I quit drinking. Just up and decided I needed to be finished with alcohol for a good long while. I woke up one Saturday morning and knew in my deepest parts, I was finally ready to quit. I had the internal focus, and the self-awareness to say, “I’m finished.”
From an outside perspective, it might look like I’m a put-together-woman who just woke up and decided to quit drinking alcohol, like a snap of the fingers. It’s been relatively easy. I haven’t struggled, or wavered in my decision, at all. If I were looking at me from this point, I’d be impressed.
Except that’s not the whole story. It’s a sliver of the story. A very small sliver that does not include all the restless nights wondering if I should quit drinking, or the mornings questioning whether I had too much to drink the night before, or the evenings looking at the clock to make sure it wasn’t too early to pour that glass of wine. The story also doesn’t include the several dry months, where I gave up wine for thirty days or forty days, or the most recent 100 dry days I finally had the courage to try. It also doesn’t include the prayers, asking God to help me get to a place where I’d be willing to lay it down and be okay with the laying down.
To be honest, it’s taken me months and years to finally get to a place where I can wake up and say, “I’m ready to quit.”
This is actually good news.
We are a superficial people, in a consumerist society hell bent on personal pleasure and immediate gratification.
Real life is not hell bent on the same thing. Real life is real. Patterns are made over time and take time to unravel. Pathways in our brains are established and take three years to rewire. Habits are made and habits take time to break. Not everything is supposed to come the second I want it to. Not everything is supposed to be immediate.
Some things require roots, which are import because roots give us more staying power.
Yesterday, as I was watering my garden I noticed tiny green tomatoes all over my tomato plants. It absolutely shocked me. All of a sudden I have tomatoes. Except it’s not all of a sudden. I’ve planted, watered, tilled, and prayed over those little plants.
If you want to get somewhere specific, sometimes it does take one giant step to get there. Most of the time, it takes many small steps in one direction. This is why it requires just a little bit of faith, and lots of grace.
It might look like I just woke up and decided to quit drinking to anyone who doesn’t know me. But that is not the truth. It’s part of the truth. Which is why it’s so important to take everything you see and add a backstory.
Here’s the encouraging thing. Maybe you want to be one of those people who can wake up and stop drinking, but you’re not there yet. Take one step. Quit drinking for July. Or tell someone you want alcohol to be less important to you.
Maybe you want to get your masters degree but you’re terrified. Take ONE class.
Maybe you want to be a writer but you don’t know where to start. Start by getting up every day and writing one page. What’s one page? Except … if you write a page a day, in one year you’ll have 365 pages. That’s what one page a day gets you.
Maybe you want something far more abstract. Like you want to be more at home with yourself, or you want to learn how to speak your mind. Or you want to be a person of substance. Those are really good things to ache for, but you won’t get any of those things immediately. Those are character traits and virtues that take time to cultivate. To be a person who speaks your mind, you have to start speaking your mind, quite badly at first. You’ll make mistakes, you’ll over speak, you’ll offend. This is the nature of change.
The metamorphosis is a struggle. A caterpillar doesn’t become a butterfly without a really big struggle. They have to break out of their cocoon.
Press into the struggle. It’s worth it. After all, butterflies can fly.
