Character defects are the barnacles of the spirit.
STEP SIX
We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Biblical Comparison: “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” – James 4:10
Many years ago, when I was a boat owner, I learned the adage “a boat is a vessel that you keep pouring money into.” It seemed like the maintenance for a salt-water vessel was never-ending. Each season, there was barnacle-scraping to be done.
The thing about barnacles is that if you never lifted your boat out of the water, you may never know they were even there. You would only be able to tell because every little barnacle affects the ‘drag’ of the vessel….making it slower and less reactive, and steering less accurate. Even though you cannot always visibly see them, they are disruptive and – if unchecked – can multiply in number and destruction.
They have to be dealt with every season. Not only are the little critters unsightly when a boat is lifted out of the water, they have a horrible stink.
And scraping them off is a very unpleasant experience. They seem glued to the surface and have to be scuffed off one-by-one. Work on too many at a time, and you don’t get them fully removed.
The stench makes you wonder if you shouldn’t have just left the boat in the water and pretended not to notice them. But the boat is on dry land now, there is no turning back.
Barnacles remind me a lot of Sixth Step work. They are much like our defects of character. If you are in recovery – even for one day – your boat has been lifted from the water. The cleaner your vessel becomes, the more you realize how encrusted it had been and how much it had been affecting your ‘drag’ – your life force.
Is it your season to scrape off the barnacles? The hard-shelled, parasitic character flaws that are slowing your recovery down?
Are you entirely ready to be free of those hangers-on of stinking thinking?
Ask God to remove your defects of character and he will lift you higher. Ask him to be gentle but effective, and ask him to make you mindful of destructive thoughts and behaviors. Sometimes they have been hitching a ride in us for so long that we don’t even realize they are there. Own every single one of your issues; you can’t work on what you don’t own. Pray for peace in the process. It will take time. That’s okay. There is no turning back now.
The scraping might be unpleasant and stinky, but there is nothing like the smoother sailing experience when you are seaworthy again.
If you had never been lifted from the water, you might have never been able to sail so free. There will be maintenance. But there will be a season to deal with those in due time.
A spirit is is a vessel that you keep pouring love into.
We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
“Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” – James 5:16
“There are some secrets I will take to my grave.”
Have you ever said the statement above? I have. It is a sentiment that keeps sickness active and recovery stunted. Step Four helped us form an inventory and delve into the wrongs done to us and done by us to others. What to do with the indiscretions laid bare by the hardscrabble work of the fourth step?
Step Five is clear about taking action.
Words have power. What you speak from your mouth can change the trajectory of your healthy recovery, even change the world around you. Speak light and life over people, and their lives change. Speak darkness and it attracts darkness. Let’s not confuse admitting the exact nature of our wrongs to another human being as speaking darkness. To the contrary, as our searching and fearless moral inventories, they can be cleanly dealt with. It’s hard to see in the dark. But whatever the light touches is seen. And can be grasped to be fully put behind you.
Some items on our inventories might be harder to admit than others. Some may seem impossible to own before God, much less a sponsor or accountability partner. But our wrongs – our sins – stay powerful unless confessed to those we trust. Confessing them deflates them so that we can step over them and move forward.
The exact nature of our wrongs, taking responsibility for those things so shameful we vowed never to admit them on this side of the dirt. You really are only as sick as your secrets.
The problem with taking secrets to your grave is that it requires you to lead a grave-tender’s life to some degree. It forces you to spend your lifetime keeping something destructive underground, making sure it stays covered up. Part of you is always tending to that, protecting it. Digging it back up to make sure it is still there so that you can flog yourself with it’s shame, reburying it twice as deep. It’s a lot of work to keep secrets.
“You don’t know what I’ve done,” you might be saying.
And you’re right, I don’t. But I do know that – in order to live victoriously in recovery – you must not keep it to yourself. All the things you’ve done in active disease and otherwise are covered under the blood of Christ Jesus if you accept Him and His love.
You see, God already knows what you’ve done, and is crazy in love with you anyway. If you are in a 12 Step program, you already know people who are equipped to help you admit the exact nature of your wrongs.
“I’ve done bad things” doesn’t cut it when working Step Five. Share your heart with someone who is trustworthy and then burn or bury your past indiscretions in the place of the secrets that have required you to tend to your grave as you are in the living.
So that you can say “Grave? What grave?”
So that you can get on with this big, juicy life you’ve been given and ask “What’s next, Papa?”
“This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with him!” – Romans 8:15-17 (MSG)
We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Biblical Comparison: “Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord.” – Lamentations 3:40
If Step Four had a tagline in the current vernacular, it would be: “Shit Just Got Real.” Apologies for the profanity, but really….there is no other way to say it to get my point across.
No longer are we just admitting that there are issues, but we are exploring what led to our active disease in a “searching” and “fearless” (and MORAL!) way.
This one takes time, deliberate work, and a “letting it all hang out” with your sponsor or someone you trust in the program who you can be real with.
Left to my own devices, my Step Four work might be a light inventory such as one might engage in when counting boxes of cereal at the grocery store. But no, that will never do for a true Step Four experience.
Step Four calls for searching my heart and asking my spirit the really hard questions.
It requires fearlessly moving forward in taking that inventory, no matter what that looks like.
And not being intimidated by taking such moral inventory of ourselves.
There is nothing to lose but the secrets that keep us sick, after all.
Here are 7 practical tips to working on Step Four:
1) Write your Fourth Step Inventory. There are many ways to go about this. You can use columns or spreadsheets (If you are really savvy,) but I use the journaling approach, and I do so old-school with a pen and paper. When I free-style write, it flows more easily. There are no hard-and-fast-rules to tracking Step Four progress. The idea is to write a record of who has wronged you, and whom you have wronged, and to make amends to those people you have harmed, except when doing so is destructive to you or others.
2) The Big Book in AA instructs participants to inventory three “common manifestations” of self-will that often precede inventory items: Resentments, fears, and harm done to others. Working within the parameters of these categories has helped me many times. Sometimes there is an over-lap, and that’s okay too. Life is a messy endeavor, and recovery is certainly a fertile ground for that messy factor.
3) Don’t forget to list yourself as part of your inventory. You need addressing and forgiving, too. Are you your own worst enemy? Yeah, me too. Include the self-destructive habits you engage or engaged in, and explore deep enough to expose the root cause for that behavior. Self-harm is a slippery serpent, and you must chop it off at the head. Sometimes the same harm that you inflict on others, you regularly inflict on yourself and without realizing it.
4) Pray throughout the process. Talk to the Almighty like He is your best friend. Because He is.Ask God to reveal people to your heart whom you need to make amends with. Sometimes, the Father reminds us gently, and other times people who sincerely traumatized us are brought to mind. In those times, remember that the past has no power over you when you are working the fourth step. The idea is not to dredge up pain, but to bring it to the surface enough to be dealt with.
5) Remember to list all others who have hurt you – physically, mentally, spiritually, sexually, or emotionally. Do not confuse this with taking THEIR inventory. Remember, you can only handle taking your own.
6) Remember to list all those whom you have hurt – physically, mentally, spiritually, sexually, or emotionally. Ask them for forgiveness if you can. Write a letter, if need be. You are responsible for your efforts to make amends. The OTHER person is responsible for how they respond to you. You cannot control another person’s reaction.
7) Think of your Step Four work as attending the birth of a new baby, and not a funeral. The old ways (the ones that never worked for you anyway) are being addressed so that NEW ways can be instated. And with new ways comes new life. YOUR new life.
You are probably realizing by now that Step Four is not a “quickie” step. At all. Seek through prayer and meditation the most honest inventory you can take. And then camp out there for a while. Step Four cannot be rushed.
Examine your ways honestly and return to the Lord. He is waiting for you with open arms!
We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Biblical comparison: “For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” – Philippians 2:13
There is a God out there. And I am not Him.
Seems a reasonable enough, right? I’m pretty sure YOU know that I am not God, that I didn’t mastermind the universe and place the heavenly bodies in orbit.
But at one point in my life as an active alcoholic – on some really deeply corroded level – I behaved as if I were perhaps God.
No, I didn’t create the universe, but I believed I was able to control my consumption from a liquid in a bottle.
Yet, over and over again, I made hollow promises to myself that tomorrow I would not drink. Period. After a period of thousands of ‘tomorrows’ and repeating the same behavior, I began to question my sanity. Isn’t the definition of ‘insanity’ doing the same thing the very same way over and over, expecting a different result?”
