Nothing

I was very fortunate to have been raised in a home where my mom and dad were deeply spiritual. They practiced (and still do) living on spiritual principles, namely those outlined by Jesus. I remember as a young kid, watching how my dad cared for our neighbors. He's the one who showed me how to care for the homeless by taking me weekly to the Star of Hope to give out meals. They would invite our neighbors to church just about every Sunday, and we'd all pack into the mini van, and I'd stare at our visitors the whole time wondering why they were with us. 

It didn't take long to grow into the faith of my parents. I naturally began doing the things I saw them doing, and most of those things I still do today. I credit my dad for how I view the homeless today. I credit both of them for my current involvement in the church. But the thing that they couldn't teach me, and that no one could, was how to believe and trust in God. They definitely set up the platform for success, but I was gonna have to be the one to figure this one out.

For years and years, I developed the practices of the faith. Prayer, studying the scriptures, and getting heavily involved in the church were a constant part of my life. They still are. 

But eventually, it would have to get deeper. Eventually, I would have to face the question, "If I do nothing, will I even believe in God?" Or better yet, "If I do nothing, will God believe in me?"

The latter question is the one that makes more sense to me, because in all honesty, with all of my "spiritual credits," all of the things that I've done to develop my faith, most of my journey has consisted of action without faith. 

It's a natural law to become like the people I spend the most time with. I start taking on their characteristics. I start doing things that they enjoy doing. I start opening my mind to different concepts and ideas that I normally wouldn't have thought about. But the faith thing is something that can't be taught. It's something that has to be experienced. 

I'm not a proponent of the idea that works without faith is somehow invalid or cheap. To me, anything good that anyone does for anybody is a sign that love exists. And wherever I find love, I find God. The two are inseparable today. The words can be interchanged because they mean the same thing. 

But at the same time, I know from experience that works was the only thing I had to hold onto because I had a faith that was counterfeit. I played the game. I said the right things. I made sure people knew that I "believed the right things," while deep inside I knew it wasn't real. 

The biggest consequence of having a faith that was counterfeit was, I had no foundation when things got bad. My drinking took me to a place that a cheap faith couldn't pray away. It drove me into a darkness that most people of faith would be able to persevere through and know deep inside that what was happening was all part of the plan. 

My drinking would send me to bed at night terrified at the prospect of a God who despised me, while my good deeds the next day would show the world I believed in a loving, generous God. There came a time when prayer just didn't work anymore. Conjuring up the energy to go help someone didn't work anymore. Going to church didn't work anymore. Hanging out with faithful people didn't work anymore. 

There came a time when I had to face the fact that either God was or God wasn't. Because, when all the good practices stopped working, I was left with nothing except the horror of my own existence. The best I could do was drink every chance I had. If I felt guilty, it would be reason to drink more.

The last few years of my drinking are still a blur. I don't know what happened in that time. I don't know that I accomplished anything. The lines between consciousness and unconsciousness seemed to get pretty gray.  

But it had to go that way, and I thank God it did go that way. 

Because, if I hadn't drank the way that I did, I don't know if I would've ever realized that faith isn't a gauge that shows me how much I believe in God, but it's a gauge showing me how much God believes in me. 

Prayer and good deeds had become tools to cope with my sick mind. They really had nothing to do with God, but everything to do with helping me feel better. I needed them in order to be okay, because me being alone with me wasn't a good thing. I couldn't bear to sit in my own skin for a few seconds without needing alcohol to ease the discomfort. 

Hijacking the spiritual practices of my parents, I used them for my own good - to deter me from myself, to deny my own sickness. 

But, like I said, there came a time when I would have to face the proposition - without anything to help me cope - that either God was or wasn't. Either God was there to help me or I was doomed to die an alcoholic death. And it was at that point in 2009 that I realized I bring nothing to God.

And I've been bringing my nothing to God ever since. 

Because, lets face it. My prayers are whispers in a hurricane. My good deeds are seeping with self-seeking sloppiness. My faith shatters as soon as things start going any other direction than my own. 

What exactly am I doing for God again? What's that?

Nothing. 

The most important spiritual lesson I've learned in my recovery from the darkness of alcoholism is this: I bring nothing to God's table. 

In other words, God does all the heavy lifting. All of it. 

God brings everything. I bring nothing. 

And I didn't learn this at a church somewhere. I didn't learn this studying the Bible. I didn't learn this through prayer. I learned this through holding onto my ideas and my way of doing things until I squeezed the life out of them. And when that happened, faith happened. 

