The Loss of Living Parents

Experts tell us every human is born with only two fears: the fear of falling and of loud noises. We learn all the rest. The first and second ones most of us learn are the fear of abandonment and rejection. Basically, from the crib we begin to wonder what will happen if that nice lady with the warm milk doesn’t come back, and then that she might choose not to come back. Many of us have experiences that relate to those fears. We’ve been rejected or abandoned. Our trust has been betrayed, our expectations disappointed. Our earliest fears often relate to our most traumatic wounds.

In the wake of two unexplained binges, I am forced to acknowledge the reality that I have experienced a loss. The timing of each betrays their relation to a singular event. My parents have moved away from our home town, leaving me and my kids the last family remaining here. It is the first time I have ever lived in a city away from my mother and father. That nice lady with the warm milk has left. Though I’m grown up, walk on my own, feed myself, and don’t need to be held, rocked, or sung to, I still recognize that living in a town far from my mother and father is a significant loss. I didn’t recognize it as such, but my failure to address this loss with appropriate grief has likely had something to do with striking the match on the fuse of my relapse.

I thought I would 4th step my loss. I don’t know if it should go as a resentment or a fear so I’ll do both. I’ve never blogged on my 4th step work before, but it is a regular part of my continual inventory. I include it here for my own therapeutic catharsis, a sort of previewed 5th step, and in the hopes it may mean something to others who have or have not processed such a loss. The format is straight from the “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous, pp. 64-68.

I’m resentful at…	The cause	Effects my… (self-esteem, security, ambitions, personal, or sex relations)	My wrong (selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, frightened)
Mother and Dad	leaving town	Self esteem: I believed I was the one they counted on in crisis, the one who hadn’t moved away. I thought I was their security. (fear) Personal relations: I will not know the closeness of their regular company. (fear)	Selfish: I have made plans to move to Africa that disregard my aging parents. They know this and are afraid of being alone. Self-seeking: I have hoarded my parents’ attention and favor. Frightened: I have kept close to family and home town for my own sense of security.

Fear	Why we had them	What trust in God would look like
Abandonment by Mother	I counted on her to be there for me, to comfort me when I am threatened or afraid.	God’s comfort is far more trustworthy and complete. His protection is far more secure.
Abandonment by Dad	I expected him to need me, and to finally approve of me.	God gives opportunity for service in every one of His children. His approval is not conditional.
Separation from those I know and who love me (This fear looms over my future missionary plans)	I have an expectation that life will be easier when connected to those I already have connections with. I am afraid of the rejection that comes with extending myself to new people. I am afraid of being alone.	I am never alone. God goes before me, seals my way behind me, and holds me in His very hand. He constantly enlarges my territory, giving me new people to love and by whom I may be loved. He promises that those who reject me or the gospel I bring rejected Him first, and that I am in good company with Him and the martyrs.

People who need people

I am busy as I can be! My BSN (Bachelor of Science in Nursing) program is killing me, and I’ve been told by those who seem to know that I have enrolled in the hardest one available. I’ve got only today to finish my homework for the week, and my daughter’s birthday dinner is tonight. I tried to stay up late last night and do as much as I could but wimped out by 10:30. Today, I was under pressure from two of the ladies in program (who have what I want) to go to the Wednesday Noon meeting 12 miles or 26 minutes from my house. I’ve never been to that meeting before, but I was avoiding it with prejudice. What a hassle! It’s not just an hour out of the day. It’s an hour sucked smack dab out of the middle of my day, when I’ve got a hundred things to do and none of them require that I listen to a bunch of ladies talk about their food problems for an hour at a place half an hour away from my house right at the time of day I should be eating my abstinent meal and tending to the business of not making myself crazy with overdue work and failing grades! (If you didn’t read that last sentence with a growling scream in your voice you did it wrong. Try again.)

I went. (Now feel the silent, humiliated eye-roll.)

