Betty Tried to Quit Smoking for Two Years. Then This Happened.

Surrender Your Trials and Addictions to God

Betty grew up in a household of smokers and started smoking at 16.    Her parents and brothers all smoked as did aunts, uncles, cousins, and a number of friends. 

There wasn’t much awareness of the negative effects of cigarettes when Betty was a young adult, and it was mostly considered a habit that left a lingering smell. 

Her smoking increased to two packs a day.  People smoked at work, on trains and buses and in restaurants at that time. She remembers a nephew joking that there should be a cigarette machine in the living room.

But Betty started to feel something in her right lung and wanted to cut back.  A wake-up call came when one brother died of lung cancer.  A second died not long after from a heart attack, with smoking a likely factor.  It was then that she and her father decided they would quit smoking and support each other in doing so.

It proved more difficult than they expected and one or the other would give in and go buy another pack.  She was trying but not succeeding.

Shortly before Betty’s wedding, her beloved mother died of lung cancer.

The smell of smoke on her clothes and in the house bothered her and did so more when her children came along and were breathing it in.  Betty recommitted herself to ending smoking and would occasionally include this intention in her prayers.  But she still found herself becoming anxious when she ran out of cigarettes.

How and where to get a pack quickly seemed to be a constant distraction.  One night, her children asleep, Betty craved a cigarette and didn’t have any left.

Grabbing her wallet, she ran out the door with her two children asleep and sprinted around the corner to the neighborhood bar.  She had to get change at the counter for the cigarette machine, got that pack in her hands as fast as possible, and raced home in under 5 minutes.

That feeling of desperation and dependence was rock bottom.  She’d been trying to quit for at least two years.

Later that night, Betty went to her knees and prayed, “God, I have to quit smoking and I can’t do it alone.  Please help me.  Please take this craving away from me.” It was the first time she’d surrendered her goal into God’s hands, admitting she was helpless to quit by herself and asking Him to take over.

The next morning, the family headed to Sunday Mass as usual.  As Betty slid into the pew, an odor came over her.  It got stronger as she sat next to a man wearing a tweed jacket, that, “reeked of smoke.”  Betty immediately felt nauseas and had to bolt up from her seat to run to the bathroom.  The stench had so overpowered her that she couldn’t stay for Mass.

Betty never smoked a single cigarette in her life again.  The desire to smoke simply left that morning after the encounter with the smoke-saturated jacket, which came right after she asked God to take over her cigarette addiction.

The cure was immediate and total.  “I never even wanted a cigarette again after that day,” she says.

“Oh Jesus, I surrender myself to you.  Take care of everything!” Servant of God Don Dolindo