I Couldn’t Fix Myself

“God creates out of nothing. Wonderful, you say. Yes, to be sure, but He does what is still more wonderful: He makes saints out of sinners.”
— Søren Kierkegaard

It was a good morning.

Yesterday I was visiting a friend who checked himself into the hospital because he wasn’t doing well. Recently, I’ve been encouraged by the bravery and honesty of people in early sobriety.

Being in that hospital was the second time I was there this year, both times for someone else, under different circumstances. I already shared about the first time. This second time hit from a different angle. With Step 4-6 stuff on my mind for a few months now, there’s been some reflection, to say the least, in the last 24 hours.

Recovery hasn’t been linear. Through a lot of learning the hard way, and what felt like radical means of therapy, including IFS, sweat lodges, coaches, and studying…oodles of journaling, confessions, and deluges of crying. Sh!t, how I’ve cried, and deserved so much of it. I was such a dirty sinner, and Jesus has been healing me, bringing my insane self back to enough sanity that smiles are creeping back into the wild again. I’m really grateful.

Mornings still include journaling, smudging, meditation, prayers, and a few shamanic practices—things CBT and AA have also helped with. Then, there’s a time for “creativity” and Scriptural exploration while listening to worship, and I try to surrender to it. God crushed me over and over again with sobbing tears over what He revealed over the last year. It was driving both a melancholy and aggressive edge, my anxiety and discontentment. I was sitting in and wading through a lot of shit, trying to survive.

Surrender is something I could learn, but I did learn how to avoid it. Maybe this is what most of “unlearning” is.

There was so much good, too. A breathtaking amount. People who, from well before sobriety, I could not have made it without.

It’s been hard to explain why it’s taken so long to be comfortable with my voice and the words coming out. To crawl out of my shell. It’s still a work in progress. That was, in small part, why. Going from backasswards to some level of sober-mindedness and peace has meant sometimes eating my way out of my old ass-ness. Ugh.

And Another Reason Is What Follows:

About two years ago, after leaving one job and trying to figure out what was wrong with me and figure out what I believed, I had a doctor’s appointment. They have a mental health prescreening, and every answer screamed I was dying on the inside. Suicidality was crawling its way back up.

It’s not that way anymore. Praise God, it’s different. Not perfect, but progress—and I love saying that. Walking out of the same place yesterday where I once was the one being checked in. There’s no word for it. It was just good.

Bending the knee to Jesus, almost two years ago, was worth the price. I called His name, and the Dude listened: Stubborn goad. I couldn’t fix myself. Jesus was the only way.

Peace, faith, holiness, goodness, love, contentment, acceptance, awareness… these and the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) are realities of Heaven existing within our hearts, minds, souls, and bodies. Scripture’s promises are for this life. Church—Heaven on Earth—Blessed Community—is when we can have that with others, regardless of our conditions, because agape is unconditional, as is God’s goodness and presence.

To be in Christ is to see what Christ sees in the other and let them see the same in us, to lay our crowns back on the earth we mined them from, and to dance with reality with a smile in our hearts. Salvation is an inside job.

If this sounds too good to be true, welcome to the audacity of Scripture and the Gospel, what I was trying to figure out until It figured me out, and what Jesus meant about the people who weren’t willing to have faith: willful ignorance, stubborn denial, elaborate systems, convenient excuses, and well-justified resentments. It’s amazing what an alcoholic will do to fill the hole in their heart, and what eight billion people will do to avoid the Great Soul hanging over each of our shoulders, waiting beneath the bottom of our pits.

To learn why you could never trust yourself, and finally deal with why others won’t. To confess sin and be healed. To walk in the light as He is in the light, with others. To have resurrection heal our dead ways. To forgive and be forgiven.

To create at will, to love that which left you, and to trust humanity enough to take the risks others don’t get yet. To allow Jesus to stop knocking and fully come in to live in every cell, neuron, and breath we take. To be the spark we see in other people’s eyes, to will good for all humanity—peace on earth, not just as an ethereal concept, but f*cking concrete.

This is where Christ meets us, and we can walk with Him.

The divides, voids we scream into, thoughts we suppress, responsibilities we avoid, manic delusions we all justify, fear of responsibility, comfortable pride of being better off than others, traps of leadership, and comfort of complaining—we are the common denominator in all our excuses.

For all my Christian brothers and sisters who call on the name of Jesus, and those who gave up on Christianity but not Jesus (or at least know He didn’t give up on them): It’s all there. It’s all real. Every blessed word. You can trust Him, and He’s honest about the cost. It’s all the old bullshit, addictions, justifications, apathy, fears, avoided conversations, greed, and the boastful pride of life. Everything the Scriptures warned us against.

The Ancient Paths still speak (Jeremiah 6:16). The Creator whispers to each one of us through the noise. If we can’t walk on water yet, we can at least learn to swim, and maybe take the hand reached out to us. Jesus is available to bring us through to the other side, to walk with Him as friends, not slaves. He’s good and worthy of trust. It’s been two thousand years, and I’m so tired of waiting, holding back, watching humanity rip itself apart, and my part in it.

I know I’m not alone.