Category: Faith

Larry Had a Face

At times in my life I look back and see signs I missed. Glaring messages later written in the nightmares of mothers, memories of survivors, they were there whispering to me or screaming, I can’t know. I missed them all the same. In brief unwelcome moments, I can see a face looking at me differently than I saw at the time, silently begging me to turn back or wishing they could explode upon me the wealth of pain they knew better than themselves, the same which would soon barrel down upon my back. These faces, I think, saw warnings of their own and missed them the same, or saw them too late to disown the path. They left clues in their wake, tokens of the demons they couldn’t shed, littering my own path.

Larry was my friend. Larry had a face and occasionally the thought of it paralyzes me. When he died, junkies raided his knapsack and left him to rot on a couch. That isn’t what hurts me, though. People die and I’ve become accustomed to the occurrence. Larry had a face and sometimes I’m sure no one saw it but me. Now, I wish I could go back and explore his eyes for everything he never said. Where did it all go so wrong?

I woke up to find a package of syringes on my kitchen table. I was an addict but not a storied one — yet, and I didn’t ask the right questions. I didn’t know the questions. No one claimed it and I dismissed the entire event. I don’t remember Larry’s face that day, but if I did, I suspect I would see something tragic. Something dead.

We met in a hole in the wall country bar and despite years of flooding my brain with damaging substances, I will never shed this memory. My girlfriend lifted up her skirt to show him all of her fancy girl parts under the table. Obviously, he came home with us that night. How could he have known that she was a raging Xanax junkie with deep rooted insecurities and tendencies towards manic outbursts of violence and destruction? We locked her out of the bedroom and spent the night talking. Larry had a face. When we woke, she had slung thousands of sewing needles across my apartment and left with my car keys. The needles were embedded in the carpet and we played hopscotch to get to the door. After her mother returned my keys, I let him drive me and my Volkswagon Cabrio convertible at 100mph over 30 miles down country roads and highways so he could make it to his nephew’s high school graduation. This was our friendship, 12 hours in.

He was shorter than me, nearly as wide as he was tall, his muscles well defined if not imposing. His dusty blonde hair and cherub face belied his recent release from Prison. Sometimes I imagined how difficult that must have been for him with his stature, fending off perverts and psychopaths with his thumbs or a bed post. I never asked. He had the obligatory tattoos, I might recall a swastika, and that deep, thick Carolina drawl that made me feel safe from God and man. I’m not painting a pretty picture, but this is reality, not a fucking Hallmark card. Generations of poverty and drug addiction had shaped him into a stereotype, but he had a face with eyes that saw and had seen and testified, which is more than I could say for most.

Larry and I never had sex, although this would become a topic of dispute after his death. We spent time spending each others time, in movies or talking about life or just lying in the bed listening to each others breathing. He would hold me while I slept, his own sleep elusive. At the time, I quietly questioned myself as to why our relationship was so severely platonic, yet surprisingly intimate. It would be years before I fully understood his sexless, needy state. Larry had a face and somehow I missed it, the sadness, the hole in his sky. I missed his addiction, I missed that he was nearly dead as he lay beside me. I missed that he was grieving his own departure and gripping me as a last farewell. I only knew we needed each other.

That year, Larry died. They brought him back and he suffered for it. He spent weeks in the ICU, his lungs filled with blood clots. He couldn’t blink without the threat of death. Bound up by tubes and wires of all sadistic medical variety, they kept him alive.  Every life saving measure lengthened his sentence, chained to the black hole that was devouring him from the inside. I looked down at his face and desperately wanted to save him, too. I didn’t know I was looking at a man who wished to cease, at a portent of my future self. He was frail and gentle and broken in the ways a man only breaks beneath the weight of his own ghost. When I saw him next, he was ancient. All life had left him and he carried a bag of grapes and looked at the floor. I hid under my steps and cried. Larry and his face and his spirit, they were leaving me.

That day, under the steps, I saw something I didn’t want to see, didn’t want to know. I learned what death felt like when it stood at the door and there was nothing I could do to stop it from walking inside. I watched him ascend the stairs and exit my life.

It wasn’t long before I walked up those stairs myself for the last time and walked away from that part of my life. A few weeks after I learned I was pregnant with my first child, Larry died. They didn’t bring him back to his black hole this time and I didn’t go to see them put him in the ground. He died alone, like he had lived. His mother called and asked if my child was his. I wanted desperately to be able to tell her it was, to give her a piece of him to hold on to, but it wasn’t his child. That week, Larry’s demon jumped from his corpse and on to my back. I took up where he left off, addicted to heroin, desperate, destitute and on a collision course with my own death. In my memories, I like to tell myself that he tried to tell me not to follow him. If I’m being honest, I don’t think he did. I don’t think he ever tried to say a thing, but it feels better to remember it wrong, to remember him like I saw he wanted to be.

