I don’t know where to start…the keys feel slightly foreign.
All I know is the pressure has built like a tumor in the brain; the days go by and everything feels just fine then bam!
One day there’s a pain punishing you from the frontal lobe like you’ve been shot in the head. I gathered steam and followed the avalanche down the mountain side finally crashing to the valley floor, as I lay in bed unable to sleep at 130 in the morning. Thousands of words floating through me like warm rivers…finally I smiled, shrugged and just got up.
I lugged the now heavy laptop into the living room, switched it on and stared at the empty screen for a few minutes before the words started coming back to me. It has been a busy few months of work and the energy it takes to sit down to click-clack the keys to a point of satisfaction simply was not present.
There is no frustration, just the simple realization that I have avoided the machine for what feels like years. It is far too long to stay away when it was the feel of the keys, which kept me alive through many thick moments that stretched into whole episodes of a lifetime.
My racing yet calm mind is the evidence that nothing whatsoever satisfies the blood, the brain, and the heart like digging in to see whatever there is to see when the mud is cleared away and the bottom is finally present…the first step is always prayer, then some deep slow breathing, and lastly keeping everything shut off for even just a short while to let the dust settle. The end result is always some kind of movement; the pausing and prayer sets the stage for the proper direction to start walking…
I have to go back a bit, as I often forget just how far away from this point in a spiritual journey I really was. This process has taken time to develop; the first five years in recovery seem to have been the tenderizing phase by own will, which brought me to a point of surrender where I was willing to enter the next phase.
The next three years in the process took me far beyond the precipice of belief into the vast and beautiful valley of faith where I find myself today. This was not an act of “will” on my part, but through the action of practice, doing the work necessary, and continually giving everything to God.
The last action is the trickiest part for me; it is tricky because the ego convinces me I have already done this. Through constant prayer I have been brought to my knees and a brand new understanding every day of what it actually means to do give “everything” to Him.
Approximately 3 months ago, I neared the shores of being broke and I drifted in silence towards the jagged rocks and undertow. I knew I could not simply rely on what I always had because such things were not sustainable therefor I recognized that new directions were necessary.
So God had shifted prayer through the constant and steady action of my practice; they shifted from those of self into something I had never experienced. All around me I heard a voice inside my head asking, “God, whatever You would have me do, I will do…I know You have it all under control God even though I do not know exactly what You want of me.”
There was an instant feeling that no matter what came my way, I would do it. If it meant I gave up my apartment and moved into shared accommodations, I would. If it meant I sold my truck and took the bus or walked, I would. Whatever it was going to take, I was willing to do and still am today if it means I can continue to work in the recovery ministry.
For the first time in my life I understood what it meant to sacrifice the ego to serve the God of my understanding and my fellows. I finally understood why I started on the career path some nineteen years ago when I enrolled in the social work program at Mount Royal University.
Contrary to my original belief, it was never to climb some ladder, which I had done repeatedly only to toss the successes away because the value was made arbitrary due to the inept men and women in charge of such success. The men and women, who live in a distant land of ignorance underlined by greed; the same who treat people, as though they are nothing more than commodities and fodder for funding proposals to build their own empires.
I had enough of towing that line and I knew it; I made a choice over a year ago to live in faith and when my time seemed nearing its end, I had nowhere to go but inside and straight to prayer…and then, as though I could see a bit more clearly what God had been doing all along; it happened.
I woke up, prayed, sat in silence for a while, and went through my meditation readings before striking out to meet with fellow alcoholics and addicts in hopes that I could share what experience and hope I had accumulated that it may help them find their way.
It was twelve hours or so after I prayed to God, asking Him to show me what He wanted me to do for Him when I felt a different kind of surrender than I had before…when I was offered some extra work as an extension of the Central United Church recovery ministry.
The work was something I would have declined twenty four hours prior because although it had always seemed noble when I heard about my father doing it and other ministers; I had never imagined it for myself in any situation.
For some reason, the “what” I was asked to do feels awkward to describe here but suffice to say it is something I would have normally said, “thanks, but no thanks, I’ll find another way…” However, I could not say no of course; it felt as though God was speaking directly to me through the circumstances. The serendipity of it all was not lost.
As a matter of fact, the thought of declining His invitation brought raucous laughter to the inside of my head and the words in my very sarcastic inside voice rang out, “you asked for God’s will and it appears you have received it, turning it down is unacceptable and like slapping God in the face…”
I was not about to do anything even resembling a slap in that direction; it felt wrong to do that even metaphorically speaking.
I said yes to the request and although it was a means to minister, the three months since saying yes have been somewhat challenging for me. The biggest challenge is the adjustment process, which apparently never gets really easy, but becomes acceptable at some point?
