Do you believe in change?

And, before you answer that, do you still pray?

Recently, it’s been another Pauleene pedantic processing season. You’d think this idea that we can arrive would have worn off by now on me, but alas.

I’m not sure where I lost myself. Somewhere in childhood, and before high school, my person was a fractured, wild, and self-centered mess that tried to be a people pleaser and perfect child with a wild ass rebel side… “complicated” was a description of myself I had grown tired of and was focused on becoming whole, or turning my red yarn brain into a whole seamless unit.

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.”

— Brené Brown

A Speedrun of the Egoic Growth

It has been a long recovery and spiritual journey to finally find some peace and wholeness. Because my dumbass brain, my default setting was needing to learn things “my way,” all at once, and everything before I could fully commit. Ego and intellect had been teaming up to speedrun emotional and spiritual growth, so I could feel comfortable in my responsibilities, faults, and giftings. The last few years have brought on a level of hyper-awareness that alcohol once solved, and I was stepping off the hamster wheel of hyper-intellectualization.

I had terms, language, theology, exegesis, an “authentic” marketing and development business, and a freaking personal development framework. “Fake it until you make it” was something I had told my step-father almost two years ago, I couldn’t afford to do… and still had been doing. Doing everything in my head was a really bad habit that got more complicated later in life.

My sobriety started with some simple rules to follow and practice; an early one was stolen from Jordan Peterson: “just don’t lie.” It took a while for that to become anything like real. And, I’m not the same person I was 4 ½ years ago… but neither was I that forthright, honest, or healthy a person for that time. A lot of medicine was needed.

A lot of the work recently has been making the massive leap from survival tactics and behavioral hacks like “just don’t lie” to actually becoming comfortable with “rigorous honesty.” I had learned an art to painting myself in a corner and was using it and everyting at my disposal to restore sanity and force my butt ot grow up. That was working for a bit, dealing with real things and making progress, until it wasn’t.

It’s been profoundly emotional and personal, deeply rooted in my past and perspectives, not a quick fix as I had always hoped for. It’s four years’ worth of harder work than I’ve ever done in my life (not that said much before). A lot of tears had to be shed just to get simple truths from my head into my bones.

Some outside circumstances and situations exaggerated it. The number of people I’d hurt was ever-present while I continued to play my part in the messes of my life. There were some people I had put myself with who didn’t help and caused unneeded harm.

Clearly, I had put myself there and needed to learn how and why I dragged myself through it all, and how much I had also hurt people. There was much more I was blind to than I could have imagined back then. Even all the “unfair” situations taught me about my past and the behavior I had once inflicted on others: “your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23). There was no more room for either complaints or excuses.

The number of lessons, synchronicities, and signs I was getting screamed there was ample room for growth. While I had grown a lot, and the path had finally been cleared for more, it was time.

“Pain is part of the process. It’s important to feel it… if you continue to overindulge in various substances or activities, then you’ll never generate the requisite motivation to actually change.”

— Mark Manson

Dopamine Detoxing & Layer Removal

Over the last 40 days, I was trying to be more into the fellowship (AA), serve authentically and selflessly, get healthy, and really move on to 2026. Tapering down dopamine across multiple avenues was important, and getting over loneliness and codependency. Not hermiting and following through on obligations was one half of the work; reining in my self-centered ego and healing a broken heart was another. In short, it was a spiritual thing—I was still two halves, wavering between two sides. Before there were reasons and circumstances at play, sure, but those had come to an end.

It was about five years ago that I began attending AA. Later that September, I detoxed on suicide watch, which led immediately to my second rehab.

From there was training in addiction counseling, nearly completing an MBA, and becoming a certified suicide prevention trainer and curriculum writer. That was a few years ago. In the last two years, I “had” to build things like Drunk Pastor, stigmamarketing.com, and everyhumansjourney.com, as well as write a book, and study a metric butt-ton just to piece back “reality.” In Reality, I was also chasing down my shadows while the hounds of Heaven barked in the background. These things helped piece me back together more.

AA had been stripping layers away. My Higher Power and spiritual “program” were moving mountains.

That was a long-winded way of saying the last almost month and a half has been rather enlightening, freeing, and something I’m grateful for. It also meant more responsibility and accountability—more work.

Dirt & Ash

So, this last Sunday, I was welcomed for a second sweat lodge ceremony. While preparing, they taught us about the meaning of rituals and items, and how the ceremony had already begun, so we were to be praying and thinking “good thoughts” for our family and ancestors.

Which is why the sweat was perfect for me: it forced stillness and naming people rather than latching on to a theological claim or personal grievance. Being completely open, honest, and willing (or teachable) was still a distant concept, but it was coming. The first sweat lodge taught me how to pray, and more about how self-centered I had been.

This second sweat, I came to “pray hard” and die more. The long study that my Higher Power dragged me through Elijah and Elisha, analytically and intellectually, exposed such a level of self-obsessed performance and emotional immaturity that it disgusted me.