I don’t want to romanticize him. He was a fucked up mess of a person who had, at times, done some pretty terrible things to other fucked up people. Once, I watched from the car as Larry called a meth junkie and convinced him there were people surrounding the house. We were the people. The guy ran out into the woods and hid in a tree. While tree guy was doing tree guy stuff, Larry walked in the guy’s house and stole his meth. After the guy came down from the tree and his high, Larry sold him his own dope back (minus a little). Oddly, that is the only night I recall doing drugs with him. Maybe I’ve revised that history as well, but I like it better this way.

What makes him compelling? What makes me think of him over someone more deserving? He is, was, an over-exaggerated version of all of us. His life and death were the product of so many external inputs, his fucked up parents, poverty, the shitty little town he came from, people who sought to teach him and others how to be as sick as they were. He was born for prison, born for death, born to be written into my blog and my memory and as a phantom in the mind of some young boy out there who will never know his father. Larry has a son, he isn’t mine and he isn’t Larry’s because Larry and his face are dead. What makes him compelling? That his condition was greater than me, that I couldn’t save him, that is the draw. That I can see and yet remain impotent. That these matters rest with God and the Larrys of the world, hashed out without my consult. And when I sat beneath the steps and grieved the man and his grapes, God didn’t rally for me. I’m not angry, I just wanted a vote.

I just wanted to be a good friend

I just wanted to save Larry

I just want to write him into existence, even if only for a moment.

Larry had one album he listened to habitually. One song, specifically, and I would watch him as he listened, investigating his eyes for answers to his condition. It doesn’t fit the tone of what I have written, but I can’t refuse it, as it is permanently imbedded with the image I have of him. When I hear this song I am overcome by tears as the moments all flood back. It’s not beautiful, it’s just everything. Larry’s face had a song and I want to scream it.

Heart, Mind and Hammer

My parents taught me to love, to question, to challenge. These three lessons helped me to rebound from the thousands of others that came later. Whatever damage they did to me, they gave me this, a heart, a mind and a hammer, without which I would surely be lesser.

When I was eight or so, I filled my pockets with gum from the counter of the local Soda Shop. I don’t recall caring much for that gum. It lost its flavor too fast to keep me interested. It is worth noting that this is one of my brother’s favorite stories to tell to my new friends, simply because it is so demonstrative of my personality. When I came home, I dumped the gum out on the counter with pride and declared that the people running that shop were idiots. This was my proof! Evidenced in the fists full of gum, those people didn’t know what they were doing. There was a sign that read “10 Cents” and nary a soul watching the goods. My eight year old self probably didn’t say ‘nary’, but that was only because someone had neglected to introduce her to such a fine word. Regardless, I had taught them a lesson, and a harsh one, those stupid, stupid people. This was the first moment I can recall challenging the inane. I was a winner! I was smarter, I was triumphant, I was the champion of common sense and I had slapped them with the consequence of their naivety. What in the world did they think they were doing, expecting people to honor their little defenseless sign? Didn’t they know that people are sheisty and untrustworthy by nature? Not me, other people. I stole out of obligation. I’m a gem. My mom, however, being a mom, didn’t give me an attagirl as I had expected. Instead she demanded I take every piece back immediately, which I promptly did not do. Instead, I pretended to walk back downtown, all the while chewing every last disgusting spoil of my victory. There wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to go ingratiate myself to the same people who had just let me rob them blind. If I told you I did this yesterday, I doubt you would be surprised. If I told you they still have the same gum and the same little sign (only with a higher price), would you understand my position?

From a young age, I was well aware of things that most kids weren’t exposed to, or at least not with intention. I knew that blind trust was a request for injury, that nobody had every answer and that those same nobodies were doing a lot of not saying the things they were thinking while saying many more things they didn’t actually believe. I knew that my best friend’s father was a child molester and that the machinations of the adult world allowed him to continue to unleash his evil on helpless beings. I knew my best friend was one of those beings and that no matter how many toys I gave her, no matter the songs we danced to or the hours we spent climbing trees, pretending to be children who didn’t both know what we did, she would step back in the door each evening to find that monster. I knew he was scared of my mom and I never had to fear for myself, but my friend, my friend. I knew, when he sent the toys home, when he barred me from the house, then the yard, when he stopped her from coming to church, that he was closing in. That the manicured lawn across there street was the place where nightmares began by turning little hearts in prisons full of secrets no babe could tell, not even to their best friend. I knew evil looked like an architect. Question.

I watched the monster drunkenly dance with my childhood friends, atop his beer stained rug in the dining room of what was once a distinguished manor. He held their hands as he two stepped, greater than six feet, they maybe four and I sunk back into the recesses of the room and myself, wondering how this could be and how they could not see. I thought of the dungeon and the skeleton keys, the rats and the open mouthed lions that waited like omens at the threshold. I thought of my friend and how she quite literally fell to her deafness as a baby and the weighted look she always wore and how unfair. Unfair for her to live, unfair for me to know and be so impotent. Her mother stood aside at all times, letting the monster prowl and groom at will and I hated her and her blank face. Love.