Time, Higher Power, and that pesky Sanity
Step Two is an action step, in that it takes movement and time on your part.
It doesn’t say “We believe that a power grater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”
It states “We came to believe a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”
Another way of saying “I came to believe” is that I have faith. How do you ‘get’ faith? We have long heard that you either have faith or you don’t, that you can exercise your ‘faith muscle’, and even that faith is ‘blind.’ I believe none of those things, actually. Because each and every one of those misconceptions places the glory of your faith squarely on you. Faith is not earned, it is a gift that our Father wants us all to know we have. Ask God to help you trust in the faith he has already planted in you – trusting Him to do what you cannot do for yourself – and your faith will grow.
He is a good father. If you ask for bread, He will not give you a stone.
“Don’t bargain with God. Be direct. Ask for what you need. This is not a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we’re in. If your little boy asks for a serving of fish, do you scare him with a live snake on his plate? If your little girl asks for an egg, do you trick her with a spider? As bad as you are, you wouldn’t think of such a thing—you’re at least decent to your own children. And don’t you think the Father who conceived you in love will give the Holy Spirit when you ask him?” – Luke 11:11 (MSG)
In Luke 17, the apostles came up and said to the Master, “Give us more faith.” But the Master said, “You don’t need more faith. There is no ‘more’ or ‘less’ in faith. If you have a bare kernel of faith, say the size of a poppy-seed, you could say to this sycamore tree, ‘Go jump in the lake,’ and it would do it.”
Wouldn’t you like to tell your addiction to go jump in a lake?
Understanding that and really embracing it is a process. It’s a faith thing, not a ‘knowing’ thing, so I cannot open a text book and show you it’s true. It takes time to allow what you are wrapping around your mind to melt down into your heart and get gooey love into the deepest crevices of your spirit and what you believe.
What is the catalyst for making that happen in Step Two? Higher Power, of course. My Highest Power (and personal friend, and counselor, and Creator who masterminded the universe and placed the Heavenly bodies in orbit…yeah, that one) is Jesus Christ. I know that in many 12 Step programs, many different applications of a Higher Power are utilized – and in some, none is recognized at all. All I can tell you is what works for me, and Jesus is the ONLY way I’ve maintained sobriety for over fourteen years now (still, one day at a time.)
He is as real as can be – even more so than you or I. Ask Him for help every single day, and he will never forsake you. He loves the brokenhearted, the addicted, the desperate. And He is a Restoration Specialist, especially when it comes to Sanity. We are all a little crazy, right? I think that’s fair to say.
The sanity referred to in Step Two is not addressing our quirks and individual weirdness. It is speaking to rebuke the insane behaviors that we engage in as active alcoholics and addicts.
The insanity that spurs you to place your drug of choice above your children and family.
The insanity that manifests when you tell yourself, “never again” (and really MEAN it each time,) only to drink and use the next chance you get.
The insanity that keeps you down, telling you that you will NEVER be well. You will NEVER get clean.
The insanity that makes you a person that you detest, who does things you know are wrong and destructive.
There is a better way, and Step Two puts it at your fingertips. Take off the God Pants (they are an awful fit, anyway) and ask your Higher Power to restore you to sanity, to really living. Ask Him to take that poppy-seed sized grain of faith you have and activate it so that it can expand and you can apply it to your recovery. He is the Restoration Specialist, and He loves you more than you can ever understand.
Prayer: Father God, fill us with Holy Spirit in all the spaces chemicals used to reside. Don’t let our faith lie dormant, but help us understand the power we carry that makes all things – sobriety among them – possible through you! We’ve done it our way….Jesus, do it your way now, and help us to trust you through every step. – Amen
We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors, that our lives had become unmanageable. – Celebrate Recovery
Biblical comparison: “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.” – Romans 7:18
I don’t know if you are supposed to play favorites with the Steps, but I am rather fond of Steps One and Twelve – One because it gives you the opportunity to admit “defeat” over a substance or habit, and Twelve because – having become victorious over an issue or addiction in Steps 2-11 – you actively become the person paying your new life forward by giving yourself to others. From “It’s all about me and what I cannot handle” to “It’s all about you and I think I can help!”
In some of my 12th Step work, I have been given opportunities to help others get involved in the programs, and nothing brings me joy quite like seeing someone pick up their “Surrender Chip” at a meeting. Each of the plastic chips designates a different amount of “clean time,” and the “Surrender” chip is the very first one taken as an act of letting go and letting God. I can feel the energy coming off of my friend, the Newcomer, who is here for the first time tonight. Although I’ve seen it 100 times, the it’s all new to her. She is waging a war in her own mind about accepting the “Surrender” chip.
I cannot do this. There are so many people here. What if someone knows me? There is no going back once I stand up.
But I must do it. My way isn’t working. How many times have I tried to get sober on my own? I need to find another way.
If I surrender, I am giving it up. There will be a hole left where my drug of choice took up space…..a lot of space.
But these people seem to know another way. Some of them are even laughing and joking!
It’s all I know, drinking.
But it’s crushing my relationships and killing me from the inside out.
Every day I say NO MORE! But every day I find myself right back in the center of drunkenness and drama.
I think I need to surrender.
Yeah, I know I need to surrender.
And with legs shaking and heart palpitating, she rises from her chair and excuses herself as she walks past the people in her row. They are clapping and cheering, like surrendering her addiction was a GOOD thing.
A gentleman holds out the blue chip to her, and embraces her as she takes it. She didn’t realize that she was crying, but she was – tears streaming down her face. When she turns to walk back to her seat, all attendees are on their feet, applauding. They know how hard it is to surrender an addiction. They, too, are powerless over their addictions and compulsive behaviors, and as their lives became unmanageable, they had mustered the courage to walk up and pick up a “Surrender” chip.
Many folks get caught up on the powerlessness angle of the First Step. How DARE anyone refer to me as powerless? We live in an age in which we are all expected to be super heroes in our lives, figure it all out, and certainly be the conquerors of our own worlds. Being powerful is highly esteemed by society (although society holds equal disdain for the powerful among us, too) because being “in control” is where it’s at, right?
Wrong. The only way for an addict or alcoholic to regain control of his or her life is to surrender. My Highest Power is Jesus Christ. When I surrendered my will to him in regards to getting sober fourteen years ago, it was not an occasion taken lightly. I was giving him my very own will, since my will was only serving to make me sicker and sicker. I tried many times to do it “my way,” with abysmal results. Like Paul wrote in the book of Romans in the Bible, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.”
Ever tried really hard to do something you knew would result in destruction? I’ve tried thousands of times. Why can I not carry it out?
Because complete Surrender must precede the abstinence from alcohol, the drug. Not partaking in drugs and alcohol is a nifty concept, but it just doesn’t work. Unless you want to live the rest of your life as a “Dry Drunk,” it’s essential. Surrender to God has to stay strategy #1, or my life becomes unmanageable all over again.
Admitting “defeat” over the drugs and drink is the most powerful thing you can do.
And in the not-to-distant future, you will be paying your life and gratitude forward by helping a shaky-legged, tearful Newcomer take that First Step
Everyone (even pop culture) seems to know that “admitting you have a problem” is the First Step proper. But does that admittance look like? And what about after Step One? And what does “Step Work” look like in practical living?
This series has been on my mind and in my heart for quite some time, because I know how confusing step work can be. The following blog entries will explore the traditional life-changing and oft-intimidating 12 Steps through observations made along the way. Each day will invite you to ponder a different step. It is only sharing my own experience, strength and hope, nothing more. Take what you need and leave the rest, as they say in the rooms. If the 12 Steps can help me, they can help anyone. I promise.
“A Journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Lao Tzu
The first time I darkened the door of an AA meeting, I was a 20 year-old. I wanted recovery, but I wanted it yesterday, and my understanding of the program reflected my impatience. These are actual thoughts I experienced when I first walked into my first 12 Step meeting:
“Well, Step One…..check! I admitted I have a problem, so that one is done. On to Step Two.”
“And I believe that a Power Greater than Myself can restore me to sanity, on account of I’m clearly not in charge here. So, worked that step already. Next!”
“Turning my will and life over to the care of God? Okay, I’m down with that. ‘God, I turn my will over.’ This isn’t so hard…..”