It wasn't the sunday school kind of faith that I seemed to never grow out of either. Up until that point, faith was what I used to compare myself to other people. Faith was my spiritual gauge. It showed me how spiritual I was at any given moment. I just needed to do down my mental checklist to make sure I was doing more than the next guy. 

The faith that happened to me when I had nothing left looked completely different. It was the humbled, defenseless, spiritually bankrupt realization that faith was never supposed to be about me. It was always supposed to be about realizing how much God loved me. 

Because God always brought everything while I always brought nothing. 
And that's how I want it to stay.

On Guard

Yesterday, I was walking to the little convenience store in front of my apartment complex. Across the street, a church meets for their Sunday morning service. The first thing that caught my eye was a police officer fully uniformed, guarding the front entrance. 

I thought, This is some great material for my next blog!

As I walked back to my apartment from the store, it seemed like the officer was staring me down from 300 yards away, and I smiled. Whether it's true or not, I felt that if I were to walk over there at that moment there would be trouble. I was wearing cut-off jorts and an Astros shirt, but that didn't seem as offsetting as what kind of people I was representing. 

My apartment complex is full of Hispanics, and most of them are probably illegal immigrants. And the thought crossed my mind, Are they trying to get certain people in, or keep certain people out? 

And with my already-a-work-in-progress prejudice toward the church, and my already-a-work-in-progress prejudice toward police officers, my default mindset told me that this church was trying to keep the people from my apartment complex out of their services - you know, the riffraff, the outsiders, the people who don't look like the majority churchgoers. 

I wanted to take the unfinished, biased, and prejudiced attitude I had toward the situation and start a heated Facebook conversation. I wanted to rile up some debate. But, something inside of me said to do otherwise. So, I waited until this morning, and I sent the pastor an email. I decided to go straight to the source and find out why a police officer was guarding the entrance to the church building. 

I can't tell you that I've ever done any sort of investigative work into something that left a bad taste in my mouth. Even as the general manager of the restaurant I work at, I'm very short-scoped in my desire to look at all angles and hear all the sides of any given story before I make termination decisions. 

But the truth is, every situation has a story. And every story has characters. And every character has a purpose. 

If I would've had any anger or disturbances going on when I saw that police officer, I'd be on the computer stirring up a hornet's nest of conversation. But, for some reason a little voice reminded me that picking fights doesn't work anymore. 

And what I've learned since yesterday is this: when I explore all the angles I can come up with, the story changes. 

The story escapes my head - which is full of spin - and becomes truthful. And in this case, the story became less about my jaded views of the marriage between civil authorities and the church, and more about my full understanding of a situation that I would've formerly written off as another instance of the church being wrong. 

And that brings me to an even deeper point. When's the last time someone yelled at me? Maybe it was a boss. Maybe it was an angry driver. Maybe it was a parent. Did I walk away from that experience thinking, That person is an asshole, or did I walk away with the thought, I wonder what was going on in that person's life to cause them to act that way.

And I can turn it around. When's the last time I yelled at someone? Would I have hoped to do things a little differently? Would I have hoped that the person receiving my verbal lashing would've walked away thinking that maybe I was just having a bad day or I was having some stressful situations going on in my life?

I heard someone say once that our lives are made up of inches and seconds. The things separating me from decisions that can potentially change my whole life are merely moments away. It's the phone call, the wrong turn, the angry jeer, the clenched fist, the boiling resentment. 

And the thing that can literally change the course of the rest of my life is understanding. In order to understand, I have to be able to take a deep breath, pray, and see outside of my raging emotions. That little gesture may be what saves my life. That may be the thing that saves me from myself at any given moment.

Every thought that goes through my mind is based on either positive or negative principles. By default, I'm a depressed, manic, and as chaotic as they come. If I don't take my morning pills, spend a couple hours in meditation and contemplation, and ask God to help me plan my day, my thinking will not get me where I want to go. It takes a whole lot of commitment and discipline to let go of my crazy mind and grab hold of God. It's the only chance I have of bringing something good into the world instead of constantly feeling like the world is against me. Inches and seconds, right?

Door

About a week ago, my buddy and I went to have coffee to catch up on life. As we were finding a seat, we ran into a mutual friend who was having a conversation with a guy in his twenties. They invited us to sit down and join the conversation, and so we agreed. I'm so glad we did, because the younger guy had lots of questions to ask. Spiritual questions. And I love getting to give my opinions on spiritual issues. 

