Thanksgiving 2017 - The Blessing of Vulnerability and the Miracle of Thanks

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

Grace, revisited

There was a day, long enough ago that I can look at it with the comfort of time, near enough that the colors are still sharp and unblurred. On that day, I sat in my living room in the late afternoon, so that there were more shadows than light. My cat threaded between my legs and I stared at the bottle of vodka I had bought earlier that day. I wanted it so badly, the sweet burn and liquid fire of the alcohol, the thirty seconds of absolute release that it always gave. I stared at that bottle, and I sank to my knees. I had every intention of drinking. I wanted it, wanted the release and the blankness. I could taste it, for God's sake! And yet I sank to my knees. And I cried out in utter despair: "I give. I can't do this anymore. I can't be so alone. Please help."

That was a shocker, that prayer. Here’s the thing: I have a couple issues with God.

Of course, anyone who's known me longer than, say, five minutes, can pretty much figure that out. I have run the gamut from at-one-with-the-All, to being convinced that my Higher Power is God's evil twin brother whose sole Divine Purpose is to mess with me and my life. I struggle with God's blessings as much as with God's capriciousness.

My journey with God has been rocky at best. At thirteen, I announced my intention to become a rabbi. By fifteen, I declared my apostasy –god was dead, orat best, immaterial. I had a God-sized hole in the middle of me, and it ached to be filled. I filled it with anything handy: sarcasm, contempt, cynicism. Throw them all in there--- anything that would make me not feel quite so empty, quite so lost.

Anger was good. If I stayed angry enough, sneered with just the right curl of the lip, I did not have to feel. After anger came alcohol: emergency spirituality in liquid form. I loved drinking. I loved the way it made my fingertips buzz, an electric pulse that made me want to dance and move and breathe. The noise in my head got quiet and I could think. I could float, and feel beautiful and connected and almost human.

Once I found them, anger and alcohol were my boon companions. They kept my demons at bay. If I stayed angry enough, drank enough, I could almost believe that they filled that hole, filled me. I could tell myself that they were enough, and that I was enough.

And then they stopped working. I couldn't get to that floaty, breathy place anymore. I couldn't find any quiet space. All that was left was this deafening white noise and a brittle coating of despair. In the end, there was a night in August, filled with heat and humidity and the smell of tar and sweat. I crawled into a bottle and some man’s bed, fully intending to pull the cork in after me. Instead, I woke up just as empty, just as alone.

So I got sober. I stumbled into the rooms and meeting places of Alcoholics Anonymous, totally spent. All those shiny happy people sitting in those shiny happy AA rooms told me: “Don’t drink, go to meetings and find a God of your understanding.”

Great. Give me a task that I have been failing at for decades. I'll get right on that.

Strangely enough, I did. Twenty plus years later, I still don’t know why – perhaps even the smallest kernel of hope can trump despair. And thus began the great God quest. I had my eyes peeled for The Answer that would explain away all my doubt and uncertainty. I looked, and I read, and I looked some more. The more I looked, the more I struggled, the more desperate I became to find solace.

I saw my friends get it. I was happy they all learned to sit comfortably in their own skins. I just wasn't getting it. After 2 years, I was sober, technically - I wasn’t drinking, but I was miserable. God may be real for everyone else, but I was pretty sure that God would never be real for me.

I told myself it didn't matter really. So what if I was a little raw? So what if all I wanted to do was drink? I couldn't sleep anymore. I stopped going to meetings - couldn't bear to listen to those shiny happy people who had found God - some Higher Power who carried them and loved them and healed them and redeemed them.

I just wanted a drink. I sat in my darkened apartment, staring at a bottle of vodka. I could taste it, I braced myself for the burn of it, and the tingle and the blankness that I knew would come.

"I give. I can't do this anymore. I can't be so alone. Please help."

That was my prayer. The only prayer I could offer. It spilled out of me, and I sat on my knees, and I didn't drink. There were no angels to dance on the head of a pin. There was no clap of thunder or heavenly choir. But I didn’t drink, even though I wanted to, even though I ached to. I didn’t. And I slept-- the whole night through. For the first time in months, I slept, deep and uninterrupted.

Redemption. I have no doubt that this moment was nothing less than the gift of redemption with a touch of grace: with no angels dancing, no thunderous choir, I finally lay down my struggle with God. I was redeemed, at last. The miracle was for me, at last. And I slept.

Twenty plus years later, trough the grace of God, I’ve still not taken that drink. I’ve found a faith that carries me through those long dark nights of the soul. I still have them. I still tend to box with God. I struggle with the idea of God still. I struggle with God still. We are locked in an eternal embrace, God and me - intimate, connected, bound together as blithely as light, as strong as love. I rail at God and demand to be carried, to be loved.

To be enough.

And I am still given grace, because I know that when I ask, I am redeemed. When I love, I am enough. And, wrapped in that blanket of grace, I sleep.

What grace looks like - a happy new year tale

I could hear the quiet hum of the furnace. It's easy, at 3:00 in the morning, when the house is quiet, and the world seems to sleep.

I could hear the buzz of the highway, that unfolds in its great concrete planes and curves, not too far from my window that holds in the warmth of the furnace that hums in constant susurration at 3:00 in the morning when the house is so quiet and the world seems to sleep.

The cat is unaware of the sleeping, softly humming world . Her only concern is my changed breathing and therefore, my coming awakeness. She cares nothing for traffic or heaters or nighttime quiet. She crawls on my chest, purring her quiet and constant purr that covers the more quiet hum of the furnace, and nudges my fingers with her nose. She's looking for scratches and pets. She is the Empress of Night, Queen of Drowsy sun. She nips my scratching fingers when she's had enough. She rules with an iron fist and sharp, still-kitten teeth.

