Anybody Got a Light?

Today, is my one year anniversary free from nicotine. I smoked more than half my life. The first time I smoked a cigarette I was 9. Yep. NINE. Two years older than my baby. I LOVED cigarettes…in fact I still do. I love the way they feel between my fingers, on my lips, the way they smell…I love them. Even now, occasionally, I will pick one of Brad’s up. Just to feel it. But I never light it.

I hated being addicted to nicotine. I didn’t smoke in the house or car, but I can remember feeling so agitated on the way home from anywhere. Anxious to get my kids in the house so that I could smoke a cigarette. I was embarrassed that I smoked too. I didn’t want anyone to know. I took great pains not to smell like smoke or smoke around anyone who wasn’t part of my inner circle. People would say, “I didn’t know you smoked!” Good! I didn’t want you to.

When I began really to put God first in my life, I realized that even He came second to cigarettes. I am not proud to admit that I had to smoke a cigarette and make coffee before I opened my Bible. God, my kids, my husband…everyone was in second place. When I took a long hard look at that and really let it sink in, I started to pray and surrender. Please take this addiction away. Please…make it easy for me to quit. Please help me to wake up and just not want to smoke.

Over the years, I tried just about everything to quit. Hypnosis, books, nicotine gum, patches, herbal remedies, spiritual healings. I quit lots of times for days, weeks, even months. But every time, I would decide that I was back in control and let myself have just one cigarette. I can just smoke when I have a drink. I can just smoke when we go out with friends. I can just smoke on Fridays. I can just smoke on the weekends until…I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t ever just have one cigarette ever ever ever again.

One year ago, on Lily’s birthday, we went to a party with our best friends. I probably smoked 100 cigarettes. The next morning I felt like there was an anvil on my chest. I didn’t want to smoke. I told Brad, “I’m gonna quit smoking today.” He said, “Okay, baby,” but he didn’t believe me. But I did.

I’m not bragging (well, except about God’s goodness and faithfulness); I know lots of people who are trying to quit something. When asked how I quit smoking, I used to say, “I just quit,” because I didn’t like people to roll their eyes at me when I said, “I prayed, and God took away my craving for nicotine.” But, that is what really happened. I woke up and said, “Help me not smoke today,” and He did. And He keeps helping me not smoke day after day.

I have been tempted, but never beyond what I could handle. On one occasion this summer, I begged Brad to give me a cigarette, but I didn’t smoke. Every day, I thank God that nicotine is no longer first in my life. Every day, I thank Him for making it easy. I never could have quit without a divine intervention because I will regrettably admit: I have no will power. Not. One. Bit.

This is the longest I have been smoke-free since the first time I smoked a cigarette 31 years ago. Not in my strength but in His…I am redeemed.

2 Corinthians 12:9-10 (NIV) But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 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, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

The dead horse called…

I didn’t want to write any more about smoking. But that’s really been all that’s on my mind. Not smoking affords you a lot of extra time. Time that you can use to think–or write–about smoking. I used to think if only the day had a few extra hours: My floors would be spotless, my laundry clean and folded, each child satisfied from “quality one-on-one” time.

Since I have had enough spare time to figure out just how much time I spent smoking (approximately 2 hours a day, in case you were wondering), my day now has a couple extra hours. Still, my floors are dirty. My laundry is in piles and hampers. I have eaten nearly all the kids’ Halloween candy. But since I did it while they were at school, I don’t think that counts as quality time.

However, I have analyzed a lot of things, made a lot of lists, and followed lots of scents around the house with my newly discovered bloodhound sense of smell. My mom told me, “That’s why people gain weight when they quit smoking, because they can smell so much better.” I nodded politely and muttered under my breath. Mostly I’ve been on the trail of phantom vile smells that don’t make me hungry. And mostly I’ve been eating because the pantry is on the way to the garage. Since I can’t go to the garage and smoke, I stop at the pantry and eat.

I didn’t think too much about all that pantry eating until two days ago when I put on a pair of jeans that were too tight. They’ve never fit right, but I hold on to them. And they’re not the kind of jeans that would fit right even if I lost 10 pounds. They are just not designed for my body type. So I don’t really know why I keep them. It is not as if my body is going to change that much. At the very best shape of my adult life, after 90 days of Tony Horton hell, they still didn’t fit right. “THROW THEM AWAY!!!” But I keep them. Put them on occasionally so they can kick me when I’m all ready down. Wow, there’s a whole case study worth of issues going on in those jeans!

But that wasn’t the point. Yesterday, I put on a pair of my regular comfortable jeans, and they were tight and uncomfortable. First thought: a dryer conspiracy. Then I stepped on the scale to see a number 5 pounds higher than the number I normally see. Shit. I guess my body did register those 800 mini chocolate bars even though I was standing up when I was ate them and barely chewed.

