Scrupulosity is going to cause you to doubt your standing with God all the time. It’s not always a raging fire; sometimes it’s merely a smoke alarming blaring. There comes a point where you have to say, “I am going to have the faith that I am okay.”

Imagine you are standing inside a house that is burning down. Fire rages around you, climbing walls and roof and floor. What do you do?

You do whatever you must to keep the house from utter destruction. You sound the alarm. You evacuate the house. You call the fire department and you ensure that the house is doused with water. Anything to put out the flames. Because if you don’t, the flames will consume the house, and they will consume you with it.

That’s what it feels like to have OCD.

Now imagine that same scenario of standing within those crumbling, burning walls, but you’re doing nothing. You’re simply standing there, watching the flames, not lifting a finger to put them out.

Your eyes see the flames, your body feels the heat, your nose smells the burning house. But you tell yourself that you are not in danger, and there is no fire. Or, maybe there is a fire; you can’t really be sure. But either way, you’re going to be okay. It will not consume you.

That’s what it feels like to battle OCD.

In his book A Quiet Mind to Suffer With, John Andrew Bryant characterizes OCD as “the Siren,” describing the urgent feel of intrusive thoughts and the pull to pay attention to them. As he shares about his own journey with OCD, he writes, “The Siren has not gone. It is only our relationship that has changed.”1 I think this is a very helpful picture of growth. Our ultimate hope is not in the removal of OCD—though we can, indeed, pray and hope for that. But our ultimate and realistic hope is that we can have a changed relationship to it.

Our hope is that one day—each day, and again the next day—we are able to grow in standing in the middle of that house and doing nothing.

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