“Step Four: Making a fearless and moral inventory of myself……yikes.”
And with this one, I was stuck. Trust me when I tell you that Step Four cannot be done in one afternoon, even if you have the whole day off. Truly. You can take an inventory haphazardly, but not a searching and fearless one. This is where the rubber meets the road, right here on Step Four. (And sadly, yes … I actually believed that I had ‘worked’ Steps 1-3 in the course of a one-hour meeting. Ta daaaaa! Of course I only believed that because of, um….denial reasons.)
It would be many years before I would get serious enough about working the 12-Steps to truly explore what they look like in ‘real time,’ how they play out as workable ways to live life on life’s terms. Now, in my fourteenth year of continuous sobriety, I am just starting to get it. Here are some of the stones that I picked up on my ongoing walks with God. With them, I am building a future; and a good future at that!
Musing on 12 Step programs:
You will work the steps more than once. If you had a flow chart that depicted each of your issues and where you are Step-wise on each, well, there wouldn’t be enough ink or paper on the planet to print it out. Seriously, there wouldn’t. It is an overused analogy, but recovery really is peeling an onion. One layer gets addressed and another is exposed. I’ve employed the steps in a number of situations in my life and will continue to do so, and personally, I think they are applicable for anyone – addict or not – to apply. Unless your life is perfect, in which case you can go ahead and stop reading now, because you will not be able to relate to me at all.
Our addictions may look differently, but the root causes that trigger them are almost always similar. Alcohol was my drug of choice, heroin might be yours. I really don’t care because it matters little what you drink, smoke, or shoot, because I would venture to bet that the core issues that drove you to do so are pretty identical to mine. The answer is the same for all of these problems, as well. Without my Highest Power Jesus Christ, I wouldn’t have survived my addiction to tell the tale. One of the things I love most about the Celebrate Recovery program is that it is for anyone to experience the overcoming of any hurt, habit, or hang-up. In my estimation, if an issue or addiction is coming between me and God, it’s a problem worthy of applying the 12-Steps to. Alcohol, drugs, food, porn, gambling….you can learn a new way to live as an Over-comer with any struggle.
There is no schedule for working the 12 Steps. Oh how I wished for a timetable for the 12-Steps when I first got into recovery! Someone to say, “Okay, you will do A, B, and C, and then you will never want to drink again.” It does not work that way, at all. You will, if you are honest, become ‘stuck’ on a step. This used to frustrate me to no end, until I learned to think of the phenomenon as “marinating” in step work. “Working the steps” alludes to putting in time and energy and waiting for the quittin’ time whistle to blow. Marinating in a step brings to mind a soaking-up, a “take-your-time because it’s gonna be worth the wait” mindset. A good marinade cannot be rushed. For it to become part of the meat, it needs time. But you don’t want to spend your entire life in a bowl of marinade either.
If you can find a Step Study Group, by all means, please explore it! It is not for the faint of heart, it is for the determined to survive. But under guidance from a Step Study Leader and some very fine workshop materials, an in-depth study of each of the steps can be a game changer. No longer floating about in the Program of Your Understanding, but in a group in which everyone has Experience, Strength and Hope, and everyone brings it to the table in order to get well. You will bring ESH to your group that only you can bring. The value of having people delving into the steps one-by-one alongside you cannot be overstated. Find a group in your area and ask if Step Studies are being done. They are a separate animal altogether from the meetings, but incredibly worth your time.
There are no two recoveries alike. They are the snowflakes of the wellness world – each and every one is different. One of the slipperiest slopes out there is to see someone else’s recovery journey and decide they are not doing it right. Trust me when I say that your own side of the street is enough to keep clean. Don’t be passing judgement on someone else’s sidewalk, just stay on yours, keep it clean, and lead by example. I have had people tell me that I’m not really sober because I don’t have a sponsor. I’ve been told a plethora of things by a myriad of people; people who are – just like me – learning to live life on life’s terms. You just do you, and I’m going to do me.
Put one foot in front of the other and ask God to bless your footfalls. And marinate in this new way of living.
Celebrate Recovery 12 Steps and Biblical Comparisons
1) We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors, that our lives had become unmanageable.
“I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.” – Romans 7:18
2) We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
“For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” – Philippians 2:13
3) We made a decision to turn our lives and our wills over to the care of God.
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship.” – Romans 12:1
4) We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
“Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord.” – Lamentations 3:40
5) We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
“Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” – James 5:16
6) We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
“Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” – James 4:10
7) We humbly asked Him to remove all our shortcomings.
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness,” – 1 John 1:9
8) We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
“Do to others as you would have them do to you.” – Luke 6:31
9) We made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.” – Matthew 5:23-24
10) We continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
“So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!” – 1 Corinthians 10:12
11) We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us, and power to carry that out.
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” – Colossians 3:16
12) Having had a spiritual experience as the result of these steps, we try to carry this message to others and practice these principles in all our affairs.
“Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore them gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted.” – Galatians 6:1
A long time ago, when I was just a new human being, I decided that I wanted to go places. As I grew, I came to realize that I could not merely transport myself to that place called Destiny; I would need a vehicle.
I made up my mind that I would take the fastest route there. It would need to be sleek, and “smart” enough to get me around in unfamiliar places. I needed it to know where I was going, since I had no clue.
Fast modes of transportation are fun for a while, aren’t they? “Wheeee! I’m headed for Happy and nobody is going to stop me!”
The vehicle I chose was alcohol, and the disease it led to was addiction. For many years, alcohol fueled the fast rattle-trap that took me everywhere, and oiled all the bothersome squeaky parts.
It never really took me to Happy, of course, although I saw tons of directional signs claiming I was getting close. It always started off in the right general direction, promising to get me where I needed to go. But it lost its way every single day. Sometimes it took me to places that could pass for Happy, if you squinted really hard and were in pretty deep denial. Sometimes it got me worse than lost, landing me in neighborhoods of darkness and despair. It even tried to kill me a few times. Every night as I lay my head down to sleep (or black out), I swore I would never ride in that vehicle again. Never. Never. Never.
Still, every new morning, I stepped into the same means of transport, chiding it to take me to Happy, and to remember the way this time.
“My destiny awaits!” I would tell it, every single day. But it couldn’t hear me over the bravado of it’s own engine.
I was so cocky in my disease, so confident that I was calling the shots. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The transportation I stepped into every day by choice was addiction. And every day, for many years, alcohol fueled that fast, rattle-trap, and oiled all the bothersome squeaky parts.
If you choose not to disembark from your addiction, you will miss all of the amazing sights. And that’s tragic, because the scenery is breathtaking. The things you do manage see in addiction, you will not remember.
If you choose not to disembark, accept that your vehicle only seats one. It’s a lonely mode of transportation. You will crush many under your wheels while you self-destruct, but you will sit by yourself in active disease.
If you choose not to disembark, you will continue to delude yourself that you – and your addiction – know The Way. “Wheee! I’m headed for destruction and nobody can stop me!”
Essentially, isn’t that what we do?
Nobody could stop me from drinking.
Except me.Backed by the power of God Himself.
Nobody can stop you from using, except you. Backed by the most Powerful Force in the Universe and His mighty angels, the gates of Hell itself cannot prevail against your recovery.
You have the power to get out of that vehicle. There is a handle on the door. You might have to feel around for it. You might mash a few buttons or pull a couple of levers accidentally. That’s okay. AH, there is, the handle! I know it feels as if you aren’t powerful enough to pull it, but I promise you that you are. Don’t worry about what will happen when you open the door to step out. The future is nothing to fear.
Is life not slowing down enough for you to step out? Open the door and jump out. It will be the first of many incredible, supernatural feats of faith you will employ. The Father will catch you!
By choosing Holy Spirit to take me where I need to go and surrounding myself with others who want to arrive at Happy, I am loving the journey.
The drinking and using life will never get you to your Destiny, only to Destruction. You can only squint so hard to confuse the two destinations. God is okay with the rattles and squeaks in our spirits. He isn’t bothered by them in the least. He is not impressed with sleekness, nor with getting there the fastest.
My first mistake was in choosing that particular vehicle in the first place.
My next mistake was choosing to get into it every day, expecting it to take me to a different place. (And that, folks, is the very definition of insanity.)