I lay in my bed, surrounded by warmth and just-below-noticing noise that I hear only in passing and send out a silent prayer of thanks for all that I have in my life, for all the wholeness and brokenness and possibilities that make up the life that I have been given, the life I have chosen. A sigh - six of one, half dozen of the other. I used to stress on the finer points and philosophical distinctions played out in the giving and the having and the choosing. These days, I'm learning to find grace just in the living.

Another reason for thanks.

I find that, in the stillness and quiet of 3:00 am, it's easier to just be, even if for just a moment. I'm grateful for those moments, and for that stillness. For those few minutes, before my head fills with the chatter of voices and relentless noise, I can breathe and be. There's just that moment, a slow inhale and steady exhale. I feel my soul slip in, returned from its dance with angels along the arc of Saturn's rings (or so I imagine), but returned nevertheless. I offer a prayer of thanks, again, for this gift of trust and faith.

Inhale. Exhale. And again - a handful or two of breaths that remind me that I'm alive, that there is a God (whatever That is), that I don't have to have an answer, not in this moment (or even the next). I am here, in this place, and I am so very grateful for all the blessings I've been given, even when I felt those blessings were curses. I have a tendency to find gratitude, and God, only in hindsight.

Funny - but they all seem to stem from the same place, those cursed blessings - or perhaps blessed curses. It surprises me, this place - so well hidden from view (yours and mine both), but I move, with what seems like excruciating slowness - away from the fear that tethers me in place to a moment of quiet stillness, an eternal moment of inhale and exhale. It's a very fragile place.

And from this vantage point, finally unbound, I look back, to count all those gifts of brokenness and grace that have been given me. Here, in the 3:00 am quiet, with the purr of a cat and the drone of distant traffic, with the gentle rhythm of my son's breathing down the hall, I offer a prayer of thanks for the kindness of strangers. And more - for the kindness given me by the people I know.

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 - it all kept me safe. Kept me distant, untouchable. 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 (Really? Years? What the hell?), some who turned out to be visiting, feeling the need to don the mantle of Scout - those who went back out to test the waters (that were always 80% proof at least), and not all of them found their way back in - 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 an 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 naivete. "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, but 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 job that came as I stood teetering on the brink of financial disaster that threatened to swallow me whole. 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, just about a quarter of a century later, I still hesitate. I still shudder a little. 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.

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 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 turn the corner of the year, in the quiet hum of darkening skies and the skitter of ice and sleet against my windows, in the end-of-the-year stillness of three in the afternoon, 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.

Merry new year xoxo

The Grace of Imperfection: reflections on the 24th anniversary of my sobriety

This is the story of my twenty-fourth year of sobriety, told together and in two parts. (You'll see. There would have been columns, which is infinitely more satisfying to me, but Blogger isn't set up for such binary sophistication. So - the parts go together, even though they look - to the naked eye - separate.)

Part One, told together and at the exact same time as Part Two

This has been a crappy year. In the general scheme of all my years, there have been crappier, but not by much. It was one of those years I less lived through and more merely survived, finding too many windy, twisty paths and far too many trap-door bottoms as I stumbled through the days.

There was a time, a while back, that I lost just about everything: property, people, positions. I lost them all irrevocably. Each loss felt like an amputation, and I would get those ghost twinges and pains, as if what I had lost still existed, just out of reach, just out of sight, but still it held weight and heft enough to bring me to my knees. This past year, this past crappy year, was not one of loss, but more a long string of break ups. People, possessions, things – all the standard gathering of stuff that one accumulates over time, a simple break of here, and then not.

If I woke, all too suddenly, in the lonely and dark, night shirt clinging and twisted and drenched in sweat, it was less about loss and grief and fear, and more about a constantly-changing body, a war of hormones and time raging just beneath the surface of my skin. But, having been woken by flashes of heat at temperatures just shy of internal combustion, having stumbled to the bathroom to pee yet again, all the voices of all those people and places and things from which I had separated and severed ties (or that – more likely – all those that had broken up with me) came muttering back in, racing through my head, a cacophony of what-ifs and whys that caused no small amount of psychic whiplash as I attempted to follow each whining whisper spinning manic tales that always ended with “and that’s why you’re a horrible mother and a terrible human being!” Dawn did not defeat the monsters of my dark, but rather sent them skittering into deep folds and hidden corners, where they readied themselves for their inevitable return.

I ran out of money. I robbed Peter and Paul both, The lights flickered a time or two while I cobbled together something out of nothing, a game of smoke and mirrors and odd jobs and charity. I can barely stand the kindness of strangers; the generosity of people I know and love is worse, but I gritted my teeth and learned a grudging gratitude. I collected the mail every week or two, whether I needed to or not. Bills went into the if-you-don’t-open-it-you-don’t-owe-it pile. I hadn’t resorted to that since the early days of my sobriety. Of course, back then, I really did believe it: let them all wait while I sorted out my life and my needs and my wants, while I amassed an Enough that was never quite Enough enough to pay any creditor back. These days, as the pile of unopened bills grew with exponential speed, I cringe, remembering something I heard at a meeting long ago, “Hey – people don’t want your money; they want theirs.”  I am hemorrhaging other people’s money, desperately trying to staunch the flow that shows no sign of stopping.

I was busy learning lessons of life and faith and God this year. Relearning. Reliving those painful, poignant lessons I could have sworn I’d mastered in early(ish) sobriety. There was no less intensity in the learning, no less wondering or pain than twenty-four years ago.

Again and again during this crappy year, I found myself knee-deep in the muck of powerlessness. This damnably simple truth had, long ago, seeped into my consciousness, gotten under my skin, became as true to me as “two plus two is four,” or “the sun rises in the east.” It has been bedrock upon which the foundation of my sobriety lives and breathes. I do not ever doubt my powerlessness over alcohol (and even grudgingly accept this as a managing principle over people, places and things). It is so true that it is almost-but-not-quite invisible.

