"If you spend your life waiting on the storm, you'll never enjoy the sunshine."
~ Morris West
I woke early this morning in the grips of nightmare backwash and wasted over thirty minutes trying to go back to sleep. I finally gave up, got up and read. I read Just For Today, but I didn't get much out of it other than the reminder that it's been a while since I've made a meeting. My mind struggled with trying to think through the aftereffects of an all too real feeling dream the way a fly struggles to fly from oil. It failed. I couldn't think. Yet I read on.
I read Daily Reflections. No great relief or inspiration came. I read Twenty-Four Hours A Day and thought I'm still trying to ground myself to this reality and feel like what I woke from was a dream so I doubt I'd be of much service at the moment. I thought, "I'm wasting my time. I'll just have to read all of this again later, if I'm going to get anything out of them today." Yet I read on.
I read As Bill Sees It, then Walk In Dry Places (at which point I only remember thinking that my throat felt quite dry), and then Keep It Simple. I thought I should make sure to reread that one, as it appeared to have potential to inspire some thought once my brain began working again. Maybe I needed caffeine? No, I thought. My thoughts felt as though they were being strained through cold molasses, but I didn't want to start making coffee just yet. I continued to read.
I enjoyed Each Day A New Beginning as I often do (I don't care if the subtitle says it's a meditation for women - I have found some universally good stuff in that one - look for the similarities, not the differences), but it did nothing to pull me from the funk I felt. Or maybe it did. For a brief moment I paused from feeling frustration at being stuck in mental low gear and felt grateful for my wife lying beside me, the "someone who brings out the colors of life and whose very presence offers tranquility and contentment, enriches my being and makes me grateful for the opportunity to share," as Kathleen Tierney Crilly put it. Upon reflection, that deviation from self-focused thought may have prepared me to receive what was to come, but I assure my readers that I was by no means aware of the possibility as I continued on with my reading journey to my Big Book. My brain still was not functioning on a high enough level for me to do any self-diagnostics. To be honest, I don't even remember reading Twelve Steps And Twelve Traditions, though I know I did.
Finally, I arrived at my daily dose of quotes. This is quite often my favorite part of the day. A single profound sentence or two is often more what I need as a jumping off point than a paragraph or more. Three quotes in I read the Morris West cited at the start of this rambling. The sentence broke through my fog, a lighthouse beacon guiding me safely to more peaceful shores. I went on a read the rest of the quotes for the day, Father Leo's Daily Meditation, Daily Inspiration and some scriptures from the Bible, but my thoughts kept returning to that simple truth about waiting on the storm.
I know that I've written way too much to preface this, but rather than edit, I will simply remind the reader of what the West quote. "If you spend your life waiting on the storm, you'll never enjoy the sunshine." How simple, yet how true! I unwound my body from bed, snap, crackled and popped my way into some clothes, and went outside to brace the damp, cold wind for a smoke. As I stood on the porch mulling over the statement, I began to feel grateful that once again, as so often occurs, somewhere in all the reading I do to being my day was exactly what I needed at that moment.
I believe that my nightmare came from the tension that has been building within me about something I might, I repeat might, have to deal with sometime in the next couple of weeks. My magic magnifying mind at work again projecting the possible though improbable. Worry and fear have entered my mind through a small portal created by anger and resentment left undealt with. I felt ashamed for a second that I had allowed this resentment to grow and fester, but I quickly chose instead to be grateful that I now realized the problem and the solution. I finished my cigarette, returned to bed, cuddled up next to my warm wife grateful she didn't push my cold body away, and went back to sleep for a little while.
It's amazing how the peace that comes from understanding can provide the ability to rest. I received no new revelation. I instead discovered a timely reminder of truth I already know. Worry is a waste of my time. I have reached a point where I should not be fighting anything or anyone, and I desperately needed the reminder that to gear up for a fight mentally, even if I avoid it in reality, is just as damaging, maybe more so, than walking into a situation swinging. I've been in enough physical fights to know that they start fast and don't last long. It's the mental fight before and after that replays and fantasizes that take up way too much energy and time from life,
The Proverbs of the Old Testament are filled with wisdom on the importance of not being lazy and preparing for the future. Aesop handled the topic well with the story of the grasshopper and the ants. But Jesus instructed me not to worry about what I was going to eat or wear and to trust God to provide. Was He contradicting the wisdom of Solomon? Absolutely not! No, there is a huge difference between taking care of my responsibilities today to ensure a more stable future, whether it be financially, physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, etc and worrying and fretting about what tomorrow might bring. I should do what I can to prepare but then go on with life, trusting God with the outcome. Expectations, after all, are the building blocks of resentment.
If there is a situation that I am dreading enough to fret over, to imagine different scenarios and dialogues about, then there is somewhere in that situation that I am trying to control something out of my control. There is something in that situation that I am not trusting God with. This is true if the situation is something like finding a job, or interaction with another person. These imaginings or possible future scenes are fueled by fear. When it comes to relationships these fears are often about someone else hurting me by not doing what I feel they should. The stem from the idea that I am not going to get my way. And since I have no business trying to control another person and rarely should have my own way in anything, these fears grow from a weed of selfishness that needs to be pulled. At times there is more to it than that though, and fear is sown from anger. Anger that someone or something damaged me or someone I love and fear that they or it will continue to do more damage in the future. Once again this comes from me not trusting God to protect me, to protect my heart, and or to protect those I love. It also grows out of my failure to release the resentment over the initial hurt.