I told our mutual friends about him. I told them in the most diplomatic way that any eight year old could. I told them what I had known for so long but had not uttered. I told them so that they wouldn’t be devoured, so that they wouldn’t dance or look at him stupidly like he wasn’t the scaly, slimy, slithering horned monster that he was.  We were never friends again. Challenge.

Sometimes people don’t want to know the truth. Sometimes they don’t want to know that their gum is easily stolen or that their architect is Satan or that they’ve delivered themselves over to the world as a meal, or worse, have been delivered by someone they love. Sometimes people glance your way, share themselves utterly with a look and retreat as fast, because they know there is nothing you can do to save them. Sometimes you can’t save them, sometimes I can’t, sometimes I cry at night. For my friend who isn’t a little girl anymore, I cry and I question. For all the little girls, which I never was but saw, I love. For all the institutions and rules and states which defy sense, I challenge. And if there’s a super power I’ve been given, it’s this.

Thank you Mom & Dad

 

Eyes in the Embers

Take a deep breath and repeat after me, “It’s all just shit and I will survive.”

Nobody was there to tell me that the first time I lost it all. To be clear, I’ve lost it all five times and each time, I had less items, yet more to lose. I promise, it gets easier.

The first time is always the worst. I woke up with fists being pounded into my face and I knew that I had to let go of all of it. In that moment I gave up my relationship, my home, my job, the supplier for my dope habit, all means of financial support, the illusion that I was a functioning drug addict, many of my possessions and my good credit score.

The second time I gave up an apartment that I had meticulously painted and designed, any semblance of self-sufficiency and my recently acquired sobriety.

The third time I gave up my record as a good tenant, my granny’s bible, furniture my mother had beautiful upholstered, hand-made Christmas stockings, medical equipment from my daughter’s time in the NICU and both of my children.

The fourth time, I gave up my freedom. I gave up all management of my life and entered a rehab facility.

The fifth time, I gave up the father to my children and the man I had prayed, wept and fought for. He left with a demon on his back and I left with my children, my faith and all of the ‘stuff’ that meant nothing to me.

It is astounding how we can adjust to continually deteriorating conditions. At one point in my life, I was a princess. I wore gold wedding bands as toe-rings, spent far too much on lottery tickets, ate take-out nightly and had pills hidden throughout the house. And then, as if suddenly, I was living in an 8 x 5 ramshackle shed, woken up by competing roosters each morning, shitting with the chickens and selling dope to Richie Rich.

The more of our space we fill with things and people, the less room we have for God. Others might fill their space with gadgets, nights at the club, PTA meetings or a career. I had chosen to fill my space with dope and dope seekers. When I went to rehab in 2011, every creature comfort was taken from me. Phone calls and interaction with family were eliminated, there was no TV in my room or friend to complain to. I had no cigarettes, chocolate chunk brownies, internet news, video games or Facebook. I was given a single room which contained myself, my two children and a few necessary possessions. Outside of my room existed an institution of women who had been abused, neglected, forgotten and discarded, each of whom would have rather run me down with a dump truck than see me succeed.

It hurt at first, the separation from my things, from my enablers and cheerleaders. And then, as if suddenly, I learned to do without. And in the without I found God waiting.

It’s all dust. All of it but the people.

Until 2017 I worked in a jewelry store. Can you imagine how difficult it was to sell luxury items when you have no attachment to ‘stuff’? Everything in me wanted to scream out, “Go love someone! Save your money!” My coworkers would get emotional about particular items, feel a sentimental attachment, but all I saw was glass. The love, the memories, they didn’t exist in a ring or brooch. They couldn’t live or die in metal and stone. Memories, feelings, joy and attachment exist in the perfect preservation of our hearts, but when we turn our joy over to things, it is given an expiration date. All will fall.

I amended this piece, as it was written well before I lost it all for the fifth time. I suppose I held on to it, knowing I was likely on the precipice of another. It is all dust. The home, the sconces, the albums and letters. I’d gladly pitch it all into a fire for the people I’ve lost, if only it worked that way.

 

 

 

 

 

The Day My Engine Stopped

I used to think that saving my own life was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and would ever have to do. That’s what I get for thinking. I’ve since learned that watching someone else destroy their life is much harder. However out of control I felt to stop my own suffering was illusory, but the inability to stop another’s suffering is soul-crushingly concrete. When you are the conductor, you can stop the train at any point. Yes, you can, lying brain. But have you tried to stand on the tracks and stop a train? I’ve smiled at that train, wagged my finger, reasoned with it, prayed for it, screamed at it, greased it’s gears, held it in a loving embrace. Every time it went off the tracks, I used my might to set it right, saying “Now, you go slow this time.” I supplied diesel, new paint, sign posts, warning signals, and always a push off when need be. “Good train! Good train. You go be good now, OK?”, ignoring the reality of the man at the controls.  I’ve gone weeks with no sleep, worrying that it would run me over at any point, all the while spending precious resources to build more means for destruction. Then I would lay down on the tracks and wait, as only the most hopefully stupid person could. The conductor is a madman, but the psychopathy is mine.