It wasn't long into the conversation before I realized that this guy was dealing with the same spiritual struggles as I was dealing with his age, and really all the way up to about four years ago.

Underneath the surface of his questions, I sensed that he had this terrifying fear of hell because he was picking apart the same verses of the Bible that I would spend hours interrogating. And as he read all these verses, I couldn't help but think about how fear had been the motivator of most of my spiritual actions. From serving the homeless to serving the church, the fear of God's punishment drove me to do some really good things. 

I sympathized with the guy. I understood what he was feeling. I understood how many nights he was probably going to sleep pondering and wrestling and worrying about what would happen when he dies. 

And there are so many people just like him, right now, who are doing really good things in the world out of a desperate attempt to please an angry God who has plans to send them to hell if they don't keep up the righteous living. On the outside, they appear sold out, all in, and some of the most loving people in the world, but on the inside they're dying. They're falling apart. They're wondering how long they can sustain this way of life. 

And so, as this guy shared his story, I shared with him my current concepts of God, and heaven, and hell, and Jesus, and all those good words in the Christian vocabulary. I also shared how I arrived to those concepts. 

The one question he asked that stuck out from the others was, How do I get to heaven?

And I knew, and sensed, and felt in my bones that he was asking it with a sincere desire to get to heaven. Except, he had never thought of the possibility of heaven on earth. Much like me, he'd never been taught the art form of questioning. 

My response was: You've gotta suspend your belief systems. If you don't, your heaven and hell will always be some place that happens after you die. If I could describe what heaven is to me, I'd say it's always on the other side of whatever my greatest current fear is. If my greatest fear is a door, heaven is what happens as a result of walking through it. Hell is what happens when I get too paralyzed to open the door, much less walk through it. So, what's your greatest fear right now?

Now, I understand that some people use fear as a healthy motivator. But that was not this kid's story, and neither was it mine. Fear would drive me to drink, and the fear of God's punishment would drive me to do as many good things as I could do in 24 hours in order to make up for the drinking. It was my vicious cycle. 

And the fear of God and hell were two roads among many that would lead me to the bottle. 

I'm gonna throw another side note in here that may offend some people, but I'm honestly only trying to share my story. I once used to take all of the Bible literally. So, the parts about God smiting cities and children and families and killing off humanity with a flood and turning Sodom and Gomorrah into a pile of salt - not only were those real events but they saturated my views of God. I couldn't imagine God without imagining violence and curses and thunder and wrath. I couldn't imagine that the Bible was written by people, and they too - just like me - looked at the world through the lens of whatever box they'd created for their God.

This is a real thing. The way we read really does affect the way we believe and live. And the Bible doesn't hold a monopoly on this sort of thing. This can happen through any sacred text. 

And so, my God always demanded more. More sacrifice. More money. More love. More compassion. More altruism, until I had nothing left but my shaky belief systems and a God I was afraid of. 

And this did not help my drinking problem one bit. It only enhanced it. It gave me another reason to drown myself in alcohol. 

The cycle kept going and seemed like it would never end. Even after I took my last drink, the spiritual crisis in my life was furiously raging. I didn't have any way to cope with my fear of God except to hold on and wait for something to change. 

And that brings me to my next point. 

Change. 

When my concept of God changed, it wasn't based on anything I'd done on my part. It happened to me. I was a recipient of something beautiful, mysterious, and breath-giving. I'd done a whole lot to get me to the point of receiving it, but had done nothing to create it. It was a gift, much like my sobriety. 

I was desperate enough, had enough pain, and had enough misery to finally be opened up to a better view of God. My intellectual stamina was done. Every part of me was done. I was spiritually and emotionally bankrupt. 

I had to hit a spiritual bottom. I had to get so tired of shoveling that all I could do was receive and stop trying to fix everything. It was at this point of desperation that God changed me. It's like God extracted all the preconceived, damaging, toxic ideas that had been in my head for so long and replaced them all with ideas of a God who was forever loving, compassionate, merciful, and forgiving. 

And it changed everything.

It changed how I looked at the world. It changed how I looked at myself. It changed how I looked at altruism. It changed how I looked at work. It changed how I looked at sex. It changed how I looked at problems.

It literally changed everything, and I haven't been the same since.

And now, whenever I read those violent stories in the Bible, I don't automatically get afraid of God. I read them as I would any other book, but get deep spiritual principles out of it that can be used to enhance my spiritual life. And I find that the people who wrote those stories were probably just as afraid of God as I was because it saturated the way they wrote.