So what does all that really have to do with the West quote? I lose the ability to enjoy the present, to live a life worth living, if I waste the time and energy of the present looking for the storm that may or may not come out of encounters with any person or situation. With situations, I need to prepare myself by making sure my side of the street is clean and that I am constantly walking the road of the next right thing. I need to stay within the direction of God's will and let expectations of outcomes die. I have to stay in the present and trust God with the future. And with people, I still have to keep my side of the street clean. I have to forgive and release anger and resentment. I need to make sure that I see my part in the tension (I have found through experience that I always have a part in any relationship tensions) and own up to and make amends for that part while demanding or expecting no change in attitude or behavior and no apology from the other party. Cleaning up my crap has nothing to do with if my pile is bigger than theirs or if they do any clean up or not. Neither does forgiveness. If I sail into a storm with a boat that is not burdened down under a load of anger and resentment then I will be more able to maneuver to safety under the gentle correcting winds of the Spirit. The alternative is to struggle with a sluggish and unresponsive to the Spirit boat that fights the waves until they tear it asunder. But other than making sure that I am spiritually fit and full of love and forgiveness, I need make no other preparations. While I need to be aware of changes in the spiritual and situation weather, my time is much better spent enjoying the beautiful skies of the present than searching the horizon for storm clouds that have not yet arrived.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Be Excellent To Each Other...And Party On Dudes!
I haven't seen Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure in over a decade, but for some reason I have had a quote from the movie going through my mind all morning. Be excellent to each other...and party on dudes! For years I tried to live my life with the party on dudes aspect at least, but the party was over long before my life could even begin to recover from the miserable mess that philosophy had landed me in. I pretty much ignored the be excellent to each other part. I mean if anyone was watching whose acceptance I wanted I'd be nice. If someone might later be able to do something I needed or wanted I could be quite helpful. If it might make people think my life was not a heinous mess so that they would not catch me as easily as I engaged in the party on dudes then the Golden Rule was sweet. But in truth, in the core of my soul, my philosophy was me first and you...if I get around to it and it doesn't cost me in any way.
During my period of recovery I have learned that to enjoy ones self in a gathering of people does not in and of itself require alcohol or drugs. I have also learned that I can celebrate without enhancement. In short, I do not need to drink or drug to party on. Upon reflection I realize that my concept or definition of party on is really more to live life to the fullest in a sensual manner. I mean to enjoy the people I'm sending time with and the places and events and situations by soaking in the sights or God's beautiful creation and the artistic creations of people created in the Master Artist's image, by listening to the sounds of nature, music, and laughter, by basking in the aromas of things that give me pleasure like ceder trees and fresh baked cookies and the bath oils my wife uses, by thanking God for and enjoying the spectrum of flavors that can be found in the vast number of choices we have been given to sustain our nutritional needs, by giving and receiving the comfort and joy that comes from a hug, from contact with another. To suck the marrow from life by enjoying all it has to offer the senses God gave me to experience life with and to add back to the sights, sounds, textures, scents and flavors when I can is really what I associate with the idea of "party on dudes!" And upon further reflection I realize that there was very little of any of that in my party days.
Do unto others as you would have them be unto you. This is the Golden Rule. Be nice and don't do anything to someone that you wouldn't want done to you is how I have most often interpreted this concept. But wouldn't be excellent to each other actually be more appropriate. As I would have someone do to me is a lot different in reality than simply what I don't want done to me. Sure I don't want people to gossip about me or back stab, so I shouldn't do those to others. But if I stop there, I fall so far short. As I would have done to me is more than be nice, be good. All my life I wanted accept me, love me in a way that means something and makes my life better, help me when I need it, don't let me suffer alone, comfort me, don't let me rejoice alone, rejoice with me, and so much more. Don't stop at be good to me, please go beyond that. Be excellent. Be faithful. Be reliable. Be God for me because I had a God shaped hole in my life.
But no person could be so excellent. People always failed. They always disappointed and hurt. And I myself was never that for anyone. Usually, I was not even in the same neighborhood. Partly because I lived a selfish and self-centered life, but this was mostly because I am not God and can't fill the God shaped hole in my own life, much less anyone else's. No, we as humans can not love each other and be good to one another and help and encourage one another in the way that God has been most excellent to us. And yet, Jesus instructed those that would follow His ways to love one another as He has loved us. What an impossible task!
But here's the wonderful part. While I am powerless over my selfishness and attitudes that would keep me from loving as Christ has loved, I know from experiencing the miracle of having Him fill my God shaped hole that there is one who has the power to love so excellently. The more I turn my will and my life over to Him, the more of His power, strength and point of view I operate on and the less of my own. This means that though I can not, on my own, treat people as God would have me, I can allow the Spirit of God dwelling in me to have His way and love, demanding no change, expecting no return, simply love.
This is what God did for me when he gave the excellent gift of Himself. He loved fully and completely. He made a way for me. He demanded nothing. He would love me no less had I totally rejected His gift, but when I did accept the freely offered, He filed the missing pieces of life in a way that nothing and no one else ever could. He was most excellent to me and gave me a life worth living and the ability to enjoy it.
I know that it easy to get frustrated with the crowds and commercialism and have to's of the season and have the Ba Humbug spirit rear its ugly head. Tolerance can be so lacking during a time when we are supposed to be remembering the gift God's tolerance and love for us provided. But as things get more and more crazy, I am going to try to focus more and more on the One who can provide peace in the midst of turmoil. I will try to accept His love for me and live like I have value to God. I will try to treat others as though they also are much loved of God. I will try to see and enjoy this life as a gift from God and treasure and embrace it rather than complain and act as though I am cursed for living. I will try to encourage others to do the same.
