God Rescues Me With Phone Call

[Sometimes God rescues us before we even know we needed rescuing]

1130pm on a Sunday night, I anxiously sit in my living room chair, ruminating on a slow boiling anger within my spirit. Although helplessly attempting to write a much needed daily journal entry, I can’t seem to focus any energy on anything other than the angry feeling in my diaphragm. A toxic mixture of past memories, unfortunate relationships, and much more misguided resentments, clutter my racing mind, acting as the deadly catalyst for the physical manifestation of the ever growing rage flooding my senses like an earth shattering tsunami.

Buzz..buzz..buzz.. “ugh what the hell man,” I think aloud, pessimistically apprehensive about answering the phone. Upon checking the caller ID I send their call to voicemail due to the fact that I don’t even begin to have the necessary amount of emotional, mental, nor spiritual fortitude required to have a conversation with them. Truth be told this person, a fellow addict, always randomly calls me late at night after spending most of their evening drinking/getting high, anxiously wanting to tell me how bad their life is, and why they “have” to do something different. Common and practical sense say that when someone is intoxicated, it is nearly impossible to offer them any kind of receptive, meaningful solution, much less get through to them in a constructively helpful way. Those conversations are almost always losing battles, and are better saved for the following morning when someone sobers up. Experience has shown me, through my own drunken calls as well as being on the receiving end, that if someone is truly ready for solution, at some point the late night “woe-is-me” phone calls cease.

However, as I sit there stewing in my melting pot of rage, something doesn’t feel right about letting this call go unanswered. So, against my better judgement, I stop what I’m doing, and call back.

Ive learned that one of the most important things about being in “fit spiritual condition”, per my program of recovery, is that sometimes God will call an audible against my usual routine, and if I’m not in the most overall receptive spiritual condition that I can be in, it will go right over my head, without second thought. Sometimes God will say, “Hey, I know this is how you usually do it, I know this is what the standard protocol calls for, but right now we are going to try something different.” It can be nerve racking to go against the usual grain, but often times I’ve found that this is where spiritual growth resides. Tonight, I chose to go against the grain.

[God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves]

“Hey brother sorry I missed your call, whats going on?” I say with grace and ease, fully expecting another drunken rant regarding why the Doctors, Nurses, Family Member, or any other plethora of easy targets were to blame for their continuous relapse. Surprisingly, none of the usual suspects are to blame. Instead of being met with obnoxious, delusional rhetoric, I’m met with tears, tears from a hard knocked grown man who can hold his own under any circumstance that life throws at him, except this one, apparently. As it has been for centuries before, and will continue to be for centuries to come, a broken man, especially the externally “tough” man, is no match for the horrors of silent solitude.

“Mannnn I done did it again Spence,” he whispers as he cries. “I don’t know why I keep doin’ this shit man, I can’t keep doin’ this!” The tough guy persona which he carries, innocently born years ago as a much needed defense mechanism for his tumultuous upbringing, all but disappears, finally revealing some much needed honesty which has continuously evaded him. “I’m killing myself man, I used to be so alive, but now I’m so dead,” words that ring true to my ears, reminding me of the gut wrenching pain of years of regret, compounded into one dark moment in time.

I’ve seen some scary things, and have met some even more scary people in my life, the likes of which I would choose to forget, if it were up to me. However, although “pitchforks and demons” can haunt a man’s dreams, the soul crushing depths of regret are what can and will haunt a man’s spirit, robbing him of his intrinsic being, eating him alive from the inside out. “I used to be so alive, but now I’m so dead.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

