Authenticity

Surrender, the key to authentic recovery, I believe, is the most difficult idea for addicts to grasp.  Mainly because it is not about them…and that was/is my biggest deal…something not about me…the almighty me…I want it…when…where…how…I want it!

Today’s post is an excerpt from several days of incoherent thoughts on the subject…I hope you can make heads or tails of it…

Every night in the darkness, fear breeds panic, I look for light, only to find more darkness, as the darkness grows, the air becomes damp, pungent with the aroma of death and despair…the death of a soul destined to be a warrior, the despair of a life designed for receiving and dispensing HOPE!

In the darkness, the quietness screams, fear conquers, life slips further and further down…farther and farther from its destiny…little by little the breath of life is squeezed out…until…finally….RELEASE!!!

In that moment of surrender, light pierces and darkness evaporates.  Panic and despair are extinguished.  Hope’s light enters to every crevice and the soul breaths in deeply.  Destiny has returned to claim what is His.

The screaming is replaced with quiet, the aroma, sweet honeysuckle, confirms, life is here.  The light warms the soul; the springs of water quench the insatiable thirst of a soul in the depths.  Love conquers the heart of a man, and the name of warrior is given.

He rises, fierce and brave to surrender once again.  Surrendering to hope, light, life, victory, and destiny…to the person of life…authentic life…from the source…the poser is dead!

“The fierceness of a man’s heart is determined by the resolve of his surrender.”

                                                                                                                                Logan Anderson, May 2007

May 2007

My Dear Son,

I Love You!  I Love You! I Love You!  You are priceless to me.  You make my heart leap for joy.  When I think of how you hurt, I hurt.  You are so special and fragile.  It hurts to watch you suffer, but you must pass through this into the real life I have for you!  Your heart has so much to give; I gave you this burden, this word of freedom, this fierce heart of love.  You were made for me to show the world my true self.  I trust you!  You can tell them of me.  You will be a great warrior!  You ARE a great warrior.

Trust me, I know the true you!  The you, you crave, the thirst in your soul is me, I am waiting there, longing for you to come to me…it is there you receive me, and what I have for you.

Let me have my way, embrace me now, allow my healing to transform you! 

You see all you failures, I see all your strength.

 I see the heart of love is fierce enough to tell the truth!

 I see the desire to see men go free.

You see a little boy afraid…I see a child-like faith that trusts and depends only on me.

You see an inadequate boy…I see the strength of the God of the universe, in your inadequacy.

You are scared of what you will give up or lose…I see the inheritance that yours as my son.

You see the world against you…I see the world at your feet, as my son.

You see your tasks, and they are huge…I see your ability to climb…you don’t know you can…I know…I will climb for and with you.

You see others disapproval…I see my seal on you.

You see disgusting self-righteousness…I see the righteousness of my Son, Jesus when I look at you.

You see the inability to acquire by this world’s standards…I see the resources of the King at your disposal.

You see the end…I see the beginning.

You see the unlovable you…I see the priceless you…I value you…value what you don’t…value all that you are…shortcomings and gifts alike…I see the whole you…not the parts of you that blind you.

You see the scraps you have to offer…I see the source of your abundance.

You see your problems…I see me…your solution.

You see the obstacles to stop you…I see the path to free you.

You fear the unknown…I AM the unknown.

You are afraid you can’t…I know you can’t…but I can.

You see the woman as your ultimate accomplishment…I see the woman as your partner…to be cherished…not to be conquered.

You see her approval as a seal on you as a man…I see you as the man to be her strength.

You see the pain…I see the joy.

You see her as the prize…I see you as her prize.

You see her as your guide…I see you as her guide to me.

You feel the agony of letting go…I felt the agony of holding on.

You see the gamble of trusting me…I see the pay off of letting me have my way.

You see the darkness…I see the light…I am your light.

You see your pain…I feel your pain

You see what you can’t do…I see what I can do.

