare ourselves to get ahead in the world. The primary purpose of education, we are told, is so we can have higher paying jobs and the ability to acquire more things. Success in America is measured by our social standing, our life style and our economic status. The Golden Rule has come to mean that "The person with the gold gets to make the rules."  Other people are viewed as a means to an end and most of us are little concerned about anyone’s problems other than our own.  "I don’t want to know your problems, because I have enough of my own," is an attitude that permeates our society.

 Considering that this mentality is driving much of our society today, is it any wonder that depression is the number three illness among Americans and millions of dollars are being spent on anti-depressants, therapists, and counselors? This is not the way that God intended it to be. The underlying cause of all destructive behavior is unprocessed emotional pain that has been inflicted on us by those we love the most.  As unresolved emotional pain drags us lower and lower it creates more and more destructive behavior in our lives.  When we experience deep emotional pain for a prolonged period of time we reach a point where we look for, and adopt, an escape behavior.  Most escape behaviors are destructive and you can be sure that Satan will quickly present us with one or more of them disguised as pleasure.

Three years ago I was getting hit with emotional pain from a number of sources. I had never considered myself as needing anyone other than myself to deal with whatever came my way.  Coming from a very dysfunctional home, I had learned to rely on myself at a very early age and as a result had extremely high survival skills. My normal reaction to things I did not like was anger.  I didn't realize that anger is not only an escape behavior, it is also the number one addiction.  I have now learned, however, that anger, as an immediate response to hurtful situations, is always counter-productive. This is particularly true when our anger is directed toward those we loved the most.  It was my anger that put me on an ever downward spiral of destructive behavior.

As I became more and more depressed my self-esteem was almost entirely destroyed and my entire outlook on life turned negative.  My wife and I have been faithful Christians for over forty years.  But, in all that time I have never heard a sermon or attended a class where I was taught God’s way for removing emotional pain.  Like most people, I though emotional pain was just something that had to be endured.

I have learned that there are two things that will happen every time people are faced with emotionally painful events which they are unable to process. Number one, they will look for some form of escape behavior.  An escape behavior is anything that will give us temporary relief from the emotional pain we are feeling.  The second thing is that escape behaviors of a destructive nature will, over time, become a bigger problem than the one we were initially trying to escape. This is easy to see in those of us who may turn to alcohol or drugs as a means of relieving stress.

Perhaps you have been there. Perhaps you have known what it is like to lay awake all night pounding the pillow.  You may even have experienced severe emotional pain which is impossible for anyone to understand who hasn’t been there.  Perhaps you know and can understand the despair felt by those of us who become severely depressed. I learned that depression is the number three disease in the United States, and that it didn’t get to be number three without anyone being depressed.  Depression has the ability to drag us to the very bottom, sometimes even to the point of suicide. It is unfortunate that it is sometimes necessary to "hit bottom" before we start looking for a constructive way out.

When we are in a severe state of emotionally induced depression there are actually only two ways out.  One way is suicide. People who commit suicide have reached a point where they believe that they are in a hopeless situation from which there is no possible escape.  Believing this, they choose a permanent solution to a temporary problem.  The greatest tragedy of this is that the largest group in our society who are choosing suicide are between the ages of nine and nineteen years old.  Our children are killing themselves and even their classmates at an alarming rate as a result of deep unprocessed emotional pain.

Then there is a second way out. It’s God’s way. It was at the lowest point of my depression that I met Ron Wilkins.  He held a workshop at our church on processing emotional pain.  I have heard many sermons on the evil and destructive nature of certain activities, and what would happen if I continued doing them, but never a lesson on how to stop.  When Ron Wilkins said that is was possible to escape the emotional pain that underlies all destructive behavior he had my immediate attention.

He showed me that "Every State Contentment" is a Biblical concept that has been overlooked by the scholars for centuries.  Within the Bible are the keys which open the door to Every State Contentment.  The method is surprisingly simple to learn but extremely difficult to apply.  It requires a total change of attitude and a very different way of viewing life.  It takes time, time and more time, along with work, work, and more work. But the result is the peace that surpasses understanding.

If you are reading this material it is a good bet that, like me, you feel the need to find contentment in your life.  You may have hit bottom or just feel that you are being dragged down by a mountain of unresolved emotional pain.  You may have been taught, and therefore believe, that the best we can hope for is a life of once in a while contentment.  Either way, that is not how God intended us to live.  The road from deep depression to "Every State Contentment" is a long and difficult one. I know because I have walked it. In fact, all the trainers in "ESC" training have walked that road. We are not counselors and do not have any letters behind our names. But unlike most counselors, who get what they know from reading books, we have lived it.  We have been there and understand the depths of depression, how it makes you feel, and what it can do as it drives you deeper and deeper into a state of utter despair.  We can truthfully say to an emotionally distraught person, "I know how you feel."

The best book I am aware of on processing emotional pain is Removing Emotional Pain by Ron Wilkins.  God's Way for Finding "Every State Contentment" is an attempt to pick up and build on the foundation that Ron laid down.  His journey is an inspiration to all who knew him personally as well as those who have read his excellent book. This writer is eternally indebted to Ron for opening the door to an entirely different way of understanding and dealing with the effects of emotional pain.

We all have a story which consists of the events we have lived.  We come from different environments, different upbringing, and have faced different difficulties in our lives.  But there is nothing any of us have experienced that is more difficult than what many others have also experienced.   When we come through adversity we come out stronger and with an understanding that we did not have before.  The wisdom we gain enables us to understand and be of help to others.  It is my prayer that my story combined with the knowledge I gained on how to process emotional pain will serve that purpose.

So, for better or for worse, this is the story of my journey from emotional pain carrier to emotional pain processor. It is the story of how a very ordinary person can read the Bible and with a little help from one who has been there discover what "Every State Contentment" is and how to achieve it.  So, if you are hurting come along with me as I describe my long journey and see if you don’t recognize yourself at many points along the way.

Wayne Leeper