Stepping Up (part 1)

There comes a point in recovery which many alcoholics and addicts dread. Dread is probably not a harsh enough term. Loath? Despise? Fear...yea, fear. They are absolutely petrified. That Amityville-Horror moment is when you have to face up to the facts, all the facts. I think every 12 step program contains at least one of these "monsters." Facing the facts, which translates into, coming to terms with yourself and your past, is such a scary - yet profound - undertaking that many never do complete the task.

You can use any metaphor you'd like to describe the experience of thoroughly taking your emotional, mental, and spiritual inventory, but none of them ring with excitement. The most oft used metaphor is probably "cleaning house," which isn't too dark. Here are a few more descriptive ones I'd use to talk about the process. It's like: "crawling through the drainage sludge of life," or "being tossed into the cesspool of your history, naked, in the middle of the night with no moon, on a feed lot, next to a chemical plant." Or maybe this extended picture will help.

Have you ever stood on the bank of a creek, pondering "the jump," and thought, "Oh, that's not far...just a few feet and the receiving bank looks inviting enough. It's smooth and that dark brown earth right there [and you innocently point to a spot on the opposite side] looks solid." Ever thought that? In hope you leap. As graceful as the proverbial gazelle (at least that's the picture in your head) you clear the stream, but as your lead foot touches down on the pebbled crust of the aimed-for-bank, your foot does not find terra firma. That moment of winged weightlessness, fit to be immortalized on the heavenly roof of the Sistine Chapel, turns into the equivalent of a dumpster dive. Instead of hard packed earth you plunge savagely into slimy brown guck - and your momentum and weight inevitably sinks your entire shoe in, past the shoe top. Wetness seeps into your footwear, and still it moves, up past the ankle (and the sock will never be the same). Still descending past the calf, and you feel the slop and cold chasing up your leg and finally, thank the Lord, finally, the plummeting halts. One leg ensconced almost to the knee and the other, hitched up around your mid-section, like you're a contortionist. Your trying not to make the same mistake with both feet, but still the trailing leg is slapping and wallowing in the churned goo. (Am I the only one that has had this happen?)

What now? You have to get out. Picking a new spot a few feet in front of you, you grimely - but resolutely - set out. Yet, moving in the slimy sediment is tough going. The "clean" leg is reluctantly sacrificed and down it goes...almost with a hiss as the ground seems satisfied to be ingesting your appendage. You lean hard and pull the lead leg up...ssssluuuuuurrrrr-POP! It comes free, but you're minus a shoe. It is agonizingly slow wading through crap. That is what it is! That was/is what coming face to face with myself was/is like for me. There is no secret why some people run away from the task in frenzied terror.

If you've never done a searching and fearless moral inventory - let me heartily recommend it. It's like an enema for the conscious. If I've made it sound difficult, good. It is. Yet, the payoff isn't in wallowing in crud. That's not why you do it. The highlight of becoming whole isn't when you're the most broken, or the delight of getting well doesn't come when you're the sickest.

For me to be a better person, it was suggested that I gaze into the mirror of time and see ALL that was reflected. So, I looked and I sank. And it was hard - still is in some ways. I don't want to "glory" in the gunk, but it is something I had to go through in order to come out on the other bank. You go through it to come out of it. It is the coming out on the other side that I really want to share. And I will, in part 2.

Friends

Tonight I was telling my son another story from my childhood. Over the last few weeks we've gotten into the habit of one more story after the lights are off and prayers are said. I did this with my older daughter for a few months when she was younger. Back then, I tried to be creative and make up a story on the spot. They usually had a moral or they were a lesson I thought she needed to hear...something on what she did, or didn't do, that day. Those stories sucked, so that didn't last too long because being genuinely creative isn't one of my gifts. (Plus, I wasn't being as sneaky a Dad as I was hoping, trying to lecture her at bedtime with a narrative.)

With Noah I decided to skip the creative crud and go straight for truth, using a portion of my childhood as a resource. First, its easier on the old noggin then making it up out of whole cloth. Second, I've found that truth - at least in my life -is usually stranger than fiction. So, tonight I was telling my son of another incident from my childhood.

Thinking about it now I realize that I've told stories about:
*a tree house started by a bunch of nine and ten year olds - lots of Dad's tools lost and the house never finished. We could never get the "ladder" boards to stay nailed to the tree.
*having the breath knocked out of me for the first time in a neighborhood football game with Mark, Jimmy, Brian, and Stephen (it was one of a hundred I played in with the same friends).
*finding a couple of silver coins with my brother on a dead-end street in our neighborhood - it was better than Treasure Island (Stephen, what ever happened to those?).
*one good friend, Jimmy, sledding into a parked car one sparkling January day when school was closed because of snow. Jimmy was a smiler, but even then I wondered about his mental state. I think he had to have a few stiches.
*making a game out of walking - more like shuffling - out on a frozen lake until the ice began to crack. Mark was the lightest so he usually won, but Jimmy, Brian, Stephen and I kept at it...Stacy tried it once.

There are a few stories I'm reserving for a better time, like: Throwing snowballs at passing cars; looking at my first Playboy which Jason stole from his father's stash...[ahem, cough, snif] "Did I say first, I meant only...my only Playboy;" crawling a few hundred yards through a sewer drain -using flashlights -every day after school for two weeks until one of the guys mom's caught us and told all our parents, so we had to quit; Stacy accidently loosing his two front teeth to a 7-iron as eight kids chopped at golf balls one summer evening in my front yard. There are a bunch of stories I'm not ready to tell, because he's not ready to hear. Although most of this rant has been about stories, that is not what pricked my heart this evening.

Tonight, after the latest childhood revelation, I went to brush my teeth (Noah probably wishes I'd done that before the story). While working up a good minty foam, I was remembering again the event I'd told to Noah. There they were, the same bunch of friends. Over and over again the same names and faces flashed in my memory. Some of the best times in my childhood were spent with those friends. I did some of the dumbest things with those friends. I had some of the greatest laughs with those friends. New adventures were undertaken with those friends, and lots of physical pain was felt with those friends.

It's been awhile since I've put as much energy into a friendship as when I was a kid. That is my loss. (Recently, there were so many people in Temple that I intentionally shut out of my life because I wasn't in a "place" where I could be a good friend. I'm sorry.) Yet, there is nothing to stop me from having just as great a time toady as I had in my childhood, only with new friends. We all need friends. Friends are people you share with. Not just your material stuff, but your life. You share life with friends at all levels: dumb things, funny things, new adventures and even pain.

One night in an ancient, upstairs, garage apartment, one man talked to eleven other men about this subject. "The greatest way to show love for friends is to die for them. You are my friends... Servants don't know what their master is doing, and so I don't speak to you as my servants. I speak to you as my friends..." (John 15). Those men heard Jesus call them friend. What an honor to be his friend (I can't wait to hear him say it to me). What an honor to have the grand title "Friend" bestowed on you by anyone!

Yep, I'm gonna do it. It's going to take some work, but from now on its gonna be good times and good friends. So, anyone up for a walk on the ice?