I’ve had years to think about these things, to put them in pictures and forms that I can understand. In my experience, everything is much simpler than we estimate and the more we complicate, the farther we get from the solution. It may be comforting in some sense to determine that a solution is so complex that it is nearly unattainable. There is an absolving element to that belief. The truth is, people make choices and we don’t always get a say in those choices. The truth is, our control is limited to our own being. Anything beyond ourselves requires either an act of force or an act of agreement. We can limit ourselves, we can limit our participation, we can limit our resources, but barring force, the final say is out of our control. If you are as willful and determined as I am, this will be a hard reality to accept. As I write this, part of me still believes I can stop a train, if I try hard enough, if I devise the right plan, if I change my approach and hold my tongue just right. I don’t like to lose. I fucking hate to lose. But some games have no winners.

So what do you do? This is the question I’ve asked myself a thousand times over. I just finished reading Atlas Shrugged, and the irony that I am Dagny is not lost on me. I’ve been using the train analogy for so long that Dagny’s focus was almost a foregone conclusion. One of my greatest takeaways was that existing within a destructive society and existing with a destructive individual requires the same approach; total removal of one’s participation. If you haven’t read the book, I highly recommend it, but if you have, you will know that Dagny fought to maintain productivity and normality despite insurmountable obstacles, and she did so until there was absolutely nothing left for her to save. This is what I’ve done, like so many other enablers. I’ve repaired the tracks more times than I can count, forgoing my own well being for the well being of the system which was designed for good but has been used for evil. But a tool is only as good as what it produces, therefore I have produced evil. I have enabled it in every way. Swallow that pill.

I think our primary failure, as enablers, is that we seek to make people into what we need them to be. Sometimes we need them financially, sometimes we need them emotionally. Maybe we just need them to be what they used to be, to restore our faith or sense of security. Maybe we assume they are a reflection of us, of our choices, abilities, devotions. Maybe their failures open up a wound within our ego, causing us to reflect on our own failures, which we don’t want to acknowledge. Regardless, our reliance on these people, on these trains, is our Achilles heel. It is the need to bring about change by which we are held captive. Suffer another analogy. Two men are held captive in an unlocked, unguarded prison. Neither are handcuffed or restricted in any manner, save for their own willingness. One wants to leave, but will not leave without the second. He cannot imagine his life without the other. The second will not leave for reasons which cannot be explained. Both will remain captive, neither will have life. This is not martyrdom, this is submission to death.

I realized recently that my prayers have, for some time, been completely contradictory. I have asked God to protect the conductor, but simultaneously I asked him to make him a better conductor. Assuming God behaved like Dumbledore, this might seem like a reasonable request. He could just wave his wand, fix everything and soon we’d be dancing through the tulips. “Enabler, The musical.” Disney worthy wishes. God isn’t a fairy godmother, though. DominosHe can protect you from your choices and simultaneously protect you from growing through experience, or He can allow you to face consequences, thus allowing you the opportunity to improve yourself. I italicize opportunity because it is just that, a chance, not a guarantee. Remember, there is force or there is agreement. Force removes freewill and won’t lead to growth. The other day I mentioned to a friend of mine that miracles happen when willingness meets opportunity. I fully believe this two-part recipe is what separates successes from failures. My willingness only matters if it’s my opportunity, but no matter how willing I am on behalf of another, I cannot accept their opportunity for them, nor can I force it upon them. I don’t like these truths. In fact, I hate them. I want to be so strong that I am strong enough for anyone whom I choose, willing enough for them also. I want to be able to give my hard earned gifts to people who don’t even want them, but desperately need them. This doesn’t work, of course. Something is only worth what it costs to attain it. Attaining it without cost doesn’t give you it’s worth, it only gives you the illusion of the worth. The worth is in the sacrifice, the resources used, the hours spent, the tears cried and knowledge gained. For this reason, I’ve amended my prayers, removing a plea for protection and focusing solely on growth. Hard won growth. You can’t utter this prayer without feeling deep pangs of sadness. What could be harder than to ask that the world come crashing down upon someone you love?

I, like Dagny, have spent my resources down to the last. I have exhausted all options, waited out all of the others, made ways when there were none and suffered to see one more day, knowing that even one more day was a gift that I would pay dearly for. The lights are out, the world is in ruins and now I retreat, removing my participation. I will not replace one more track, hammer one more nail. I will not waive the lantern or signal the approach. I will not be used to bring about my own destruction. This is the one place where I do have a choice. This is my opportunity to say no, this is my willingness to be unwilling. Welcome to Galt’s Gulch, Rachel.

