A decade or two ago,
newly sober, still mostly feral, I was in awe of what we called the
"fellowship." Drinking had always been such a salve, a slippery balm
that maintained an invisible but solid wall between me and the humans. Every
drink, every drug, every thing that I used to make me not feel merely
bound me tighter, twisted into a tangled mess of fear and loathing – and it all
kept me safe. Invulnerable. And here were all these people, all these
sober drunks with some time: sometimes only an hour or two, sometimes days or
weeks or years (Years? What the hell?), all these people, with names I
sometimes remembered but mostly didn't, with phone numbers readily given but
that I never called. They all of them, mostly, showed up. For each other. For
themselves.
For me.
Even when I snarled, or
whined, or pushed back as far as I could go. I felt like Harry Beaton, the
character in Brigadoon who couldn't bear his grief, who wanted only for others
to hurt as much as he did, who ran, as if all the hounds of hell were running through
his head, skittering up and down his spine, trying desperately to leave , all
the while doomed to stay in the same place. "I'm leaving Brigadoon,"
he cried, "The miracle is over!" That was me, too: I wanted out, I
wanted the miracle - of sobriety, of AA, of something I couldn't even name - I
wanted it over for everyone. And still, all those drunks, they showed up. For
me.
"Be honest,"
they said. Be open and willing and vulnerable, a little bit every day. I
scoffed at their naiveté. "Keep coming back," they smiled, sipping
coffee as the smoke from their cigarettes rose in delicate spirals, collecting
in a haze just below the ceiling of the meeting room. I went back, again and
again. One day, on a whim, or perhaps a dare to myself, I offered a truth or two,
exposed the delicate skin of my secrets, just a fraction, and waited for the
white hot pokers to come, seeking blood, sensing weakness. They never did, and
I lived to tell the tale. I tried it again. And again. I shed my secrets like a
shroud, felt their weight shift and dissolve, not all at once, but in time,
over time, as I learned to trust.
"It's ok not to
know," they said. "It's ok to ask for help." I laughed, I was
too smart to fall for that line! I knew it all and needed nothing from anyone.
I was the Fixer of Broken Things. I knew, above all else, that I would never be
loved, and so decided that to be needed was almost the same. Almost enough. So
I found all the broken pieces, all the broken people - and I fixed them all.
And in all my fixing, I could find a whispery echo of the humanity I was so
sure was just outside my grasp. I knew, without doubt, that only one person
remained outside the circle of healing: me.
But those people, those
glorious drunks, they showed up and they offered and they loved - freely,
without any expectation of return. There were no scoreboards or scales that
weighed my worth. With infinite caution and care, I crept away from the curse
of people - the burden of their need and want and broken desire and slowly,
almost imperceptibly, found grace in fellowship, the blessing of people who
fill my life, and my heart.
So here now, a few
decades later, looking back at a lifetime of wholeness and brokenness and
breathless awe, I find grace - and God - in the kindness of strangers and the
people I have gathered along the way, here in the quiet of 3:00 am.
Who am I kidding? "Looking
back at a lifetime..." Ha! It's all well and good to talk of lessons
learned - difficult, daring, skin-crawling lessons that you learn and then fold
up neatly, put it away in a drawer in a locked room that lives down a long and
cobwebbed hallway that is dusty with disuse. I like lessons like that, feel a
smug humility that I can say, "Ah yes - that was hard, learning how to do
that. Not that I'll do it again or anything; I got that badge, thanks."
This past year has been a
never-ending parade of learning that lesson, again and again, the one where I
ask for help. I tried. I tried so hard to shoulder all the broken pieces, all
on my own. God, I tried! And I couldn't do it. Time and again, I struggled,
like Atlas. I carried every load I was handed, felt buried by the weight of it
all, until I stood - motionless, breathless, defeated - until the pain of not
asking for help was finally greater than the fear of reaching out. And so, skin
crawling, face pink with heat and body glistening with flop sweat, I asked for
help.
And without fail - without
fail - every time, there it was. Offered not as an "if - then"
statement, but freely, unstintingly. There were rides and loans and stronger
shoulders than mine that could bear the weight of my fear. People showed up,
offered their love, sometimes in the form of coffee and a willing ear, once or
twice as a meal, delivered with a happy smile and no strings. There was the
offer of advice a time or two, but more often, a steady presence and a gentle
hand to hold. I needed everything that was given.
I used to say, in the
early days of my sobriety, that the only thing worse than not having friends was having them; the only thing worse than
depending upon the kindness of strangers was depending upon the kindness of
people you know. Now, a quarter of a century later, I still hesitate. I still
stumble, making my solitary way to some desperately high ledge. But with every
piece of brokenness that I cling to, I hesitate a little less, don't walk quite
so close to the teetering edge. I am learning to shrug a little sooner, so that
whatever it is that I think I must carry doesn't crush me under its
weight. While I still can’t seem to say “Please…” I can finally, sometimes, actually
say “Thank you,” with a modicum of grace and graciousness.
A quarter of a century
later, after a lifetime of steadfast fear and absolute certainty that my
burdens are mine, that I am the fixer who can never be fixed, I have discovered
a new conversation topic with God. These days, there's a lot less "Why me,
God?" and a helluva lot more gratitude for all the gifts I have been
given. Why me? Sometimes, it's the choices I've made or the actions I've not
taken that place me smack dab in the middle of something hard and
fierce. Sometimes, there's no reason at all, a thing of fearsome and
capricious chance that happens because it does. Even then - a conversation of
thanks.
So, as we enter into this
season of blessings and thanks, I offer this, my prayer of thanks, with humble
gratitude for the presence of strangers and friends who teach me, every day,
what grace looks like.
God of infinite compassion, who fills the world with quiet wonder and endless breath, thank You for the gift of not knowing, the grace of bending and the joy of asking, and in that joy, gratitude for the strength of vulnerability, and the ability to give thanks
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