Consequences: It's never my fault!

Definition
Consequences: something produced by a cause or necessarily following from a set of conditions

Some days I wish that I could pass blame for my life to someone, or something else. Trust me, I spent a good part of my life resting, in perfect peace, that my life was someone else's fault. My marriage was a mess because of the example that I had. I drank so much because I had to deal with all that guilt and shame that I had learned growing up. I gained so much weight because something was wrong with my body. All of those things were true, but not an excuse.

We are prepared for our adult life by a set of people that, most likely, had the same type of childhood that we did. If I'm not at fault for the adult life because of my parents, then how can my parents be held responsible? Did they not have parents too? My Grandparents are wonderful people, but they sucked as parents to my Mom. Great! That means that I can blame my Grandparents for my horrible choices! What? Oh. You're right, they had parents too. Then who in the hell am I supposed to blame?

How 'bout I blame the person responsible. What say I blame the person that ate anything and everything that he could get his hands on. I think that some blame goes to the person that was controlling and verbally abusive to his wife. Let's not forget to blame the guy that was guzzling whiskey from the bottle at six in the morning and would not stop until he blacked out or ran out of drink.

I did all those things. Me. I can't pass the buck any longer. I have to take personal responsibility for my life. Right now, it appears that I'm going to fall 'victim' to the economic woes of this world; I'm going to lose my house. Victim? I bought a house with no money down on an interest only loan for 5 years. Sound like a 'victim' to you? Me neither. It is me paying the consequences for making a poor decision.

Part of sobriety is placing the blame where it belongs. I can no longer afford to side-step my role in my own life. I make my own choices, I make my own decisions, and I pay for them; good or bad.

It feels good to take ownership. It feels good to feel horrible about the poor choices and to work through it. We hurt people along the way. When I own my actions, I can make amends and move on.

I am not a bad person, but I have made bad choices. All I can do it try to do the next 'right' thing.

Stay strong and help someone else out today.

Johnny

Stumble It!

Let Go, Let God...is it that easy?

"God is not moved by my tears, or by my fear. He is only moved by my faith."

That is what my younger brother, Justin, told me two nights ago. It was one of those weird statements that I heard and acknowledged, but it did not sit right. It hung in the back of my throat like a swallow of bad milk.

You mean that if I cry that God does not really care? When I am scared God moves on to listen to someone else?

It was not that I did not understand what Justin was saying. The problem was that, for the first time, I actually understood that statement.

In A.A. we use the term, "Let Go and Let God" quite a bit. What does that mean? It means have faith. I have to believe that God is on my side. I have to believe that if He is on my side then nobody and no "thing" can stand against me. I cannot claim to have faith and then be worried about what is going to happen to my home in this economy. I cannot say that I have faith then stress about what will happen to my job if GM goes bankrupt. I have to let it all go and let God do what he has promised. He is concerned for me and wants what is best for me, but what is best for me is to have complete faith that He will provide for me.

Justin made another comment that made perfect sense to me...for the first time ever. He said that, "fear is faith, just in the wrong thing." Faith is the belief in something not seen. Fear is a belief in something that most likely has not happened yet. So, when I fear for the future of my home, I am believing in something that I cannot see. I have faith in it.

I have come a long way in not worrying about my life, I have not perfected it, but I am making progress in the right direction. I have to let God do His part and I have to do mine. Mine is not to worry about anything, but in all things to give Him praise.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.

Johnny

Stumble It!

He is mine, you can't have Him...

Has the Church missed the mark? I think that the Church is an amazing thing and helps so many people find redemption, but I'm not sure it is exactly what God had in mind. I know too many Christians that are in an incredible amount of pain.

I am not even remotely implying that being a Christian makes you somehow immune to this life, but why isn't there more of a difference between Christians and Non-Christians? I recently had an interesting conversation with a friend. He said that a group has been studying things like divorce, bankruptcy, suicide, etc., for past couple of decades and that statistically there was no difference in the percentages if you were a Christian than if you weren't.

I was wondering how that could be. I haven't done any big study on this, but I was reading someone's story in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. She was one of the first women ever in A.A. She loved the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, but couldn't get past the 'Higher Power' thing. One day she became very angry with some people and decided to show them by getting drunk again. This was when she had her spiritual awakening. In that moment she says that it made perfect sense to her. It wasn't about Religion. It was about freedom. Freedom to live.

Isn't that why Jesus came? Not so that I could be Evangelical Free and you could be Catholic, Methodist, Assembly of God, or Pentecostal. He came so that we could be free. I believe that the goal is to get back to that perfect relationship with God that existed in the Garden. I don't recall a lot of rules for Adam and Eve. Actually, there was just one. As soon as they broke that one rule God had a plan to get us back there; back to perfect communion with Him.