I got the crash course review this past crappy year. During that first year or three of sobriety, when I finally began to notice the shambles of my life; when finally noticing the shambles I had made of my life: the gruesome remains of relationships I had pushed past the breaking point, the tiny universe of one I lived in, desperate to avoid pain and entanglement and fear (never realizing that I had tethered and tied them all to me with knots as hard as night), when powerlessness felt draining and all-encompassing and impossibly huge, but there was something I could do, some action I could take that could relieve the absoluteness of my powerlessness. The action would not fix me or the broken pieces of my life, but I could rest easier, trudging along that weary road. I could go to a meeting, make a list, talk to my sponsor, make an amends, go to another meeting, whine for a bit and work on it and pray about it and go to sixteen more meetings and find that, at some point, the moment passed and I was out the other side: still powerless, but sitting in my own skin, crisis (real or imagined) back there somewhere, and I was still sober. 

What I didn’t get then – all those early days and middle years and long ago Thens - was that soul-sucking, weak-in-the-knees shock of powerlessness that comes when all you can do, no matter how much you pray or hope or love, all you can do is watch. There is no action you can take, no power you can summon. There is nothing you can do except witness. Hope becomes tattered and gritty, an impossibly shallow breath that cannot sustain a too-weary heart. It is so much easier to quip “I’m a human being, not a human doing!” from the comfort of ease and abundance. It is nearly impossible when the doing and the being may be on you, but the reality is all about someone else. Someone you love, who is facing demons of their own, challenges and stumbling blocks and even death itself. And all you can do is love them, because you are powerless to do anything else, and how the hell can that ever be enough?

What can I do? What can I do? Nothing. Pace. Pray. Don’t drink. Get angry. Get scared. Still don’t drink. Disconnect. Head to a meeting. Write. Don’t drink, even when that fear becomes unbearable. Still don’t drink. Talk to a friend. Rail at God. Pace. Nothing. Anything. Spin like a whirling dervish of activity – all sound and fury, signifying nothing. Cry. Sleep. Wake up. Eat a cookie. Don’t fucking drink. Sing. Hope.

Ah, yes. Hope. That gritty, rusty shriveled old thing. Hope. Don’t drink. Hope. Pray. It gets better. Maybe. It might get better. But you’ll be there. You’ll be present and sober and scared and there. Ready, when it’s time. Time to pray, or mourn, or do the next thing, whatever that thing is. You’ll be ready. You’ll be sober. Don’t drink, go to meetings. Talk. Share. Listen.

I have walked, stumbling and hesitant and with a surprising bit of grace, through twenty-four years of days. I still get scared. I still box with God. I still take it a day at a time (sometimes an hour at a time, sometimes a minute or a breath). I am still powerless. I still mostly hate that.

I’ll live – powerless and present. I’ll pray a little, pace a little. Try to hope. Sleep too little, fret too much. Feel crappy. But oh – what a gift! To be present, in this moment, to celebrate and grieve and worry and doubt and love.

Part Two - told together and at the exact same time as Part One

I’m getting a little annoyed with my editor. She keeps telling me the eBook version of my book will be available soon. She’s been saying "soon" since late June.

She is German, though. Maybe “soon” means something different to her.

Maybe I’m just impatient.

This is a real conversation that I’ve been having in my head. For weeks, I have been getting peevish that the book isn’t yet an eBook, that it’s still not available on every online platform. That I haven’t been written up in the New York Times Review of Books or been handed a Pulitzer.

The fact that I can have this imaginary conversation – imaginary in that it’s unsaid and in my head, but not that the events and situations aren’t true on the face of it – is absolutely and completely mind-boggling.

I wrote a book! I mean, an actual ink-on-paper book. Six months or so ago, I woke up to an email from some woman, the Acquisitions Editor at a small Jewish press in Germany, telling me that, while they normally publish scholarly works and textbooks, they were looking to expand their markets. She had come across my blog online and thought my writing would be perfect to help them do that. Would I be interested in doing a book with them?

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Really? Someone has to ask that?

When I was newly sober, still trying on random pieces of my life, those pieces I had left along the wayside as I pursued anything that would bring on an oblivion stronger than my pain – even if only for a minute or three – and desperately trying to shed the wreckage that was threatening to bury me in a field of hidden mines and sharp, rusty edges, I would sigh every so often, saying, “I want to be a writer.”

Finally, one of my friends could take it no longer. “Stacey,” he rasped in a voice laced with too much booze, too many cigarettes, too much loneliness, “a writer writes.” Oh. That. Hmmm.

I filed that tidbit away with all the other verbs that I yearned for but couldn’t quite manage, like sing, or love, or parent, or God. So many verbs escaped me in those early days that stretched into weeks and months and years. Eventually, they came to me, not in a whoosh of perfection, but in fits and starts, all jangly dissonance and wonder. Jack of all verbs, master of none. I practice at them, do them far less than perfectly – which sets my teeth on edge and makes my skin fairly crawl often enough – but I do them anyway, and sometimes even manage to do them well. It never lasts, that, but I learned to live with that, learned to live in a world that is much more silver and gray and messiness than my black-and-white sensitivities would require.

And this year, this twenty-fourth year of my sobriety, I wrote a book! I can say, almost without giggling like a small child who is trying, but cannot quite contain the very large secret she is guarding, “I am a writer,” in answer to the question “What do you do?” I wrote a book, and someone published it and oh my God – seriously?

What a glorious gift this year has been! A few months ago, I was asked to participate in a Storytelling event. What an incredible honor, and so very humbling to be in the company of such masterful wordsmiths. I felt awkward: the story I chose was so different from the others! They were crisp and funny and bright, the perfect blend of wit and wonder. My story moved along in slow waves.

