So Far Gone

"I wanna be so far gone in you

So far nothing else will ever do

I wanna be so far gone in you

in you..." 

~ Thousand Foot Krutch

There are times when I look at my life and the situations in it and realize that I've gotten one or two degrees off course. I'm not talking about slipping into the deep end of the pool of self or backsliding, but rather simply realizing that God and my relationship with Him do not quite have the priority that they should have. It's easy to slip into the performance mentality at that point and start thinking of all the things that I should be doing. I need to pray and meditate more. I should read and study more. I need to make sure to put God first in my life, etc.

And there's nothing wrong with those things, especially the last one. The idea of putting God first in my life is a good one. It's even scriptural. "Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness..." I've heard repeatedly that if I put half as much energy in pursuing God as I did in pursuing those things I'd become addicted to that I wouldn't have trouble walking with God. I agree.

I don't want religion in my life. I want relationship with Christ. I don't have to prioritize my wife. When I wake up I don't have to make a choice to put Leah before other things and try to spend time with her. I love her so much that when I have a moment of free time that is also free for her my only desire is to spend it with her. It's not a choice, because there is no choice. I want to spend my time with her, and I do that every minute that I can. I have to try to force myself to socialize some and include others in my life, because it would be very comfortable to isolate and hole up with Leah and shut out the rest of the world. But I can't be of service very well when I do that. I've found the most satisfying compromise is to make sure I do my visiting when Leah can go with me. That way I get to see family and friends more but don't lose a minute with her.

I never once woke up and said I'm going to put drinking and drugging first in my life today. I didn't have to. It already was. There were times that I isolated and sought oblivion and nothing else. There were also plenty of times that I went to work, spent time with family and friends, etc that I was not alone with my addictions. But they were always right there. I was either using during those times or trying to figure out how and when I could use again.

I could structure and organize my life and put God at the top like a chore on a to do list. But I don't want that. It makes God a burden. Spending time with God becomes something I have to do to keep from messing up my life, to earn His blessing and power in my life, and that's no way to have relationship. I don't want Leah to feel like she has to spend time with me to keep from losing me. I want her to want to spend time with me that way I want to spend time with her. I'm sure God feels the same way about me.

I want to be so in love with God that my love affair with my wife pales by comparison. I want to be so consumed with relationship with Him that I don't try to put Him first it just happens. I want to be unable to go anywhere or do anything without my conscious contact and awareness of God being a part of that time. I want to be so far gone in my relationship with Jesus that there's no area in my life where I can say here I am spending time with Him and here I am not.

For years the first thing I did upon waking was reach for something to chemically alter my body and mind. I didn't think about it. It never got written down on a to do list. It was as natural a part of my day as breathing. The last thing I did each day was ingest something to change the way I felt. And all through the day my life was chemically altered. My desire today is not to feel the need to put God first. Instead I want to be so in love and consumed with that relationship that the presence of God becomes as much a part of each moment of my life that it is as much a part of who I am today as the drink and drugs were in the past.

Three Years Old And Finally As Smart As A Toddler

Three years ago yesterday I wrote a blog entry and proceeded promptly thereafter to get totally trashed and cry myself to sleep. The last paragraph of what I wrote was full of determination and hope, but not enough to keep me from using that night. It reads as follows:

"I thank God for an earthly father who lives an example of Christ-like love and gave me an understanding of the concept of mercy, love and forgiveness rather than hatred, rejection, fire and brimstone. Because of this I can believe in forgiveness from God, because I have seen it in my earthly father I can believe it from a Heavenly Father. I can accept the philosophy of progress not perfection and release myself from the bondage of legalism and expectations I set too high for myself. I don't have to follow you [Someone close to me who had relapsed and died 16 days later four months before I wrote this] into the ground, and while I miss you terribly, I pray that I regain my recovery. I can take a detour back onto the route that God put me on over a year ago that leads to a place of serenity, where I can be happy, joyous and free as God wants me to be. I know we'll meet in heaven one day, but it doesn't have to be soon."

What I felt that night and tried to express may not have been enough to keep me clean and sober as I wrote it or in the hours that followed, but it did indeed signal a change. The next morning I  woke up sick, hurting and shaky and hit my knees rather than reach for a drink. I prayed for God to help keep me clean and sober for just the next 24 hours and that I would be able to make the journey back home as the prodigal son.

I surrendered. The alcohol and drugs had whipped me. I'd only been back out there about a couple months, and I'd lost 40 pounds. Death courted me daily. I knew I only had two choices surrender or die. I surrendered.

And that's all I did on my own. Since that morning after the grace of God has given me three years worth of 24 hours clean and sober all strung together. Every day this happens is a new record for how long I've been clean and sober since I was 13. And that is a miracle.

I did what God told me to do, but only because He gave the grace for me to be able to obey. I did my part of the work in the Spiritual program I chose, but only because He gave me the willingness, ability and energy to do that. I changed, but only because He changed me. He did it all, but only because I let Him. Today I am free from the obsession to drink and drug and have recovered from a hopeless state of mind and body, but only because He tore down  the walls and loosed the chains.

Last night and when I first awoke this morning, I felt on edge, anxious and angry for no reason. I couldn't control my emotions. I took things that Leah said as attacks and persecution and reacted poorly. I took computer problems as signs the whole world was on the brink of disaster and cursed the moon, the stars and Toshiba. In short I acted a fool.