So, I guess there are pros and cons like everything else. Everyone says there are no cons to quitting smoking, but this growing-bigger-by-the-day ass of mine begs to differ. Yes, I’m being vain and trivial, but it’s my ass. I put a lot of stipulations on this whole quitting smoking thing, so I have high hopes. I still can’t run without getting winded; I had expected that within a week. I still have wrinkles; I was expecting them to vanish. I can still see my pores; I had expected them to shrink.

Yet I plug away. Because I am so happy that I can smell Chloe’s perfume lingering in the air after she leaves for school. Comforted by the shampoo and toothpaste smell of freshly showered P, when he snuggles up with me. Grateful for Lily’s warm milk and sleep smell, when she first wakes up. Coffee brewing…well, I could always smell that, but now it almost reaches into my bed with it’s warm fragrant arm–like that old commercial?–and lifts me out. Not happy about all the stinky things I was blissfully unaware of before. But the good definitely outweighs the bad.

And today, this minute, the good outweighing the bad, is enough to keep me from smoking.

Spinning Heads

Today I am not smoking. That’s premature. This minute, I am not smoking. I figure my blood pressure is probably close to normal because on any other given morning I would have had at least 4 cigarettes by now. One when I first get up, with my coffee, another before I wake the kids up, another after the kids eat breakfast and go upstairs to get ready, another after they leave for school. This morning, I have had none.

Over the last 16 years, I’ve probably tried to quit smoking 20 times or more. Using various interventions. Well, the only physical intervention I used was the patch, but I’ve played lots of mental games to try to quit. I’ve cut back, smoking only on the weekends, only when I drink, limiting myself to a certain number of cigarettes a day, not smoking in front of the kids, etc. etc. etc. Since I’m writing this, it’s needless to say none of those approaches have been successful.

Pregnancy worked once. It made me sick to smoke when I was pregnant with Chloe, so I stopped easily. With Peyton, it did not make me sick. I cut back but didn’t quit. Before I got pregnant with Lily, I had quit smoking for 6 months. The stress of the surprise pregnancy led me to start smoking again. Ashamed. Hiding it. But smoking. What kind of monster smokes when she’s pregnant? Only a horrible, horrible person, right? I don’t think I’m a monster or a horrible person. I love my children with every ounce of my being. I smoked when I was pregnant. How do you reconcile that?

I am very honest with myself. I no longer say, “I could quit whenever I want. I just choose to smoke. I enjoy it. It helps me relax.” That may be true for any number of “social smokers;” I am a full-blown addict. As I sit here writing, my brain is saying, “You could have just one cigarette…” I imagine this must be what it’s like for all addicts. Lured by a needle, a line, a bottle, or in my case a cigarette.

The last time I tried to quit, I read a book, because that’s what I do. Most crises in my life drive me not to church or to a bar but straight to the library. Anyway, the book talk-therapied you through the quitting process. Examined all the bad things about smoking, reminding smokers that those “good things” are just a trap to keep you addicted. All true. All good points. I didn’t smoke for several days and decided that I’d overcome my addiction to nicotine and would reward myself with a cigarette. Really? Addicts everywhere just laughed at me, with me, whatever.

My kids have given up on me. They used to beg me to quit, come home after anti-smoking programs at school begging me to quit, fearful that I was going to die. Several years ago, Chloe left a butterfly-shaped post-it on my steering wheel that said, “You have a beautiful heart but black lungs.” It hurt my heart. I hung it in the kitchen among other motivational quotes and notes and continued to smoke. Feeling ever more guilty about it. It still hangs there. I still smoke. And every time I see it, it stabs me in the heart.

People talk about how they just quit. My best friend just quit. Brad’s grandma just quit. Lots of people you ask, “How did you quit?” Their response is, “I just quit.” No intervention. Brad is talking about getting Chantix, but he said he didn’t want me to take it because of reports that some people have developed suicidal thoughts while taking it. That simultaneously pissed me off and made me feel very cherished. I would hate to think I’d kill myself over a cigarette, but I understand his concern. Sometimes things get blown out of proportion in my world.

So I’m writing this, thinking I’ll have a cigarette when I’m done. Just one before Lily wakes up. That will be okay. No, it’s not okay. The talk therapy book stressed that once you make the decision to quit, you can never have just one cigarette. Never. Ever. Makes sense. Alcoholics can’t have just one drink. They don’t quit being alcoholics and become social drinkers.

Still it makes my head spin like when I was a little girl in Catechism. The teacher spoke of eternity: If you’re good children, you spend eternity with God in paradise. That scared me, not God or paradise, but eternity. Going on and on and on and on without end.

Never. Ever. Smoking. Again. Makes my head spin.