It wouldn’t have mattered if my story was exactly like theirs. I would have felt awkward regardless. No matter. I showed up – because I was asked. Because I was honored beyond belief. Because this was my community, and I am connected to them by more than words or microphones.

I did a horrible job of promoting the event. I had great intentions. Some things change with meteoric speed, others with all the pondering grace of glacial movement. Some things even slower. This was one of them. I had posters to hang, networks to harangue. I managed to put a notice or two on my Facebook page – Hey! There’s this thing! Come, if you have nothing better to do!

I was not hopeful. I had tried this before, this ask-people-to-show-up thing. It mostly hadn't worked. I was pretty confident that it would mostly not work again. I mean, really: who wants to schlep out on a Thursday night to hear a bunch of people telling stories? Ok – they’d schlep to hear them, just not you. Me, They would not come to see me.  

(Always remember: the words I say out loud are but the tip of the iceberg. I have a fascinating and very vocal internal life to fuel all the voices in my head. Trust me: the 10% rule fully applies.)

I did not do the publicity thing well, but I did something. And I showed up. And they came. Lots of people came. It was amazing. But oh my! In a breathless moment of wonder and joy, there were a few people who came just for me. They came because I asked.

This still takes my breath away and leaves me teary. I had a reading. I have an editor. I wrote a book. People came because I asked.

Part Three - the hidden track on the CD 

I joke that my son has learned every lesson I have ever taught him, whether I wanted him to or not. So, for all that he has become a champion for kindness, for all that he will act swiftly (if not always wisely) if he sees injustice, for all that he will dive into words and ideas and stories and worlds beyond and worlds that should be, it can be painfully awkward to hear the sharp edge of sarcasm coming from the mouth of a four year old. And that is infinitely more palatable than to see him throw up his hands in frustration and walk away from verbal conflict, shutting down, shutting out, wrapping himself in silence because he learned the lesson of avoidance all too well.

My continued imperfection at life continues to confound me. More, it saddens me profoundly, when I see its aftermath writ so large upon my beloved boy. He is smart and kind and willful and sarcastic and snarky and sneaky and funny and gracious. The other day, I broke down. There is only so much crap I can take at any one time, and I had reached the breaking point. So I cried, and couldn’t breathe for a minute, and had no clue for a longer time than that. I was in full panic mode, Def Con 5. I did this all in front of my son. Not necessarily the right move, but I’d rather he see me be human – emotional, imperfect, sniveling and lost more often than I care to be (and probably should be) – I’d rather he see that than something false and not real.

My beloved boy, who has learned every lesson I’ve ever taught him whether I wanted him to or not, apparently has also learned the lessons I could never quite learn myself but wanted so fiercely to teach to him. “Mom,” he said to me, “it’s ok to be vulnerable. It’s not weakness to ask for help.”

The bountiful gift of grace: to be present for one another,  in that moment - any moment, every moment - to grieve and worry and celebrate and love.

Synthesis and gleanings, told with the words I see in my heart, not my head

This was my year, my twenty fourth year of sobriety. It was crappy and glorious, both at once. It was never one or the other thing. There are things that I know to be true, like two plus two is four, or I am powerless. These are immutable facts. There are so many more: life is so very rarely one thing. It is mostly a jumble of everything, and the trick is to tease out a single thread – maybe a couple or five – to see where they lead and what they feel like before moving on to the next thread or two. This takes patience. I am quite imperfect at that. I finally know that it is more important to show up, imperfections blaring and embarrassing and feeling all too large and loud, than to wait for a perfection that can never achieve. I missed so much of my life, waiting for it – and me – to be perfect.

I am so very grateful for my sobriety. I am so very grateful for today. It’s the only day I have – to make much of or to hide from or to fritter away while I busy myself with something else entirely. I have this day because I did not drink. I have this day because there are miracles still, and grace and love. I have this day, crappy, resonant, joyous, humbling, scary, lost, magnificent, because I didn’t drink. I will go to a meeting, talk some, listen more, sing a bit, have a conversation with God, hang out with my son, write and remember to be grateful for the gifts I have been given: the gift of struggle and the grace of imperfection.

#BlogElul 13 - Forgive

There are twelve steps in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Each of them has their own truth, their own spirit. Their own degree of difficulty. You learn, if you are a member of any twelve step program, that they are written in this order for a reason.

There are many who enter the program, beaten and spent, more than willing to admit that their lives have become unmanageable. For many, almost immediately, there is this sense of euphoria, as if a huge albatross of a weight is suddenly lifted, and for the first time in as long as they can remember, they didn't take a drink today, and they they can, in fact breathe. Really breathe. Many of these, filled with the fire of release, fly immediately from Step One (admitted we were alcoholics and that our lives had become unmanageable) to Twelve (basically, carry the message of AA to all who suffer).

Many times, in their newbie zeal, they tend to carry the mess, rather than the message. They are welcomed back with open arms and open hearts - if they make it back. Doesn't always happen that way.

There are others who enter the AA dance competition. There is the Waltzer - the person who bounces between Steps One, Two and Three. They can admit their powerlessness, they are willing to find a Higher Power, but the willingness to trust that Higher Power, to turn their will and their lives over to the care of that Higher Power (whom some choose to call God, some call Ralph and still others haven't quite found a name for Whatever-It-Is, but are willing to go with it anyway) - that is beyond them. So they  waltz, stuck.

I was a Two-Stepper myself: one-two, one-two. On and on and on. I struggled mightily with the whole idea of a God (whatever God's name might be) who could restore me to sanity. Who could protect me or save me or keep me from picking up a drink. I've written volumes about my struggle; I won't bore you (again) here. Feel free to browse the blog. Better - reach out to me and we can talk.

I got over it. Thank God. I finally figured out what worked for me, and I leaped. Sure enough, God caught me on the other side.