You see everything but me…I see only you as you were meant to be!

I am your Father…you are my son…~T, you are PRICELESS!!!

                                                                                …with all my heart…

                                                                                                GOD

“Why do you want this so bad, Rudy?”  Coach Parsegian asked.

“Is this for you?”  He continued.

“No!  It is for everybody that said I wouldn’t play football at Notre Dame.”  Rudy replied.

“OK!   You have earned it…I wish your heart could be put into some of my players.” Coach Parsegian remarked as Rudy left the office in a hurry.  Moments later…on the phone to home…

“You have to come Dad; Coach said I would play…Yes… I will let you know…promise me you will come…”  Rudy had invited his entire family to South Bend for the game in which he dressed out with the team.  If he dressed out and got onto the field, he is recorded as actually, being on the Notre Dame Football team.

Rudy wasn’t an addict, but he understood the mountains that we addicts climb.  Just like us, his family didn’t believe in him.  In fact, his dad told him that following his dreams only cause pain for yourself and those that love you.  “Just let them go.”

Rudy refused to let them go…he pursued his dream.  In the end, he did play for Notre Dame.  He went into the game with seventeen seconds left and helped on a kickoff return.  The last play of the game was his swansong as a football player at Notre Dame, Rudy sacked the quarterback.  The crowd went crazy; his father’s chest protruded with pride, his teammates carried him off the field on their shoulders.  Rudy Rutiger is the only Notre Dame Football player to be carried of the field in the history of the university.

This is another image I have of recovery, actually, what recovery will lead to…being carried off the field because I am so valued by the people in my life.  That one day there will be a celebration in honor of me for the good things I do.  A celebration honoring how good a person I have become.  A celebration because I am special…I know that sounds silly…but it is true.  Especially, when recovery is the big black suburban of God’s grace.  The success to give me my dreams.

If you truly want a glimpse into my soul then you have to see me revealed in my recovery. It is there that you get the true man…my true identity.  The wit and charm and humor and intelligence all meld together with the arrogance, shame, humility, guilt pretentiousness, confidence, sin and the wickedness of a human heart to form the man I so desperately attempt to be in every other arena of my life.  I am the man you see there. 

Completely exposed in my recovery…the gut wrenching honesty that is required there is real…untainted…unaffected by the past…not influencing the future and at the same time thriving and living off the past and forging the future.  The real man, Logan, is only as real as the authenticity of his recovery.  It is in that place that value is intrinsic and not extrinsic.  The moments of clarity become for me, the diving board to my soul…the starting place for the real man in recovery…the potential to become the man I was intended.  The place where all dreams are filtered through the love and acceptance of a man bigger than all my addictive behaviors, thoughts, and desires… I huddle in my recovery like a man lighting a fire in the wind with his last match…life and death depend on it!

To know me truly is to love me completely.  In the completeness of your love, I blossom.  In the complete love and acceptance of who I am and not who I want to be, there is power.  Power to be exposed…power to love…power to trust…

To understand me is to see all the nakedness of my soul…when the darkest place of my soul are exposed to the light of another’s love, the dust and cobwebs of a place forgotten, disappear in the light.  At that precise moment the wind and waves shift direction and become the assets of a life being fully lived.  The rudder of my heart turns to a new course…the intended course!

To desire me is to understand my glaring weaknesses and subtle strengths.  In reality, the glaring weaknesses are pretended to be subtle and played down, yet are on display for everyone to see, only I think they are somewhat hidden.  That is uncomfortable, scary, and an insidious poison to the soul.

My strengths, I tout so boldly, are actually, subtleties of a man in the shadows…my inner world boasts my strengths until I believe them stronger than they actually are.  I look with a piercing eye only to see my glaring weaknesses. To see passed the smoke and mirrors require a prescription for vision that does not come from this world…it is only through the relationship God has with me, and I with Him, that I emerge with a sight beyond this world.  In fact, to see inside the human heart at all requires celestial vision.  Otherwise, you get blurry preconceived notions of a life that only exists in the dreams of a fool.