To put it simply, I will do my best to get out of the way so that God through me can be excellent to those I encounter, and I will party on dudes.
During my period of recovery I have learned that to enjoy ones self in a gathering of people does not in and of itself require alcohol or drugs. I have also learned that I can celebrate without enhancement. In short, I do not need to drink or drug to party on. Upon reflection I realize that my concept or definition of party on is really more to live life to the fullest in a sensual manner. I mean to enjoy the people I'm sending time with and the places and events and situations by soaking in the sights or God's beautiful creation and the artistic creations of people created in the Master Artist's image, by listening to the sounds of nature, music, and laughter, by basking in the aromas of things that give me pleasure like ceder trees and fresh baked cookies and the bath oils my wife uses, by thanking God for and enjoying the spectrum of flavors that can be found in the vast number of choices we have been given to sustain our nutritional needs, by giving and receiving the comfort and joy that comes from a hug, from contact with another. To suck the marrow from life by enjoying all it has to offer the senses God gave me to experience life with and to add back to the sights, sounds, textures, scents and flavors when I can is really what I associate with the idea of "party on dudes!" And upon further reflection I realize that there was very little of any of that in my party days.
Do unto others as you would have them be unto you. This is the Golden Rule. Be nice and don't do anything to someone that you wouldn't want done to you is how I have most often interpreted this concept. But wouldn't be excellent to each other actually be more appropriate. As I would have someone do to me is a lot different in reality than simply what I don't want done to me. Sure I don't want people to gossip about me or back stab, so I shouldn't do those to others. But if I stop there, I fall so far short. As I would have done to me is more than be nice, be good. All my life I wanted accept me, love me in a way that means something and makes my life better, help me when I need it, don't let me suffer alone, comfort me, don't let me rejoice alone, rejoice with me, and so much more. Don't stop at be good to me, please go beyond that. Be excellent. Be faithful. Be reliable. Be God for me because I had a God shaped hole in my life.
But no person could be so excellent. People always failed. They always disappointed and hurt. And I myself was never that for anyone. Usually, I was not even in the same neighborhood. Partly because I lived a selfish and self-centered life, but this was mostly because I am not God and can't fill the God shaped hole in my own life, much less anyone else's. No, we as humans can not love each other and be good to one another and help and encourage one another in the way that God has been most excellent to us. And yet, Jesus instructed those that would follow His ways to love one another as He has loved us. What an impossible task!
But here's the wonderful part. While I am powerless over my selfishness and attitudes that would keep me from loving as Christ has loved, I know from experiencing the miracle of having Him fill my God shaped hole that there is one who has the power to love so excellently. The more I turn my will and my life over to Him, the more of His power, strength and point of view I operate on and the less of my own. This means that though I can not, on my own, treat people as God would have me, I can allow the Spirit of God dwelling in me to have His way and love, demanding no change, expecting no return, simply love.
This is what God did for me when he gave the excellent gift of Himself. He loved fully and completely. He made a way for me. He demanded nothing. He would love me no less had I totally rejected His gift, but when I did accept the freely offered, He filed the missing pieces of life in a way that nothing and no one else ever could. He was most excellent to me and gave me a life worth living and the ability to enjoy it.
I know that it easy to get frustrated with the crowds and commercialism and have to's of the season and have the Ba Humbug spirit rear its ugly head. Tolerance can be so lacking during a time when we are supposed to be remembering the gift God's tolerance and love for us provided. But as things get more and more crazy, I am going to try to focus more and more on the One who can provide peace in the midst of turmoil. I will try to accept His love for me and live like I have value to God. I will try to treat others as though they also are much loved of God. I will try to see and enjoy this life as a gift from God and treasure and embrace it rather than complain and act as though I am cursed for living. I will try to encourage others to do the same.
To put it simply, I will do my best to get out of the way so that God through me can be excellent to those I encounter, and I will party on dudes.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
No Alexis I'm Not....Neither Were You
I have several spiritual and recovery based readings that I start my day off with. One of the ones that I usually favor is Father Leo's Daily Meditation. I don't know if he's a Catholic, Anglican or what, and frankly, I don't care. I love that recovered alcoholic. He has some wisdom that I am grateful he shared with the rest of us. He usually has a quote at the start of his writing and then expounds on it. I love quotes to, so this is a good meditation for me.
But no daily meditation would be worth anything, whether it be Daily Bread, Upper Room, My Utmost For His Highest, Daily Reflections, 24 Hours A Day or any others, if I didn't actually meditate on what they're saying. I don't do daily readings to learn what I am supposed to think, but rather to give me a few options of topics to focus on as I start my day and see where the Spirit leads my mind and heart. And as much as I love Father Leo, in my opinion, he missed the mark with the one I read today, which is actually the entry for December 13. I missed a day a while back.
"Man can not remake himself without suffering. For he is both the marble and the sculptor." ~Alexis Carrel
This is the quote that Father Leo used to expound on, and what he said was, in my opinion, good and right. He focused on the aspect of being grateful for his sufferings, because he learns from them and grows because of them. The Apostle Paul said similar things. I do not disagree.