I had to kick around a few tires before I chose my new transportation. That’s okay, too. There is a huge learning curve to this Recovering Life. It isn’t about arriving at your destination all in one piece, but experiencing the journey in One Peace.
In recovery, you are a new human being again, with places to go, people to see, things to do. Don’t even entertain thoughts of your old ways and means. They literally took you nowhere but down. They have no part of getting you to Happy.
Daily ask God to direct you in all that you do.
Daily take the time to stretch your traveler’s legs.
Gather with others, who – like you – are on the way to Happy. And don’t forget to enjoy the views.
Normally, I write pieces urging others to seek recovery.
Today, I write with one focus:
Drinking and driving, and the powerful implications of the practice.
If you feel passionately about drunk drivers, too, feel free to share the link.
In God’s love,
Jana
By: Jana Greene
I can’t stop thinking about her.
She is only 22.
She is the same age as my oldest daughter. Exactly.
She didn’t mean to do it, I’m certain. It was a horrible, horrible choice. Still, I can’t stop thinking about her, my heart breaking for her and for those whose lives were snuffed out when she decided she was okay to drive, only a few days ago.
You can’t go back in time.
Oh how I wish she could go back and reconsider!
After it happened, the accident was all over the news. The accused looked very familiar to me.
We have mutual Facebook friends, it turns out.
She probably wasn’t going far. Everything in this town is 15 minutes to everything else in this town. It was the middle of the night (to my middle-aged mind) but likely she was just getting started at 1 a.m. At 22, you are just getting started at that hour.
Her mugshot is pitiful. She is dazed – a stunned countenance of shock and inebriation. She is wearing too much eyeliner like girls here age do, and she is looking to the side, away from the camera.
She is having a nightmare that she will never wake up from. And there are others who will never wake up from the nightmare she originated.
Her hair is perfect in the picture – perfect! – as if she just stepped out of a salon instead of a 2,000-pound vehicle crushed like a soda can… instead of stepping away from a wreck that rendered the other vehicle unrecognizable as transportation. She looks so normal. She had the plans of a vibrant young woman, and now she will go to prison. She will have her whole life to consider what she chose in a split second.
Yesterday, my husband and I saw the orange markings still on the road – left from those whose job it is to document such losses, the paint marking the vast debris field. It was unbelievable.
One split-second decision to drive ended in wreckage so devastating, it is a miracle that even one person walked away.
Nobody ever thinks it will happen to them.
But it happens every single day.
I’m an alcoholic. I have made this horrible, horrible choice many years ago before I got sober. It is by sheer miracle that the same thing did not happen ‘to’ me. It makes me so ashamed. This young lady’s fait accompli could have been me. It could have been almost anyone who has been young and feeling invincible. Anyone addicted.
I don’t know if the driver who caused it had a problem with alcohol. Addiction to alcohol starts as a dirty little secret, not a tweet or snarky Facebook status. I’m not diagnosing her. Most 22-year olds drink to blow off steam and that’s all that comes of it.
Except for this time, it wasn’t all that came of it.
I’m praying hard for the surviving victim, who lost her husband right before her very eyes in what – judging from the carnage of the photos in the news – must have been gruesome and traumatic. She will never, ever be the same. The man who lost his life will never get to grow old with his wife, fulfill his plans. I cannot imagine his wife’s pain and suffering.
It’s so easy to hate someone who has chosen to drink and drive. Her actions make me very angry, but her normalcy makes me profoundly sad. Nobody ever thinks it can happen to them.
So, I pray for the drunk driver, too.
I can’t stop thinking about her.
She is only 22.
And she didn’t mean to do it, I’m certain.
But her one choice imploded the lives of three people and will permanently alter the lives of the families, friends, and communities of those who loved them.
One split-second decision can change the trajectory of lives. One decision that says …
I’m okay to drive.
It’s not far.
I’ll just be extra careful.
One split-second decision can change everything tragically.
And you can’t go back in time.
No matter where you are going, it is too far to drive if you’ve been drinking.
Just please, please don’t ever do it.
Stay where you are.
Call a cab.
Ask a friend to be designated driver.
There are so many, less-deadly options.
It is such a cliché of society these days that we almost forget why it became so pertinent.
Please don’tdrink and drive.
For practical tips about how to help prevent someone from driving drunk, visit MADD tips here.
To read an article about the stigma of addiction, click here.
People in recovery continue to amaze me. They are some of my very favorite people, because they have a high compassion level coupled with a low judgement level. One of my friend, J, is like that. He is brave and in love with Jesus in a way that just scours the complications of sobriety and salvation clean. When you meet such a person, you feel you can scale that pillar of recovery that can be the hardest to keep firm – rigorous honesty.
I emailed him today: “Do you know where I can hit a meeting tonight?”
And he emailed me right back: “What’s up?”
I told him that I’m struggling. The past few months have been super emotional and crazy….a cruel mixture of extreme change and boredom of mediocrity, both. I’m not sleeping well. I’m cranky about things out of my control. Experiencing health challenges. My kids are grown now, and my purpose has shifted. I feel depression tugging on my sleeve and anxiety strangling me with it. And all the while, I’m feeling a little guilty because I’m a follower of Christ and THIS IS NOT WHAT TRUSTING LOOKS LIKE.
And in the midst of emotional turmoil, a thought popped in to my head, smooth and serpentine.
“I’m just going to move,” I told myself, emotions rising. “I’m going to move far away from here and leave everything and go where nobody knows I’m an alcoholic. And I’m going to drink. I’m going to have a whole bottle of wine.”
What a very alcoholic thought!Lose it and leave it – to gain an hour of oblivion, just to be out of my skin for a temporary stay. Perhaps not even one hour – a time that would be followed with heaps of shame.
The thought – a skilled assassin….poised on the edge of my clean time – ready to take my sobriety out.
Nevermind that God has graced me with fourteen very good sober years now.
Nevermind that my life is – my all accounts, including mine – a really good life.
Nevermind that I’ve cultivated friendships and recovery partners.
Or that I would be dead, had I not gotten into recovery in 2001.
How cunning and baffling the disease of addiction is. You can be trucking along, and BAM! That’s why we must be on our guard.
I told J about my assassin thought. I thought about glossing over the messier points, but I shared my heart honestly, because I figure that assassins who are called out into the open are less likely to get off a clean shot.
“I know exactly how you feel,” he wrote. “ I’ve had those same thoughts. And I wasn’t even really in a bad place or anything. My mind just always defaults back to my old ways.The good news is you are aware of it and want to get to a meeting.”
It is a fact of chemistry that we addicts are wired differently. Our default is so often continuing the old behaviors that never really worked in the first place. Rigorous honesty can be tough.
“The best possible news any of us can hear,” continued J, ” is that the God of the universe put on skin and walked the earth. And while He was here He went through what we went through – he was tempted, in many respects just like us. Worse actually…worse, because He is GOD. He can do whatever He wants, whenever He wants. I mean really, how tempting must it have been to not just say ‘Pfft, forget this. I can fix it all, and I’ll start by erasing Satan from history.’ But he didn’t. He resisted the temptation, and used His own written word to do it.”
People in recovery are some of my favorite people.
“And we have Jesus,” he reminded me.”The absolute best possible sponsor – which falls so insanely short in describing Him – living inside of us! He is alive, and He completely understands our struggle because He came here and went through it. That is absolutely mind blowing! And the only reason I still have hope, is because all of that is 100% fact.”
Brave and in love with Jesus. Like I said, scoured clean.
Assassination averted.
Addiction has a sort of timelessness to it. A day is a thousand years and a thousand years is a day. I don’t rely on ‘clean time’ to keep me clean for that reason.
I rely on Christ. And on others walking the same path. Others who are willing to say “What’s up?”
So, I’m saying…sharing honestly, because there is healing and fellowship in vulnerability.
I’m in a messy place. But I won’t always be in a messy place. While I’m in the midst of it, I stay put. I gather with my tribe and drink coffee in fellowship halls, asking God for help just as I have for 14 years, knowing that He will help – every time. He has not dropped me on my ass yet, even as I often try to wriggle free of his grasp. I will use God’s written word to resist temptation. He knows exactly how I’m feeling and doesn’t love me any less, emotional basket case as I may be.
That’s 100% fact.
Asking for help is what trusting looks like. Yeah, I think asking for help is sometimes what trusting looks like.
