The bad news is that I still have the flu. The good news is that I have finally accepted it as a permanent condition.
And so has Dave.
It’s been fun to watch him adapt to our new lifestyle. I lie around the house wearing a luxurious faux fur robe (think Leona Helmsley), while he waits on me hand and foot. He brings me roses, buys me Kleenex, shops for food, cooks the food, cleans up the mess, walks my dog Edmund in the freezing cold and picks up his gifts—
But I digress. It’s just that watching Dave like this… it’s such a beautiful thing!
Anyway, since my new life as a professional sick person keeps me very busy staring off into space with my mouth hanging half open (so I can breathe and drool), I don’t have much time or energy for work or writing lately (why was I wasting my life that way?!).
Fortunately, anything important I want to say about addiction has already been said. For example, if I didn’t already worship God or if God wasn’t the jealous type (he is), I would worship at the feet of the late Gerald May, who wrote, Grace and Addiction, my all-time-favorite book on addiction.
One of the most important things I learned from May has to do with the myth of fulfillment. The idea that if we are good people living life rightly, we should not experience deep discontent. I think this myth is especially powerful in a Christian context. I can’t count how many times I asked myself, ”How come I’m not fulfilled? How can I feel thirsty or spiritually empty when I’m supposed to have a river of life flowing out of me?”
It wasn’t until recovery that I came to understand the river of life Jesus spoke about is not a river of bliss.
For an alcoholic or addict, this myth is especially significant. Long term recovery depends on our finding healthy ways to view and cope with our nagging feelings of discontent.
But enough from me. May writes:
“In our society, we have come to believe that…feelings of distress, pain, deprivation, yearning, and longing mean something is wrong with the way we are living our lives. Conversely, we are convinced that a rightly lived life must give us serenity, completion and fulfillment.
The truth is, we were never meant to be completely satisfied. …To live as a child of God is to live with love and hope and growth, but it is also to live with longing, with aching for a fullness of love that is never quite within our grasp…
We need to recognize that the incompleteness within us, our personal insufficiency, does not make us unacceptable in God’s eyes. Far from it; our incompleteness is the empty side of our longing for God and for love. It is what draws us toward God and one another. If we do not fill our minds with guilt and self-recriminations, we will recognize our incompleteness as a kind of spaciousness into which we can welcome the flow of grace.
To claim our rightful place in destiny, we must not only accept and claim the sweetly painful incompleteness within ourselves, but also affirm it with all our hearts…
Somehow we must come to fall in love with it.”
—Addiction & Grace by Gerald G. May
What May suggests is of course easier said than done. How do we fall in love with our longing? How do we make peace with our feelings of incompleteness?
I think every book May wrote was trying to answer this question. Maybe it’s what this blog is all about, too.
I don’t have a single, easy answer. I only know it has to do with surrender. I only know that my pain becomes more bearable when I stop resisting it and try to sit with it quietly and let it be felt. And sometimes when I do this, that hollow ache inside of me slowly softens and melts until the emptiness itself feels enfolded in God’s great compassion.
Other times, my nose starts to run and I realize that my Kleenex is calling. So, if you’ll excuse me…
(P.S. Actually, I think I’m on the mend. But sssshhhh….mums the word. Dave doesn’t need to know that yet.)
Just enjoy your life, and always be thankful to HIM. He has a plan for us, so we must be ready at all cause. while we are waiting for it, we have our families that will always love us and guide us in our way.
So MANY well said things here. Love this!…” Long term recovery depends on our finding healthy ways to view and cope with our nagging feelings of discontent.” This kind of summarizes where I’m at these past couple of weeks and now I can put it into words and tend to those feelings. Thank you! … Feel better!!!
Heather, hope you feel better soon! Loved this post; needed to hear it big time! xo Joanne
Joanne, thanks for this! I am SO much better today–Thursday. I can’t believe how good it feels just to feel normal. We take so much for granted. Hope today finds you in good health and feeling loved. H
Glad you’re starting to feel better . . . what a cute post:-)
Thanks, Jamie. Yes, I’m so much better! It’s Thursday now and I feel like Lazarus back from the dead. Congrats on your upcoming book release! I hope your “bomb” goes off well. Keep me posted, friend.
“Professional sick person.” You’re a hoot!
I love that book … one of my favorites also. I gave it to my dad years ago, only to have him look confused and hand it back to me after he read some of it (which I was impressed he did) and say, “I think I’ll stick with the Bible.” I guess he wondered why I thought he needed it. I figured between me and Gerald, we could fix him.