 

The Life of a Thought Without (pictures)

I’m a little neurotic, but only in the most amusing ways. I’m chaos reordering chaos, dizzyingly destroying unseen boundaries only to redraw the line with dots and hyphens, hanging chads and discarded vowels. Step over. I’m an eternal optimist until you are and then I’m assured of your impending failure. I can do a wrong thing right as well as a right thing wrong but you can’t make a right on red without breaking your stride, can you? Look, you broke it.  I use words that flatten your banana and inflate your ingrate. I’m the CEO of no, head mother of kill your thunder. I pocket facts for arsenal, I table feelings for the upper hand, I take the stand for the guilty man. I’ve eaten plenty of regrettable meals but never uttered a regrettable word. I’m a fool for kicking things that might be dead just to check with the hopes they are, or aren’t, which one requires less work? I like run on sentences but not the kind made by people who make them naturally. I planned to leave and never come back, then I found drugs, children, the Constitution, in that order. Here I am.

I dated a guy who was straight edge. Late 90’s, coffee shops, Daria diarrhea dispositions, combat boots and how depressing is this story? Straight edge was the precursor to my belly flop into the underground. No drugs here, no meat, no leather, no alcohol, no CHEESE! Not me, that weird pre-emo kid with the VW bug and gaping earlobes. One day he drove past a McDonald’s, smelled a filet of fish and that was it! The next week he was a meth addict. Never saw him again. That was fun, wasn’t it? He’s probably your senator now.

Only recently did I realize that everyone didn’t freebase hydrocodone in high school, have dates in the graveyard, find Iranian boyfriends on the internet that were clear across the country to bring home to dad, perform interpretive dance during the movie introduction or pay (literally & figuratively) dirty men to let you bathe them. Nope, I swear, there are people who went to school and came home. I shit you not! They did homework, chores and never once received compromising photos from their local rock DJ. Mind blowing stuff right there.

When I was twelve I could hold my own with a forty year old. I know this because I was prepared to marry an old man I met on Compuserve. Do you remember Compuserve? If you do, you are old too. Also, if you had a phone relationship with a man named Chris Cox from Iceland, you should probably see a therapist yesterday. Not me. I count it as proper preparation for things to come.

One time, which was many more than one time, I did enough ecstasy to completely deplete my natural resources of dopamine and serotonin. One day, which was more than one day, I screamed and ran out of 12th grade 20th century history class. One time which was only one time, I enrolled in college and the screaming stopped. There I learned absolutely nothing except that you don’t shower your hopeful boyfriend with bongs because he will just break them and then pawn you off on his friend with the same name. Daniel, Dan. Who can remember which one I destroyed private property with during that ice storm? The ugly one. Nice ugly Dan. They are always nice, aren’t they?

I am on or I am off. I am inserting myself in a dog pile of violent car salesmen or I am asleep. I am arguing my point or I am silently arguing it and letting you run off unawares. I am completely befuddled until the moment I master it all instantaneously. I am stockpiling pieces for sudden synergy. I demand justice, I decry your version. I laud morality bathed in reality, detest formality sheltering depravity. I see the value in a lab rat, the entry level, one’s long-suffering, yet grieve their necessity. I can’t create a character I hate or hate a thing I’ve done or do a thing I can’t justify or justify a thing another did which I wouldn’t do in like circumstance.

Once I thought I’d write a book. I put all of the people who wrecked me on to the page and learned God is the greater story teller.

This is the life of a thought without

 

 

 

 

 

Wilson, the Low Leaper

I was built for a post-apocalyptic world, but most people haven’t gotten there yet and I hate to wait. 

Trauma has isolated me from much of the world. Maybe this is what it feels like to come home from war. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been to a war, or at least not in the traditional sense, and I suppose like me, folks who have are isolated as well. Maybe this is what it’s like to be a quantum physicist at a Tupperware party. Maybe this is what it’s like to be an English professor on planet Xenu or a Thomas Sowell ever. They’ve never told me, but I feel like we may all be living within our own unique habitations, rolling around in big plastic balls of experience all over this planet. Everyone is smiling, chatting about obscure foods and the ambience of their stunted emotions, vibrant vacancy, assaulting flatness. “I love dogs. Like, I love them,” someone says and then someone else produces a photo of their corgi, Wilson. Wilson loves to watch birds through the windows and chased a shadow once. They all chuckle and that guy on the left straightens his tie. And here we are, me, Thomas, the teacher on Xenu, General Survivor, rolling around in our awkward plastic balls as we eye these strange creatures. They like anime. Ok? What do I say to that?

I like dogs. I don’t dislike them. I don’t really care, honestly. If a dog was suffering I would help it. I like piercings and cobb salad also, but who wants to talk about that? Who even thinks about that? In 2009 I pulled a man’s false teeth from his mouth so he wouldn’t swallow them as he had a seizure from a heroin overdose. He had just come back in town after spending a year living under a bridge in New Orleans. When he left for New Orleans he persuaded a friend to sell his truck and come with him so he could fund their trip. They both lived under a bridge and every morning they sat at the day labor temp agency hoping to get enough work to fund their habit. Sometimes they would call and ask someone from North Carolina to ship them syringes or buy gift cards. Did you know that Louisiana doesn’t allow the purchase of syringes without a prescription and gift cards are highly devalued? Hepatitis. I don’t want to talk about dogs.