I'm always amazed at how an Alcoholic that has had no relationship with God, ever, gets it so much quicker than a "Christian" does. Maybe it is the desperation involved. However, I think that it revolves around maybe the greatest phrase in Alcoholics Anonymous, "The God of your understanding." I have a friend that said to me, "This is my God, you can't have Him. Find your own." He actually said it like a child with his favorite toy in hand. It really offended me, but later I understood what he was saying. Why would I want to worship the God of my friend's understanding? I have had a different life. I have been through different things. And, don't forget that God wants a unique, personal relationship with me. I guess that is why we are all so different, isn't it?

My Dad is a pastor and he gets a little fidgety when we start talking about "Higher Power" and "God of your understanding". The thing to remember is that I grew up knowing my Dad's God, not mine. I grew up understanding someone else's God and I ended up a drunk because that God couldn't possibly love me. He could forgive me, but only because he had too, not because he loved me.

James 4:8 tells us to draw close to God and He will draw close to us. It is personal. It is unique. The Big Book of A.A. says that if you draw near to God that he will reveal Himself to you. Now, who would you rather hear it from; God or me?

I since have found the God of my understanding. He is the God of the Bible that sent his son to die for me, but He is mine. You can't have Him. Go find Him for yourself.

Stay strong,

Johnny



Stumble It!

Step 2: God, I don't know if you are up there....

We have all seen where the big hero of the movie is desperate. He, or someone that he loves, faces certain doom. On his knees, all sweaty, beaten, and bloodied he looks up and says, "Look, God or whoever you are, if you get me out of this I will never___________."

Here is something that you do not hear everyday about Hollywood: They got it right on this one!

Step 2 for you and I is no different from our humbled hero. He does not really acknowledge God; he does not even know who God is. He simply looks up and says if you are there please help me. That is Step 2.

You see, we have already tried everything that we can think of. Undoubtedly, our movie hero tried to shoot the bad guys, was probably in a car chase with the bad guys, tried his best karate moves on 6 or 7 of the bad guys at once, and still he came up short. He needed help. "I don't know if you are there, but if you are I need your help." I wonder how God feels when he hears that. I believe that my God is almost overwhelmed with joy when one of his kids says that.

Step 2 reads like this: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity

People, there is no conversion here. There is no religion. There is no judgment. There is no punishment. This is just a person that has come to the end of a long rope and believes that if there is not a power greater than themselves out there, then they are screwed anyways, so they might as well give it a shot. The wonderful thing about desperate people is that when they give "something a shot" they typically go all out.

Don't kid yourself, A.A. is firmly rooted in Christianity, but you won't hear it talked about much in those rooms. Why not? The relationship is personal and unique. The relationship begins with a simple, "I don't know if you really exist..." Is that not how most relationships start out? First you get to know someone, then you start to trust them, then the love comes. It is no different with God.

So, it does not really matter where you are at with your Hurt, or your Habit, or your Hangup. According to Step 2, all that really matters is that you concede to the fact that there is something greater than you that can help you with these things. Whether you have a name for that "something greater" or not really does not matter.

We have tried to fix things ourselves, just like our movie hero, and we all end up in the same exact position; on our knees, bruised, and bloodied asking for help.

Johnny

Step 1: How can it help me? I'm not an alcoholic.

Step 1:
We admitted we were powerless over our Hurts, our Habits, and our Hang-ups,
that our lives had become unmanageable.

Is it not interesting that when you replace the word "alcohol" with the 3Hs (Hurts, Habits, and Hang-ups) that meaning of the 1st Step starts to hit home?

We are all broken. The moment Eve took a bite of that apple everything changed. Now, we just try our best to get through it, but life has a way of throwing things at us that make it difficult to cope.

Most of us are raised in a fairly dysfunctional home, or maybe we went through some traumatic event when we were younger. During that time we found what worked for us; what got us through it all. A fair amount of the time, what got us through was not healthy, nor was it affective.

As we grew, we hung on to this coping method. We may have modified it some, but it is still recognizable. You may have the same exact way of dealing with things as you did when you were a kid. However, as I got older, I found something that worked better for me: Alcohol.

What most people don't realize is that had I chose something else, I'd be no better off. I might not have lost 5 years of my life to blackouts and poor decisions, but I still would have been coping instead of dealing.

Drinking was one of my Hurts, Habits, and Hang-ups. What is yours? Anger? Laziness? Maybe you deal with everything by taking nothing seriously. Maybe spending money takes away the bad feelings you have after you get in a fight with your husband. Maybe you don't know how to handle the feeling of being overweight. I could go on a name an endless amount of things that you could be doing to deal with life. Things that are not healthy.

