Wow what lessons I’ve been learning in the last few weeks! I’m finishing up reviewing a book I’ve put off for close to eleven years, procrastination being my middle name. In re-reading the book, cleaning it up and getting it ready I’ve had to look again at some very core issues. Looking at myself it’s funny to see how learning disabled, ADD and kinked my sense of who I am is even today.

Because of those things there are times when I’m really confused about myself. An issue of mine that has bugged me for years is, “Just who am I? Who am I in my eyes, my wife’s eyes, my children’s eye’s and especially in those around me eye’s? Who am I?”

For years I’ve asked myself that and for years I’ve struggled with it. I joke and I kid and I tell people, “I’m an old, fat, bald guy just walking through life trying not to kick up a dust storm.” But that’s not really true. I’ve kicked up pretty good dust storms in my life as I’ve trudged through it.

So again I find myself asking “Who am I?” Honestly I don’t know at times and when that happens I get scared. I do know who I want to be but am I getting there? Am I really doing the work that can get me there and am I doing what I should be doing to get me there? Let’s find out. This article is going to be a therapy article for the writer.
In several articles I’ve written I’ve said that when I was growing up I wanted to be a Priest. I was raised Catholic and I loved sitting in the Churches listening to the Priest’s talk up front. I was also lucky and I’ve met several Priest’s who were true men of God. They were honestly walking the walk and they weren’t making left turns and asking those around them to pay for those turns.

Those Priest’s were great mentors and I thought hard about following them. But I chose to chase addiction instead. Growing up I had the extra burden of being learning disabled and ADD along with that I was stuffing frustration, anger and building up huge resentments. With all that chaos going on I started to drown in my problems with addiction and I had no voice to communicate what was happening to me.
As a very young man I started making left turns, choices that led me to drinking and drugs. I also started acting out in the schools causing problems for the staff all of that acting out was a veiled attempt to get noticed so I could get some help. People tried but the resources of today weren’t there then. I kept drowning. The life preservers that were tossed to me I just pushed them away.

Finally I grabbed a hold of a life preserver that was tossed to me. I ended up in a treatment center and followed that up with a stay in a half-way house. I took the road that was offered to me and started walking it looking for mentors.

What I learned was this, I was a young man who had chosen addiction to fix some problems in my life. I chose to use and drink so I could stuff down the feelings that were besieging me at the time. My solution, addiction had become my worst problem.
After a few years of spending time with mentors what I learned then was, I had a spiritual hole and that hole needed filling. I’d better find something to believe in that was big enough to fill that hole. I started looking. I watched friends choose secondary addictions like gambling, sex or worse to fill that spiritual hole. I chose to keep working on myself and to keep pursuing better instead of settling for good enough.

 
What I found first was a “Puny” belief system. My puny belief system almost drove insane. I believed that I deserved some of what happened to me. I believed that I was getting exactly what was coming to me. I sat with people and I watched friends, acquaintances and even people I disliked start to succeed in life where I saw myself failing. I had chosen a punishing God instead of the God I have now.

I watched and once again anger started to swell up in me. Resentment of others started to erupt again. I started to become angry, really angry at what I was seeing and what I perceive. The God I prayed to was dumping on me once again. Life was terrible once again and it was God’s fault. I was sitting in recovery with an angry God becoming an angry young man.

I spent many months in that frozen state of anger. I kept it to myself and only shared it with God at night when the erupting feelings drove me awake. I would stare at the ceiling and look at my life. I’d lay in bed believing “I’d arrived at the end, this was all there was. I’d might as well accept it.”

It never dawned me at the time that life was a continuous journey not a destination. That as long as I kept walking God would keep disclosing more to me. That I wanted to be happy and with my punishing God I was locking myself into the life I was living. At that time it never dawned me to let my feelings go. I never understood that I could give myself permission to let me off the hook. That I was the one keeping myself on the hook not God.

For some reason, one night I got of bed and knelt beside the little single bed I was sleeping in. I knelt down like I’d been taught all those years ago. I had no idea how to pray really I had some prayers memorized so I used those prayers. Half-way through the first prayer I started to cry. Deep sobs doubled me up, my throat hurt from the strain of holding some of the sobs back.