But I didn't want to drink or drug, I only wanted to stop feeling the way I felt. I'm still the same guy who can't always handle reality and emotions, but today, I know that the solution, the peace I seek, the attitude and feeling I change I need is not found in chemicals, or self-control, will power and discipline, but rather it is only found in God's grace, acceptance and love.

So now, like the toddler I am, I will run to my Papa crying instead of trying to fix my injuries myself. Like a toddler I will crawl into His arms and let Him kiss it all better. Like I toddler I will not hold it against myself that I didn't walk perfectly and something went wrong, but will lose all sense of everything but the moment and Papa and that now everything is Ok.

This is what I've learned in three years. Not how to walk perfectly or run without falling and scraping a knee, but how to turn to my Creator and cry out Papa and to know that He will answer with love. And that love is enough to fill what needs to be filled in my life so that today, at this moment, I crave no other enhancer or numbing agent to get through the day. I am grateful.

Moneyball and Me

My wife does not like baseball, nor does she enjoy movies with baseball as the backdrop or central theme. SO it surprised and blessed me when I checked to see what disc had arrived from Netflix the other day and discovered that Leah had added Moneyball to the queue. It was a sweet and thoughtful act on her part, and I felt grateful that she loves me so much.

Yesterday as I worked on editing images from a recent wedding Leah and I shot I put the disc in the player and relived a little of the back story of the miracle season the Oakland A's had in 2002. No, they didn't win the World Series, but they made the playoffs when all the experts and fans expected them to be one of the worst, if not the worst, team in the American League that year. They'd lost their star players and had a budget smaller than the average Hollywood film I remember going into the season as a Rangers fan being glad that no matter what else happened at least we wouldn't be last because we were so much better than the A's.

Wrong. Texas finished last in the West, although not last in the American League overall, thankfully, while Oakland finished first in the division. It wasn't supposed to happen that way! Every factor that could be seen by everyone, experts and armchair coaches alike agreed the A's were doomed to fail! So what happened?

Well, I don't want to recap the movie. I might ruin it for those who haven't seen it or bore those who feel about baseball as my wonderful wife does. It's an awesome story if you're in to that kind of thing, so give the film a look see. But to answer the question in a general way Billy Beane, the A's General Manager, did something different and unexpected.

Beane saw another ball club getting direction that he didn't understand from someone he wasn't sure had the qualifications to be giving said direction. He admitted he didn't have the answers himself and gave this new approach a chance. He opened his mind to a new way of thinking and took advice from a source he would not have considered before.

He didn't have instant success, but he didn't quit or demand the path of instant gratification. When the whole world seemed to be heckling and second-guessing, when we all said what he was doing would never work, that he would be as big if not a bigger failure than before, he stayed the course.

The results were amazing and beyond even die hard Oakland fans' wildest dreams. Another team, the Boston Red Sox, put the principles that Beans used in Oakland into place and two years later broke the 86 year championship drought. I won a large pot when the Red Sox won the World Series for the first time in what seemed like forever.

So what's the point? Am I just rambling about a movie I really enjoyed? No. I saw in this story an example of recovery and life the way it is meant to be. I, like many others, have made some extremely bad choices running my life. I woke up one day to find myself on the bottom of the pile with little hope of digging my way out of it. I didn't have the resources or skills. There was no way to get a new result using the same old thinking and living the same way that I always had. I simply couldn't happen.

Society looked at my record, my past, tallied up the results of my mistakes and wrote me off. I didn't blame them, because I did the same thing. Then I opened my mind enough to listen to others who had started doing something totally different.

There is another way, an easier softer way, to live that actually produces better results! By surrendering to God and letting Him show me what needed to be cut from my life and what needed to be added, I abandoned the self-centered, look out for number one way of the world that had failed me so miserably, and adopted a new way of thinking and acting and making decisions.

My life began to change. I didn't have instant success, and I still had detractors. More than one person doing the same thing I was doing looked at my early struggles and said this guy is never going to make it. But I found my miracle. Today I have been clean and sober for two years, ten months, and twenty-five days, and that my dear reader is a miracle. I have proven over the years that I could never have done that on my own. I needed to surrender to the still small voice of God, do it His way instead of mine, and stay the course.

I still haven't won the show. There are areas in my life that still need a lot of improvement. But I'm in the playoff hunt again. I have a chance to make a difference. I have a life worth living. And I have my own Red Sox. Another man saw what was happening in my life and started listening to the same advice, practicing the same principles. After a lifetime of mistakes and using, he died clean and sober and restored. He won the show.

I don't take credit for Thomas' success. Beane didn't leave Oakland and Boston won their World Series without him. He saw what someone else was doing and did what they did. Boston saw what he did and took it further. I didn't change my life. God did. And I didn't find a new path. The principles I put into practice have been around a long time. And while I made myself available to listen and help, Thomas did his part of the work and God did all the heavy hitting.

But that's the point. That's the secret to success in recovery and in life. Realize that there is another way, make a connection with the One who understands how things need to be done, listen and put what He said into action in such a way that not only you have success but where others can see what you have and get it for themselves by doing what you did.

There is another way. It doesn't make sense to a self-centered world, but I promise that it works....and it costs a lot less too.