About two years ago, as I was going through my fifth operation in two years, this time for cancer of the nose and throat, a friend of mine gave me this book, because he thought it would be thought-changing for me with my series of medical problems. He was correct. The title of the book, “Don’t Give the Enemy a Seat at Your Table,” by Louie Giglio has now been used in one form or another for winning the battle of your mind, throughout the world.

The book is based on the Twenty-Third Psalm, “The Lord is My Shepherd.” I’m going to tell you a brief story about faith and spirituality, and then you can determine if this leads to an impact on your thinking. Good friends of Mr. Giglio were Jay and Katherine. They had attended Samford University, met, fell in love and eventually married. He was a law student and she had been crowned Miss Samford – smart, beautiful, confident. She pursued a career in acting and modeling and a few years later they had their first child, a boy.

All was going well for this “power couple”. About six months after Katherine had given birth, she felt dizzy and sick to her stomach. Her hands and arms were numb, as were her legs. She attempted to walk, wobbled twice, then collapsed. She was rushed to the hospital and diagnosed with a massive brain stem stroke. She wasn’t expected to live. To save her life, half of her cerebelum was removed. The surgery took 16 hours, and she was only 26.

She survived the sudden ordeal, yet the story of her “new normal” was just beginning. For two months, she was unconscious and was in intensive care for 40 days. She had to relearn how to talk and eat. It took two years to walk again. Years of rehab followed, with ten more surgeries. Her body would never fully heal from the stroke. Today she is partially deaf and can’t swallow normally or see well. Part of her face is paralyzed. Her speech is slurred. Mostly she is in a wheelchair. Yet Jay and Katherine exude a remarkable faith. Their main core belief is that there’s purpose in pain. As a result, they are a huge force for the kingdom of God. Through their books and messages, they bring hope to suffering people everywhere.

You may now wonder why I chose this story. Few of us have been through the depth of what Katherine and Jay went through.

But all of us have experienced a life less than perfect. When it comes to not giving the enemy (who?) a seat at your table, we have to understand the difficult truth: life is hard and yet Jesus invites us to follow him anyway as Jay and Katherine have.

So, you may now ask, “what enemy are you referring to?” It’s simple, because whether you believe this to be true or not, I will give you evidence that he exists and wants to kill you and I.

I’m talking about the devil. Unfortunately today, people lean towards their favorite addiction (alcohol and other drugs) when the going gets tough. See, when life turns hard for us (me) we’re always tempted to welcome the enemy (Satan) to our table. Even though bad things happen, I will still praise the Lord. Even though bad things happen,

I will not let my mind be lost to the enemy and invite him to my table. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to understand that this is faith in its highest form.

You may wonder why I am pursuing this thinking pattern. I’d be a hypocrite if I told you I was not suffering through grief due to the death of my wife from ovarian cancer. As a counselor, I have seen people with 40 years of sobriety pick up drinking due to the intense grief of a spouse, especially in a happy marriage.

Yet when Karen was diagnosed 12 years ago, and was operated on, we made a pact based on faith and trust in God, that we would try to laugh every day and accept things that were thrown at us by life. She with her Rosary and prayer book, and me doing my REBT group trying to help sick people get better This would be an opportune time for the enemy to attack me, if I didn’t have a great support system based on Jesus Christ, family, friends, fellow counselors,who understood that many times things get worse and sometimes they stay worse. So if the Lord is my shepherd and he leadeth me beside still waters, and yea, though I walk through valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil and if he prepares a table for me in the midst of my enemies, I simply don’t have to invite them to my table because they are out to destroy me. In later articles, I’ll explain who “they” are. This is not a Christian faith that believes in God only when the sun shines. It isn’t based on any particular religion, but pure spirituality. The problem today, as I see it, is in today’s treatment of chemical dependency, faith and spirituality are keeping clients “spiritually bankrupt.” This secular treatment – methadone, suboxone, vivitrol are the main ideas of whatever they think sobriety is about (“they” being the treatment community). All that I can end up with is, the enemy keeps getting invited to their tables.

Mike Tramuta is a Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy counselor.