I am still waiting for that part to happen, but I do understand that without question God answers prayers; just not necessarily in ways we understand or even like for that matter. It is at this point that I need to focus on the acceptance of life on its terms as opposed to continually fighting for what I think things should be and for what I “want”.
This is when the thought, “everything happens just as it is supposed too regardless of whether I like it or not or whether it happens as I think it should…” entered and repeated itself through my mind.
At first this idea confused me, but then as I prayed on the notion, asking for clear direction to do what He wanted, a sense of peace and liberation seeped through my system and I grew steadily calm. The “need for control” fluttered into the atmosphere with any remaining “need to know” the future and with the absence of this long held illusion a deeper sense of knowing settled in.
Knowing that God certainly has everything under ontrol; there was no longer any doubt whether conscious or subconscious. It simply is the truth, as I know it.
I know for many this idea may have been easy to understand and most may have come to it a lot sooner in their lives, but for me, it honestly struck me like a lightning bolt on the inside of my brain half way through my thirty-eighth year. As I mentioned, I am a late bloomer with this spiritual path, but I am just grateful to be on it now.
I can barely remember my previous life and how I coped when I wasn’t high or drunk; I recall only the chaos, anxiety, constant fear, and bewilderment of early sobriety when I so feverishly searched for that anchor people spoke about all the time thinking somehow, some way I still had control. The first five years of my sobriety can attest to this very real struggle.
Here in this new awareness, there was the absence of crisis amidst the presence of miracle after miracle. God had been doing what He always did…that which I could never do for myself and of course so much more.
He was changing me in ways I could not have imagined prior to twelve months ago.
There were many nights, laying in the wafting memory and fevered doubt of my inability to change behaviors; recognizing failed attempt after failed attempt by my will only to hear the light, gentle whisper of God’s clear voice telling me to surrender my weakness to Him that He may use me to do His bidding.
This too brought about a much deeper comprehension, not of what or who God was, but of what He was capable of doing with all of my imperfections and my strengths. The reality for me is that I have no better idea as to how to define God today than I did eight years ago, but what has replaced the tired confusion over “what He is” is the absolute knowledge that I do not need to define Him in order to surrender to His power and watch Him do for me what I could never do for myself.
Prayer is the strongest action I can take; when my will has brought me to my knees and when my strengths have seemingly brought me to great heights, it is and always was God lifting me up from those bottoms I had dug for myself.
Amen.
David Lewry
All I know is the pressure has built like a tumor in the brain; the days go by and everything feels just fine then bam!
One day there’s a pain punishing you from the frontal lobe like you’ve been shot in the head. I gathered steam and followed the avalanche down the mountain side finally crashing to the valley floor, as I lay in bed unable to sleep at 130 in the morning. Thousands of words floating through me like warm rivers…finally I smiled, shrugged and just got up.
I lugged the now heavy laptop into the living room, switched it on and stared at the empty screen for a few minutes before the words started coming back to me. It has been a busy few months of work and the energy it takes to sit down to click-clack the keys to a point of satisfaction simply was not present.
There is no frustration, just the simple realization that I have avoided the machine for what feels like years. It is far too long to stay away when it was the feel of the keys, which kept me alive through many thick moments that stretched into whole episodes of a lifetime.
My racing yet calm mind is the evidence that nothing whatsoever satisfies the blood, the brain, and the heart like digging in to see whatever there is to see when the mud is cleared away and the bottom is finally present…the first step is always prayer, then some deep slow breathing, and lastly keeping everything shut off for even just a short while to let the dust settle. The end result is always some kind of movement; the pausing and prayer sets the stage for the proper direction to start walking…
I have to go back a bit, as I often forget just how far away from this point in a spiritual journey I really was. This process has taken time to develop; the first five years in recovery seem to have been the tenderizing phase by own will, which brought me to a point of surrender where I was willing to enter the next phase.
The next three years in the process took me far beyond the precipice of belief into the vast and beautiful valley of faith where I find myself today. This was not an act of “will” on my part, but through the action of practice, doing the work necessary, and continually giving everything to God.
The last action is the trickiest part for me; it is tricky because the ego convinces me I have already done this. Through constant prayer I have been brought to my knees and a brand new understanding every day of what it actually means to do give “everything” to Him.
Approximately 3 months ago, I neared the shores of being broke and I drifted in silence towards the jagged rocks and undertow. I knew I could not simply rely on what I always had because such things were not sustainable therefor I recognized that new directions were necessary.
So God had shifted prayer through the constant and steady action of my practice; they shifted from those of self into something I had never experienced. All around me I heard a voice inside my head asking, “God, whatever You would have me do, I will do…I know You have it all under control God even though I do not know exactly what You want of me.”