“HOW IT WORKS” AA Big Book pg. 58:
“Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of beng honest with themselves. …. At some of these we balked. We thought we could find an easier, softer way. But we could not. With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of
us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely. Remember that we deal with alcohol- cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too much for us. But there is One who has all power—that One is God. May you find Him now!
Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked His protection and care with complete abandon.”
This piece originally ran as a guest blog for my friend and fellow writer, Chris Canuel. I felt like maybe someone needs to read it today…someone who might be currently praying in the desert.
Maybe that someone who needs to (re)read it is ME.
How do you get out of the spiritual desert? You build a huge, blinking distraction to it.
Or, you can just walk through it, and fully expect God to bring you to the other side.
About eight years ago, I went to Las Vegas on a business trip. The long and short of it was that I had a mini-nervous breakdown.
My colleagues and I stayed in the Luxor – a magnificent pyramid structure on the Vegas strip, smack dab (as we say in the South) in the heart of Sin City. Although there were seminars by day, there were too many hours of free time after the nine-to-five activities.
I don’t always do that well with too much free time.
Vegas is not so much fun for a person in alcohol – or any other, so far as I can tell – recovery. Moment after moment, fleshly appetizers are placed before you. In-your-face, 24/7 sex, drugs, drink, gambling, smoking. Even things that had never tempted me before – such as the gambling – became this enormous tease.
I knew that Vegas was not for me before the plane even touched down. If you’ve ever flown over Las Vegas, you will know what I mean. Here is a visual synopsis of the view from the plane.
Hours of flight over sandy canyons, gorges, and deserts. Everything is some shade of brown– nothing, nothing, nothing, hours of nothing– barren brown, tan and beige. Nothing.
BAM! Super incredibly bright neon, see-it-from-outer space, larger-than life and twice as gaudy, Technicolor VEGAS, Baby! The strip is, quite literally, just a strip that – from the air – looks as though the heavens barfed forth a city-sized strip of neon, glitter, and a strange, Disney-like conglomeration of architectural/cultural mess. Pastel medieval castles, next door to Greco-Roman-columned casinos, next door to the great pyramids, next door to a shrunken New York City entwined by a roller coaster, punctuated by liquor and nudie bars.
It is the anti-nature, if you will.
Before even the first rah-rah corporate event, I was burned out. Too much to see. Everything in sight vying for my attention – and so, none of it really getting my attention. The first night, I stayed in the hotel room and cried while everyone else went out and had Vegas adventures. And I couldn’t stop crying.
Every morning, for privacy, I wandered down to a café in the Luxor, and call my (then) fiancé, a grown woman crying in an enormous, cartoonish pyramid, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people and utterly alone.
“I can’t be here,” I told him. “It’s too noisy. Too much temptation. Too many drunk and high people…so much gambling, porn everywhere…. too much empty, scattered, shallow glitz. I have to come home.”
It didn’t upset me because I believed I would never do such things, but because I know good and damn well that I could – given the right circumstances and a weak moment – and, in fact, have. I try to respect the parameters – the slippery slopes. And Vegas is a very slippery slope.
Each day, I became more and more depressed, the thin veneer of sanity cracking under the weight of trying to appear all the things I was not: Professional, immune to the temptations, and able to cope.
Where I live at home, the Ocean is a scant 10 minutes away, and the Cape Fear River 10 minutes in the other direction. Water, water everywhere. And people I love.
Of course, I survived it – and as a bonus, with my sobriety intact. When I finally, got home, it didn’t seem like such an ordeal. But during the experience, I was miserable.
For the last month or so, I have really been struggling with prayer. Not just having a desert-like prayer life, but a Vegas-like prayer life. Unwittingly, I’ve filled up a dry-spell with diversions to distract my spirit. Sensory overload is not the same as spirit satiation. What happens in my prayer life lately…..it goes nowhere. Or so it seems.
Praying…. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
BAM!Diversion!
But anything but Holy Spirit in a hurting soul is not an oasis….only a mirage.
Sometimes, my spiritual walk becomes about too much empty, scattered, shallow glitz. A grown woman crying in church, surrounded by dozens of happy worshippers. Everyone else seemingly bloated with happiness. Don’t they see the barren dryness?
Aridness…brown, tan and beige. So I build great, giant cities – big, awkward pastel and neon structures of distraction, instead of just walking through the desert – exhausted from trying to pretend to be what I am not: A “professional Christian.” Immune to the temptations. Able to cope.
I don’t always do that well when I have too much time, but I know the God of the Universe always makes time for me. I have to come home, and the only route is through the desert.
It’s hard to encounter God, what with the gaudy, neon monuments to my worries and anxieties blinking. Why don’t I remember that in the “uninhabitable” – He inhabits? He dwells in me always, vying for my attention.
And if I am simply willing to just walk through the desert?
BAM! God. Living water, water everywhere. Deserts can’t go on forever.
EDGEWISE: Plunging off the Brink of Drink and into the Love of God
It’s book giveaway time again! I am happy to announce that two copies of my recovery memoir, “EDGEWISE: Plunging off the Brink of Drink and into the Love of God” will go to winners in the http://www.goodreads.com giveaway event. The deadline to enter the contest is July 20.
It’s easy to enter, and there is no obligation whatsoever.
Well, I got my copy of In Recovery Magazine today, and I am STOKED!
In Recovery Magazine is a wonderful publication for recovering folks, and I’m so honored to be one of the writers included in this month’s issue. Please consider getting a copy if you are in recovery or knows someone who is.
Jesus as depicted in stained glass in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, NYC. My Jesus loves everyone. Everyone is precious in his sight.
Meet Joe.
Joe is a Christian who struggles to keep his blood pressure under control. Following his doctor’s advice and having the support of his family, he manages to healthy. He keeps encouraged by those who love him, and that makes all the difference.
Meet Sarah.
Also a Christian, she is a survivor of breast cancer. She has suffered through a double mastectomy and many chemo treatments, and is currently in remission. She surrounds herself with people who love her to stay in a positive mindset, and has the admiration of the community for the brave fight she has waged.
And Sam.
Sam’s diabetes demands constant care. The dietary and medical choices he makes impact his life every day. Sam is very open with others about his condition, as he depends on their support and his own healthy choices to keep him going.
Joe, and Sarah, and Sam. They each battle a disease. Each need a place to rest, as rest is essential to wellness.
In this life, we will have trouble. If God’s own son was not spared suffering, we will surely not be either. Health challenges are simply a part of life.
Now meet Amy.
Amy is a follower of Jesus Christ who suffers from mental illness. Perhaps you know Amy – or someone like her. We all do.
Maybe she cuts herself. She might even have visual and auditory hallucinations.
Perhaps depression weighs her down, making even the most mundane survival tasks difficult.
She could have anxiety, the dreaded foot race between her worrisome thoughts and the beats of her heart.
She may have crippling compulsive behaviors, making her a social outcast.
Her moods may soar to the top of the stratosphere – beyond logical control – and then crash and splinter in too many pieces for her to put back together.
Her emotions may be too wild for her will to handle.
She might rage or isolate, with the same outcome: shame.
Amy is just as sick – but no sicker – than others with chronic diseases to be managed, but that makes some people feel uncomfortable. So she hides, even from her own church. She knows there are others who struggle with issues like hers, but she is wary to share her story with them.
She depends on Christ to help her through each day, but desperately needs other Christ followers to walk with her.
Christians struggle with mental illness, too.
A brain that does not regulate serotonin levels is – spiritually speaking – no different from a pancreas that does not regulate insulin. The biological propensity toward addiction and alcoholism should carry no more stigma than having genes that could carry cancer.
High blood pressure can be managed and so can mental health. And having a mental illness has nothing to do with having a relationship with Christ because that relationship is simply, not “all in one’s head.” It is all in one’s heart.
The church is the first place that the mentally ill should seek to stay encouraged, become surrounded with love, and depend on the support of one another.
To bear our own crosses while we help others keep from collapsing under the weight of their own.
To manage the pain of life and all the challenges it doles out.
To combat the stigma of mental illness, and nurture the brave ones coping with it every day.
To stay encouraged by those who love us, which makes all the difference. To have a safe place to find rest.
Joe, and Sarah, and Sam. They each battle a disease. And so does Amy.