I haven’t seen the book in a long time, but what stands out is the part where May talks about all the analyzing we do, then he says we have to stop trying to figure it out and stop the addiction. Just stop it. Even now, I remember how powerful that was to read.
Thanks, Heather. Feel better soon.
Yes, May is amazing. He had such a gentle soul. I love all his books. So funny about your dad! I got a note this morning from a friend who read the post and he said he ordered the book and I thought, oh, I hope he likes it. It’s not your usual… can be kind of dense. But it is so filled with gems for those who struggle with things like emptiness or addiction or an overabundance of longing. Thanks for taking time to write, friend. I am feeling better today, thank goodness.
You nailed it, Nancy. Almost every powerful spiritual truth I come upon is part of some great paradox, which makes them hard to write about and even harder sometimes to live. I loved the raw honesty of your comment here. Thanks for sharing, Nancy. I’m so so sorry you ever lived in that much pain. I have had such moments, too. In the past, thank goodness. But you don’t ever forget that kind of pain and it makes you more sensitive to the pain of others.
yes it does and it has helped me grow and learn so much. I have not always made the best choices, if fact, I have made some really bad ones. But I have very few, I can’t honsetly say no regrets because there a a couple of real biggies, but the other bad choices I have learned from, grown and become a better person because of them.
I definitely am going to put that book at the top of my Amazon wish list.
I do have a comment though about surrendering to pain. Years ago, when I was a very, very sick co-dependent my ex-husband left me for another woman. The pain was so intense, I was so devasted and so frightened, that I could only rock and bang my head against the wall because when I did so the external pain, for one brief second, masked the internal pain. It was the only thing that worked. (I totally understand cutters and the like because of this)
However, as the days went by I often felt like a squirrel in a squirrel cage running around in circles trying to escape the pain. I finally realized that when I stilled my thoughts, accepted the pain, and surrendered to it, it became not only manageable but lessened signficantly.
All that to say, i agree with you. When we stop trying to fill the “void” and surrender to it, we win. I am constantly amazed by all the paradoxes (sp?) of our faith. Surrender to win, die to live, doubt to believe, our God is truly an awesome God.
So sorry you still have the flu. Me too, just a little. It feels like it is almost gone, then BOOM!, No, make that SNEEZE! “it’s baaacckk!” I think as moms, whether, we work out of the house or stay at home, it’s hard to just stop everything. My hubby, who last nite, was annoyed that I was still cleaning up around the house, “enlightened” me as to why I’m not better yet. It’s simple “You just dont rest when you’re sick. All this housework can wait.” But, it DOES wait….for me….and it brings dirty friends over to leave extra messes.. Lol….So,it’s another ‘dayquil” kind of day, and I will rest to day…..for a while….
Lisa, it’s a yucky one. I get it about the housework. And yes, it’s so hard to do nothing! When I felt worse the other day Dave said, you spent too much time at your computer. Ha. Men. I can’t believe Dave hasn’t gotten it, though. Amazing to me. And it’s a good thing, because this man does not know how to do nothing but relax. It would be far worse for him than it’s been for me. Hope you have a good dayquil day, Lisa! Hugs. Heather
This is a tricky post for me, because the painful longing and discontent you talk about is the pit of the depression I was brought from — that ‘one drink’ I can’t entertain. I agree it has to do with surrender. But I can no longer “sit quietly and let it be felt” Oh I wish I could. And I definitely cannot ignore it (It’s known for its sneak attacks.) I HAVE to embrace it (but don’t picture a warm fuzzy kind of hug, picture an out of control child that needs a straight-jacket kind.) I have to partner WITH God to be on the offense in this hug. It becomes quite a split personality type of warfare that I am powerless to do without him. It fact it kind of turns into a group hug type of thing: Him hugging me, who is hugging that out of control, sad me…Don’t know if any of this makes sense. But the result is the same: “that hollow ache inside of me slowly softens and melts until the emptiness itself feels enfolded in God’s great compassion. A taste of longing fulfilled in his strong arms.
Jane, I totally get what you’re saying. I love what you said about the group hug. Isn’t God good? And I suppose there’s a fine line between morose lingering and sinking into our sad feelings and a willingness to sit with our longing long enough to recognize it is calliing us toward God’s heart, that it’s him we’re thirsty for and maybe spending time in his embrace will help alleviate the ache. I sure love you, friend, and appreciate these insights so much.