In closing, I don't know if that guy will ever read this, but I'd like to let him know:

Friend, keep digging because eventually you're gonna hit Texas gumbo and that stuff's really hard to dig through with a shovel. But, you'll probably get a backhoe. And eventually the backhoe's not gonna be powerful enough. And then, you may get one of those huge augers. But eventually, that huge auger's not gonna be powerful enough. And then, you may get the world's strongest pile driver. But eventually, that pile driver's not gonna be powerful enough. Eventually, there's not gonna be a tool in this world strong enough to go any deeper. So, keep digging until you can't dig anymore. Don't stop. Chances are, if you stop too soon, when you still have energy left, you're still gonna be in control. Once you've finally run out of energy, and power, and determination, and motivation, you'll be ready to receive the change that God has for you. You'll be ready to have your current ideas transformed into new, life-giving ideas that will forever alter the course of your existence and it'll be absolutely mind-blowing.

Tools

I discovered one of the greatest truths I'll ever know about four years ago. It turns out that the people around me aren't the cause of my problems.

Yesterday, I was assembling a toolbox at my job. I had all the screws, washers, pieces, and instructions laid out before me. And, the A.C. was broken. As the heat rose, so did my irritability. And due to the position that I signed up for, every five minutes it seems like there's a new problem that comes up that I've gotta figure out a solution for. And so, every time someone would talk to me, I got more irritated. And they could hear it in my voice. They could hear it in the way I was working. I started banging the toolbox around trying to give off a signal that I was not to be interrupted while working on this toolbox. 

And I can't stand putting things together when I don't have complete focus. I end up skipping an important instruction or putting the wrong screw in the wrong hole, and taking something apart and doing it over. 

It took about an hour to get the thing assembled, but while the toolbox was complete, my irritability wasn't. I was ready to bark at whoever said a word to me or looked at me in an offsetting way. 

In a perfect, Jon-is-a-saint world, I would've stopped what I was doing every time someone needed my attention, calmly listened, and addressed whatever problems needed addressing. But, that wasn't me yesterday. I just kept going, carrying my frustration with me all the way through work. 

Before I ever discovered the truth that I stated above, I would've been perfectly content blaming my coworkers for my frustration. In fact, the more I could blame other people for my problems, the more invincible and self-righteous I felt. 

And that philosophy of living is - what I've found - a very normal state of being for many, many, people. Just take a stroll through the home page on Facebook, and see how many people are pinning their problems on the government or some other institution.

But the truth is, no one has the power to frustrate or irritate me. No one has the power to run my emotions or feelings. 

For years and years, I had a scapegoat. It was a real person with fictitious attributes. I got so used to blaming this person for so many problems, that it became a way of life. It was always my get-out-of-jail-free card. I only thought it was free. 

And the more I pinned this person as the cause of all my problems, the less I was able to see any flaws in myself. And that was a dangerous place to be. 

But doesn't that seem to be the default of the world we live in? Haven't the lines gotten so blurred between who's at fault and who's not? There's always someone or something to blame. 

I'm so thankful to have some trusted friends who will never fall for my self-pity tricks. When I go to them with my problems, they won't join me in my character assassinations of other people, but they'll point me inward. They'll help me discover what's off inside of me, what needs tweaking, what needs a little adjustment. Friends like these are vital. 

Every time I'm disturbed about something, I've got to look inside. If I don't, it's impossible to find out how to fix it. The problem with blaming others is, I have no control over other people. And so, if my perception of the world is that it causes me frustration, or anger, or fear, I have no chance of getting over it. The best hope I have is avoiding it, and at the same time I'll paint the world as an evil, dog-eat-dog wasteland with nothing good in it. And eventually, I'll isolate myself from anything or anyone who isn't like me.

But there's an alternative to this way of life, and it's freeing. 

Every time I'm disturbed, all I have to do is ask myself what I'm afraid of. Am I afraid of being inconvenienced? Am I afraid of being rejected? Am I afraid of not having enough time? Am I afraid of feeling insignificant?

And after taking responsibility for my disturbance, I simply ask God to give me the right thought, decision, or action to address the disturbance. Nine times out of ten, the answer I get is to prayer for the person that I blamed for my problems. There's a beautiful, mysterious thing that happens here. I cannot pray for someone and be angry at them at the same time. I don't know how this works, but it does. As soon as I start praying, my mind goes to a different, more realistic place. It's no longer controlled by anger or frustration, but care and compassion. I let the person off the hook, remove them as the cause of my problems, and put the problem back on me and my own childish behavior. It's an amazing thing.