It takes a village to build one another up, yes – but it also takes a church.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” – Jesus. (Matthew 11:28, NIV)
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” – Jesus. (John 16:33, NIV)
Could be titled “Prayer in the desert” … Could be titled “VEGAS, BABY!”
A friend of mine, who happens to be a writer I admire very much,
asked me to guest blog. When I was trying to figure out what to write, I struggled a bit. He suggested that ‘prayer’ might be a good subject. I told him that I’m having a bit of a (as Christians are disposed to saying) Walking in the Desert prayer spell right now. Then I prayed about it a bit. Then I remembered a trip to Vegas. And then I wrote. The result is attached below.
Thanks, Chris Canuel, for the opportunity to guest write for your awesome blog.
He had enjoyed 23 years of clean time, previous to his relapse. Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
In the announcement of his recent death from a drug overdose, CNN refers to Hoffman as “everyman,” and indeed, he was extraordinarily talented while still remaining personable. I know in my head that people with two decades of sobriety “fall off the wagon,” but it is always jarring to my heart when I hear about those occasions. Addictions will not be taken for granted.
There seems to be a slight shock that Hoffman, who suffered the same disease as Amy Winehouse, died from the same disease. His spin was not that of a train wreck, but of an accomplished and revered performer.
The article goes on to describe Hoffman as an actor so versatile that he “could be anybody.” I’m not sure the author of the piece really appreciates how true his statement is.
We are everyman …. everywoman. We alcoholics and addicts. We are legion.
Hoffman is Winehouse,
Who is the twenty-year old kid who died in the bathroom of a fast food joint with a needle in his arm,
Who is the elderly gentleman in the nursing home, stealing pills from a roomate,
Who is the wealthy businessman drinking in the wee hours of the morning to get going,
Who is a soccer mom who cannot stop at three glasses of chardonnay,
Who is me.
If the silence of those ripped from the landscape of the entertainment world is deafening; the gaping voids left by loved ones lost to addictions are life-swallowing sinkholes.
We alcoholics and addicts…..
We are not weak. The strongest people I’ve ever met have been recovering alcoholics.
We are born with super dopamine-seeking brains, susceptible to a hijacking of our brain chemistry. We know that our choices can keep our disease at bay, but we usually have to learn that the hard way.
We don’t want to make excuses for the train wrecks we pilot; we just want you to know they are not by design.
We are sensitive, and are often creative forces to be reckoned with.
We contribute to the landscape of the world. We make music and poetry and art. We make business deals, and partnerships. And we value relationships more than you can imagine.
We love deeply, intrinsically…..sometimes so deeply that our souls cannot seem to bear it sober.
We punch time clocks and live ordinary lives. And truth be told, it isn’t always the pain that makes us want to drink and use, but fear of the ordinary.
We love our children fiercely. Yes, we would change “For the sake of the children” if only we could.
We have heart. We grieve so for hurting people. We often lack the instincts to handle that grief without self-destructing.
We really don’t want to self-destruct at all, but we don’t always know how to keep it from happening until the process has begun.
We crave the ability to handle life on life’s terms “normally,” like you do.
We don’t mean to embarrass you.
We don’t want to inflict the pain on others that our brain chemistry urges us to. Addiction is as a plaque in the arteries of the spirit, a disorder of the brain. Like any mental illness, nobody wants to have it.
A good portion of any recovery program worth it’s salt is accountability. We want to make ammends with you (and if we don’t want to, don’t despair….we are working on it.)
We are brought to our knees in a desperation that normally-wired brains cannot fathom. And we can get better – if we stay on our knees.
We need each other for survival. We sit in meetings in drab church basements drinking lukewarm coffee with others like us who are cut from the same colorful brilliant, thread-bare, sturdy cloth – because we want to go on living and contributing to the world, just like you.
We need God most of all. He is the Power Greater than Ourselves that can restore us to sanity.
We are “everyman” and “everywoman.”
And we get sober. We even stay sober, with work. With the understanding that our disease will not be taken for granted.
But we need you to understand some things:
You can support people who are trying to win – and daily WINNING – the footrace with tragedy.
You can try not to shame them. They feel guilty enough.
You can start here to educate yourself on the realities of alcoholism and drug addiction.
You can know that you are NOT ALONE – if you are everyman or everywoman, too.
You can ask someone who struggles with addiction – past or present – to church. Our spirits, above all else, need to be nourished.
You can ask a recovering friend to go to the movies with you, or out to dinner, or for a walk on the beach. Our minds and bodies need to be nourished, too.
You can ask questions.
You can pray for us.
You can just not give up on us.
You can know this, mothers and fathers. Your child’s addiction is NOT YOUR FAULT. You did not cause it.
You can be tender to us in recovery, just as you would anyone in treatment for a disease.
By simply talking about it, you help strip away the stigma. Because the only thing worse than battling a disease is battling a disease that many people don’t believe exists. A disease that – if treatment is not embraced as a way of life – can be fatal.
For everyman.
Please take a moment to consider the loss of life and talent that alcoholism and drug addiction has taken from the cultural landscape.
And then think about the voids left by the vastly more important “everyman” lost or still in the trenches of addiction – the children, spouses, friends and family that you love.
Amy Winehouse, musician; Brian Jones, musician with The Rolling Stones; Chris Farley, comedian, actor; Cory Monteith, actor and singer; Darrell Porter, American professional baseball player ; Elisa Bridges, model, actress; Elvis Presley , musician, singer, actor, cultural icon; Freddie Prinze, actor; Hank Williams, Sr., country music singer-songwriter; Heath Ledger, Australian actor; Howard Hughes, business tycoon, movie producer and director, aviator, engineer, investor; Janis Joplin, musician; Jim Morrison, musician, singer; Jimi Hendrix, musician and singer-songwriter; John Belushi , actor and comedian; John Entwistle, bass guitarist for The Who; Jon Bonham, drummer and songwriter for Led Zeppelin; Judy Garland, actress and singer; Keith Moon, drummer for The Who; Kurt Cobain, Nirvana singer; Len Bias, Boston Celtics player; Lenny Bruce, comedian ; Marilyn Monroe, actress, model, singer; Michael Jackson, singer and icon; Richard Burton, actor; River Phoenix, actor; Sigmund Freud, considered by many to be the founding father of psychoanalysis; Tommy Dorsey, jazz musician; Truman Capote, writer; and Whitney Houston, singer and actress.
For a more comprehensive list of the famous who have passed away due to substance abuse, click here.
I cannot talk God out of loving me. And neither can you.
By: Jana Greene
“For those who feel their lives are a grave disappointment to God, it requires enormous trust and reckless, raging confidence to accept that the love of Jesus Christ knows no shadow of alteration or change. When Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy burdened,” He assumed we would grow weary, discouraged, and disheartened along the way. These words are a touching testimony to the genuine humanness of Jesus. He had no romantic notion of the cost of discipleship. He knew that following Him was as unsentimental as duty, as demanding as love.”
― Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
From the very first minute I met my beloved husband, it was obvious that he was interested in me. He made is so clear! If ever there were a love at first sight, we totally nailed it.
But seemed to be such a good man, that I had this primal urge to warn him.
“You should probably know,” I said, while waited for a lunch table on our first date. “I’m an alcoholic in recovery.”
“And have two daughters, 10 and 13, who I raise by myself. And they are really handfuls.“ He only smiled at me, undeterred.
As that first date progressed, it was clear that this man was special, different. He was warm, attentive, interesting. I had butterflies, but in the most comfortable, natural way. As it turned out, that he had a 13-year-old daughter, too. In our first, long conversation, I kept having the oddest feeling that this was The One.
We saw each other every day after that. We simply couldn’t be apart.
In times of anxiety, I wanted to tell him, “RUN! I am not worth it!” and when he didn’t run, that dark place in my spirit that was born of so much rejection in the past, whispered, “He will one day abandon you, you know. He will figure it out.”
Even after such a brief courtship, it occurred to me that If he wanted to run, I would rather it be right away, before I fell any deeper in love with him. I felt like such a mess, with nothing to bring into this new relationship.
Nothing but me.
“I have medical issues,” I would say at otherwise intimate times. Or, “I struggle to pay my bills.”
I was sure that this sexy, compassionate, amazing man would not stick around, if only he knew the true me. But a strange thing happened … the more he came to know the true “me,” the more he just kept falling in love. The alcoholism recovery (which is a lifetime endeavor,) the single-parenting of teenaged girls, the health issues….none of these – or any of the other in the plethora of anxieties and insecurities – kept him from loving me.
