Belonging

“Belonging”

 

“The pessimist complains about the wind.  The optimist expects it to change.  The realist adjusts the sail.”

                        William A. Ward

           

I am at a place now in my recovery where I no longer crave a drink.  I can honestly say that I don’t think about drinking anymore.  I guess that isn’t entirely accurate.  I think about it all the time in terms of recovery and addiction and meetings and sponsees and living my best life and knowing I can’t do it etc… But I don’t think about it in terms of longing anymore.

I went to rehab and started attending 12-step meetings so that I would stop drinking because I saw that as my problem.  When I got some periods of sobriety under my belt my life would improve because the chaos caused by drinking would be removed but eventually I would relapse because I had not taken care of my underlying issues.  What I had not realized before doing the steps was that it wasn’t the drinking that was the actual problem, it was my thinking.

My thinking, my general unease with myself and my lack of connection with a spiritual life was the root of all my problems.  Drinking was a symptom.  Drinking was what I turned to so I could shut off the noise and interference going on in my head.  I didn’t know what it was then and I didn’t understand how to interpret it.  I do now.

I don’t mean to say that I don’t still experience the noise and interference.  I do.  For example, this past Thanksgiving I spent the day at two different houses.  I had two dinners with two families.  I felt for part of the day, adrift.  I felt disconnected and uncomfortable.  In my head I heard myself saying, “I don’t fit in anywhere.”  This was a genuine feeling I had.  This was nothing anyone else made me feel however.  Neither family said or did anything to make me feel this way.  I made myself feel this way.  It took me several hours to turn that around and see the reality of the situation.  I had two Thanksgivings.  Two families cared enough about me to have me at their houses and accept me at their tables… and yet somehow I managed to feel as though I did not fit in rather than doubly loved?

This is an example of the fundamental flaw in the way that I can sometimes think.  But now I am able to recognize if for what it is.  I see it as my humanity and vulnerability cropping up and reminding me that I am a singular mortal link in a chain.  When I am in that state of mind I feel all of my naked insecurities and I imagine myself alone.  But because of the spiritual journey I embarked on doing the steps I am reminded that I am not alone and that I am indeed a link in a chain.  That chain is love and it is endless and eternal and all-powerful and I may not understand everything that I encounter, but that I don’t have to understand it all to live a happy and fulfilling life and know that I am loved.

 

 

 

 

God Weeps

“God Weeps”

 

“God shall wipe all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”

                        -Revelations 21:4

           

This past week has been long and full of pain and sorrow but also beauty and overwhelming love and acts of kindness.  My closest friend lost his son and I’ve had a ring-side seat to his progression through grief thus far and asked if I could write about it on the blog. I wanted to capture it for many reasons, not the least of which has been because Brendan’s anger turned so quickly into a sort of acceptance about the death of his first-born that I am in awe.

Brendan is a friend of mine from recovery.  We met at our home group and have grown very close over the past eighteen months or so.  We often laugh about how we would never have met in our former lives and if you saw the two of us together and knew anything about our respective lives before recovery you would say, “Wait, what?  Really?”  But we get along so well and talk daily about any and everything.  He has become a staple in my life and I in his.

His eldest son, also named Brendan, had struggled with addiction for the past ten years or so.  He had been in and out of rehab countless times and had last gone to rehab and then a recovery house in California a few months ago.  Brendan and I had dinner a week ago Thursday and one of the main topics of conversation was young Brendan, because it appeared he had relapsed and no one was sure where he was or how he was doing.  What his father told me he feared that night would happen to his son, did indeed happen a mere two days later.

As most of you know, Frank and I lost our eldest son, Liam, fifteen years ago.  Liam was only 68-days old when he died.  Brendan was 29-years old and the circumstances are very different for sure, but a parent should never lose a child under any.  Frank had cancer at the time and was just at the onset of his treatments at the time of Liam’s birth and then subsequent death.  Brendan also has cancer and had to go from finding out his son was deceased on Saturday to his first round of radiation on Monday.  I remember thinking fifteen years ago, “how much more can one man take?” and here I am thinking the same again.  I said to Frank on Sunday about Brendan, “I don’t think I have ever seen anyone look so broken before…  Actually, yes I have.”

Losing a child is a pain all its own.  I don’t mean you win some sort of prize for one-upmanship of anguish or anything, but it’s just so outside the natural progression of things.  In terms of categories of grief it is an agony that so should not be.  It is a special kind of hell and I would not wish it on someone I hate let alone someone that I have come to love so much. 