How long I cried, I don’t know but finally I was ready.

To honestly seek God I believe we need to become three things. We need to become broken, vulnerable and transparent. Without those things God has nothing to work with. With those three things still in place we are running the show and God will let us run the show until we come to Him. Freedom of choice is his gift to us. We will always have the freedom to choose to the life that we want to live.

I’ve learned that God is not a hostage taker and punishing. He only wants those around him that want to be there. If we want to chase down a “Bunny trail” that’s our choice and we get to go. If we want to walk with Him and be with Him that’s our choice.

For years I’d pray for change and then get mad because I had to change something inside of me. It was and still is a weird thing in my life but I get mad at God when I have to change. I get made at the circumstances that are in my life demanding attention. I created them and I’m mad at God because they’re there and need to be dealt with.

As I’ve grown, my walk has changed. I was so stifled by the “circumstances” that I brought with me to recovery. In the beginning I didn’t understand the “toxic” nature of anger and how left un-dealt with, it only would grow worse. The anger in me grew and leaked out in my attitude. My attitude about myself and how I saw myself as a fellow human being got worse. That was what drove me to my knees and with the tears cleaning me up I could again start to walk a better path.

When I was finally broken I was able to see myself. Being broken, I could rebuild myself, I could for the first time see myself as a child of God. I saw those around me as one of God’s kids but I couldn’t see myself as one. I saw everyone sitting at the table eating richly and I lapped up the scrapes that fell on the floor.

Being one of God’s kids allowed me to start the healing process. I started seeing myself as I was not as who I used to be. I stopped judging myself and started letting the healing take over. I didn’t need to keep picking at the healing that was happening, stopping the process.

Next vulnerable. In the addiction road I walked vulnerable was never a choice. Vulnerable people ended up terrible victims and I’m no ones victim. Vulnerable was great for anyone else but me. Me I had a things I had to do and vulnerable was no where to be found on that list of things.

But with time and many torturous nights I learned I had to become willing to let the Grace of God in. I was stuck in the mythology of work. I believed I was going to be renewed through the work I was doing. Work is great and it’s needed but before work can start healing, grace needs to be accepted. I needed to become vulnerable enough to let God work in me. I needed the steps, the book and to trust my mentor enough to let him see me.

Every one needs defenses to keep the world at bay but when it comes time to heal the defenses need to come down. I wasn’t willing to do that. I wanted to keep enough “street” in me in case this “recovery” thing wasn’t going to work. My sponsor would tease lots. “You’re terminally cool aren’t you? That hip, slick and cool thing will kill you.”

I’d laugh but inside I knew there was no way I was going to let him or anyone see me. In the treatment center and the half-way house I’d tried that and I felt terrible afterwards. In groups when I led them I knew others like me and I loved cracking them. I just didn’t want anyone cracking me.

Vulnerable is scary and inside I believed the lie that if I became vulnerable I’d lose me. I’d heard that belief wasn’t true I just didn’t want to accept it. I was mixed up in my thinking, I was mixed up in my beliefs and I was trapped by the punishing God I’d picked.

With those tears streaming down I found vulnerable and I didn’t fly apart like I thought I would. I found myself in those tears and I didn’t see the picture I had in my beliefs, I found the me that others saw. Lots of anger left that night. Lots of pain and resentments left that night. True healing began and with the healing I could find a large enough God to get me help.

Transparent. I stopped trying to look good. I’d hide all the crap in my life under a smile a joke or a multitude of defenses. I wanted no one to see what was in my closets. I had my closets stuffed with things that I wanted nothing to do with. My closets were terrible places and I’d take myself to one of them and lock myself in there as punishment. I’d hide the goulies from others and punish myself with them everyday.

Transparent allowed me to show others how I was really. I finally knew that I had nothing to hide from anyone. We, everyone of us is on a Spiritual journey and we all have the same starting point and we all have the same ending point. It’s up to us to start and it’s up to us to finish. It’s our choice.

God gives us the choice to be honest with each other. The book of life tells us that the “Greatest commandment is to love one another.” Without being transparent love can’t happen. Without being transparent communication doesn’t happen. Being transparent, open to others and what is going on around us that’s where everything starts.