I did the inventory thing> Several times. It's not that I didn't get it right the first handful of times I did it. Rather, as they say in the halls of AA - more was revealed. The longer I stayed sober, the longer I continued to work the program, stay honest, do the steps - the more I figured out who I was, and how I used that to bludgeon myself and the world around me. Funny - for years, when I swore I had no God (even in AA), I always managed to do steps Four and Five (personal inventory, then admit it - to God, myself and another human being) right around Yom Kippur. That was not an accident. My life has always been about the struggle and the search.

As I said, every step has its own degree of difficulty. That degree changes by person, by time, by spiritual state. Six (get willing to have God remove the defects of my character) and Seven (humbly ask God to remove the defects), for this Jewish girl, generally make me falter a bit. They always strike me as a little too Christian, a little to magical. Thankfully, I get over it; it never hurts to ask, right?  And when I ask, in that instant, I am made whole again. Boom. That I pick up my defects almost immediately thereafter is on me, not God.

Then came Eight and Nine. Again and again, every time I did the stupid steps, I got here (sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. I can be an awesome dancer at times...). I breezed through them pretty quickly the first couple of times. Especially Eight - made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. How easy is that? I mean, I had the list already, didn't I? When I did the inventory thing in Four, I had the list.

Ok, so maybe I forgot a person or three. Maybe there was a bill collector - someone who had the temerity to want his money at a time when I wanted to keep all of mine - who fell off the list. Accidentally. I swear. Maybe because I was bending the light differently, trying to live more mindfully, trying to keep my side of the street clean, I found more of those folks whom I had harmed.

So I built the list. Again, how tough could that be? To become willing? A little more challenging, but doable. Around about five or six years sober, I was working my program hard. I was in some kind of a spiritual crisis, some place of stuckness and fear, where my brokenness was all I could see, but my experience with living a sober life told me (creamed at me, pleaded with me) to get unstuck, to make the leap, to find all the broken pieces and move. And I knew, because I'd done it before, and my sponsor told me, and all the millions of other recovering alcoholics who'd gone before, they did, too, and I was willing, if even for an instant, to trust them all, and to trust that whole God-thing, and to know, that if I did the steps, in order, with an open heart, things would change. My life would change. Wouldn't be perfect - but it would be different.

So. The Eighth Step. My sponsor and I would talk - "Ready to make the amends, Stacey?" she'd say. Almost, I'd answer, and then find eleventy-seven thousand things I had to do before I could make the amends required in Step Nine. Really - my parents weren't in a hurry, were they? Or my brothers? The rest of the family? We were all good by now anyway - weren't we? Holidays, birthdays, sometimes no reason at all, we'd get together, with no shouting or tantrums or slamming of doors. 

And secretly, so secretly that I kept this from myself even, for months, I was waiting. Waiting and watching the clock and the giant scoreboard in my head. Because, you know, I may have ruffled some familial feathers and all, may have borrowed stuff with the intention of giving it back, may have been thoughtless and unkind and mean. But, you know, so were they.

Fair is fair. I'd make amends, just as soon as every one of them, any one of them, made amends to me.

I went to meetings. I met with my sponsor. I spoke and prayed and meditated. And I waited. And I was broken and weary. Every day. And I wanted it to stop. Please God, just let this pass. 

And one night, doing nothing in particular, it hit me. How simple. How profoundly simple. And difficult. I called my sponsor, immediately.

":I have to forgive them, don't I? In order to make amends, to ask for their forgiveness - I have to forgive them first. And not ever expect them to make their own amends. Right?

"Yup," said my sponsor, and I could hear the relief - that I had gotten this lesson, finally, that I would finally be able to act and move - to forgive and ask for forgiveness.

That's the lesson of forgiveness for me: I cannot ask for forgiveness until I have forgiven. I cannot ask for forgiveness with the expectation that it will be given to me, that I'll get the relationship back exactly as it was before I broke it. That I have to pray, really hard, for the willingness to be that loving, that vulnerable in front of another human being.

We all have our parts to play in each other's lives. We are all bound to mess up. And that messing up - even unintentional, can hurt like a sonofabitch. And we need to clean up our messes, fix the hurts and leap, with all the humility and vulnerability we can muster. And when we do - there is grace and hope and possibility, and we find - each other.

(c) Stacey Zisook Robinson

2014

The Empress of Forever and Eternal Moments of Grace

Invariably, I just up and go to live in the Land of Forever. I am, perhaps, the Mayor there. Or the Empress. I like the ring of that - Empress of Forever. All I need is my tiara and sash, and I'll be set for, well, forever.

Do you know the place? 

Forever is the place I go - always - when Something Happens. It's always a capital letter event: a Loss, a Disappointment, some Painful Experience. Something that leaves me a little breathless, a little lost, a little twisty. Something Happens and I pack up, riding the train to Forever, where I set up camp and plant myself, to wait Forever. It's a bad neighborhood, Forever is: burnt-out buildings, tumbleweeds, and a howling, keening wind that wraps around my heart and gets under my skin until I want to crawl out of it. Instead, I wrap myself in the armor of my memory. Like an endlessly looped movie, I watch the scenes of my pain again and again. There is no surprise at the climax, only a certain kind of inexorable inevitability. There is comfort of a kind in that inevitability.

And I sit. And I wait. And I stay. Forever.

This is what happens, almost always. Almost every time, until the next time, and I don't know when I leave Forever, or how I get back - but I do. I re-enter the world of happy and frustrated and joyous and bills to pay and dinner to cook and life to live. From temporal stasis to moving at the speed of life in a heartbeat, a breath, unnoticed.

Except not this time. For the first time, I am not moving to Forever. For the first time, I seem to have made a side trip to the land of Used To Be. It's an oddly jarring journey. 