On Monday last, Brendan managed to go to our home group with one of his other sons.  He spoke about his anger.  He was angry at God then that his son was gone.  He wondered if his son knew he was loved and questioned if he had done enough to show him that.  Throughout the week he wrestled with his thoughts and emotions and some of the conversations turned and he told me a number of times that he believes “God weeps” for man and then told me this directly and I had to relay it because it is so powerful:

 

“God give man the gift of free will and when man uses that free will to hurt himself or others, He weeps.  God looked at Brendan as he tried to stop the ‘noise’, as he drew every breath of duster, as his heart broke because he just didn’t know how to stop; God said ‘Enough suffering my child’ as he pulled Brendan into His arms of incomprehensible love… and stopped the noise.”

 

I don’t think he’s angry anymore, or at least less so.  I am amazed at the way he was able to work through his emotions this week and get to a place of relative peace.  He keeps saying he is grateful for all the love and support he and his family have been shown and he knows that his son must see that now.

I only met young Brendan a handful of times so unfortunately I did not get to know him.  But from being around his family this week and knowing his father the way that I do, I would say he is far more than the circumstances of his death.  He is remembered so fondly by his parents and brothers and his Aunt and cousins.  He has two beautiful, curly-haired daughters who I hope will learn about the positive impact he had on all the people I have seen reach out over the past week.  If he was anything like his father he was a beautiful human being.

 

There is certainly a lot of ugly in this world, but there is also a lot of beauty and that has poured forth and embraced Brendan’s family this week.  God weeps for us here on earth but I like to think that wherever young Brendan and Liam are now, there is precious little to weep about anymore.

Accidental Perfection

“Accidental Perfection”

 

“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.”

Mother Teresa

           

Over the summer the kids and I went on a road trip.  This is the third year we have done so and it has become a much-anticipated event.  We have visited many friends but always go to see my college roommate and her family in Indiana as the main part of our trip.

This year, while visiting, my friend’s fifteen-year-old son made us guacamole.  It was really good and we told him so.  He didn’t seem to believe us, and, at first, deflected the compliments we were lobbing at him.  He claimed he had forgotten an ingredient, or that he hadn’t cut this or that correctly.  After his mother and I insisted that it was indeed really great guacamole, he smiled and shrugged and said, “I guess it’s just accidentally perfect then.”

I stored this memory in the notes section of my phone to revisit for a post later because it was a profound sentence and interaction.  Last night I thought of it again when I received a text message from someone in my twelve-step program.  I was asked to speak on New Year’s Eve at my home group.  I accepted and told the woman who will be chairing the month of December that I would be happy to and that it would, in fact, be an honor to speak at my home group.  She wrote back that the honor was all hers and proceeded to tell me that I was an inspiration to her and several other really lovely things that profoundly touched me.  Now I don’t mention that to pat myself on the back or because I want more compliments, but because it took me back as compliments always do.  My gut reaction is to deflect them like my son’s friend did about the guacamole.  My instinct is to tell her that I could not possibly be an inspiration to her or anyone else, that I was a hot mess for so long, that I am nothing remarkable and that she should not waste her breath.

However, that gut reaction is now quick to die out.  That voice in my head that told me for so many years I was worthless and still rears its ugly head when someone says something nice to me, is so much quieter than it was.

It took me many years to get to a place where I have re-trained my brain to move past the negative and allow in the positive.  It hasn’t been easy.  I didn’t get sober and go through the steps until I was 41.  In that process I found a spiritual connection all my own.  I found a Higher Power and understood myself for the first time.  That journey led me to discover my humanity and with that I embraced all of myself, including my many flaws.

Not too long ago Dermot and I were talking about standards of beauty.  He told me I was beautiful and my instinct was not to believe him.  I wanted to disbelieve my own son when he told me I was beautiful.  Think about that for a moment.  How much self-doubt and self-loathing do you have to have fed yourself on that you would doubt the sincerity of your child when they innocently compliments you in conversation?  I stopped myself in mid-thought, smiled at my humanity when he said it and simply thanked him instead.  I have discovered that the flaw is not in the way that I look, but in the way that I think about the way that I look.  The flaw is not in the way that people see me, but in the way that I think about the way that people see me.

I think about it this way now…  Before the steps and doing extensive work on myself, I saw myself as if I were looking through a funhouse mirror.  My impression of myself was skewed.  Now I see myself more through God’s eyes and there is beauty there even in my many imperfections.  So the next time someone compliments you, pause, smile and accept it.

Maybe we are all accidentally perfect.