My intentions are to do this every single time I get disturbed, but I hardly ever do it. It's so much easier in the moment to run on autopilot, to let my emotions drive me around. But after awhile, it's not so easy. I'm an emotional wreck with about a million different disturbances littering my mind, and I don't know where to begin to clean it all up. If the problems pile up big enough, I'll start looking for every opportunity I can to drown it all in a pitcher of beer, or five. 

Because before, alcohol was the solution to all of my problems - until it stopped working. I never knew that problems originated inside of me. I never knew that I could just take a moment to pause and rethink whatever situation had caught me off guard. I never knew that other people weren't to blame. So the only thing I found that would calm my unsteady nerves was a thirty pack of beer. It would take care of any resentments, fears, or worries. But once the alcohol evacuated my system, it was back to the default - pinballing from one disturbance to another without a viable solution to any of them. 

Pause. Pray. Continue . . . repeat. 

My problems today aren't cause by my coworkers, my pastor, my government, my religion, my parents, my family, my friends, my enemies, my teachers, or my boss, and that's a huge relief because I don't have any control over any of them. 

 

Speechless

One of my deepest fears is the fear of running into people I haven't seen in a long time who I used to be close with, especially when the relationship went from full throttle to a halt.

And if I pull back one more layer, the fear is all about being rejected.

My wife and I recently went to Galveston for the weekend, and as we were eating breakfast, I decided to give an old friend a call to see if he was available to hang out. To my surprise, he was, so we met him for coffee. 

We used to be connected at the hip. We dreamt the same dreams, envisioned the same ideas, and did a lot of great stuff together. But we went our separate ways. Alcoholism took me elsewhere while he continued on with his life, searching for meaning and putting into action all the things that I aspired to do. In a lot of ways, I lived vicariously through him.

Have you ever had those kinds of people in your life? They're so energetic, passionate, and driven that you can't help but wanna sort of soak it up without having to go all out. But for some reason, you can't seem to do it on your own. This was my friend and I. He was the doer and I was the dreamer. 

When he answered my call, my plan was to rekindle as much of our relationship as I could over a cup of coffee. He had to get to work, so we only had about 45 minutes. About five minutes into the conversation, it dawned on me that if we were to rekindle anything, it'd have to happen over about a five hour span with a firepit and coffee. And we just didn't have the opportunity. 

I had these feelings surging through my body that ultimately kept me speechless. He had no problem sharing as much as he could in the time alotted, but I didn't know where to start. So, I just stared at him, and back to my wife, and back to him, just hoping the time would end soon.

What is that?

One of my closest friends that I never get to see, and all of a sudden I'm paralyzed mid-conversation and have nothing to say?

What is that??

This is the first time I've really examined that conversation (or lack of), and I realize that it was another instance of fear dominating my actions. Once I realized that we didn't have enough time to give him the perception of me that I wanted him to see, I shut up. It felt futile. 

He went on to share all the different ways his beliefs had changed since the last time I saw him, the books he was currently reading, the job he was currently working, and everything that would seemingly catch two old friends up. But, I was more driven by my need for him to see how successful and important I am than my need to highlight everything that had happened in my life since the last time I saw him.

My body language showed nothing less than disinterest, because when I stop talking it means the most important person in the room has nothing to say. And so, I sat awkwardly, stared awkwardly, and shuffled around in my seat. It was severely uncomfortable. 

What is that?

Well, the short answer is: my self-reliance failed me. 

My ultimate plan was to walk into this conversation and rekindle in a few minutes what would normally take months. And not only did I fail to do this, but he probably left thinking I was crazier now than the last time I saw him.

In a perfect, Jon-is-a-spiritual-guru world, this would've never happened. I would have blown his mind with all of my knowledge, he would've have found no need to talk, and our "relationship" would continue where it left off.

Now that I have a chance to think about it, I may have been just a little controlling and dominant. 

So, why does fear happen? We can list so many different kinds - rejection, failure, financial, the fear of God, the fear of success, the fear of heights, the fear of people, the fear of authority . . . the list goes on and on.

But, if you take away all the different kinds, and just leave the word fear by itself with no companions to cling onto, what do we have?

The failure of self-reliance. In other words, the scary, paralyzing, sobering reality that I can't do blank.