I’ve done my best over the past years to reintegrate back into society, but honestly, I was never very good at it even before I experienced trauma. When situations were dry, awkward or emotionally perilous, I had a habit of commandeering the narrative into my own arena, often to my own detriment. I was arrested for passing a stopped school bus when I was sixteen years old and I plead diarrhea to the judge. “Your honor, I had sudden diarrhea. I’m sorry.” I said in open court. That time it worked to my advantage. That time. Last week I told my coworker that she looked like the type who would be a bridezilla and I was surprised that she wasn’t. I thought it was a compliment. It didn’t land as I expected. I was built for a post-apocalyptic world, but most people haven’t gotten there yet and I hate to wait.

I find it so difficult to entertain mundane conversation about weekend plans and mild illness. I want to change things! I want to be that person I knew from my first recalled memory that I was created to be. I want to shake it up, stir it around, juggle it behind my back and throw it triumphantly to the next. People are dying, I’ve seen them. People are hurting, I’ve been one. Neglected children are on their way to being destructive adults and we love dogs. We love sushi, too and that commute was terrible and Sailor Moon is my favorite. I don’t begrudge you, I just can’t take part. I can’t understand. I can’t form a response. My friends are dead, in prison dying, in the streets dying, clinging to what is left of their souls. My friends are ghosts. I have none. I have what I cling to desperately. I have faith, I have a family, I have proven endurance. I have a wall that is higher than my eyes can see and your dog doesn’t even come close to clearing it.

“You think weird,” I was told. I think like a sane person who was locked in a mental institution for decades only to come out and learn that the world has become the haunting ground for spiritual zombies. I think like a person who has embodied a corpse. I think like a person who has seen beyond the veil. I think like a person who is perpetually trapped in two worlds. I can’t tell most people what I’ve seen. They need safe zones and ice-cream socials. Everyday I want to scream, “You don’t know! You have it so good!” but instead I turn my head and hate Wilson silently. I don’t want a support group, I want a world where people are honest about their experiences. I want a world where we can communicate openly about what we have endured, witnessed — and then get over it. Half of me already lives in this world and if you choose to visit, we don’t require a passport. The other half of me begrudgingly pulls a paycheck.

I know who’s dying and why. I know the status of their wasting and I know how it feels to be left behind. I know how it feels to know things no one wants to know or hear or think about or even believe exists because it makes them culpable. I know how it feels to tell the heinous truth and be shunned for the stun of it. I know what happens when the curtain is drawn and the soul stabbing pain of finality which is so great it makes death seem delightful. I’ve seen centuries of consequences pass before me, I’ve seen the waste of a different kind of war and I’m a better person for it. Those things made me worthy of knowing. Maybe you know a different loss, a different stab and if you do, I want to know it too. I want to know how you got the dirt under your nails and why you have that eye twitch and that thing you swore no one would ever understand because I swear too, I will try.

I want to tell it all true, hear it all true and never, ever have to pretend to care about a single thing that can’t clear the fence.

 

Discovering the Forgotten Floor

He speaks through opportunity and the unlikely weaving of the unimaginable, unpredictable and unexplainable. He speaks through suffering, stumbling, sin and salvation.

I used to have an idea of God. I had an idea that He loved me, distantly, rigidly even, like the elementary school principal that I never had the occasion to meet. He was an observer. I had an idea that he existed somewhere outside of my environment, watching, waiting. He did a lot of waiting. I didn’t see evidence of His hand in my life and after a time, I gave up looking. I suppose, for me, God went missing and I didn’t bother to send out the search party. I wouldn’t have known who to look for, had I tried. I had heard of His voice, never his voice. I didn’t have a face or past experience to solidify the image of Him in my mind. He was elusive, vague, dreamlike and disinterested in me. So, this poorly formed idea disintegrated within me, dissipated and was forgotten.

In elementary school I was a very good student. I never behaved poorly enough to warrant consequences and thus, I never formally met my principal. In fact, I was terrified of doing anything wrong, disappointing even a single person. I suppose he knew my name, but I couldn’t say for sure. Maybe he saw me walk to class, knew of my parents or was familiar with seeing my face in the hallway. Had you asked me what he was like, I would likely have given you general terms associated with principals. Maybe he is kind, maybe he has a stern face. Maybe he is quiet and neatly dressed. He probably wouldn’t hurt anyone but he could be scary if you misbehaved. Such was my relationship with God. I had never had need to know Him intimately. Things change.

Suffering is an opportunity unlike any other. There is little that can match the magic that happens when a person is utterly vulnerable. Whether self-imposed or otherwise, being without any worldly solution, being impotent to change our situation, is the impetus to surrender. In the past, when I heard that word, surrender, it would make me angry. ‘Surrender’ sounded counterintuitive. If I had a problem, I had to act, not give up. Right? I am a fighter, not a quitter. I don’t give up, I win! Except that through all of my fighting, I never won, not even once. Years later I would learn that surrendering didn’t mean giving up at all.

