"Embracing My Entirety"

“Embracing My Entirety”

           

This time five-years ago I was waking up on the detox unit of a rehab facility.  I was fully clothed, deeply hung over and full of the most intense shame I believe I had ever felt and certainly ever hope to.

If I am honest, I was disappointed that I had woken up at all.  I could not fully mentally and emotionally process where I was or what I had done to be back in rehab for the second time.  It was as if my mind could not allow me to go there just yet for fear I might break into a million tiny pieces.  I would eventually get there, but it was a gradual process through the steps; a slow letting go of my ego.

The person I was then and the person I am today are vastly different yet essentially the same.  I am still me at my core but so much about how I view myself and therefore the world around me has changed.  The inflexibility of my thought processes and my judgement has shifted from black-and-white to living in a shifting state of grey.  Few things in my life are concrete, few things are set in stone.  I know I have love in my heart, I know I am grateful and I know I want to live as congruent a life as I possibly can and those things I don’t shift on.  Everything else is on a continuum.  I am always learning.  I live in a constant state of understanding I don’t have all the answers but that no longer frustrates or embarrasses me.  If I ever start to feel as though I have it all figured out again I will be in trouble. 

Over the past five years I have not just found sobriety, I have found recovery and there is a difference.  Stopping drinking is one thing.  Being blessed to live your life as much as you can in what the Big Book calls the “sunlight of the spirit” is an entirely different experience.  I am grateful that I found the group of people I did.  They took me through the steps in a particular way.  I have no doubt that the process saved my life.

Through the steps I was given a new way of thinking that in turn changed my vision.  I was able to look at myself for the first time in the way that I imagine God sees me.  I believe that an all-powerful being, a higher power, an essence, an energy or, God if you like, embraces us all in our entirety.  God takes in our good and our bad and loves us despite ourselves.  Through my step-work I was able to meet myself for the first time – warts and all.  I was able to fully accept myself in my early 40s.  I don’t just like myself today, I love myself.  To go from wishing I had not woken up five years ago to loving myself completely today is a miracle.  I wish everyone could see themselves with love and tolerance.  I wish it even for people I don’t like; perhaps I wish it for them even more.

There have been other things gained in five years.  I have a relationship with my children I could not have imagined.  This time five years ago, I thought they would be better off without me.  Now I know differently and I am able to be a loving and healthy part of their lives today.  Though my marriage did not last, my relationship with Frank is a good one.  We co-parent really well and we are true friends.  We laugh and when we have conflicts we work it out.  We have what Wren calls a “friendship divorce” and I will take that gladly.

I have repaired relationships with old friends.  I have made amends with people.  I have learned to forgive.  I look the world in the eye and stand tall.  I talk openly and honestly about who I am and what my struggles are because I accept the darker side of myself along with the light because to hide from one side over the other no longer feels congruent.  I don’t feel nearly as much shame, though I still sometimes struggle with its legacy.  I am perfectly flawed and beautifully human.

A friend of mine from my home group mentioned the other day that he takes the time to thank God when things go wrong.  I remember him saying this and I think my head cocked to the side like a dog.  I at first could not grasp the concept.  Why would you thank God when things were going wrong, you are supposed to thank him when things are going well?  He clarified that he does both.  He doesn’t just want to thank God when things are easy but he wants to remember to thank God when things are hard.

It seemed such a foreign concept to me, but it was something that kept coming back to me over the course of the next week.  I began to feel myself starting to do this when little things were not going my way, then when bigger things went wrong.  It started to become easier and it started to really make an impact on my thinking.  It is like the opposite of a fox-hole prayer for me.  I feel my anger rising about something and I take a moment to thank God and it instantly puts things into perspective for me and I am grateful.

This is the kind of thinking that I am receptive to now.  This is the kind of thought process I can have now that allows me to turn things around and look at all facets of a situation and be thankful rather than resentful.  It changes everything and makes me calm in situations that used to send me right over the edge into fear and self-pity which are my Achilles heels.

So I am not saying that I am a saint and I am certainly not perfect five years later.  I have growing to do still and much left to learn, but I am open to doing so now and so very grateful that I can. 

Today I am no longer disappointed that I woke up.

Embers

“Embers”

ember

[em-ber]

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SEE MORE SYNONYMS FOR ember ON THESAURUS.COM

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noun

a small live piece of coal, wood, etc., as in a dying fire.

embers, the smoldering remains of a fire.

           

Over the holidays I was sad and lonely for a variety of reasons.  The end of December marks the fun of Christmas but is followed shortly after on the 27^th with the date of Liam’s death.  Frank and I married on December 29^th so that date is also now somewhat bittersweet.  Frank had asked me if I would be alright if he took them on a trip over the New Year and I was happy they had the chance to go on what turns out to be an epic vacation with him but then I got sick and a friendship ended and I was much more on my own than I had anticipated would be the case. 

A close friend of mine runs a Bible study course from him home on Sunday mornings and I have been through the course twice before in the past four or so years.  In December, he asked me to join them one Sunday morning and sing for the people attending the course.  I agreed and forced myself to go even though I was feeling sad and down. 

I have learned over the years that when I am down I have to force myself to do things and to get out or feeling down will turn into depression before too long.  I am in a place now in recovery as a result of having gone through the steps in such a thorough way and finally gotten a very clear picture of myself, that I listen to my own advice now, I don’t just give it anymore.  The steps have allowed me to live in a place where I can have sadness but don’t get depressed; where I can worry but don’t get anxiety and where I can get scared but no longer live in fear.

So I showed up at my friend’s house and I sang “I am Not Alone” by Kari Jobe.  It is a beautiful song by a Christian artist and if you haven’t heard it, it is worth looking up.  I had not heard it before my friend introduced me to it and had me sing it at another event a few years ago.  It speaks to not feeling alone because God is always with you.  I sang it in the car once when I was trying to learn the words initially and Wren was with me.  When she heard it the first time, she cried.  She told me it made her think of her brother Liam and how she never got to meet him but he is always with her.

I don’t know what happened to me either, but I sang for the people in the room and one woman cried while I was singing it.  I made it through to the end of the song and then I burst into tears as I sat down afterwards.  It contains a powerful message and one I clearly needed at that moment. 

After I sang, I stayed to hear the pre-recorded sermon that the group watches and then discusses.  In the sermon, the pastor talked about embers on a fire.  He talked about how while the embers are on the fire they burn well, but if you take one off the fire, it begins to lose its heat and the fire in it begins to die, just as the dictionary definition above denotes.  He goes on to say though that if you put that same ember back on the fire with the other pieces of coal or wood, it will begin to burn again because it will draw heat and energy from the others.

It was a message I needed at the time.  All of it.  I needed the song and the sermon.  I was and am not alone and when I am feeling like and ember I need to find my fire again.  I need to find the people who feed my flames and build me up spiritually and emotionally not tear me down. 

Then because my fire is stronger I need to turn around and build up the heat in other dying embers.

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.