I don't go anywhere. I still wander through my life and dance to its syncopated rhythms. I cook and clean and watch and write, but in the quiet, offhand moments, when I allow the busyness of my life to still for a stuttery step, Used To Be comes sidling in through some back door, grabbing my attention in the corners and the almosts: almost asleep, almost awake, just out of sight, around the next bend. Almost but bot quite vulnerable. Or guarded (which is sometimes, almost, the same thing): I used to be. I used to look. I used to feel. I used to 

The particular verb escapes me. Or perhaps, it's all of them. An infinity of Used To Bes. 

I hear the whispers of that empty, soulless land as a death knell - what once was is no more and will never be again. I used to be younger. I used to be thinner. I used to be pretty. I used to...

I can't seem to find my way out of this place. All I can see, all I can feel, all I want is what used to be.

And perhaps, because it is early August, and the day before the twenty-second anniversary of my getting sober, I have just enough strength, just enough faith and hope to be able to breathe in Now for just a second. To be present, in this moment, and so, remember a few other Used To Bes.

I used to be drunk. If not all the time, then a lot of it. And if I wasn't drunk, then I was cleaning up the mess of my life that came as a result of being drunk. Or attempting to clean it up. More often than not, whatever I tried to fix, or manage or control just got me deeper into my brokenness.

I used to live in a tiny universe of one - lonely and isolated and silent: deathly, desperately silent. There was no you, there was no me, there was no God. Just a vast eternity of empty. I remember the cold of that. I remember slowly dying of that. I used to huddle in on myself, unable to move, to think or feel. I crawled inside a bottle, my shield against pain. I wanted to sink into the liquid courage of that drink. I would cling to my despair as if it could save me - or drown me. I don't think I really cared which. I used to survive - barely - and and used to fool myself that drinking would make everything just Stop.

I used to be dying - a sip, a drink, a bottle at a time. I lived in a Forever with no pause. No return. One stretched and attenuated Forever that never changed. I used to think that was okay.

And then, one day, twenty-two years ago, it wasn't okay anymore and I got sober.

One day, twenty-two years ago, the pain of drinking was greater than the fear of not drinking. I slipped free of that universe of one. I left the desolation of my prison, and entered a world of sound and light and motion. There was still pain. There was still fear. But there was joy, too. And grace. And living. There was living to do - and I got the bills and the cooking and the cleaning and the driving and schlepping and loving and loosing and grieving and laughing. I got it all. Every breath, every whisper. These days, I even get to take a trip, every so often, to Forever, to set up camp and sit and wait, in silence and in pain - but those trips got shorter every time. The distance between that Eternity and this Now has been bridged. The path is still narrow, and sometimes dangerous, but it's been lit by an infinity of hearts, and there are hands to hold in the darkness while I learn to navigate its sometimes twisty, sometimes merely curved pathways.

And so I move from the harshness of Used To Be to a soft and reverent remembrance: for every Used To Be that I mourn, there are a thousand blessings for all that I have been given. Now is a fine time to be living. Now, not what was, nor what might be, but now, an eternal moment of grace and gratitude.

Thank you for your strength, your laughter and your love, and for helping to light my way as I stumble along this blessed path, from Forever to Used To Be to Now. I am endlessly grateful for your graceful presence in my life. 

07 August 2014

The Music of God (Part One)

When I was born -- or something near enough to that so that it doesn't matter-- I sang. I can't remember a time I didn't sing. Spiders. Buses. Bonnie on the ocean harmonized with Christmas carols and Hinei Mah Tov. I drank it in and sang it out-- every note, every key, every word.

Even then, I knew that when I sang, I was free. Or freed. Something. I felt light and joy, and I loved how people would stop when I sang, and watch me, in wonder or something close to happiness. And when I was finished, when the song was done, invariably, they would coo and smile and tell me how beautifully I sang.

And in that exact moment, I knew that I was beautiful. I knew that I was loved. Just for that instant, even as my face grew pink and warm, and my toes curled with their compliments, and I felt like squirming under their attention, in that instant I knew that I could sing and it was good.

I don't remember a time I didn't sing. From first grade junior choir at synagogue to the middle school chorus and my high school stage (with summer theater camp weaving all in and through those years), name a musical and I was probably in it. Name a song arranged in four part choral harmony, and I sang it: first soprano, reaching flawlessly all the way up to F above high C. And oh-- it was all amazingly good! For the space of that performance, and the handful or two of minutes while the applause lasted and the congratulations echoed off the auditorium walls, it was good and I was loved and God was near.

And when I was 18 or 20 or some other difficult and existentially angsty age, I decided I would never sing again. There were a thousand reasons for my declaration, every one of them reasonable,  well thought out. 

They were all lies, of course.

I didn't sing-- refused to sing-- because I was angry--with the world, my life, my family. And God. Oh, I was especially angry with God! And what I wasn't angry with, I was afraid of-- everybody, everything. Singing was the one thing-- the only thing-- that allowed me to step outside my own head and breathe, really breathe, and feel the presence and comfort and absoluteness of God. In a world where the ground was constantly shifting, where people loved you and told you lies, where less-than and lost were my constant companions, there was God. And one day, at aome impossibly vulnerable, hormonal age, I crawled outside the confines of my head, and was met with emptiness.

Where once there was God, now was a howling, empty loneliness, coupled with the absolute conviction that I was alone and God had gone. Somewhere. Anywhere. Certainly gone from me. I thrummed like a taut wire: abandoned by God and fairly buzzing with tension in the face of my inability to fit inside my own skin or into the steady cadence of life the rest of the world seemed to find so easily.

I tried. I tried to find God, to fill that gaping open space. For a bunch of years, I searched, but eventually, I couldn't bear the thought of my abandonment. A few years into that howling emptiness, so vulnerable and so desperately raw, my twisted logic led me to the only possible conclusion that made sense: having been rejected by God, I therefore rejected the one thing that felt like holiness, the one thing that lifted me to sacred. I'll show You, I declared into the silence that suddenly filled me: I will not sing. Instead, it was so much easier, so much more right, to crawl inside a bottle and hide there for a small space of eternity and my own personalized tour of hell. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

So, for the next couple of decades, I didn't. and I did.