A few months ago my daughters asked to go rollerblading. I took them out to the lot behind our house, but they weren’t very good at maintaining their balance. My youngest was about to fall and grabbed on to the wooden fence along the edge of the lot. As she fought to catch herself, splinters sliced into her little hands, fifteen or so. For the next half hour I grappled with her, trying to remove them from her hands. Each time I would bring the tweezers close, she would squeal and jerk away, tears flowing down her face. Obviously she was in anguish, but I couldn’t help her until she relaxed. She was fighting against her own self-interest. This is what we do everyday. We squirm and struggle in a weak attempt to initiate change, all the while, God is waiting for us to calm down and let him help. Surrendering is not an act of accepting defeat, but rather an act of accepting help, and in times of great suffering we are presented with an opportunity to do just that.

I never did meet my principal, but in 2011 I did meet God. That was the year I got sober and by no coincidence, the same year I realized I had absolutely destroyed everything in my life. An amazing thing happened during that time, though. Because I had nothing, I found what I had been looking for all along. It was like cleaning a messy room and finding the floor! When there were no enablers, no cheerleaders, no televisions, radios, bars, drinks, dope, cigarettes, swimming pools, beach vacations, shopping trips, home-cooked meals, manicures, jobs, hair cuts, days in the park—-there was God, waiting. He had done a lot of waiting. And I heard his voice. First, softly and then, the more I listened, the more pronounced it became until eventually it was the loudest voice in the room. And then came the dreams.

Some Christians worship a God who is distant and incommunicative, but my God speaks and he speaks in every way imaginable. He speaks in the wind and in the waves. He speaks through people, through timing, through patterns and the simplicity of a child. He speaks through opportunity and the unlikely weaving of the unimaginable, unpredictable and unexplainable. He speaks through suffering, stumbling, sin and salvation. He speaks through His word, he speaks through victory and sometimes, he speaks through dreams.

When God has given me a dream, I know. They have a vivid quality to them, closer to living than dreaming. But more than their appearance, they have staying power. When God speaks through a dream, it will remain with me forever. It will continue to reveal more and more wisdom as time goes on and always it will be corroborated by something that happens subsequently in my life. It is my favorite form of communication with Him because it is a dialogue which unfolds artistically and always in a manner which I couldn’t have anticipated or designed.

The night before last I had a dream that I was in Las Vegas. I wasn’t there to gamble or party. I was just there, visiting I suppose. I had spent exactly $60 dollars to get there and on whatever other needs I had. I don’t know why but I knew the exact amount. I also knew I was very poor. That $60 was the last of my money.

I went to the laundromat and as I was loading clothes into the dryer, I realized that none of the people at this laundromat ever cleaned the lint trap out. I thought, these people are very inattentive. This could cause a fire. I began cleaning out the trap, which was angled outside of my vision. I reached in blindly and felt something crumpled and hard. I pulled out a twenty dollar bill. I reached back in and pulled out another, and then another. Then I pulled out a ten. I reached back in to feel for more but it was empty. I had found a total of $70 and I marveled at how I came to Vegas, didn’t gamble and somehow still managed to get back all of the money I spent, and I made $10 extra — all from just doing what needed done— cleaning out the lint trap.

That was the dream in its entirety. It doesn’t seem like much does it? But that is how I know it is everything.

Yesterday I went to church and realized my money was at home in my pants pocket. All I had was a little change to put in the offering plate. At first I wasn’t going to put it in, thinking how insulting it would be to give coins. Then I remembered the widow’s offering in Mark (Mark 12:41-44) and thought of the mere seven dollars I had left at home. What made me think of that, anyway? I decided it was good to give the paltry change I had, regardless. I dropped it in and it clanged loudly. I was so embarrassed.

After church we stopped at a mom and pop store to pick up some food for lunch. When we got to the counter, my mom realized she had left her debit card at home. Normally I would have no trouble covering this, but having been out of work for months now, my thoughts went to the mere $25 I had left in my bank account. I am in that moment calculating in my head, seven at home, twenty-five in my account, that’s $32. The entirety of my wealth. I felt my stomach flip. I don’t like this feeling of helplessness. I swallowed it and told her I could cover it. Of course I could, it was only $8. I guess getting that close to the bottom of the barrel is unnerving.

When we got back to her house we ate lunch and then she gave me a $20 bill to cover the $8 I spent at the store. It wasn’t until late last night that I realized that after the $8 at the store and the change I put in the offering plate, I had profited right at $10. In fact, if I could go back and count the change I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to learn it was $10 down to the penny, just as in my dream.

We Christians live in a world of sin, like Vegas you might say. We are strangers in this place, temporary visitors. We have to live here for a time, but we don’t have to take part in the darkness to be successful, despite how the world suggests otherwise. We live by faith, we live by His word and we will always be provided for. We are cleaning out lint traps every day, some in the heart and some in head, caring for that which others disregard. We are the mess cleaners, the fire preventers, the silent observers and the grateful receivers of God’s blessings.