But this blog is about my experience, strength and hope on whatever subject I feel lead to use as a topic, and while I do not disagree with Father Leo, and certainly not with the Apostle Paul, I greatly disagree with the spirit and philosophy of Alexis Carrel and therefore take issue with the quote used. Yes, I have both learned and grown from suffering. Suffering is one of the only ways that this stubborn man will find himself able to release his own will and check out how God may want things done. It's a sad but true fact. Knowing that I have pleased my Father is usually not as good a motivator as the misery I find myself in due to the law of cause and effect after walking in my own will. I pray that someday it will be the opposite.
Here's the issue. I'm a fairly intelligent man. I have a strong will in many ways. I know how to think, and I have read plenty of books on motivation, psychology, etc. And yet, I have never been able to change myself. I have caused my own suffering and grown and changed due to that suffering, but that is different. I did not do the changing, never on any long term basis anyway. Because I can't. In the words of the great philosopher Popeye, I ams what I ams and that's all that I ams. I can't be anything other than who I am. I've tried. I can fight against myself for a while. I can wear masks, pretend, and hide the truth for a while. But I have never been able to truly change anything about the nature of who I am, and I have never met anyone who could.
I am the marble, that much is true, but I am most certainly not the sculptor. Whenever I have tried to be I have only succeeded in failure, misery and making a mess. My Father, my Creator, God is the sculptor. There are several different scriptures in the Bible that specifically say that He is the potter and we are the clay to be molded and formed according to His will. Carrel believed that mankind could better itself by following the guidance of an elite group of intellectuals, and by implementing a regime of enforced eugenics. But even were he right, it is not the individual acting as sculptor but a select few exceptional individuals. And he was not right. The truth is that I have less chance of changing anyone else than I do of changing myself. I can take a man's life and end it, but I can never give him life. None can but the Creator.
So while I do want to be grateful for my sufferings, and I want to walk in what I have learned so that I do not need as much suffering to inspire positive change in the future, I do not ever want my pride to get in the way of my remembering who has done what I couldn't do in my life. I want to make sure to always give the glory and the honor to the One who deserves it. God performed a miracle in my life, and to quote Scrooge, "I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope!...I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!” The spirit of Christmas that I keep in my heart is the constant reminder that God's greatest gift to me was Himself to make a way to have relationship with Him and to enable me to change from what I was destined to be in my own will to the man I could be in His, happy, joyous and free from a hopeless state of mind, body and soul, no longer enslaved by drugs and alcohol and daily dancing with death but rather making my own journey following yonder star to find freedom.
I am not the sculptor. I am the marble. I am not the potter. I am the clay. And I am not the composer, but like the little drummer boys before me I will play the Composer's music the best I can in gratitude and thanksgiving for the song He has placed in my heart.
But no daily meditation would be worth anything, whether it be Daily Bread, Upper Room, My Utmost For His Highest, Daily Reflections, 24 Hours A Day or any others, if I didn't actually meditate on what they're saying. I don't do daily readings to learn what I am supposed to think, but rather to give me a few options of topics to focus on as I start my day and see where the Spirit leads my mind and heart. And as much as I love Father Leo, in my opinion, he missed the mark with the one I read today, which is actually the entry for December 13. I missed a day a while back.
"Man can not remake himself without suffering. For he is both the marble and the sculptor." ~Alexis Carrel
This is the quote that Father Leo used to expound on, and what he said was, in my opinion, good and right. He focused on the aspect of being grateful for his sufferings, because he learns from them and grows because of them. The Apostle Paul said similar things. I do not disagree.
But this blog is about my experience, strength and hope on whatever subject I feel lead to use as a topic, and while I do not disagree with Father Leo, and certainly not with the Apostle Paul, I greatly disagree with the spirit and philosophy of Alexis Carrel and therefore take issue with the quote used. Yes, I have both learned and grown from suffering. Suffering is one of the only ways that this stubborn man will find himself able to release his own will and check out how God may want things done. It's a sad but true fact. Knowing that I have pleased my Father is usually not as good a motivator as the misery I find myself in due to the law of cause and effect after walking in my own will. I pray that someday it will be the opposite.
Here's the issue. I'm a fairly intelligent man. I have a strong will in many ways. I know how to think, and I have read plenty of books on motivation, psychology, etc. And yet, I have never been able to change myself. I have caused my own suffering and grown and changed due to that suffering, but that is different. I did not do the changing, never on any long term basis anyway. Because I can't. In the words of the great philosopher Popeye, I ams what I ams and that's all that I ams. I can't be anything other than who I am. I've tried. I can fight against myself for a while. I can wear masks, pretend, and hide the truth for a while. But I have never been able to truly change anything about the nature of who I am, and I have never met anyone who could.
I am the marble, that much is true, but I am most certainly not the sculptor. Whenever I have tried to be I have only succeeded in failure, misery and making a mess. My Father, my Creator, God is the sculptor. There are several different scriptures in the Bible that specifically say that He is the potter and we are the clay to be molded and formed according to His will. Carrel believed that mankind could better itself by following the guidance of an elite group of intellectuals, and by implementing a regime of enforced eugenics. But even were he right, it is not the individual acting as sculptor but a select few exceptional individuals. And he was not right. The truth is that I have less chance of changing anyone else than I do of changing myself. I can take a man's life and end it, but I can never give him life. None can but the Creator.