Sure enough, there were no dudes at this meeting but me, and the girls all talked about how their shared group text chain is one of the things that helps them the most. Oh, heck no!! I’m not having any part of a group text chain. Let me off that merry-go-round right now! I’m a night shift nurse, and don’t need to be reminded to mute my phone every morning before I go to bed just so I can sleep through the incessant chimes from these day-dwellers’ feel-good messages and memes.

Just about the time I was feeling like I couldn’t use anything in the room, someone read the line from the Big Book that addresses the drinker who would not follow along:

“If he thinks he can do the job in some other way, or prefers some other spiritual approach, encourage him to follow his own conscience. …Let it go at that” (AA, p 95, emphasis mine).

Oh, crap! I’m the addict who won’t follow along with those in recovery! I’m the one thinking I’ve got a better way, a shortcut, something without all the bells and whistles that come with a newcomer’s program. Part of me believes that I can do this on my own or in an advanced pattern, without all the tools it took to build my recovery in the beginning. Dang it! I started to pay attention and let what was going on sink in. Something amazing happened — they started to make sense. 

While I was at this meeting and in the sharing that followed, I was both nurtured and encouraged by people who had gone through circumstances that were remarkably similar to mine. One chose a path that made me feel like I had permission to quit my demanding college program if it was to preserve something important like my sanity or marriage. Another let me rant about how unique my situation was, but kept assuring me God would let me know what His will is. It was encouraging to have someone speak those words over me even though I, myself, pray all the time for knowledge of God’s will for me and the power to carry it out.

The truth was I needed that meeting. I may be really behind schedule, especially now that I’ve added all this journaling to my distraction from homework, but I needed to take care of me, even if that meant taking a big bite out of what I thought was the productive part of my day. The ridiculous thing is, if I had bothered to accept what is in the literature, written by hundreds of successful people who came before me, I might have known that the tool of meetings is one cornerstone of a well built recovery structure.

“Together we get better!”

By the way, in case I disappointed anyone with the candor of my sick thinking … good! It’s my sick thinking that proves just how badly I need recovery. I’ve strung 16 days together after a one-night binge disrupted nine years of abstinence. That’s how serious this thing is.

Forgive Again!

This morning I visited an AA meeting before my regular OA meeting. While sitting among them listening to their Step Eight shares, the following occurred to me:

I, like many Twelve-Steppers before me, resist listing harms done in Step Eight because I am fully aware of the Step Nine amends to follow. One of the basic spiritual concepts linked with Step Eight is forgiveness, and many people mingle forgiveness with amends because they believe an apology is necessary in order to forgive. I often say that the hardest ones to forgive are those who know not what they do. I can tell that I’m getting the two confused when I repeat an apology or fail to repeat forgiveness. I don’t want to be the guy who starts every day telling his wife he is sorry for cheating on her in 1985. That guy is ruining two lives. I also know there is something amiss when I ask God to forgive that sorry, no-good, son of a trouble-maker! I cannot leave all the forgiving to God.

The hardest ones to forgive are those who know not what they do.

When I think of amends, I think of a tailor repairing a garment. I don’t know much about how sewing machines work, but I do know there is a spool at the top and a bobbin underneath. If the thread only comes from the top and never the bottom, as soon as the fabric is lifted, the thread pulls right out. So it is when forgiveness only comes from Heaven. When it is not met with forgiveness from someone of us down here underneath, it has no chance to bind to the fabric and all the blessed progress just comes unfurled.

There is a white board on my bedroom wall, and on it I have written a forgiveness prayer that goes like this:

“I love and forgive _____ in the Name of Jesus, and I call my feelings, thoughts, and behaviors into alignment with God’s will.”

