Contradiction Or Paradox

It is the turn of a new year and now is a wonderful time to align myself with my highest potential, serving the greatest good, realizing the dreams that have always informed me of God’s path for me. It is time to release the ways that I resist my own good in the world. It is time to clean up the birth-place of my soul. It’s not a one-time event like the birth of our physical being. No, it is every moment of every hour of every day that we are lucky enough to call ourselves alive in this wild and crazy world. First, I will begin by seeking the stark contradictions in the ways that I live my life. I facetiously have always referred to this crossroads as balance. I laughed the other day as a colleague commented as I crushed my Cinnabon roll while waiting for the salad that he overheard me order, I thought you were “all healthy” when I heard you order a salad. With a crooked grin brimming with the high of the sugar rushing through my system, I said no, “I am well-balanced.” just like I balance my yoga with a can of chewing tobacco and my restful nights of sleep with all-nighters that are just a part of the line of work that God chose for me at this stage of my life. Somehow though, it has worked for me thus far. When I say it has worked for me, I mean that I am still alive… I have survived the meth balanced by Church, the alcohol tempered by a morning run or a hot yoga class, the days in the city running with the drug lords, with climbing through the rocky mountains on skis with some of the finest athletes in the world. I always wondered what it would have been like had I surrendered myself completely in entirely one direction… to the streets without a home, begging for money to feed the increasingly crazy beast, stealing my sanity until death the only door left for me OR straight-lining it in the world of adventure and athleticism, maybe even into the pique experience of professional sports or the Olympics. But, then I realize that just isn’t me. I am brilliant and bright some days, and others I am dark and sullen. My brightness is tamed by my inner blonde who misses the most obvious cues from my environment. I know when she’s out because of those familiar “are you shitting me” eyebrows which cock crooked when I act from this place. Yet, people aren’t afraid to tell me how smart I am which is usually sort of shocking in a way. But, something inside of me knows. Something inside of me agrees. 

So, how much power do we have to influence our existence?  Or is finding the center of the paradox the only way. I can’t surrender until I am damn well ready, but the only true power I have comes from defeated surrender. We can’t rush our way to the center of the Paradox any more than we can rush God to bring the things we want when we want them. So, whether it be by chance or by grace, I finally found myself, barely in the last week of the last year, surrendered to a life of sobriety. Finally. Ugh. Wow. How? I don’t know… I spent the whole year toggling between a great thrill that came from drinking and drugging, the depths and despair that accompany those experiences, wanting to be ready but not being ready…. At all. Knowing that every time I went to a meeting and knowing the futility of trying without that surrender. But, in God’s sweet time, the thing finally damn came. I hope that every one of the 525600 minutes of 2020 are lived sober by me. That is my hope. I believe that is God’s will. We shall see. But, my prayer today is to get out of my own damn way and live the life that God would have me live and to be the person that God would have me be… again, we shall see. But, here is to hope!