We stacked something like 21 stones, “mothers and fathers,” someone carefully called them. I prayed for everyone I could. I tried my best to just be present, available, grateful, and receptive. And myself. They’re a fun group, a loving one. Eclectic, rich with personality and complexity. A good group of them are in recovery. They were doing something, or being something, I want to become more of. They have ways I couldn’t learn in Bible college. Prayer was one example.

Coming out of it, I was lighter. There were tears, beating of chest, lying prostrate, praying, while I hoped the Holy Spirit would suck my sinful and selfish nature out of me into dirt and ash. At one point, my hands were on the ground while I was trying to pray for a family member. It was piercingly freeing.

I wanted to be more loving, to be more useful, to be more free, to be more at peace, to be able to stand and serve, to be who I knew my kids and friends knew I could be. And that meant more of me needed to be left in the dirt.

A few months ago, I was reading a small notebook sent with me to my second rehab. There was a letter in there from a once-good friend who mentioned people needing my gifts, and another about remembering my calling. Back then, I wrote letters to them but never sent them. I still knew I was still sick, not ready. There was a decent chance I’d cause more harm.

So, calling and gifts have been something haunting me as they were becoming alive, while also being a selfish dick, trying to be useful and kind, but still having the Elijah-Jacob archetype that was full of unresolved drama and chaos. There wasn’t much I needed to understand anymore; there were no excuses.

Within the time of exiting the sweat and first checking my phone, a message had come. It was something that was intriguing in regard to timing. I was committed to quitting nicotine, and another temptation that had been boundaried was fishing again. I was fine, and it was clarifying. Still dug some things up, which was healthy. Then a few things happened in AA, from someone’s share, I know, to family, and business, that opened up. While I didn’t make it past Monday with nicotine, the new level of dopamine—not perfect but low enough—that I had breath, the ability to hear myself think, to be more present, shut up, and to start catching myself more. This week was rather humbling. Again… And I needed it, and need more.

“To become the person we can become, we must drop the rock—all the grasping and holding on to old patterns of behaving, thinking, and feeling that are harmful to ourselves and to others.”

— Drop The Rock

Dropping Rocks Like They’re Hot

There’s a reason I asked if you pray still, then after, if you believed in change.

I’ve been rereading Drop the Rock. Four years ago, I read it. There are underlines, notes, and some sticky notes. But it’s a completely new book to me. Tonight, I read about how prayer is a special time for someone named Kris:

“Prayer is a special time I share with God. Prayer is the means I use to talk with God and to listen as God communicates with me. When I pray, I become still and I quiet any unrest within me. I reaffirm my oneness with my Higher Power, and I find the answers I seek.

I do not limit my prayers to a certain time or a particular place. Whenever a small success enters my life or a moment of joy illuminates my day, I silently thank God for those blessings. Every time I affirm God as the source of my good and give thanks for the many channels through which it comes, I am praying to God.

Prayer enables me to know and feel that I am a beloved child of God. I am needed because I can be an expression of good in my world. I am a useful person.”

Tears of gratitude were coming down my face, again, while I chuckled with something like sorrow. There was a lot that had to happen before that paragraph could have hit me the way it did—something of resonance and connection, of knowing another human soul.

There are still layers… If Shrek’s layers were an onion, I would be a puff pastry bakery. Or the red ball of yarn metaphor might fit better.

Prayer has brought peace, Scripture has cut through bone and marrow, and Jesus has kept teaching me while God has continued that work He started a lot longer ago than I realized. It has helped change become a real thing, and not just an object of study or performative preaching. I have found myself, and only by losing myself in surrendering to God.

There are still guard rails, signal flares, and insecure, immature habits and patterns. I’m still an ass, and my pride is something that’s going to take more proactive work to dismantle completely. There was a small part of me that wanted to use all of this work to be “proof” of recovery, so people would believe me. So much of it was backasswards, and still God blessed it.

Trusting the Changer, not the Changeling

I’m countering the bullshit. The bigger truth is this wasn’t performance for an audience; it was a long-brewing, crazy-ass Paule experiment—one I had to go through. In everything, this spiritual growth and path was the inevitable result of over two years of blogging and getting back down to the basics of a spiritual recovery. The performative and self-conscious masking are on their way out, learning to be genuinely authentic and grateful instead of selfish. One of the hardest things right now is trusting change and allowing it to be real.

Today, I’m freer, lighter, and clearer, again. When I started over 4 years ago, it was an abrupt turn, then another about a year later, and another year after. Easter is coming. Those detours that took years were needed to get back on the path I was on before even moving to Missoula. It was a crucible and a long, juicy study in soul searching, and a gauntlet of mistakes, and searching for answers. I got, in some sense, what I asked for, on a lot of levels. And it was perfect.

Tomorrow morning, my sponsor and I are taking me through Step 4 again, which is about searching and fearless moral inventory. I’m set on doing this round well with another human being and in the presence of my God. 40 years old, self-obsessed, and well-guarded, fake-Paule, that I am also tired of.

I must become less so that He might increase.