So while I do want to be grateful for my sufferings, and I want to walk in what I have learned so that I do not need as much suffering to inspire positive change in the future, I do not ever want my pride to get in the way of my remembering who has done what I couldn't do in my life. I want to make sure to always give the glory and the honor to the One who deserves it. God performed a miracle in my life, and to quote Scrooge, "I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope!...I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!” The spirit of Christmas that I keep in my heart is the constant reminder that God's greatest gift to me was Himself to make a way to have relationship with Him and to enable me to change from what I was destined to be in my own will to the man I could be in His, happy, joyous and free from a hopeless state of mind, body and soul, no longer enslaved by drugs and alcohol and daily dancing with death but rather making my own journey following yonder star to find freedom.
I am not the sculptor. I am the marble. I am not the potter. I am the clay. And I am not the composer, but like the little drummer boys before me I will play the Composer's music the best I can in gratitude and thanksgiving for the song He has placed in my heart.
Friday, December 9, 2011
Different But The Same
Last night my wife and I braced the cold and went to hear a friend of mine tell her story. As I've already indicated, my friend is female and therefore different than me. She is also several years younger than I am. She is from one of the Northern, non-Yankee states and a transplant to Texas. I am a native of Texas. She started drinking about the same age as I did, but did not hit full speed on the crazy train until later and held off on adding drugs to the booze for quite some time. I started a little younger and was doing coke to remedy hangovers at 13. Different. She never got arrested, and I went to prison. She has two precious daughters, and I am not a father. Differences, differences, differences, there are so many differences. And yet, our stories are much the same.
Hearing her story served as another reminder of the truth behind the statement often heard in the rooms of recovery to look for the similarities and not the differences. Seeing the similarities in my lives and the lives of others is crucial. First it makes seeing the common solution easier. No matter how different someone is or someone's life is from me/mine, every person on this planet has something so wonderful and important in common with me. We are all loved of God and as long as we are still breathing have a chance to find relationship with our Creator because of the grace He has provided to make relationship possible.
My friend and I have more than that in common. We are both powerless in our own strength over alcohol and drugs and under the wisdom and power of our own wills can not manage our lives. We both came to understand and believe that as powerless as we were and are, God has the power to overcome addiction and any other problem and is well able to manage the universe, much less our lives. We both made a decision to our will and our lives over to the care of God, because He loves and cares for us. We both took stock of our lives in the form of a written inventory and shared that inventory, admitting to God, ourselves, and at least one other person the exact nature of our wrongs. We both understand that our secrets will kill us, and that which is done in secret will come to light or there will be no lasting recovery. From our inventory we were both able to define and see areas in our life where our character was bankrupt. We both asked God to remove these character defects and then made a list of people we had harmed throughout our lives. We both began making amends to those people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. We both continue to take personal daily inventory and when we are wrong, promptly admit it. We both seek to improve our conscious contact with our Creator through prayer and meditation, asking especially for the power and grace to do His will. As a result of doing these things, we have both found recovery. We are no longer powerless, because we are tapped in to the Ultimate Power. We have been set free and healed of a hopeless state of mind and body. We do not need nor wish to drink or drug today. We have both received miracles from God, and our lives, indeed, have become examples of what the love and power of God can do for those who will let Him and are willing to surrender. We both try to carry this message to other alcoholics and addicts and to practice the principles of relationship and surrender to God in all of our affairs.
My friend and I both had God shaped holes in our lives that we tried to fill and patch with chemicals. We both nearly died. We both lost relationships and things. We both suffered. We both hated our lives and ourselves. We were both dishonest and criminal. We both found a spiritual solution. We both worked the steps of recovery, and we both got well. Out stories are the same. Today, my friend is happy (more than not), joyous and fee woman with a real and beautiful smile and a life worth living. Today I am a happy, joyous and free man with a real and fast smile and a life worth living. Our stories are the same, and that is why I cried as she spoke, because the similarities tore at my heart, and that is also why I smiled as she spoke, because God did for her what He has done for me. And that is why I can write with complete faith and confidence that if you are an alcoholic or addict reading this, that our stories can also be the same. There is a solution. There is one powerful enough to set you free. That one is God- may you find Him now.
Hearing her story served as another reminder of the truth behind the statement often heard in the rooms of recovery to look for the similarities and not the differences. Seeing the similarities in my lives and the lives of others is crucial. First it makes seeing the common solution easier. No matter how different someone is or someone's life is from me/mine, every person on this planet has something so wonderful and important in common with me. We are all loved of God and as long as we are still breathing have a chance to find relationship with our Creator because of the grace He has provided to make relationship possible.
My friend and I have more than that in common. We are both powerless in our own strength over alcohol and drugs and under the wisdom and power of our own wills can not manage our lives. We both came to understand and believe that as powerless as we were and are, God has the power to overcome addiction and any other problem and is well able to manage the universe, much less our lives. We both made a decision to our will and our lives over to the care of God, because He loves and cares for us. We both took stock of our lives in the form of a written inventory and shared that inventory, admitting to God, ourselves, and at least one other person the exact nature of our wrongs. We both understand that our secrets will kill us, and that which is done in secret will come to light or there will be no lasting recovery. From our inventory we were both able to define and see areas in our life where our character was bankrupt. We both asked God to remove these character defects and then made a list of people we had harmed throughout our lives. We both began making amends to those people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. We both continue to take personal daily inventory and when we are wrong, promptly admit it. We both seek to improve our conscious contact with our Creator through prayer and meditation, asking especially for the power and grace to do His will. As a result of doing these things, we have both found recovery. We are no longer powerless, because we are tapped in to the Ultimate Power. We have been set free and healed of a hopeless state of mind and body. We do not need nor wish to drink or drug today. We have both received miracles from God, and our lives, indeed, have become examples of what the love and power of God can do for those who will let Him and are willing to surrender. We both try to carry this message to other alcoholics and addicts and to practice the principles of relationship and surrender to God in all of our affairs.