Oh how many times I experience the same dynamic in my walk with God! From the very first moment I accepted Christ as my savior, it was obvious that he was head-over-heels with me.
From time to time I remind him: “I am small, insignificant. I battle anxiety, and fear abandonment, and have nothing to bring to the table. Only me.”
He is such a good God, it’s almost as if I feel I should warn Him.
Often, when I feel those butterflies that come from knowing the Living God has fallen in love with me, I still wonder “why?” I am in awe that the God of the universe is undeterred by my character defects, challenges, and not concerned about what I can “bring to the table.”
I’ve told God that – if he wants to run, I understand. I’m kind of a mess. Sometimes, when I am most anxious and depressed, when the old feelings of being a “mess” crash over me, I think about the early days when I tried to talk my Beloved husband out of loving me, and he just smiled. I was enough, he wanted me, just me – forever.
What kind of God would be crazy about me? The kind that cannot be talked out of it.
The kind who just wants to be with me, because when he created me, it was love at first sight.
I love you, God— you make me strong. God is bedrock under my feet, the castle in which I live, my rescuing knight. My God—the high crag where I run for dear life, hiding behind the boulders, safe in the granite hideout. – Psalm 18:2 (Message)
On January 3rd, I will celebrate thirteen years of continuous sobriety. In getting ready to publish my testimony in full, I wanted to share what ‘hitting bottom’ was for me. I need to remember these things, so I am not doomed to repeat the past.
And I need to share it with you – in case you have touched bottom yourself, or know someone who is there now.
“Bottom” is a terrible place to be, but it is the only place that gives you enough leverage to push off.’
Hitting bottom enabled me to anchor on the true Rock, instead of drowning in the dark abyss.
I am still – forever – an alcoholic, and still – forever – in need of Grace. It is only by the grace of a savior who is willing to crouch down on the bathroom floor with me that I am saved.
It is by His grace that I live now, one day at a time.
By: Jana Greene
“Please, Jesus…please.”
My prayer was simple and desperate, my head spinning.
Crouched down against the unfamiliar toilet – in the home of the hostess for the Christmas party where I was employed.
How did this happen again? How did I let this happen again? I was so careful, careful with the first drink, nursing it politely while milling awkwardly about the crowd of coworkers. I wanted to gulp it down to ease my nerves. I was shaking when I arrived alone at the party, because I was sober then.
Sober always meant shaking.
The second drink went down a little quicker. But my hands slowly stopped quaking and with the warm fire of the drink came slight nausea. Ironic that I must drink every day now – even though my body was starting to reject alcohol vehemently.
In those days, the whites of my eyes yellowed and face bloated, every day ended with a violent vomiting session.
Every day ended with the words, “Please Jesus, please.”
Be careful, I reminded myself while I poured the third. But I was just starting to feel “normal”, laughing with the other partygoers…maybe even fitting in, just a little bit. For just a few moments…joviality. The warmest place. Then, just as always, the relaxation turned to spinning and whirling.
I worked for an elementary school that year – my coworkers were also my children’s teachers, principal and librarian. My daughters were in Kindergarten and second grade respectively. I had to be careful with the drinking on this occasion. I’d been able to hide the extent of my drinking to my coworkers, friends, husband – the world. Or so I earnestly believed. I passed off hangovers as stomach bugs and headaches as minor inconveniences. I thought I was such a clever girl.
It had been less than an hour since I’d arrived at the party, when I had my fourth drink. I was proud that I was pacing myself so well. But by the sixth (or seventh?) drink, I casually wove to the guest bathroom, taking care to lock the door behind me.
And then the sick. The warmest place filling my throat and choking me.
I hate myself, I thought, shaking with another retch. Vomit quietly!
How did I even let this happen?
I tried to asses the situation soberly, rationally. But I kept forgetting where I was. Worse, someone had gone in to the bathroom with me! I could feel the presence of another person, but I couldn’t focus enough to identify who it was. I wished they’d leave! Having someone see me at my weakest was my worst fear. I was not alone….that much I knew.
Through the door, I can tell that voices were rising over the holiday music in the living room.
Now, someone is knocking at the bathroom door! I am laying on the cold tile now, convulsing in dry-heaves, but I can still hear the knocking. I whisper to whoever is hunkered down in the bathroom with me, “Shhhh…please, don’t open it!” Pulling myself to myknees, I can see that the bathroom floor is a mess, the lovely white rug splattered with the evidence that I cannot control myself.
“Just a minute,” I say louder, trying to articulate the words.
Another knock, and then a woman’s voice. “Are you okay?”
It sounds like the school’s principal. Oh no.
“Yes,” I respond, but it sounds like “yesh.” Hot humiliation burns my face.
“Okay then….” the voice says, unconvincingly. “Okay.”
Get up, I tell myself, pulling myself up to the counter. Get up, damn you…. and fake sober!
I’d taken such care to prepare for this evening, having bought a new “little black” dress, curling my hair, and wearing just the right makeup. But my shoes are missing….where are my shoes?
If I could pull of looking okay on the outside world, I could still be okay on some level. And this night, while driving to the party, I had repeated a mantra: paceyourselfpaceyourselfpaceyourself….you can do it if you try!
This night, I promised I wouldn’t cross the line between “relaxed drunk” and obliterated, which is what always (every single day) “happened to me, in the privacy of my own home. As long as no other human being knew my secret, I was safe.
Insanity is thinking that you would be just fine, as long as nobody knew – and I could find my shoes.
Now, on the bathroom floor, I remembered it was not only my professional reputation at stake, but my children. The party-goers were same people in the first line of defense for children, my children. They would pity my beloved daughters at the very least, perhaps even … I cannot even imagine. Oh, my sweet girls – how I love them. How much better they deserve.
I raise my eyes up to the bathroom mirror, and my reflection paid homage to my dread. Eyes ringed in crimson, makeup sloughed off with sweat.
This is the mother of my beloved daughters.
Sick.
I tried to wipe my face with a wad of toilet paper as best I could, and then kneeled back down to clean the floor. It was difficult with the room spinning.
I hear a strangled whimper rise from my own throat and it swells to an involuntary sob. I try to muffle it while I rummage around in the cabinet under the sink for air freshener to cover the stench of vomit, but it is not use. The only think under the sink is a small toilet plunger and a very old bottle of White Shoulders perfume, half-full and orange with age.
I still feel whoever is in the room with me when I am misting the perfume around the bathroom. He is crouched down on the floor with me, but I still cannot discern his identity. Whoever it is, I owe him an apology. “I’m sorry,” I cry in a whisper. “I’m so sorry.”
I stand up, wobbly, and smooth my hair.
I can make slight eye contact with myself in the bathroom mirror now and hold the sad, strange gaze. I am just beginning to feel like the un-numb version of myself again, the hiccup in my buzz was rapidly becoming the itch of sober reality, immediately uncomfortable. Never mind, I tell myself.
Opening the door, my boss and coworkers – my children’s teachers – are standing around casually, trying not to stare at the wreck that emerged from the bathroom.
And my thought process is simple and desperate in that moment of sickness. I have stopped politely imploring Jesus to help me, afraid that he might – and what that might mean.
Instead, I am thinking, “I need just one drink.” After all, I’m not the first person to get drunk at a company Christmas party. It’s practically expected. I will just pace myself.
“Regard prisoners as if you were in prison with them. Look on victims of abuse as if what happened to them had happened to you.” – Hebrews 13:3 (MSG)
God,
I’m thinking today of all the saints in the early church who prayed to you from the cells of prisons. Wrongly persecuted, they mustered their faith and lifted it to you, because they had been stripped of everything else they owned.
I know you’ve gotten your fair share of letters from prisoners.
Jails and prisons are often the venue in which lost souls lift their last remaining possession to you – faith – but the truth is that many have been stripped of that possession, too. Many, before even arriving for intake to be processed by a legal system, were already processed by another captor – Addiction – before ever setting foot in jail. Addiction is a thief of hope.
Today, I have a broken heart for a dear friend and Sister in you, whose adult son is both literally, and figuratively, a prisoner. He is addicted to drugs, God. He has reached the end of himself. Right now, he seems a shell of himself.