There was an instant feeling that no matter what came my way, I would do it. If it meant I gave up my apartment and moved into shared accommodations, I would. If it meant I sold my truck and took the bus or walked, I would. Whatever it was going to take, I was willing to do and still am today if it means I can continue to work in the recovery ministry.
For the first time in my life I understood what it meant to sacrifice the ego to serve the God of my understanding and my fellows. I finally understood why I started on the career path some nineteen years ago when I enrolled in the social work program at Mount Royal University.
Contrary to my original belief, it was never to climb some ladder, which I had done repeatedly only to toss the successes away because the value was made arbitrary due to the inept men and women in charge of such success. The men and women, who live in a distant land of ignorance underlined by greed; the same who treat people, as though they are nothing more than commodities and fodder for funding proposals to build their own empires.
I had enough of towing that line and I knew it; I made a choice over a year ago to live in faith and when my time seemed nearing its end, I had nowhere to go but inside and straight to prayer…and then, as though I could see a bit more clearly what God had been doing all along; it happened.
I woke up, prayed, sat in silence for a while, and went through my meditation readings before striking out to meet with fellow alcoholics and addicts in hopes that I could share what experience and hope I had accumulated that it may help them find their way.
It was twelve hours or so after I prayed to God, asking Him to show me what He wanted me to do for Him when I felt a different kind of surrender than I had before…when I was offered some extra work as an extension of the Central United Church recovery ministry.
The work was something I would have declined twenty four hours prior because although it had always seemed noble when I heard about my father doing it and other ministers; I had never imagined it for myself in any situation.
For some reason, the “what” I was asked to do feels awkward to describe here but suffice to say it is something I would have normally said, “thanks, but no thanks, I’ll find another way…” However, I could not say no of course; it felt as though God was speaking directly to me through the circumstances. The serendipity of it all was not lost.
As a matter of fact, the thought of declining His invitation brought raucous laughter to the inside of my head and the words in my very sarcastic inside voice rang out, “you asked for God’s will and it appears you have received it, turning it down is unacceptable and like slapping God in the face…”
I was not about to do anything even resembling a slap in that direction; it felt wrong to do that even metaphorically speaking.
I said yes to the request and although it was a means to minister, the three months since saying yes have been somewhat challenging for me. The biggest challenge is the adjustment process, which apparently never gets really easy, but becomes acceptable at some point?
I am still waiting for that part to happen, but I do understand that without question God answers prayers; just not necessarily in ways we understand or even like for that matter. It is at this point that I need to focus on the acceptance of life on its terms as opposed to continually fighting for what I think things should be and for what I “want”.
This is when the thought, “everything happens just as it is supposed too regardless of whether I like it or not or whether it happens as I think it should…” entered and repeated itself through my mind.
At first this idea confused me, but then as I prayed on the notion, asking for clear direction to do what He wanted, a sense of peace and liberation seeped through my system and I grew steadily calm. The “need for control” fluttered into the atmosphere with any remaining “need to know” the future and with the absence of this long held illusion a deeper sense of knowing settled in.
Knowing that God certainly has everything under ontrol; there was no longer any doubt whether conscious or subconscious. It simply is the truth, as I know it.
I know for many this idea may have been easy to understand and most may have come to it a lot sooner in their lives, but for me, it honestly struck me like a lightning bolt on the inside of my brain half way through my thirty-eighth year. As I mentioned, I am a late bloomer with this spiritual path, but I am just grateful to be on it now.
I can barely remember my previous life and how I coped when I wasn’t high or drunk; I recall only the chaos, anxiety, constant fear, and bewilderment of early sobriety when I so feverishly searched for that anchor people spoke about all the time thinking somehow, some way I still had control. The first five years of my sobriety can attest to this very real struggle.
Here in this new awareness, there was the absence of crisis amidst the presence of miracle after miracle. God had been doing what He always did…that which I could never do for myself and of course so much more.
He was changing me in ways I could not have imagined prior to twelve months ago.
There were many nights, laying in the wafting memory and fevered doubt of my inability to change behaviors; recognizing failed attempt after failed attempt by my will only to hear the light, gentle whisper of God’s clear voice telling me to surrender my weakness to Him that He may use me to do His bidding.
This too brought about a much deeper comprehension, not of what or who God was, but of what He was capable of doing with all of my imperfections and my strengths. The reality for me is that I have no better idea as to how to define God today than I did eight years ago, but what has replaced the tired confusion over “what He is” is the absolute knowledge that I do not need to define Him in order to surrender to His power and watch Him do for me what I could never do for myself.
Prayer is the strongest action I can take; when my will has brought me to my knees and when my strengths have seemingly brought me to great heights, it is and always was God lifting me up from those bottoms I had dug for myself.
Amen.
David Lewry