Below that prayer is a running list of my resentments, each one an answer to my fill-in-the-blank prayer. The list has changed some since I first took a Fourth Step, but it is my way of continuing to take personal inventory and admitting when I’m wrong. The thing is, I have to list those people, groups, and institutions regularly, or my carnal self will begin to slip back into judgment, I will hold those parties in contempt, often trying to punish or correct them, and maybe even despising them with bitterness that poisons only one soul — mine. While praying this list, sometimes I think, “I don’t even think about that person anymore,” and they retire off my list. Other days, I storm into my room and emblazon a new name on my list, and I start again, calling God’s will into my life and aligning with it my intentions for a loving attitude.

I confess I suck at this forgiveness routine. That’s one of the many reasons my own name appears at the top of my forgiveness list. I despise the me that failed at being kind and generous today almost as much as the 6 year-old me who never stopped crying because he was convinced nobody loved him. I want to tell that school kid to suck it up and get a grip, and I want to tell the grown man in the mirror how ashamed of him I am for failing at grace so quickly after committing to mission living in his morning devotion.

Still, the stitches of forgiveness are made with a spool from above and a bobbin below, so I’ll bob and weave my part while God supplies the good stuff from above. As today’s AA meeting closed with the Lord’s Prayer, I heard “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” a little differently. God and I are stitching a tapestry, making something new of many tattered shreds. It’s His masterpiece; I’m just submitting to His work.

The stitches of forgiveness are made with a spool from above and a bobbin below.

 

“He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Revelation 21:5, NIV

“But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” Matthew 6:15, NIV

 

 

Broken but not severed

What an evolution of thought plagued me while en route to my recovery meeting this morning! I didn’t want to go, but I knew I need to be involved. I almost gave into the impulse to do what I wanted rather than what I knew. Then it hit me like a big bang: I have to go to a recovery meeting, because when I begin to think I don’t need a meeting or the program, my thoughts betray that I am the sickest one in my head, and maybe even the sickest one in the meeting room I’m trying to avoid.

“Abstinence” in Overeaters Anonymous (or anywhere else, including the dictionary) is the action of refraining. (Technically, OA’s official definition of abstinence elaborates, but I shortened it for emphasis.) My personal declaration of abstinence has several food types and behaviors, but the primary point of my abstinence is that I will refrain from the “F- it, I’m eating!” response. (“F- it” is shorthand for “Forget it!” If you thought otherwise, get your mind out of the gutter. If you didn’t think otherwise, get real!) That’s the nature of my disorder – to know what I should do but do what I want in a given circumstance. If I am not careful, I can live in any number of “F- it”s that have nothing to do with my primary addiction of food.

“That’s the nature of my disorder – to know what I should do but do what I want”

I’m in good company according to reliable historical documents. My great-to-the-Nth-power grandparents, Adam and Eve, had one ordinance to follow in Eden. Wouldn’t you know it was a food-related abstinence rule! (Who says God doesn’t care about what we eat?) The sticky part of this bun is that when what they wanted conflicted with what they knew, they chose to block God out and indulge in the ripe, juicy succulence of the tree of “thou shalt not.”

I don’t know if it’s every human’s experience, because the only human I’ve ever been is me. I know, though, that the dysfunction caused by this tug of war between what the higher self knows and the lower self feels like is so powerful that it took the Creator of Earth coming down from Heaven to pay for the discrepancy and remind humans of the priority. So it must be more common than rare.

“…tug of war between what the higher self knows and the lower self feels like…”

The epiphany dawning on my cranial committee today is that if I am living in half of my “thou shalt not” statement then I’m 50% across the line already, whether I’m stuffing my face or not. When I permit myself to say, “F- it, I’m watching TV instead of studying,” or, “F- it, I’m buying that expensive item even though I’m out of money,” or, “F- it, I’m sick of caging my rage, I’ll let the fur fly this once,” I’m doing just as much spiritual damage to myself (and those around me) as if I had stopped by the bakery for a dozen doughnuts and destroyed the evidence down my gullet before arriving home. In fact maybe even more since, in the process, I’m lying to myself about how “recovered” I am and how little I need a recovery program in my life  just because my bathroom scales don’t groan when I get on them anymore.