I wanted to share this with each of you, as it brought me great comfort in a time where I could easily be swept away with fear and doubt. Though I have not been able to provide for myself for three months, I have not gone without and will not go without, and neither will you. Wash yourself clean, be a light in a world of darkness and walk boldly in faith because there is no circumstance impossible enough, no situation dire enough that God cannot overcome to the benefit of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

 

Psalm 37:25

I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.

Faith Bootcamp

 Every day I failed, every night I grieved and by morning I begged God to be relieved of duty.

I’m sitting at the park, watching my kids swing with my left eye and giving wimpy parents the dress down with the right. I do love hating on other peoples parenting and for the first time in days, my children aren’t asking me stupid questions, so I should be enjoying this, but instead I’m distracted, and only partially due to the ant crawling on my cheek. Today I received three rejection letters.

Living by faith is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. It sounds easy in practice and I suspect many people think they do it, but with contingency plans, options and a history that lends to their odds. Me? I’m just floating down the river on my back hoping a fish takes pity on me and commits hara-kiri in my arms. I don’t have a plan or a pan. Nope, I have a felony and mediocre writing skills.

Nearly two months ago, I took a leap of faith and quit my job. I had been praying for over a year that God would release me from it, but every day I would wake with the same obligation to keep going. The position I was paid for was secondary to that which God had designed. My days there were filled with people in crisis, strangers who needed to know that miracles do happen, addicts dying a slow death, elderly people who just wanted a friend, war veterans plagued by their damaged minds, parents struggling to cope with the death of a child, scorned women, the homeless, the insane, the forgotten. Worst of all was the constant parade of family who had been dominated by the undertow of addiction for so long that they couldn’t distinguish up from down. Morality was muddied, mistakes compounded and love used as a weapon of self-destruction. I didn’t work in a crisis center, I worked in retail, but God knows where there is need.

My own history, replete with mental illness, drug addiction, enabling, homelessness and a rapid decline in morality, allowed me to see these things for what they were—but at what great cost. Though cliché, ignorance is bliss. Over time I started to sink into a depression. I felt completely ineffective. There I sat with so much experience, willing to share with anyone in need, yet I saw people make the same mistakes time and time again. My words didn’t penetrate, my experience had no resonance. I could chart the inevitable progression of the disease in my mind and then watch it play out as predicted while I sat impotent to help.  Every day I failed, every night I grieved and by morning I begged God to be relieved of duty. Towards the end, I began to have physical reactions to the stress. My hair began falling out, I developed psoriasis, food allergies, fatigue, weight gain, anxiety attacks, muscle cramps, sleep loss, nightmares and fits of anger. I’m certainly not Jesus, my limits became obvious.

The kicker is, we don’t always know when we’ve been effective and some seeds take time. It is easy to become discouraged by the failures. They are always louder than the successes. I try to remember that there are a lot of people who were integral in my success who will never know it. There are nurses, counselors, doctors, acquaintances, friends, strangers, bureaucrats, and junkies who will never know that they helped to save my life. And God’s plans are bigger than any of us can comprehend, more complex and creative than we could design.

Cat and Dog stroller
This is me trying to understand God’s plan

It was a beautiful June day. I had been woken up to breakfast in bed, which is a rarity in my home. I went to work that day feeling confident and hopeful. You should always beware of these days. In my experience, this is the parade before the gallows. What followed was a series of ultimately meaningless events, with exception to one thing; my release. How do you know the voice of God? How do you identify his hand? For me it has come with time observing and practice listening, and that day it was unmistakeable. It took one look from one person and God’s intentions hit me with the force of a cat 5 hurricane. There were no words or exchanges that lent to it. When God speaks, he needs no corroboration. I was to leave, I was to leave then and I was to do it without fear.

I stepped out that day without a plan. The only assurance I had was that God provides for those who are obedient and faithful, and I’ve clung to that promise. It was so out of character for me that my employer assumed I had another job lined up and when I told him I didn’t, he laughed, as if I were lying. That is because the idea of truly acting on faith is foreign to most of us. The day that I quit, I went to my church and asked my preacher how to step out in faith. His response was, “I wish I could tell you, but I’m not very good at it.” I appreciated the honesty. Since that day, I have applied for nearly 400 jobs. I’ve had two interested parties, a handful of decline letters and a ton of disinterest. I have an empty bank account, bills that are due and two children that can’t be asked to understand the circumstances. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, but I try not to live in fear. I wake each day reassured that I made the best decision by following God’s lead. I try to hold on to the promises God has already fulfilled in my life as a reminder that he didn’t create any of us to suffer needlessly, nor did he save us only to let us fail. Paul wasn’t promised it would be easy, he was promised it would be possible and it would be worth it, as are we.

Lessons in faith are a lot like what we ask our children to do; trust without reason, do without understanding, try without guarantee. If my only accomplishment today is to be willing, as a child, I will have succeeded. There is a plan, it just isn’t mine. And just like children, we aren’t privy to all of the details, but we are loved, provisioned and considered in all things. After all, even the birds and flowers are provided for. And how much more loved are we?

Matthew 6:26
Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?