I quit drinking wine about a year ago for 100 days. That decision was a long time coming. Those 100 days were so good, so clarifying that a month after they ended, I decided to quit drinking alcohol for a good, at least for a good long while. I’m not exactly sure what a good long while means except that it’s at least a full year, maybe longer.
Georgia O’Keefe wrote, “To see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.” Real change takes time, and seeing that change also takes time. Almost eight months into my decision to quit drinking, here are a few things that I am starting to see.
My emotional life has been the ruling monarch for most of my life. When triggered, however the trigger comes, my tendency is to get angry, defensive, and wall up. I’m learning to bring my emotional life into proper order. Emotions have a place, but shouldn’t be the monarch of our lives. Emotions come and go, ebb and flow, and are subject to all kinds of realities. If I don’t have control of my emotions, they have control of me.
I have spent much of my life avoiding the real feelings that lurk behind anger and frustration. Mostly these are feelings of sadness, insecurity, fear, and inferiority. These are the feelings that make me feel vulnerable, small, out of control. The feelings I stuffed deep down with red wine.
When I name my emotions and work with them, instead of acting as if they are not there, they lose their power and I gain a sense of authentic internal power. It’s in the naming where real change begins to be possible.
My insecurities, my feelings of being small and insignificant are real, and they don’t magically go away. However, I can’t speak truth to the lies if I’m ignoring them and pretending that they aren’t there. I can’t step more fully into my real strengths and accept my real weaknesses if I’m trying to avoid my feelings. We can’t deal with what is true, if we don’t know how to discern truth from lie.
One of the issues I see inside many Christian communities is a perceived need to pretend that everything is fine, that all is well, that even if it hurts, God is good. While I certainly believe that God is good, I see the way this phrase has been used to gloss over the very real pain of our humanity, the real heartache of problems that don’t have easy solutions. Yes God is good, but not everything is good. Yes, hope will rise, but sometimes at a high cost.
Resilience does not come from glossing over our very real pain, or our authentic fears, or the deep disappointments in our lives. Resilience comes from learning to live inside the tension of all those things, and choosing to cultivate gratitude and dwell in God’s love, despite all the evidence that points to the contrary.
For example, I might be small and insignificant, but God gives grace to the weak and lifts up those who are humble. The gospel says that the meek will inherit the earth. I don’t have to be great or put-together or even strong in order to apprehend the grace and goodness of God. None of us do. But we can’t apprehend God’s grace if we shove our weakness deep inside of us. We can’t receive God’s mercy if we are unwilling to admit how much we need it.
God can’t spring us from the traps of self-pity, and of the lies we feed ourselves about our perceived insignificance unless we loosen our hands and offer them over to God. This begins by examining our hearts and speaking honestly to God about all of my feelings. This is the beginning of bringing my feelings into their proper order.
There is fragmented superficiality to the American culture. Probably because of the American Dream and the mantras of “Be all that you can be,” and “The sky is the limit,” many Americans haven’t learned to let their roots go down deep, how to settle into the ache of living in a broken world. WE haven’t learned how to accept our goodness and our badness, our strengths and our weaknesses. All of it is the stuff that makes up life.
As Frederick Buechner says, “The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us.”
Since I quit drinking, even if I wasn’t drinking all that much, I see the world in more vivid color. I feel the terrible and the beautiful with a deeper connectedness, a more poignant tenderness. What I’m continuing to take hold of, despite the aches, and all the terrible, is that this world is a wondrous place to live in.
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This! Exquisite, gentle, spot on, grace-filled profound insights. It’s a joy to read, Tina. Your writing never fails to engage and intrigue me; I am enriched by your thoughts with each post. The sentences are crafted so well yet they aren’t over worked in the least – many writers with very good things to say do that. How I appreciate the freshness, the beauty in your words. It’s like you’ve immersed yourself in these truths and we as readers get to peek inside by your warm invitation and sweet challenge to really lean into the Lord. No matter what. Thank you!
Thank you so much! This is such a beautiful comment. I appreciate that you took the time to encourage me.
Love and hugs,
Tina