All I want is to be what I have tried so desperately to be all my life…the man I was created to be…to live from the center of my heart…from my core!  My addiction is the product of an empty soul…a soul so dark and hollow, so dark, not the remotest flicker of light can escape into it.  The light bearer searches out the darkness to expose what is hidden.  The lost soul wants to be left alone in his darkness.

The recovery process is that search for darkness and the subsequent exposure to the light.  There are days when I prefer the darkness…will purposefully seek out the darkness…I want to be in the dark…I refuse to be in the light.  In the light I am forced to see the glaring weaknesses of humanity in me.  In the darkness, I know they are there, but I do not have to see them…I can continue with the cotillion of existence that eludes the depth of my heart necessary for recovery.

I sit!  Anxiously waiting for musically induced coma to engulf my soul…waiting for the exact moment when the music has taken over and I am at once at the mercy of the song.  It is there…I can see clearly with my ears…where the inner world becomes both visible and audible…the moment of truest clarity.  The night is all around and I sit, unafraid of the darkness.  What am I doing?  Sitting in the night exposing myself to the possibility of light for another day…thinking all my insights and musings will somehow miraculously turn on a light, or turn it off for that matter…the darkness is as comfortable as my favorite pair of Levis…at what point do I trade the old worn out life for a new one?  At what point do I value the light as I do the darkness?  How can a rational, intelligent, albeit. Slightly tainted man value the non-existence of a life as opposed to the truth of a life of light? Even on the darkest days, there is light…just because I do not see it does not mean it does not exist…I have to choose to live in the light…in the light there is freedom…freedom to love…to receive love…to trust…to be trusted…freedom to become…IT is in the light that I AM!!!

I realize some this may not make sense to you, and that is ok…It is not for you…maybe not for you…it was for me…enjoy…

~L

…for many of us, we are confused.  We take the misinformation we have received over a lifetime about who God is and draw our own conclusions about what He wants for us.  We assume that because God loves us, so much so, that He died for us, and obviously wants the best for us, His job in recovery is to restore the life we want so that we will be free from addiction to live our lives as we desire.  Again, what we do not see is that recovery is simply a relationship with Him.  He desires us more than we desire anything.  His idea of the perfect life is this relationship, a perfect relationship.  A relationship that is based on His ideals…His desires…His timetable…His deal…NOT ours.  His plans include a life that contains more than we can wrap our little pea brains around. 

 When I imagine my life now that I am in recovery, I see streets of gold and the milk and honey flowing ceaselessly.  What He sees, however, is a life that is content to simply know Him…free to love boldly…free to receive love boldly…restoration at its core level.  We see a life that can finally live out as we imagined it.  He sees a life that is not focused on here and now, but in the next life.  He sees surrender, joy, and wholeness!

 The desire to own that truck is the very same desire I have for my recovery.  Life will better now than before…that I would reach the plateau where everyone would look at me, not with the disdain of an addict, but with the admiration and acceptance of a man who has beat his demons.  A success…a man worthy of anything he now has because he climbed the mountain and is now at the plateau.  The place where all the crap and toil of recovery have earned him a place free from the same-ole, same-ole… 

I wear my recovery as a badge in the same way I want to drive the badge of my success and significance.  Isn’t it strange, even now as I write, I see myself in that vehicle…completely fulfilled…complete somehow, through the magic of my own twisted mind, of what success looks like.  “Sure I will teach a class on recovery”…”I will be happy to help a poor, sorry no good addict with turning his life around”…”absolutely I will sponsor you…I have made it and you can too…with my help and expertise..” “I know the way to freedom…”  

Surely, I must have arrived…I must have this addiction licked, I am being asked to share how to do it.  The only problem with that…I am an addict still.  It’s like the old saying goes, “…if you live in the garage…it does not make you a car”.  You teach all the recovery classes in the world, reunite with your family, obtain the forgiveness of your children, wife, family, and friends, get a better job that you have ever had, learn to set your finances in order and save your money, accomplish all of the things that eluded you before recovery, and appear to be a raving success to all that look at you.  You may never get the life back that you wanted or believed recovery would provide.  You may never get your family back, you may never have the kind of job you once had, or you may relapse and never get free at all…are you a success then?  Unless you stop reaching for a plateau and strive for your permanent home, the answer is, “no” !!! 

