Have you ever felt like you were in a wilderness? I felt like that in early sobriety. I couldn’t
see my way out of the fog and shame. The road seemed like it was blocked to
everyone but me. Others had gotten sober easily. It looked like it was
effortless for them, but when I began to listen to their stories, I heard a pattern; addiction puts us all in a self-centered
place like that of a wilderness. While we drink or use, we don’t attempt our
way out. We are content to be lost. Oh yes, we cry out to God in self-pity, but
not in earnest sorrow. Finally we come close to death and we are dying of
thirst. We grab onto God with our last ounce of hope. And say, “Help me! I’m
ready now!”
That is when things shift. Though we are still in the
wilderness, we can see others in the distance who also are finding their way
out. We hear their cries. We see them trip and fall. We find the small pool of
water and begin to drink. We see that
there is a way out though it is a long and difficult trip. We find that we cannot trust our sight or our
feelings. We have to trust the instinct of God’s Spirit in our gut. We have to trust people that don’t even look
trustworthy. We have to trust that weakness is good and we have to trust that
what we think we need may be the opposite of what we really need. I remember
saying, “They are flat our wrong to say that I need to go to work washing
dishes when I have a master’s degree!” It turns out they were right. I needed to prove my humility in a
concrete way. I required hands-on humbling. My own ideas were almost always
wrong because of my narcissistic beliefs and delusional rightness. I had to
be trained to believe that correction and truth come in many forms. When I was
in early sobriety, helping a drunk was an experience that proved life changing.
The smell of the alcohol, vomit, and the 3-day body odor, combined with the
slurred speech, and convulsive eyes went a long way towards my new reality. I
didn’t want to go back after that day. I didn’t want to drink again after I
helped that drunk.
The way out of the wilderness was not what I thought it
would be. Life is still that way. When I think I have the answer, I’m learning
to stop and think again.
