Running for my life

In the bible we find an amazing book of poetry that speaks to people living through impossible situations without much support. Early in my recovery I could not read the psalms; they triggered me. I felt irritable, restless and discontent when I read them.

I thought they were a bunch of baloney.

Then one day I was reading about David. My childhood had taught me about David, the giant slayer, but my summer-go-to-grandma’s church Sunday School teachers had definitely skipped over the chapters where King David became an adulterer, a murderer (by proxy), and a pretty unimpressive father. This fuller version of David’s life story completely opened the psalms up to me - since he is attributed with writing many of them. Today I love the psalms. They do not “should” and “ought” me with demands for perfect trust. Today, I read them with more context and a touch of imagination. When I read Psalm 23, I think of David running for his life, chased by his many enemies. I can see his arms pumping, his legs churning, his breath coming in deep and uneven gasps as he cries out, daring to hope but not quite believing, that what he is praying is true. He is disciplining himself to believe in a God who loves him in spite of his world offering little evidence that God does love him OR that he, David, deserves it. Got the picture? Now listen in…

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall lack nothing.

He makes me lie down in green pastures,

He leads me beside quiet waters,

He restores my soul...

~ Psalm 23:1-3, NIV

David is a guy who was a “man after God’s own heart” before and after the Bathsheba scandal. When confronted with his sins by Nathan, he confessed and received forgiveness. He did horrible things in his life; he loved God well and true for much of his life also. Complicated. Human. Loved by God.

How about you? Have you the spiritual bandwidth to live with such a complicated reality for David? For yourself? For others?

Banishing Shame

In 2019 Danielle Collins stormed onto the women’s tennis scene at the Australian Open. Having never won a match in a major, she made it to the semi-finals where she lost to P. Kvitová in two sets. Commentators did not know what to make of her brash confidence. When asked about her strategy of play against her next opponent, she replied, “I will just keep on playing awesome tennis!”

Fellow tennis geeks spoke with me in conspiratorial tones... “I am not sure I like her. I think she might be a little ‘too much’.”

Reporters said that her fellow tennis stars were ambivalent about her brash personality. Did she fit in? Was she worthy? Maybe not they implied. She learned to play tennis on public courts not in pricey private clubs. She is a college graduate from the University of Virginia (a rarity among tennis professionals). She readily admits that her game was not good enough to enter the tour earlier and she credits her college coaches with improving her game. Her teammates say that the Danielle Collins of the Australian Open 2019 is the exact girl they have known all along. She’s a force to be reckoned with. She would have LOVED to be a phenom at 14 but she admitted she needed help to improve and took herself off to college to get what she needed.

This gal could walk around with massive doses of shame - how can we ever know about another person’s self assessment? But her actions and words indicate that she believes in herself and she shows no interest in asking any of us to do that work for her.

Shame “all shucks” us. It demands that we take no credit for our strengths and beats us up for our weaknesses. Danielle’s story at a minimum shows us that if we are honest about what we need and willing to ask for help in getting it, good things, unexpected things - can happen.

Meditation Moment- Gratitude

Offer a prayer of gratitude and sit in quiet as you allow your mind, body and heart to absorb the gifts that these early days in your recovery are giving you. Breathe.

The Impact of Family Drama

Over the course of our lifetime all four siblings in my family have had an opportunity to explore the wreckage of our past. Each of us have reached various conclusions about our family system of origin - not all of them are in sync. Most of us experienced seismic changes in our understanding of our childhoods as a result of self-reflection. One of my brothers believed that our childhood was one adventure after another - he had to wrestle with his idealism. It was not all fun and games but he had forgotten chunks of life at our house.

I experienced my childhood as traumatic in ways that defined me and encoded all my memories as such. But when we found some old family movies that recorded happier times, I had to rethink my perspective. I remembered these times once they showed up on film. I realized that my memories were skewed; I needed to re-remember. It was NOT all trauma.

The only reason any of us entered therapy, treatment and/or recovery was because we were forced to admit that our adulting was not working. We were wrecking things all on our own without any help from others - thank you very much. It took intervention and outside resources for us to stop the insanity of living with great certainty and few insights about our lives. We had grown up but not through our past. The baggage of our youth was cluttering up the floor of our adulthood and we kept tripping over it. Something had to give! Recovery asks us to believe that God has the power to restore us to sanity - we can learn how to stop thinking, feeling and doing the same things over and over that keeping resulting in negative results.

My family and I did not end up with the same assessments of our collective growing up experiences. But each of us did what we have both the right and responsibility to do: We are living our lives in the way we believe best fits our core values. It is not easy; it is not without conflict. But it is what families do!

Meditation Moment- Salutation of the Dawn

Blessed with the experience of others who have walked this path of recovery we often find common ground in prayers, poems and meditations that have been helpful to others. Their experience can guide us. This poem is an adaptation of a poem “Salutation of the Dawn”, author unknown:

Look to this day! [Pause and observe the day you are in.]

For it is life, the very life of life. [Offer a prayer of thanksgiving for your precious life.]

In its brief course [Acknowledge that you have much to learn.]

Lie all the verities and realities of your existence: [Life offers many experiences; focus on one gratitude.]

The bliss of growth; [Thank God for your restoration.]

The glory of action; [Commit to do one next right step today.]

The splendor of achievement; [Ponder one right thing you did yesterday and give thanks.]

For yesterday is but a dream, [Commit to letting go.]

And tomorrow is only a vision; [Choose to not fret about future events.]

But today, well lived, makes every yesterday [Consider your day and choose to embrace it.]

a dream of happiness, [Happiness is possible. Look for it.]

And every tomorrow a vision of hope. [Find one thing to appreciate about your future.]