****Potential trigger warning for recovering alcoholics and substance users; my story in part, with alcohol.****

The thing about recovery is no one is coming to do it for you. No one is coming to save you. You need to find the will within yourself and in your faith (I hope you have one) to allow yourself to live your best life possible.

Life doesn’t end when the partying does, it just begins.

I liked to drink. I liked the dissolution of my defenses, allowing me to feel free for a change. Free from constant posing, ridicule and perfection. I’d get drunk just to loosen up and feel free. Free from everything I was told that I was supposed to be and wasn’t. Free from the shame that was placed upon me for not being something remarkable, like the people I was being compared to. Free from the judging voices that took up residence in my head. I could finally drown is all out with some drinks.

Drinking used to make me happy until I didn’t know who I was anymore. Alcohol made me happy until I realized I had to live with whatever consequences from the decisions that alcoholic me had made. Alcoholic me lived in the moment, YOLO— right? Alcoholic me wanted to feel the warmth of a good-looking man beside her. Alcoholic me fueled off of caffeine, mac and cheese and cigarettes when she wasn’t drinking. Alcoholic me did not give a fuck about anyone else but herself. Well, she did but it was mostly to serve her own ego or agenda and on her terms. Alcoholic me didn’t think straight, couldn’t think straight even when she wasn’t actively drinking.

I used to quit for 6 months at a time, just to remind myself that I was better than other alcoholics and that I was still under control. But man, when that 6 months was up, it took no time at all to get back up to a bottle of vodka a night or a case and a half of beer. I made so many stupid life decisions that had I been sober, I wouldn’t have consorted with the people and places that I did, ever. Alcohol shaded everything I did in my life. It also gave me a way to fit in, in a world I have always felt like a foreigner in. A world that I still feel like a foreigner in. One of my favorite scriptures always was; Romans 12:2
Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

1 Peter 2:11
Beloved, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from the desires of the flesh, which war against your soul.

1 John 2:15-17
Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. / For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not from the Father but from the world. / The world is passing away, along with its desires; but whoever does the will of God remains forever.

I went to Celebrate Recovery. It was on a Thursday night, every week. I didn’t need it like maybe other people do but I needed to be there, where I was seen and understood whilst decompressing from my addiction. But it wasn’t just the addiction, it was what drove me to it. It was the pain of being here, the pain of being rejected by the people who brought me here, rejected by those who said they loved me. That was my pain. The pain of being such a loving soul in such a cruel world. I remember as a child doing kind things for strangers and being ridiculed, not because I was being unsafe but because my love revealed their hatred. It still does.

Jesus wasn’t a man of this world, he was a rule breaker by this world’s standards. He got angry. It was a holy anger. I think there is much we do not know about his story and it would be foolish to fill in the blank spaces with human reasoning. Jesus operated at a level that most people spend their entire lives trying to achieve yet you achieve it by not trying. You let go. You release your grip on everything that you thought that you were and lean into God, lean into your innate inner being where God resides. You ARE the arc of the covenant. You are the dwelling space of God. Heaven is within you but many of us make it hell instead.

This is why the flesh must be disciplined and crucified. I don’t like sermons much anymore. They’re explained away when Christ’s words were as plain as day for those who have ears to hear.

I put down the bottle, I quit smoking too. I take care of my vessel God has given me and I listen to that space within me that knows how to navigate this life better than my best ever attempt at it. I’m wise enough to share what I know but I’m humble enough to know that I know nothing. I am an ordained minister but that doesn’t make me any more of an authority than anyone else. I just wanted to be the hands and feet of Christ. It’s what I was when I was a child, I was compelled to, naturally. Life became painful when I was told NOT to be. It was bad. I was bad… but I wasn’t. That was the lie. So, I sought to escape the lie.

This June will be 15 years sober. I’ve never woke up in the morning regretting what I did the night before in these 15 years time. My life hasn’t been easy by any stretch of the imagination, in fact, I’d say it’s been soul crushing. But I have my faith that keeps me going. My faith has changed a lot over the years, it’s an eclectic tapestry of what I’ve experienced and learned over my lifetime in combination with the vital sources of hope that have been left behind for all of us. I’m still alive by the grace of God, the source of all things… and I will continue to share my story here and else where.

Blessings x