My friend and I both had God shaped holes in our lives that we tried to fill and patch with chemicals. We both nearly died. We both lost relationships and things. We both suffered. We both hated our lives and ourselves. We were both dishonest and criminal. We both found a spiritual solution. We both worked the steps of recovery, and we both got well. Out stories are the same. Today, my friend is happy (more than not), joyous and fee woman with a real and beautiful smile and a life worth living. Today I am a happy, joyous and free man with a real and fast smile and a life worth living. Our stories are the same, and that is why I cried as she spoke, because the similarities tore at my heart, and that is also why I smiled as she spoke, because God did for her what He has done for me. And that is why I can write with complete faith and confidence that if you are an alcoholic or addict reading this, that our stories can also be the same. There is a solution. There is one powerful enough to set you free. That one is God- may you find Him now.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
The Prodigal Restored
I haven't updated my blog in way too long. Partly because I haven't wanted to lose any more time in my day than I had to with my normal responsibilities and activities and partly because I haven't really had anything to say. I started to write something a couple of weeks ago and about a paragraph in scrapped the entry due to frustration over not being able to say what I felt I needed or wanted to say. Sometimes I forget that at times you just have to ramble until you get to where you need to go.
About a week ago I received a friend request from an old friend I haven't seen in ages. I had actually looked for him on Facebook a few times over the past couple of years and had not been able to find him. I felt blessed that he had found me, especially since the name I go by now is not the nickname I used as a boy when the two of us were best friends. He sent me a message a few days ago and asked how the past twenty years have been. I haven't been on Facebook much the last week, so I just read the message this morning and haven't responded yet, but the question got me to thinking.
The last time I saw my friend was in 1989, and it had been several years before he stood up with me at my first wedding that I had seen him. In reality, the two of us haven't really spent any time together since I was 11 or so, almost thirty years ago. The few time I saw him or any of his family around the time I was 13 and 14, I had been traveling the road of addiction long enough to have tried to hide it. I didn't try to hide that I had played in the street, but I attempted to disguise that it had become my normal commute. If I remember correctly, the last time I saw his mother was during one of the brief week or so long periods at about 14 or 15 when I tried to clean up my act, and I believe I even may have spoken to her about how God had helped me kick the habits I had so foolishly started. The sad thing is that it was a lie built on the overwhelming need I had at the time for the acceptance and approval of others. The truth was that I had not quit anything for long enough to claim recovery and that I knew that I would use again. I wasn't stopping anything, just trying to pause long enough to postpone the wreck I could see was about to happen in my life. The other sad truth was that I played lip service to a relationship with God that deep down I knew I needed but that did not exist in any real sense. I burned with anger at my Creator and believed deeply that He hated me. My life was worse than empty, it was filled with toxic poisons that had nothing to do with the chemicals I put in my body. The chemicals were simply an attempt to kill the spiritual pain I felt was killing me in slow motion.
Skip ahead about four years, and I asked my friend to be one of my groomsmen at my wedding. He drove up from Huntsville. It was good to see him, but we didn't have a lot of time to catch up. It wouldn't have mattered if we had the time, because there was no way I would have let him see the real me, the messed up me, the me I had learned to hide so well from everyone, including quite often, myself. In many ways, I had become so adept at wearing masks and camouflaging the insanity that on the last day I saw my friend even the woman about to become my bride had little idea of what she was bout to join herself with and the danger that she was in. That was twenty-two years ago, and this morning I have been thinking some about what transpired after. How do I answer the question how was that time?
Of course, like any question so general that covers two decades, there is no simple good or bad answer. Over all, today, I would say that it was good...more good than bad anyway. That's a little strange to me, since I know that it wouldn't appear so to many. There are some good memories of some fun and pleasant times, but they were too few and spread too far apart. Many of them should even be placed in category of riotous living, as the Bible describes it in the story of the Prodigal Son. In the meantime, the uncontrollable mess of my life became more and more uncontrollable while the wreckage became worse and worse.
Between the last time I saw my friend and ten years later I would see actions damage and destroy more and more of my life and the lives of those I cared about. I cut through the life and heart of my first wife like a fragmentation grenade that went of in spurts rather than a single explosion. I remember all too well how it felt to see what was happening in every area of my life and be unable to stop it. I remember thinking, "I need to quit this, and today I won't do (fill in the blank)" as physically I prepared to do the very thing I was thinking I would not do. I felt powerless and hopeless. But I couldn't admit that powerlessness, not even to myself.
Over that ten year period I destroyed the chances to do so much of what it seemed clear that God had given me gifts suited to do. I nuked a career that I loved. About the time that I finally felt a desire to follow in the footsteps of my minister father, I also realized that I had left that road way to far back to do so. Now relax, I am not saying that God can not or will not use me or that I can not minister to and help others. He can and does, and I can and do.
A few months after the first decade past, I found myself facing a felony less than a month after having tried to kill myself yet again. As angry as I had been with God at the age of fourteen, it did not compare to the anger I felt in 1999 as I faced a world full of the knowledge that God would not help me and yet would not let me die and escape. Of course the truth is that I would not let God help me.