You see my friend, whether he is consciously aware of it or not, is not looking for a way “out” of this valley of distress he finds himself in. That solution is quite simple. No, my friend is looking for a way “back”, helplessly searching for a way to go back in time before everything fell apart. He’s grieving the wasted years, the wasted potential, the childlike sense of wonder which defined him, oh so long ago, something most of us addicts can relate to. The truth is, metaphorically speaking, if my problem in life were to simply get off the ground where I had been laying, and walk through the door in front of me, then I would never have needed to drink or drug in the first place. That’s an easy fix, and there would be no reason to seek an escape. Sadly, my problem in life is that the “door” closed a long long time ago, and can’t be reopened. Now, lying on the metaphorical ground in the house of my life, I’m faced with the gargantuan task of accepting my losses, and all the horrific emotions that go with them, or choosing to deny they exist, diving head first into the bottle and or substance. In theory, it seems simple enough. Admit defeat, accept the consequences, and move on right? In reality, as I have learned, if it were that easy, everyone would be doing it.

 Facing your true unadulterated self, and all that goes with it, takes a sense of courage, honesty, and humility that tends to evade most people. Congregating with the skeletons in one’s closet is akin to taking a sledgehammer to every belief system you have ever known, smashing your entire being into a zillion pieces, all the while having zero guarantees that you will ever be able to rekindle any semblance of yourself, or who you thought you were. Sadly, most people are never blessed with enough desperation, usually in the form of dire circumstances, to ever need to venture to those dark waters. Why fix it if it’s not broke? How could you fix it in the first place, even if it was, if you weren’t even conscious of your own brokenness? As they say, ignorance is bliss. There’s very few worse feelings, in my experience, than being completely aware of ones own dismal, shattered existence, yet not even beginning to have the ability to do anything about it. On this dreary Sunday evening, this is where my friend finds himself.

There’s a saying in the rooms of recovery, “When all else fails, nothing will ensure immunity from drinking/drugging like working with another alcoholic/addict.” I have found this saying to ring true for my own recovery, especially on nights like tonight. Cognitively, focusing my attention on someone else immediately takes me out of my own head, far away from my own emotions, which gives my mind, body, and spirit time to come back to ground zero. Its essentially a philanthropic form of distraction. But on a more serious, spiritual basis, focusing on another alcoholic/addict who is in a worse place than I am, a place where I used to be, not only reminds me of where I could be, but also reminds me of how far God has brought me. There is a supernatural power, which I can’t explain, that comes from helping others.

You see, I often don’t even realize when the ship of my life starts to sink. Addiction is a subtle, sneaky bitch from hell. It’s akin to having a virus that is always evolving, diligently searching for the cracks in one’s proverbial armor to weasel its way back in control of your system. For me, this usually starts with resentment, aka fear. I reminisce on how I was wronged by people, places or things. I start to remember the anger, embarrassment, and or sadness which follows. From there, the path becomes darker. I start fantasizing on how I wish I would have handled that situation, the choice words I should have used, and the spiteful action of revenge I would have enlisted. By this time, my blood starts to boil, my fight or flight instincts start to react, and my spirit starts to harden. Then, seemingly out of the clear blue sky, an innocent thought pops into my head, clear out of left field, “You know what you should do? You should go get high! That will show them.” Drinking poison hoping someone else dies, this is addiction in a nutshell.

What us addicts and alcoholics are taught is that somewhere between the initial dark thought, and the dangerous left turn down the path of darkness, we need to quickly incite our program of recovery, lest we fall prey to the fast approaching freight train leading us to the point of no return. However, being a mortal man, there are often times when I am either unaware of the potentially dangerous situation I am walking into or I simply choose to not use the tools in my toolkit to find freedom from my own bondage of self. It is at these times, looking back, where I can clearly see God has thrown me a much needed life line, doing for me what I couldn’t do for myself. In the moment, this seemingly innocent laborious phone call was nothing more than a perceived nuisance of my time. However, after the fact, I can clearly see how God used that phone call to rescue me from myself, in a moment where I wasn’t aware of my need to be rescued, before it was too late.

Working an honest program of recovery means following a few simple concrete steps, then doing the best I can with what I have. It’s not about perfection, it’s about progress. It’s about consistently following through with the steps I need to take, then trusting that God will carry me when I am unable to carry myself.

[Spencer Brooks Otto]