…again…more tomorrow

~T 

I feel it important to let you in on the origin of “The Plateau” series.  I am finally making public the last three years of my recovery.  While a need to edit and polish writing is important, I will leave this series “as is” in the original handwriting, so to speak, as it resides in my journal today. 

The issues of this series are mine, from a deep place that deep untreated, with the exception of self-medication, from as early as five years old.  So as you read, seek out the heart of the message and find whatever it is you are looking for, or can be found for you.  I believe pain speaks to pain, regardless of circumstances or origin, people that have suffered understand the suffering of another, and in so doing, provide a level of empathy only known through the catalyst of pain.

Having said that, enjoy the third installment of “The Plateau”…

Empathetically yours….

~T

Hello all, actually only three of you, but hello all the same, today I will continue from yesterday’s post…”The Plateau”.  I hope you enjoy and be sure to share what you think…I am very interested![b]

 Part 2: For instance, today as I sat at Starbucks enjoying a Chai Latte, my fave, venti, 7 pumps, no water, soy, no foam, OMG!!!, you have to try one…anyway…where was I?  Oh yeah…enjoying a Chai Latte and the old school jam playing on the patio, I looked up from my book ever few minutes to see the cars passing by or to notice the other soujourners on the trek for the holy grail of morning beverages, I noticed a larger than life Yukon XL parked in a fire zone.  I noticed for two reasons…One, I want one…desperately, and Two, It had a large manly trailer attached with a large grill riding shotgun. As I gazed upon the Muhammad Ali of trucks, I was taken into a magical place…in the ten minutes the owner was inside getting his morning fix, I played out the completion of my life in that truck.  It was a beauty, high gloss black paint job, shiny silver trim, and pristine rims.  This glimpse, the symbol, or so says the circles I run in, the icon of a life that has reached a plateau.  The plateau…I can afford a big, overly expensive manly vehicle…the unspoken status…”you my friend have arrived!” As I sat there lusting over this piece of machinery, that would establish me as a success, at least in my own eyes, I imagined the good life such a purchase would usher in.  I mean, “If I can afford this truck, then surely there isn’t anything in my life that is wrong…I have a good job, my house is nice, my family is proud of me, I AM A SUCCESS!!!” In those few minutes, I had visions of acceptance and success in whatever endeavor I attempted and wherever I found myself this status symbol would speak for me…even…especially to complete strangers.  My wife would proud and always romantically available to me, because her husband provided so far above and beyond her wildest dreams.  My children, so proud I was there father, unashamed to be taken anywhere becuase their manly and virile father takes them in his truck.  All of their friends would want to be BFFs, instantly, and their enemies would be uber-jealous…(a word my 12 year old uses, I hope I used it correctly) - The big black Suburban would enable me to do all the things in life I have never been able to accomplish.  ”Surely, I will be different in this truck than I am in my current transportation.”  ”Finally, I have beaten this addiction!”  ”All is good!”  ”All of the problems from my past are resolved….”  Then…the guy waved as he got into his truck and drove off.  As the truck pulled away, I was eye to eye with “Ole Bessie”, she is my Plymouth Acclaim, I paid six hundred bucks for her, her air and heat didn’t work, her radio only picked up two AM stations, Talk Radio, and not the good ones, and an AM Country Music station, so I drove her in silence.  During my eye to eye encounter with Ole Bessie, it hit me, it happened, a moment of crystal clear clarity. The big black truck represents the life I assume recovery will bring me.  In that moment, I was face to face with my inner demons again…reminded of the failure, pain and harm I have always caused.  I am an addict and this is my life.  I looked my demons in the eye and said, “I will not lose!”  They in turn, smiled and looked me in the eye and said, “As long as you want a better life now, You have already lost!”  The big black truck incident forced me to look inside where the truth of my wicked heart boasts, “You, my friend,  have mistaken the purpose of recovery.”  It was true, I had, I believed recovery to be a magic potion given to return my life to the same it was for years, without the messy being an addict stuff.  The purpose of recovery is restoration!  Plain and simple, recovery is designed to make me what I was intended to be from the beginning.  Recovery is a relationship!  Its about my relationship…with everything…the problem was not in my behavior but in me! That is enough for today…I am exhausted!  I promise to come back and share my story…enjoy…be encouraged…live authentic! ~T2009-01-08 - 00:20:42 