My relationship with my family deteriorated. My brother saw me at my worst and saw the damage I had done to my wife, and our relationship has yet to recover. The marriage ended in an unsurprising divorce. I broke my parents hearts and witnessed the pain in their eyes over and over on visitation days. I spent the majority of the next decade wearing a prison uniform, and my life continued to spiral downward as anger, bitterness, self-pity and fear ate away at me, fueled by the chemicals I continued to assault my body and mind with. It has been barely more than three years since that chapter of my life ended. I have been unable to find steady employment since my release.
I hope my little recount of some of the basics of what has happened over the past two decades doesn't sound like I'm whining or feeling sorry for myself. It is what it is. I did every bit of that damage, to myself and others, and ran with the bit in my teeth through to fields of destruction while cursing God for not reining me in. And please don't forget that I said looking back today I see the past twenty years as more good than bad. How?
Well, for starters I had gotten so far off the right path that I needed the road I was on to turn to rubble so I would see how much I needed to return to the highway my Creator called me to travel on. I had to destroy my life enough to become desperate enough to get past my anger with God and discover that I was truly angry with me. I needed to learn that it was me who hated me and not my Creator. I needed to discover the truth and the depths of God's love for me, and for me, that was only possible looking back over the destruction and danger I had survived when there is no earthly reason that I should have.
While prison would not have been my choice of methods to save my life, God used it do do just that. I am thoroughly convinced that had I not been arrested and caged, I would not be alive today. In many ways, my wounds and addictions and anger grew worse over that time, but in several key ways, I found healing and time to recover. Some of that recovery would not bear fruit until after I was released, but the healing began in the darkest of places.
Thanks to parole, I found the rooms of recovery. At first, of course, I went only to get my paper signed. Meetings were better than prison any day. But God gave me ears to hear, and I became drawn to recovery and sobriety. I began working the steps for myself and discovered in the process how much God loves me, how much my wreckage can be the exact right tool to help others who believe that they have strayed to far have destroyed too much to return to their Creator. Though my recovery has not been constant over the past three years and I have only eighteen and a half months clean and sober right now, that is the longest that I have gone without changing the way I feel with alcohol and drugs since I was 12. That is a miracle. And the greater miracle is that I do not feel a loss of anything. I have a peace and a joy today that have nothing to do with my circumstances or prospects for worldly success or approval.
Once I finally surrendered my will and my life over to the care of the God who loves me and died so that I might live, He blessed me with love and companionship I believed I had forfeited all right to. I thank God daily that He brought Leah into my life and saw fit to join us together. I am so grateful that she said yes to my marriage proposal when on paper I surely seems as bad an investment as giving a loan to a crack head. I am grateful for my relationship with my parents, and my in-laws. So much of the damage I caused in my past has healed, and I have friendships with people, including my ex-wife, who have every right to hate me forever. Most of all, I am at peace with who I am and content with my life. I am no longer driven by the need for approval of others or a hundred forms of fear, anger, self-pity, etc. I have recovered from a hopeless state of mind, body and spirit. Greatest of all, I experience the truth and wonder of a personal and daily relationship with my Creator.
The road from there to here was long and filled with destruction and pain, but it was the road that I had to take to discover for myself what the Prodigal felt when his father saw him returning from a long way off and ran to embrace him and welcome him back into the family. I despised my birthright. I rejected everything. I destroyed and tarnished the gifts God had given me living selfishly and playing god of my own life. And yet, He loved me. He protected me. And when I finally beat myself down enough to say I know I do not deserve to be His son, but even being a servant in the household of my Father is better than this, I will return, I discovered the relief and gratefulness that comes from restoration.
About a week ago I received a friend request from an old friend I haven't seen in ages. I had actually looked for him on Facebook a few times over the past couple of years and had not been able to find him. I felt blessed that he had found me, especially since the name I go by now is not the nickname I used as a boy when the two of us were best friends. He sent me a message a few days ago and asked how the past twenty years have been. I haven't been on Facebook much the last week, so I just read the message this morning and haven't responded yet, but the question got me to thinking.
The last time I saw my friend was in 1989, and it had been several years before he stood up with me at my first wedding that I had seen him. In reality, the two of us haven't really spent any time together since I was 11 or so, almost thirty years ago. The few time I saw him or any of his family around the time I was 13 and 14, I had been traveling the road of addiction long enough to have tried to hide it. I didn't try to hide that I had played in the street, but I attempted to disguise that it had become my normal commute. If I remember correctly, the last time I saw his mother was during one of the brief week or so long periods at about 14 or 15 when I tried to clean up my act, and I believe I even may have spoken to her about how God had helped me kick the habits I had so foolishly started. The sad thing is that it was a lie built on the overwhelming need I had at the time for the acceptance and approval of others. The truth was that I had not quit anything for long enough to claim recovery and that I knew that I would use again. I wasn't stopping anything, just trying to pause long enough to postpone the wreck I could see was about to happen in my life. The other sad truth was that I played lip service to a relationship with God that deep down I knew I needed but that did not exist in any real sense. I burned with anger at my Creator and believed deeply that He hated me. My life was worse than empty, it was filled with toxic poisons that had nothing to do with the chemicals I put in my body. The chemicals were simply an attempt to kill the spiritual pain I felt was killing me in slow motion.
Skip ahead about four years, and I asked my friend to be one of my groomsmen at my wedding. He drove up from Huntsville. It was good to see him, but we didn't have a lot of time to catch up. It wouldn't have mattered if we had the time, because there was no way I would have let him see the real me, the messed up me, the me I had learned to hide so well from everyone, including quite often, myself. In many ways, I had become so adept at wearing masks and camouflaging the insanity that on the last day I saw my friend even the woman about to become my bride had little idea of what she was bout to join herself with and the danger that she was in. That was twenty-two years ago, and this morning I have been thinking some about what transpired after. How do I answer the question how was that time?