So, what are you powerless over? What has made your life unmanageable?

Fear not my fellow messed up brethren! There are 11 more steps helps you get your life back!

Johnny

God's Part, Our part

"We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us
what we could not do for ourselves."

One of the most exciting feelings that I get is when I "suddenly" realize that change has happened in my life. Typically is goes completely unnoticed by me until a familiar trigger comes my way and I do not want to react the way that always used to.

At the 180Xchange recovery ministry that I am involved in we always talk about God's Part and our part. When we concentrate on doing our part and let God do His part, low and behold, things change!

It is when I do my part and His part that life seems to fall apart. I am reminded of the Carrie Underwood song, "Jesus Take the Wheel". I would have written it just little differently, "Jesus Take the Wheel and then make my hands disappear so that I can not try to take it back from You." I know, I know, it's a little wordy, but it could work.

So many of us think that humility is such a horrible thing, but what humility does is remind us that we should never, "Take the Wheel." I wonder just how much of that is what sums up "Our Part."

I hated change before I got sober. Now it is my daily goal. There is no stress involved in it. It is actually fun for me. Some things change slower than others. Some things have not changed at all. That is okay with me. I have to think that my life is like a big game of Jenga. God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are slowly pulling out each bad block. It is slow and sometimes I sway back and forth when the bad block does not want to come out and one of Them has to tug a little bit. So, if something in my life is not changing or it is just not happening fast enough for me, then it is because if that block was pulled out too soon the entire structure could come crumbling down. Maybe it is like that, maybe it is not, but either way I am going to let Them worry about that. I am just going to keep working on my daily conscious contact with God (my part) and let Him to the rest.

Stay strong and stay sober from whatever it is that you deal with: drugs, alcohol, sex, food, spending, TV, codependency...don't kid yourself, we are all broken and we all need recovery from something. If your church doesn't have an all encompassing recovery program...start one!

Johnny

Live Life on Life's Terms

My wife and I have been in a custody battle for her 11 year old son, Bailey. Kiley, my wife, gave up custody of her son while she was having a drug induced breakdown. She has regretted that decision ever since.

This past March we decided to go for custody because Bailey told us that he wanted to live with us. It is something that we had talked about for quite a while, but this pushed us over the edge. We hired a lawyer and started the process...the long, painful process.

I am not going to go through all the details and this certainly is not all about me, but I want share what I learned about myself through this: I can live life on life's terms.

It really only hit me about 3 weeks ago. I was thinking about how horrible the stress of this was. How worried I was about Kiley and how much I felt for Bailey. I have had a lot of sleepless nights. I have had a lot of bad days at work. I have been short with people. I have not eaten well. I missed too much church. However, not once did I think that I would be better off taking a drink.

Before sobriety, I simply was not cut out for living life. I could not cope with anything. The most mundane thing would stress me out and make me crave the feeling of cheap whiskey on my tongue. Since I stopped drinking and adopted a program for my life, I have gone through a divorce, had many financial hardships, had a brother in Afghanistan, and dealt with the loss of a custody trial. I never did drink. I don't even really recall struggling with it. My life may or may not suck right now, but it sucks much more when I drink.

We do not control life, but we can't let life control us either. I do not necessarily believe in, "If life gives you lemons, make lemonade." I would rather say, "If life gives you lemon, don't get drunk."

No, we did not win the custody hearing, but I have to believe that God has a plan for Bailey's life that did not include him living with us right now. I am good with that.

The Crazy Mind of the Alcohlic

It has been a good year. All the bills get paid on time. The 180Xchange Recovery Ministry is going to start in a couple of weeks. I'm getting so much enjoyment of out of being the band for the 180. Kiley and I are really working hard at being husband and wife. Oh, and work is going really well.

This past Friday I got a promotion. I got the promotion after making a presentation to the VP of Strategic Relations of our company. I went from worker bee to supervising some incredibly talented people.

After getting the word that they liked my idea I got on the elevator to go down to the floor that I work currently work on. I was so excited. The promotion was awesome, but having the important people at my company saying that they loved my idea was something really special. Alone in that elevator I got a visit from an old "friend": craving.

That ride from the 6th floor to the 5th floor seemed to take hours; maybe days. It has been so long since I have had a craving to drink that badly. It took my breath away.

You hear people say things about alcoholics. Things like, "Why can't they just stop?" or, "Why can't they just have a couple of drinks?" or even, "He just got our of treatment, why is he drinking again?"

He I was so excited about something that was good in my life. Something that I have worked so hard for. Something that would never have been possible if I wasn't sober and yet here I was wanting a drink so badly that I was shaking.