For the next couple of decades, I did not sing. For the next couple of decades, I hid inside a bottle of whatever was handy, as long as it burned like liquid oblivion going down, and made me believe, if even for 37 seconds, that I was not alone in the universe, and the voices in my head stopped whispering their siren song of self-destruction.

For the next couple of decades, I yearned for the connection I had once found in singing. And for the next couple of decades, I denied myself the grace of it, with ever sip, every glass, every hangover. There was a lot of denial.

For more than twenty years, I did not sing. And then I got sober.

I got sober, and they told me, all those happy, shiny people who filled the smoky rooms and the cracked leather couches and the gunmetal folding chairs that had seen better decades, let alone better days-- they told me to find God.

I didn't need to find God. Hell, I knew exactly where I'd left Him. Her. The Deity. I hate the grammar of the Divine. God was locked away in a private little room, watching. Watching everything through a window that looked out onto the world far, infinitesimally far away. God's face was the face of Compassion itself-- filled with kindness and light and love. And God wept, as He watched, at the evil and cruelty and waste and sadness that filled the earth, day in and day out, world without end, amen.

God wept, and I saw that Her hands were bound with barbed wire, powerless to act, impotent in the face of a desperately broken world aand desperately broken people. What good was God, if God could only watch, and weep?

I may have known (unequivocally) exactly where God was hiding, but I searched anyway. They told me to, those happy, shiny, sober people. And they had something I didn't have, something I desperately wanted: they had joy. They had happy. They sat comfortably in their own skins, didn't seem to want to crawl out of it all the time, into a hole or the dark or... away. And I wanted that. all of it. I wanted to be made whole, to fit, to be forgiven. So if the price of all that was to seek God-- seek God I would, in twelve step meetings and self help books, spiritual guides and therapy. I would practice willingness,  because they said it was the next right thing to do.

I managed to make a friend at a meeting; turns out we had more than trying to stay sober a day at a time in common. He was edgy, sarcastic, broken, looking for redemption and God, and he was Jewish. My lucky day.  He tended to go temple-hopping on Saturday mornings and invited me to hop along. Not every Saturday, but every so often, I'd hop along with him, and look for God in God's own house.

I stumbled through the prayers. I didn't remember the choreography or the Hebrew. I was convinced that I didn't fit, didn't belong. I didn't know what the hell I was doing, and felt gauche and ungainly. I had that odd and unsettling, questioning, searching, just-at-the-tip-of-my-out-of-reach-almost-discovery-of-I-wish-I-knew-or-maybe-I-hope-I-don't-discover sensation of being closerthanthis to an answer kind of thing. But it was elusive and missing, an almost-whisper of grace.

And then one Saturday morning, the choir sang.

From above me and behind me, a host (I swear it was a host, not just a handful or two of earnest choristers) a host of heavenly voices filled the sanctuary with this glorious, transcendent sound, a rising arc of prayer and joy. It was rich and full and resonant. I could hear in it, in every note, every chord that stretched from one note into a thousand (I swear it was a thousand) before tumbling back-- like water, or laughter-- into a single note again, and there was God: unshackled, unbound, present in a way that took my breath away.

And I knew -- knew-- that everyone around me felt it. They got it-- they were in it and of it and surrounded by it. They were whole and filled and it was all meant for them. This was the day that God had made, and they were welcomed into the miracle of that moment. I could feel their faith, their acceptance-- of God, of themselves, of the world around them -- radiating outwards, a parallel arc to this music of God.

I stood transfixed. I felt the power of that faith, the grace and majesty of it. I wanted it, every drop, every heartbeat, every breath. I could feel the hunger in me build, a surge of want and need. I stood at the jumping off place, poised and motionless at the gate. A step. All I needed was a single step through, and I would find it, all of it, all my yearning answered-- faith, redemption, forgiveness. God. 

And I couldn't.  I couldn't step or leap or even move. I could only stand, rooted, outside of that glorious, joyous song, knowing that there was faith and forgiveness and God. For them-- all of them, the world entire. But not for me.

I stood, and I wept, and I did not sing, knowing that my fear was stronger than any faith, louder than any music, vaster and more complete than God.

I was silent, and I knew that my silence would last forever.

Thanksgiving 2013: Unbroken enough

My refrigerator is broken. A year ago, I reported on its state of disrepair. And now, well, it's still kinda broken. I called the repair guy way back when, who came out, fiddled around for a minute or ten, turned the temperature dial inside a notch or two and charged me a bazillion dollars.

I swear I had fiddled with that dial all on my own. Apparently, I have no patience and the refrigerator does not respond instantaneously. And now, it's (apparently) still not entirely repaired. These days, it's runnning a little too cold. Sometimes, the spinach devolops a few ice crystals and the strawberries are a tiny bit frozen. I will say, everything keeps a little lomger, which is good.

All that said, I am afraid to fiddle with the stupid (read: malevolent and capricious) dial again. I am not quite sure that my refrigerator will not stick out its metaphorical tongue at me and give up the ghost. So, I put up with a mostly unbroken refrigerator and let the vinaigrette breathe a bit before dressing my salad.

Mostly unbroken, just like, well-- me.

Of good God. Did I just write that?  Oh lord; I do believe I did.

*waits a minute, one eye shut, the other squinting upward, ready for the bolt of lightening from above*

*waits another minute, ready for the earth to open up and swallow me whole*

*breathes again*
*relaxes*
*stands up straight*

Yup. Me. Mostly unbroken.

Who'd'a thunk it?

