Faith & Roses

It is my “NA Anniversary.” Thirty-one years. Thirty-one years ago I was living with a husband and our two children. I had run out of ways and means to continue to medicate myself. I had no idea of anything I felt inside. No idea of how to stop the drugs. I was scared and didn’t know it. I needed help, and I didn’t know it. I did not have to work outside the home. I was able to be with our children all day. I was 35-years-old. I was not present in my beautiful life.

I did not know the price I would pay for getting clean. I may never have gotten clean at all had I known I was about to lose so much. My Spirit was starving. I gave what I had to my children. Always. There was never any doubt that I cherished them. In many ways they were my only connection to anything good, healthy, or sane that may have remained inside of me. And then it was all gone. Houseless, childless and jobless.

Thirty-one years ago, all I could see and feel was exquisite pain, the intensity of which I had never experienced before. I became untethered, but I stayed clean. I was scarcely able to function, but I stayed clean.

Over the course of these past thirty-one years, lawd knows I have had more than one “restart.” I often wondered why my recovery journey unfolded as it did. Was there no other way to reach me? No other conditions in which I would have gotten and stayed clean? As I slowly grew, I became honest enough with myself to admit there were other paths. As the saying goes: the truth will set you free. And it will also piss you off and hurt like hell. I didn’t understand the progressive nature of the disease of addiction. It left me unable to live with or without drugs. Wow. I really didn’t know how to live.

The process of forgiving myself and accepting the consequences of my decisions and behaviors was painful and arduous. Uphill for sure, with stops and starts too numerous to count. I came to see that without finding my way to belief in some kind or another “higher power,” I would never get there. Forgiveness and acceptance would continue to seem impossible — like wishful thinking. Or worse yet, the false belief that often told me forgiving myself and accepting myself would be just another of my denial escapades. Another try at refusing to accept responsibility. Yet my understanding of and relationship with a Power greater than myself grew as I traveled through all of the fallout. I often heard at meetings that we needed to show up, because our lives depended on it. That was certainly true for me. The God-thing I was given as a child never really worked. I needed a Higher Power to become my own.

The process of forgiving myself and accepting the consequences of my decisions and behaviors was extremely hurtful and arduous. Uphill for sure. And without finding my way to some kind or another “higher power,” I learned forgiveness and acceptance would be impossible without one. And my understanding of and relationship with a Power greater than myself grew as I traveled through the fallout. Again, it had to. The God thing I was given as a child was not working and I needed a Higher Power that could become my own.

I hardly cease to marvel when I do look back. I got through it. All. Clean. I am grateful to be older and a bit wiser. I am thankful to have learned to cherish the memory of my first few years clean. Through some of those days, I was (eventually) able to spot the grace and mercy inside of them. I am in absolute awe of my daughter and my sons. The 12 Steps of Narcotics Anonymous really led me to the path where I could find righteousness and mercy.

Redeemed: ¹ to bring back, recover, or exchange for something of value; ² being rescued from bondage or saved from the consequences of wrongdoing; ³ being freed from the heavy burdens of guilt, past mistakes, or the “slavery” of negative patterns.

I have been redeemed That is an amazing, infinite concept. Have I ever wished that I did things differently? Yes. 100%. Yet, to have reached this place where I can honestly say “Yes” to that question and, also, say “Yes” to my life here and now, is perhaps the greatest gift of all.