Make no mistake, being an alcoholic makes you insane. Reason has no room in the mind of a drunk; sober or not.

I was at an A.A meeting last week when I heard someone else's insanity. An older guy, a lawyer in fact, said that he first started thinking about getting sober that the only thing that he could think of was that if he stopped drinking that he would never get laid again. That is insanity.

I don't know exactly how the drug affects the brain, but it changes it. It changes it forever. I still have to think before I do things. I still have to disregard my first choice. I still have to stand in an elevator and remind myself that:

1. I am powerless of alcohol and that, were I to drink again, my life would be unmanageable.
2. That a power great than me could restore me to sanity.
3. That if I turn my will and my life over to the God of my understand that he would help me.

...and He did.

Do I "Got the Power"

Every morning for the last three weeks I've been reading a chapter in the book of Acts. Everyday I walk away asking myself the same question, "Where is that power today?"

I talk to more Christians today that seem to be trying too hard to hear God's voice. People that seem to be seeking so hard to know His will for their lives.

Why was it different for Peter? For Paul? Neither really had to struggle to know God's will and direction. I pray and pray about a situation and then end up going with my gut. God would talk to Peter and tell him that,
"...some guy would be coming by his house and knocking on his door precisely at 3 o'clock in the afternoon wearing a blue Colts jersey and mismatched socks. He's going to ask you to change the tire on his 1999 Silver Ford Taurus that has 98,435 miles on it. After you change his tire give him a glass of water and that blue shirt you bought at Old Navy last March."

What is up with that? What was so different about Peter and Paul? Don't feed me the, "Well, that was for 'back then'." God is an unchanging God.

If God is an unchanging God then I have to assume that I am doing something different, or not doing something at all, that the disciples and apostles were doing. I suppose that the first thing that comes to mind is distractions. The followers of Christ ,at the time, had one purpose for being on this planet: to tell people about Jesus. Me? Well, let's see? I work 40 to 55 hours per week. I have two dogs that require a lot of my attention. I have my stepson, Bailey, every other weekend and half the summer. I have a house that needs to be cleaned. Grass that needs to be mowed. I won't take my vehicles into the shop for any reason at all, and sometimes it takes me a lot of time to figure out how to fix them myself. Oh, and I spend a few hours a week working on my church's Recovery Ministry....'a few hours a week'.

My faith and my evangelistic heart (tongue-in-cheek) are so far down the list that I'm not even sure that they count.

We've covered priorities, now let's look at discipline!

I mentioned that I get up each morning and read a chapter of the Bible. Now, I'm almost certain that that puts me into a small percentage of Christians that actually do that. Wow, look at me! I read the Bible everyday. The power of the Spirit must flow out of me like water from a broken levee! Riiiight.

Wait! I do pray..."God, I want to be better at_________please help me to be more like Jesus in that area." "God, thank you for helping me stop drinking." "God, thank you for my wonderful wife and the redemption that you have given with her."

I suppose that these are wonderful prayers and that they are heard, but is it what God has in mind? Acts talks of men praying and fasting....lots of fasting. Fasting? You have got to be kidding me! I am hungry right now!

I do know that a relationship with God is about progress, not perfection. I will be perfect in that relationship, one day, but until then I am looking for progress. I am seeing that progress, as slow as it may seem at times. However, I want that power. I want to quote scripture and see lives changed. I want to lay hands on someone that is sick and watch God heal them. I want to see someone whose life is tormented by evil and cast that spirit of addiction out of them. Why not? Peter did it. Paul did it. John did it. Am I not a child of God? Does the same Spirit live in me that lived in Peter, the Rock?

God has not changed. Jesus is still the Messiah and when He physically left this world He sent his Spirit. He didn't send the "A-Team" Spirit and then later sent the Spirit that sits on the bench. The same Spirit that lives in me is the same Spirit that Paul had.

In Ephesians, Paul talks about believers having the same power that Jesus had. I don't see that in my life.

Celebrate Recovery

I was approached about a month ago about giving my thoughts on a new program at my church called "Celebrate Recovery". The idea is to take the alcoholics and addicts out of the small room in the basement of the church.

I think that putting recovery at the forefront is a wonderful idea. Saddleback church, in Lake Forest, California, started Celebrate Recovery to address the issues that Christians face in dealing with sobriety,addictions, co-dependency, and pain in general.

Well, I fell in love with the program. We are going to start meeting to discuss how a "Celebrate Recovery" ministry might look in suburban Indiana.

I am going be updating the ongoings of this ministry in these pages. I hope to be able to share with you how we approached this important issue.

Take care,

Johnny