It feels as if I have spent most of  life feeling broken. Mostly broken. Shattered at times. Damaged and disconnected and less than. I have been haunted by demons and the ghosts in my head, their voices whispering lies and howling contempt.

I have believed every single one of them.

I spent a fair amount of time trying to drown them out. I hid inside a bottle for a couple of decades, and, even in the midst of my drinking, when that didn't work (because it never worked, not once) I grasped other straws of self destriction. Pick one. Any one. It didn't matter. I'd use anything I could find, any easy, path-of-least resistance way that would shut those voices up, lock them away. Fix me. Make me whole.

It never worked. Ever.  All it did was feed those demons, who tore at me ceaselessly, who broke me and battered me and roared in their triumph.

I am grateful beyond belief for my sobriety.

I spent way too much time listening for those seductive whispers, straining to hear the pale voices of brokenness and damage. Even sober. Even sober, I was so used to being broken, had learned the lesson of their lies all too well.  It was so much easier to believe in my brokenness.

But I was released! I was freed from that tiny universe of one, a locked box prison that kept out light and hope. Suddenly, I could move-- leap and twirl and dance. And there was you, every single one of you, who taught me how to live a day at a time (an hour, a breath, a heartbeat at a time).

There was life, full and vibrant and messy and painful, joyous and boring and profound. And love; God, there was love! And hope. After a lifetime of numbness, there was hope at last.

Still, even then, sober and learning and feeling after an eternity of numbness and ice, still I carried my brokenness with me, and I listened for the voices only I could hear. It was getting harder to do, though. The strain was getting wearisome; the shattered and broken bits of me that I clung to were becoming unbearably heavy. I longed to put them all down. Mostly. In theory. I am stubborn and crave the comfort I find in the familiar. But I could try, maybe. I could trust-- that I could be made whole, even a little bit at a time. A day, an hour, a breath, a heartbeat. I could believe, maybe just enough, that there was hope and grace, even for me.

Life is messy beyond belief, and full. It holds everything-- absolutely everything. I am humbled by its bounties, graced by its blessings. It is not all good, mind you, not all sunshine and roses. There is death and sadness, loss, disappointment. It is, after all, life.

And maybe, just maybe, not all at once, but little by little, I will lay my brokenness down. I will let those pieces fall by the wayside, slipping through my fingers and I will not feel their loss like a sharp absence. Perhaps I will let them lay where they fall, and I will walk on, lighter. Less broken by one (and then another and another), so that one day, one glorious day, filled to overflowing with gratitude and blessings, on that unimaginable day, I would realize, in the fullness of life--

I am, mostly, unbroken. I am forever, grateful.


Merry Thanksgiving to all. May we all find healing and grace to lay down our own bits of brokeness. Blessings of light and love, enough to fill the world. Thank you, God, for the gift of wonder and joy, and the miracle of hope.

22 Elul 5773: Dare

On my one year sober anniversary, I felt somewhat at a loss. I mean, really-- how in the world do you celebrate anything, if not with a flute or seven of champagne (merely as a prelude to the serious drinking that was sure to follow)? I went to my regular meeting and announced for all the world to hear (or at least the 27 people who were present): I have one year, today.

I'd seen the drill a thousand times. OK, maybe not a thousand, but at least one or two at every meeting I went to (which was pretty much a daily occurrence), someone announce his or her anniversary. Some counted days. Some, months. There were many of these folks at every meeting. For some, it took months, sometimes years, to put some time together. Often, we'd hear "I have 3 days. Again" or "I'm back. Got two weeks this time." Some iteration of time and desperation and hope.

Incremental anniversaries were announced, but there were always a helluva lot fewer people making these announcements as the years went up. Two years. Three. Seven. Seventeen. With each bigger chunk of time, the number of people to reach those milestones became fewer. One year anniversaries were kinda special. At the one year mark, it was as if you had crossed a magic line-- you'd made it, member of the club. Not that it would be a slam-dunk guarantee of sobriety, forever and ever, world without end, amen. Not that (not ever that). But at a year, there was a recognition that, at the very least, there was a chance that sobriety just might stick. 

So I announcded my anniversary. I felt a little proud; I felt a little lost. There was applause and exclamatory congratulations flew across the room. I got the obligatory "How'd ya do it?" followed quickly with my equally obligatory "With the help of God and the fellowship of this program!" It was a script we'd all played at before, in one role or another. Right at that moment, I didn't believe a word of any of it.

Frankly, I had no idea how the hell I'd stayed sober for a year. 

We went for coffee and to grab a bite after the meeting. No champagne. :) I got a chip-- a brass coin-- embossed with a giant Roman numeral I on one side, and "To thine own self be true" on the other. I got a rose. And I got a card. The front was kinda sappy-- watercolor flowers and "Hooray! Hooray!" Lots of exclamation points. Or at least, it felt like a lot. I opened it. 

This was another of those truth things, found unexpectedly. It hit me between the eyes and took my breath away. Hooray, hooray--

"You did the thing you feared the most!"

And I realized, in that instant, that I had. Sobriety was a terrifying prospect when I was just starting. How in the world can you live without a drink to calm you and protect you and put a glassy, fluid shield between you and the rest of the universe? How in the world do you face life raw and vulnerable? How in the world can anyone dare to hope-- that things will change, the life gets better, that there is forgiveness and perhaps even love? 

How? A day at a time. A day at a time, a minute, an hour, a breath-- you do the thing you fear the most. 

In honor of that long ago moment, that changed my life and opened my heart; in honor of this month of Elul, for today, for this moment, I will dare to live of life of hope. I will dare to trust, and pray, and believe. For today, I will let faith overrule my fear. For this moment, I will brave the shadows. For today, I will reach out to offer strength and kindness, to shine a light in your darkness.

For today, for this moment, in this breath-- this eternal and infinite breath-- I will do the thing I fear the most, and I will dare to leap...