But a long time ago, this friend raised this man up by filling him with God- seeds. She took him to church, and youth group; she talked out her active faith in you….all the way forming rows as she raised him, and planting seeds in the soft soil of youth.
He is familiar with you. But he has made some bad choices, covering that fertile, planted ground with all the world has to offer, including substances that distract him from You. He has filled his life with all the plastic distraction that keeps the sunlight from getting in; that keeps the water of life from reaching the seeds.
Society sometimes has very little compassion for those who bring woes on themselves. Society forgets that it is only made up of infinite units of just the same kinds of people – sinners. It’s easy for them to open their bibles to the letters that Paul wrote as a prisoner, and feel compassion.
But you don’t forget to be compassionate, because you never forget that we are infinite units of people who sin, but whom you love dearly. All people must come to you from their knees on the floor of a prison cell, its only a matter of what four-walls constrain us.
Today, this man – this addict – is on the floor of a cell. I like to think he is calling out to you right this minute, but I know how stubborn addicts can be (being one myself) – I know how insane the cycle is, and how hard it is to let go of that tarp of denial we keep covering ourselves in.
But I am asking you – right now, in Your Holy Name, to crouch down on that prison floor with this man. Scrootch up so close to him that You feel familiar, that the seeds planted in his spirit in his growing-up-years feel like beads under his skin. Crack them open, and as they are opened, let him feel surrounded by love.
The supernatural feeling all addicts crave, that many addicts are willing to go to prison for – to die for – is only just a craving for you, Lord.
This young man is feeling the pain of the chemicals leaving his body, as we speak. Let the suffering he is experiencing be for the cause of one little Seed of Faith germinating. Fill up the space left by the chemicals, the hurt, the loneliness, the shame and pain. I’m sure he will remember you, God.
Be with his family, who is suffering beyond comprehension. Fill them up, too.
Since this precious son of my Sister in You is currently in no position to “write letters” in your name, and lift prayers from his broken spirit, mind and body, today I am interceding on his behalf. I ask that everyone who reads this to pray along with me.
For the addicts, the prisoners. The broken, the sinners. For my friend’s son.
Remind them that they are full of seeds of Truth, let them receive water and light, in their own personal prisons, and let those seeds grow healthy and strong and take root in You. So they can go out and tell other prisoners that there is life waiting to be lived.
Give them HOPE, Jesus.
In the name of the Father God, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
A man walks out of a bar. The establishment has been his “safe place” for years. He knows the owners and they keep a seat waiting for him on the end, where the bartender can lean in to listen when he talks without knocking over the high-ball glasses. They know his story and keep pouring, and those two things have always made him feel understood. Loved. He went to the bar every day because he wanted to be cared about and he wanted to just be left alone. Drinking is a funny thing – it makes both seem possible simultaneously.
He was incredibly brave, he thought, to work so hard and provide for his family, to deal with all the drama and dealings of life. Wasn’t he due this time? Didn’t he have it coming to him?
Until very recently, when it became obvious that his safe place was a dangerous place, he thought he would keep drinking. As his wife was leaving for the last time, and he had not been willing to follow her. He had not been willing to ask for help. The path to help was a rocky, treacherous road. The way to the bar was paved with familiarity.
As he slowly became more lost, lost, lost, it became increasingly clear that pouring did not equal understanding; that having someone lean into you and listen did not always equal love. Over the years, he chose this seat over relationships, over passions. Everybody knew his name here, but not a single soul knew his heart.
He is sick, in mind, body and in spirit.
He doesn’t know how to stop. How do you stop? Someone somewhere has to know how.
There must be magic pill to stop the drinking, and there was. There were lots of pills, all supposed to make him better, but they only made him worse in time. Perhaps he needed another diversion? A few days without drinking made possible by strange women and dirty, secret deeds. And then drinking again. What about sheer willpower? Alone, in his room, shaking and sorry, he had no one but himself for company. Nothing is working. He asks God for help, if God is real….if he exists at all.
“Love me and leave me alone,” he wanted to tell God. But instead, he searched for a support meeting nearby. Because, at the end of himself, he had no other choice.
Before the first meeting, he sat in his car, debating with himself about going in at all. Because the rooms are full of “those people” and once you walk in, you are one of them…no turning back. But he knew that he already was.
He thought of the bar, but he made another choice. And stepped into a new place.
Inside the building, worship music filled the space. He filed past others – men, women of all ages, all races. The stereotype represented was very specific: The Human Race. As he took his seat and the speaker began to share her experience with substance abuse and recovery, he leaned in.
I am lost, lost, lost, he said in his spirit.
In that most-alone place, God made his presence known.
There were relationships among hurting people in those rooms. There was a passion for living. He took small glances around the room as the meeting wrapped up. Over cups of coffee, there were tears, but laughter, too. There was palpable joy, something he’d forgotten existed.
And nobody knew his name. Nobody knew it until the men gathered alone for small group.. There, in a small circle, he shared his name. He told a little of his story, when it was his turn.
At the end of the meeting, all of the others knew why he was there, and why he didn’t want to be there anymore. And no-one turned away from him. His eyes met with love.
There was a pouring-out of himself and all of his drama and dealings, and he filled up that space with hope for a future, because here, “those people” have one – a future.
The God he had doubted helped him to stop drinking when he couldn’t do it himself, and gave him people who loved his heart when he was at the end of himself. He had been incredibly brave to walk through the door. He was due this time, he had it coming – this life raft. This safe place.
Keep coming back, they said. Your seat will be waiting for you.
A man walks out of a bar……and into a meeting. He keeps coming to meetings because he feels cared about there, and he knows he cannot be left alone to his own devices. The road he is on – to recovering his life – is well-worn by others.
It is paved by hope.
“If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.- Alcoholics Anonymous
He asked me to ask you…..who do you say that He is? He is quite concerned about what you think of Him.
Do you say that He is Historical Figure, criminal, prophet or ordinary man? Would you say that He is the Son of the living God?
Writer and scholar C.S. Lewis, who was an avowed (and very vocal) atheist for many years before accepting Christ described him this way: “Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.”
This Jesus, who so radically changed the world, was brought up on bogus criminal charges at the end of his earthly life. He was the first and only completely perfect human being to have walked the earth. His reward? Death by brutal crucifixion, burial in a tomb from which He would rise in splendor three days later.
But what does that have to do with you? Why would it matter what one man did over two-thousand years ago?
You and I can never live as perfect human beings. I’ve tried, and it was the hardest seven minutes of my life! We need God’s help to secure our place in eternity. Jesus was the sacrifice that makes this possible. But God is not only interested in the “forever”; He is sincerely invested in the ‘here and now’.
Who do I say that Jesus is? He is my
Debt Settler: Jesus is not a debt collection agency, reminding you of every mistake. He is not in the business of setting up payment plans for all of your sin, either. He settles the debt of all you have accrued in the past (and I mean ALL of it!) and cancels it entirely when you ask Him to be your savior. When asking His forgiveness, no sin debt is too big or too small. He is waiting to set you free!
Game Changer: Your rules? The way you’ve always handled challenges on your own…He doesn’t even need to see the playbook. He wrote a better one! He changes the trajectory of your life in ways you cannot imagine….in ways you will be so humbled by.
Name Changer: When you accept Jesus, your name is written in permanence in God’s book of life. It isn’t penciled in, jotted down hurriedly. It is written in Spiritual Sharpie, bold and eternal. Your name, and your life, becomes His as you are adopted into His family. The name He remembers you by when He thinks of you? “Mine.”
Life-Giver: I want the kind of life that is eternal, but let’s be honest…I’d like it to be pretty awesome here, too. Jesus doesn’t want us trudging through each day with just enough energy to survive until we get to heaven. Here’s what Life-Giver Jesus has to say about that in scripture: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” John 10:10.
Friend: Why the Creator of the universe would want to hang out with me, I have no idea. But for some reason, He does. If he were a great human teacher, that would be humbling enough; but no. Jesus, in dying on the cross and raising to life, bridged the gap between the Holiest of Holy Ones and puny, neurotic, recovering alcoholic, generally-all-around misfit and master of mistakes – ME. His Holy Spirit never leaves my side and calls me “friend”. And that’s a miracle.
Who do you say that He is? It matters very much.
My name is Jana Greene, and I say He is also the Savior of the world.
. Be sure to check out both her blog and book. You won’t be sorry!
Musings of a Gypsy Soul 