“…if I am living in half of my “thou shalt not” statement then I’m 50% across the line already…”

The pretentious me (okay, more pretentious me) used to look at addicts of other substances or behaviors and say, “At least I don’t have it that bad.” The truth is, I have it worse than anyone when I’m thinking that way. Jesus observed two similar people in Luke 18:11, when he condemned the Pharisee who thought he was shiny stuff compared to the “sinners” around him. Frankly, the comparison is lopsided in my direction anyway, since the alcoholic or drug addict have to go to special lengths and pay tariffs or drug dealers to get their teeter to totter and it only takes a sandwich to make me crazy. Clearly, I’m still in need of a Savior. Daily. Hourly. Ok, each breath is a do-over. I’ll get the next one right.

 

“I’m a very important passenger car following at exactly the right distance from my Higher Power, the only Engine that can…”

Truth is I’m not The Little Engine that Could, but I’m not the caboose either. (Don’t you dare call me a “Bozo on the bus!” I have a problem with clowns.) Instead I’m a very important passenger car following at exactly the right distance from my Higher Power, the only Engine that can, and He is faithful to provide exactly what I need to follow in line as long as I stay connected to Him. Want on this train? Hitching in is optional, progress is our destination, and anytime you want off your first dozen doughnuts is on me. Okay, not really. Considering the train wreck I have been, I’m just happy to be on a track at all and linked with such fine people as those in recovery from various addictions. Thanks for sharing the journey, for going ahead or falling in behind. We make this thing go when we link together and drag each other along.

Hiding from One Makes Me the Monster

Photo credit: Woman’s Day

Confession time! The transformation of recovery isn’t complete when Self keeps taking charge.

For the last couple weeks, I have moved, for the most part, into a guest bedroom in my house, partially to study without disturbing my precious bride, but mostly to hide from disappointment. I have repeatedly told the one who loves me that I was giving her “space to have her own way.” The truth is I have grown increasingly impatient, even intolerant, with her decisions lately. I have judged her actions as being based on her whim and emotion, when they are more than likely only lacking what I would deem an appropriate level of consideration of my own will, wish, and way. Either way, I am using isolation as a shield for disappointment, whether the expectations that feed it are realistic and fair or not.

Last night, while I fell asleep alongside her for a change, my mind and mouth were engaged even in the twilight of wakefulness. In the mental fog where the lies that support justifications begin to buckle under the weight of truth, I had some profound thoughts that escaped by way of mumbled, almost hypnotic, verbal expression. I confessed to my precious bride that, more than anything else, I am afraid of her. Not that I am afraid of her intentions or convictions, but that her intellect is not behind the wheel. After acknowledging my fear that her emotional navigation would run us, or more accurately – me, amok, I was forced to acknowledge that isolating myself from her to prevent injury puts my own emotions at the helm of my life, and so, constitutes me becoming the monster of which I was afraid.

The last thought I remember uttering before drifting off was that she is worth whatever pain I may experience, whatever it takes. As I recall what Christ endured for His Church (Ephesians 5:25), I am reminded that I have “not yet suffered to the point of shedding (my) blood” (Hebrews 12:4). I have not done everything I can. I have avoided pain by disengaging. I have behaved according to my own self-interest rather than sacrificing myself “as an act of worship” (Romans 12:1) giving preference to those around me. “As a dog returns to his vomit” (Proverbs 26:11) I have put Self on the throne of God yet again!

“Selfishness – self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity…” (AA, 62).

Holy Father, rescue me from the bondage of self!* I have wandered back into my old cage, and it is dark and lonely in here. Deliver me so I can be relevant to those You have placed in my path, and that You, not me, may be glorified. Make Your light shine on me and reflect onto others, that they may be attracted to You and discover for themselves that You are able and willing to deliver us from our prisons, no matter how comfortable we have made them. Empower me to do Your will only always. Through Christ our Lord, amen!

 

* (a variation of AA’s Step Three Prayer, Alcoholics Anonymous, page 63)