Of course, like any question so general that covers two decades, there is no simple good or bad answer. Over all, today, I would say that it was good...more good than bad anyway. That's a little strange to me, since I know that it wouldn't appear so to many. There are some good memories of some fun and pleasant times, but they were too few and spread too far apart. Many of them should even be placed in category of riotous living, as the Bible describes it in the story of the Prodigal Son. In the meantime, the uncontrollable mess of my life became more and more uncontrollable while the wreckage became worse and worse.
Between the last time I saw my friend and ten years later I would see actions damage and destroy more and more of my life and the lives of those I cared about. I cut through the life and heart of my first wife like a fragmentation grenade that went of in spurts rather than a single explosion. I remember all too well how it felt to see what was happening in every area of my life and be unable to stop it. I remember thinking, "I need to quit this, and today I won't do (fill in the blank)" as physically I prepared to do the very thing I was thinking I would not do. I felt powerless and hopeless. But I couldn't admit that powerlessness, not even to myself.
Over that ten year period I destroyed the chances to do so much of what it seemed clear that God had given me gifts suited to do. I nuked a career that I loved. About the time that I finally felt a desire to follow in the footsteps of my minister father, I also realized that I had left that road way to far back to do so. Now relax, I am not saying that God can not or will not use me or that I can not minister to and help others. He can and does, and I can and do.
A few months after the first decade past, I found myself facing a felony less than a month after having tried to kill myself yet again. As angry as I had been with God at the age of fourteen, it did not compare to the anger I felt in 1999 as I faced a world full of the knowledge that God would not help me and yet would not let me die and escape. Of course the truth is that I would not let God help me.
My relationship with my family deteriorated. My brother saw me at my worst and saw the damage I had done to my wife, and our relationship has yet to recover. The marriage ended in an unsurprising divorce. I broke my parents hearts and witnessed the pain in their eyes over and over on visitation days. I spent the majority of the next decade wearing a prison uniform, and my life continued to spiral downward as anger, bitterness, self-pity and fear ate away at me, fueled by the chemicals I continued to assault my body and mind with. It has been barely more than three years since that chapter of my life ended. I have been unable to find steady employment since my release.
I hope my little recount of some of the basics of what has happened over the past two decades doesn't sound like I'm whining or feeling sorry for myself. It is what it is. I did every bit of that damage, to myself and others, and ran with the bit in my teeth through to fields of destruction while cursing God for not reining me in. And please don't forget that I said looking back today I see the past twenty years as more good than bad. How?
Well, for starters I had gotten so far off the right path that I needed the road I was on to turn to rubble so I would see how much I needed to return to the highway my Creator called me to travel on. I had to destroy my life enough to become desperate enough to get past my anger with God and discover that I was truly angry with me. I needed to learn that it was me who hated me and not my Creator. I needed to discover the truth and the depths of God's love for me, and for me, that was only possible looking back over the destruction and danger I had survived when there is no earthly reason that I should have.
While prison would not have been my choice of methods to save my life, God used it do do just that. I am thoroughly convinced that had I not been arrested and caged, I would not be alive today. In many ways, my wounds and addictions and anger grew worse over that time, but in several key ways, I found healing and time to recover. Some of that recovery would not bear fruit until after I was released, but the healing began in the darkest of places.
Thanks to parole, I found the rooms of recovery. At first, of course, I went only to get my paper signed. Meetings were better than prison any day. But God gave me ears to hear, and I became drawn to recovery and sobriety. I began working the steps for myself and discovered in the process how much God loves me, how much my wreckage can be the exact right tool to help others who believe that they have strayed to far have destroyed too much to return to their Creator. Though my recovery has not been constant over the past three years and I have only eighteen and a half months clean and sober right now, that is the longest that I have gone without changing the way I feel with alcohol and drugs since I was 12. That is a miracle. And the greater miracle is that I do not feel a loss of anything. I have a peace and a joy today that have nothing to do with my circumstances or prospects for worldly success or approval.
Once I finally surrendered my will and my life over to the care of the God who loves me and died so that I might live, He blessed me with love and companionship I believed I had forfeited all right to. I thank God daily that He brought Leah into my life and saw fit to join us together. I am so grateful that she said yes to my marriage proposal when on paper I surely seems as bad an investment as giving a loan to a crack head. I am grateful for my relationship with my parents, and my in-laws. So much of the damage I caused in my past has healed, and I have friendships with people, including my ex-wife, who have every right to hate me forever. Most of all, I am at peace with who I am and content with my life. I am no longer driven by the need for approval of others or a hundred forms of fear, anger, self-pity, etc. I have recovered from a hopeless state of mind, body and spirit. Greatest of all, I experience the truth and wonder of a personal and daily relationship with my Creator.
The road from there to here was long and filled with destruction and pain, but it was the road that I had to take to discover for myself what the Prodigal felt when his father saw him returning from a long way off and ran to embrace him and welcome him back into the family. I despised my birthright. I rejected everything. I destroyed and tarnished the gifts God had given me living selfishly and playing god of my own life. And yet, He loved me. He protected me. And when I finally beat myself down enough to say I know I do not deserve to be His son, but even being a servant in the household of my Father is better than this, I will return, I discovered the relief and gratefulness that comes from restoration.
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