Next month I’ll find out if what inside my lungs is cancer. I suspect that it might be from all the smoking I’ve done. Smoking has been my the greatest struggle of my life. I only was able to quit using tobacco because of advances in modern medicine. Thank God for Chantix and Zyban! However, now I find myself addicted to other things.

I even split a church over my smoking addiction. The pastor of my church let me teach Sunday School even though he knew I smoked. I think he gave me a break because he saw I was a young Christian who was always in church with great zeal for the Lord. But when other members found out that I smoked and that the pastor knew I smoked while he let me teach Sunday School, some in the congregation began giving him trouble. This was very unfortunate. I feel like I cost this pastor his job. A pastor that would travel a great distance to come visit me at the university and even talked to me about becoming his youth pastor at one point. But then the church split.

So I went off to a Christian University where smoking was strictly prohibited, on or off campus. I struggled with quitting and found myself continuing to smoke off campus. This caused a great internal struggle within myself. I felt like a fraud for my deception. I felt like I was living a lie– like a was living a double life–I was like two different people, one way at school in front of everybody and one way while I was smoking. I was living a secret life, always worried someone would find me out. This killed me more than anything.

So the next time you meet a smoker, please realize that smoking is very addictive and people don’t always want to smoke. The struggle for smokers is real.