Roused by harsh, indistinguishable light and sound, I surface to semi-consciousness. Rays of ambient light penetrate squinted eyes, like shards of hot steel. Covering my face with shaking hands, I try to defend against the visual assault. Fused sounds slowly fragment into recognizable pieces, car horns, the acceleration of engines, air-brakes on buses, music…morning traffic. Afraid to move, for fear of inviting more pain, I remain motionless for what seems an eternity. I am increasingly aware of the soreness in my body as I try to sit up. Every slight movement sends a new wave of agony crashing over me. Head throbbing and body shaking, a familiar question arrives in my clouded mind – where am I?
I have come-to in the passenger seat of my pick-up truck. I slowly survey the inside of the small cab for clues on how I arrived here. An empty liquor bottle and cigarettes butts litter the floor board. The sense of smell which has failed me so far suddenly returns. The thick, blended stench of Jack Daniels, cigarette smoke, body odor, and vomit, permeates this space causing me to retch. I have no memory of the last 12 hours, but I know what has happened – I have been here before. It is the tail end of yet another alcohol binge. Then the second question comes, how did this happen to me again?
A desperate prayer, “GOD please help me”, is all my broken being can produce.
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Growing up, I rarely felt at peace. I have always been awkward, uncomfortable in my own skin is an expression that fit well. I remember feeling as though I was different from other people. Even at an early age I spent a lot time inside my own head. I was curious about my world and felt a need to mentally explore it. This compulsive thought separated me from others. I was always questioning, faith was foreign notion. My investigations into life became a burden, I was unable to find answers for many of my queries. Insatiable curiosity over time transformed into a powerful fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear became an emotional sickness that infected nearly every aspect of my young existence.
I learned of GOD as a child from my parents and grand-parents. I accepted these lessons because I loved them. I saw in them what “normal” people of faith were supposed to look like. How “good” people lived. In hindsight, I see that these teachings were absorbed with a kind of faith, though short lived and inadequate. They were eventually compartmentalized as stories of morality, fables, along with those told of Santa Claus and the Boogey Man.
The moral to be learned – behave or be punished by an unseen force. Awesome…more fear.
These observed behaviors in others, for me, were a set of seemingly impossible standards that I would never measure up to. I tried for many years to imitate them, they did not come naturally. With a desperate desire to be a part of, and to be loved by my family, I started pretending. This play-acting yielded a new trait…dishonesty. The more I tried to hide my short-comings, the more necessary my deceit became. It turned automatic, habitual, until it became a large part my character. I was transforming in to a naturally deceptive child. My earliest memory of this habitual dishonesty, is when my folks would take us to church and give us a little pocket change for offering in Sunday school. I would play hooky from the children’s bible study class, use the change to buy a can of soda water, and head to the playground until the adult service was over. It was very difficult for me to sit through these classes because I felt unworthy of God’s love. Afterward, as automatically as deception had been employed, shame inevitably followed. This was at age 7 and the most effective tools I had accumulated for dealing with life were fear, dishonesty, and shame.
I have lived in Houston nearly all of my life. It is the place where I both, lost and later recovered my faith. Between these two gates, I descended into a hellish rift that spanned nearly 20 years. The loss of my connection to God was subtle. It was a change from light to dark over infinite shades of grey. The grey darkened with each episode of fear driven dishonesty. I found it necessary to begin hiding the person within, as the sphere of my associations increased. Neighbors, friends, teachers all could not be introduced to the authentic me.
I starting abusing alcohol in my mid-teens and it continued into my thirties. I used it as a tool for escaping the ugliness of my situation. My experience with alcohol was a seemingly endless cycle of emotional and physical pain. My inability to truthfully communicate my feelings and fears led to relentless sense of self-loathing that kept me in an orbit of self-destruction. I continuously asked “why me”, desperate to understand the reason that I was doomed to this existence and who could I blame for it. I was trapped in an unbearable state with no path to relief. I needed help or I was going to end it all. Hopeless, I began to call out to the heavens above. Half begging and half threatening, I challenged God for a miracle. I was nearly defeated.
Real change only became possible through absolute desperation. No place to live, no money, and completely isolated from the world – the desperation swallowed me. As horrible as this desperation was, it became the catalyst needed for change. Like a blacksmith’s iron, fire was required to make me malleable enough to shape.
The journey back to a life of faith was slow and full of missteps. I cannot tell you exactly when it happened, but somewhere along the line I began to see that most of my troubles were of own making. A transition from blaming God to accepting responsibility for my position in life had begun to evolve inside me. This change in attitude produced intervals of peace. Usually only lasting a few moments, this sense of peace over time began to eclipse my need to drink. Slowly, escape from the living hell I occupied became possible. Slivers of hope started to emerge.
The cultivation of this hope was only made possible with the assistance of others. These people were not Doctors or Priests, those that my arrogance and ignorance had told me held the keys to my salvation. I begged/threatened God for a miracle, he sent former winos and addicts to answer the call. These folks, whom society abandoned, had found their way out of the wasteland of addiction. Without pretense or selfish interest they freely offered me what they had learned.
The approach towards building faith they proposed was that I visualize my own concept of who and what God is. They offered only two suggestions for “must haves” regarding this conception. First, that my God must love me unconditionally and second, that my God must have the power to rescue me. I did not have trouble intellectualizing this, but personalizing it proved more challenging. I had difficulty letting go of the many transgressions against God and man. So, again God came to my aid through these folks.
They asked me three simple questions. First, do I believe that God forgives me? Yes. Next, do I believe that God wants me to forgive myself? Yes. Lastly, who the heck am I not to do it? They had me with this one. I had just been “lawyered” by a wino.
The theory was sound, the practice hard. My mind had to be retrained away from impulsive and obsessive thought. I began by asking God to help me by removing the need for self-punishment. The energy I was spending on dwelling in the past, would now with Gods help, be re-purposed towards his will. I make an effort today to please God and am rewarded with the knowledge of his grace.
This is where I am today. God has become many things to me, but mostly he is my friend. With my acceptance of God’s assistance, I have peace. I no longer worry for what has been and what will be. I realize that I have been protected all along. That it was necessary to go through my previous life in order to get where God wanted me to be. I have learned to trust God. As I am falling asleep at night, I am left with thoughts of gratitude and love, rather than fear, loneliness, and sadness. I live in a new world where anything is possible.