Today’s post will be in several parts.  Over the course of the last six years, I have been privileged to teach, facilitate, sponsor, many groups of men in recovery.  From Alcoholism, Drug Addiction, and Sex Addiction, I have taught many a class for The Salvation Army’s Adult Rehabilitation Center in the large Metroplex in which I live.  More recently, meaning the last two years, with the exception of 2007, I taught weekly for the men in the program.  It is in the moments of preparation, that the three years I spent with my two sponsors really took shape and began a long sought after transformation…ME!!!In the days, weeks, and months that followed my sabbatical, I found a safe place, finally, an honest place, in my heart.  Once my heart was unlocked I found that which I searched so diligently for many years.  In my journals, the man I was intended, the man I ran from all my life, the man I thought existed in me, was actually alive.  In my journals, I found my voice of reason, logic, and passion for life.  No longer was I left, with whatever happened to survive my latest binge or addictive life, there I began to emerge, a new creation, a progressively whole man, an authentic man.So, enjoy the first post of many to come from the bowels of insanity I once called my heart. The Plateau:  Part I: When you are in recovery you have gifts given to you…the gift of the oridinary.  The gift of  moments of clarity…glimpses in the inner world that you have unlocked to door to…In that moment of clarity, you may not see it for what it is… the glimpse wil be ever so slight…often times even hard to understand how it fits.  In my own recovery, there are moments of clarity that shake my foundation and those that slipped by unnoticed. There are moments that come though the musically induced comas  I call quiet times, those times when he music has take over and I am at once in the moment of the song, and then BAM!!!  Without warning or announcement, the moment comes.. and it may linger or leave quickly.  Those moments typically bring about lots of questions, pnderings, musings, and brief insights into my life as a recovering sex addict.  I cannot understand them all the time.  However, it has become the practice, while working my program, to look for them.  Without fail, I will stumble across another moment of clarity in the most unsuspecting places. …until tomorrow… ~T 

Hello, my name is…If you happen to be a recovering addict, been to a recovery meeting, or watched Hollywood’s impersonation of what a “12-step” meeting is like, you have heard those words, and possibly you have as much disdain for them as I do.  I know, I know, an addict despising recovery meetings.  It is true though, I do, I despise recovery meetings.  I have attended many meetings in which nothing was accomplished, I felt, except, we, in unison, greeted those that came, as they told us who they were.  I guess, if you  are at all like me, recovery meetings are the bread and butter for addicts.  I believed that once upon a time too, now, after eleven years, find that most recovery efforts simply address the activity of addiction without ever pursuing either the underlying addictions, or root causes for such insane living.For this reason alone, well, not exactly, for two reasons, I write here.  One, to offer hope to those like me, whether further along in their journey, or just beginning.  Secondly, I write to offer AUTHENTIC experiences from one addict to whomever, and I believe what I have to offer will enlighten and better your day. So, thanks for coming by and please leave a comment, whether you agree or not, because I can assure you, this is anything but normal… …thanks…