And there's only two things that can fill that gaping hole when the reality sets in: either fear or God.

Now, I must also note that evidently there's a whole population of people out there who haven't had the experience of self-reliance failing them. They've managed to get it right every time. They've managed to use their intellect, their self-will, their own resources to figure out the solution to every problem they've faced. I don't understand this. It's not me. In my mind, they're either living in constant fear or in constant reliance on a higher power. I don't see any middle ground there. 

Back to the point. 

Every day, I experience about a million of these oh-my-god-I-don't-know-what-to-do moments. At work, at home, with friends, with family, you name it.

And all of these moments are red flags of self-reliance failing me. The problem is, about 999,999 of my responses to these moments consist of acting out of fear. Then, there's that one shining star moment in the day where I actually do the right thing - stop, pray, and move on.

Doesn't it seem so much simpler to rely on God instead of fear? 

It does to me, yet everything inside me says to figure it out, turn it over, scan it, analyze it, problem solve, get angry, scream, go smoke a cigarette, and come up with something other than prayer!!

The self is such a good persuader, and evidently prayer is not. 

But, in my experience, prayer has been the one thing that'll get me out of fear and get me moving again. Somehow, it allows me to be okay with my inability to do whatever it is, and moves me along.

I'll close with this final thought, and I apologize if it's too abstract. 

If it weren't for the millions of times that my self has failed me, I would either be dead, in prison, or locked up in an insane asylum. As far as I know, the only reason I've even had the chance to comprehend the existence of God is, I've run out of options. 

The state of constant fear doesn't work anymore. It doesn't motivate me anymore. It doesn't do the things that it once did for me, which was mostly trying to fit square pegs into round holes. I have not, can not, and will not have the ability to gather all of my resources and figure out every single dilemma life throws my way. And I'm doing my best to keep God out of the box that I've been building for 33 years. 

As a result, the moments that have the potential to drive me into a deeper reality with God are the same moments of utter failure - when I can't figure it out, when I can't seem to make it work. 

So, if self-reliance failing me is what ultimately points me to God, then I'll take it every chance I get.

Stage

I've never been the type who responds to burning bushes with enthusiasm. While Moses may have been convinced that all he needed was a sign from God to do something great in his world, I find that the writing in the sky doesn't convince me. Maybe it's because it seems too mainstream, too obvious, or too common-sensical. 

Because, for most people (I'm assuming), all it takes is the flashing sign that says Do Not Enter for a quick stop, breath, and U-turn. 

We've all heard the stories of these flashing signs. It's the dad who goes from a sperm donor to a real father because when his wife decides to finally utter the words, I'm leaving, the light bulb goes off. It's the woman with the dead-end job who knows deep inside that she's really supposed to be doing that, and the boss walks in to tell her the company's shutting down and the light bulb goes off. It's the man who's been a functional crack smoker for twenty years and looks in the mirror one day and sees the sores all over his face and arms, and puts it away for good when he realizes how much his family really needs him. 

Doesn't it seem that the light bulb just flickers on for most people? One moment they're messed up and on a path going nowhere, then the epiphany comes, and everything changes. They just quit, or redirect their path, or start doing something different.

That's just not how it's worked for me. 

The great epiphany hasn't been my story.

The conversation with my mother after wrecking her car (for the third time) didn't create any epiphanies. The trip to the hospital with enough alcohol in my blood to kill any human wasn't enough to turn on the light bulb. The broken relationships, the financial debt, the trips to jail, none of these was a burning bush for me. 

Why? I wonder. 

I'll give it a shot trying to answer this loaded question.

For starters, I'm the most important person in my life. As long as I still have what it takes to overcome the obstacles in my path (regardless of whether they're self-imposed or not), nothing's gonna convince me to turn off the path I'm heading down. 

I have a friend who, although much like me had repeated burning bushes in his life, the one thing I knew that would convince him was losing his daughter. But, even that wasn't enough. So, what's left? He was left, and he may still be holding on for dear life to what's left of himself. I don't know. I haven't heard from him since he went to jail.

Anyways, back to me (the most important character in this article). As long as I'm the one who appears to be the fixer, or the obstacle mover, or the hero, or the rags-to-riches-personality, I have a chance. At least, that's what I think. That's the status my marvelous mind's telling me I'm living in. 

But something curious happened one night in 2008. I was at a bar, which was normal. I was with friends, which was normal. I'd been drinking, which was very normal. I was singing karaoke, which was normal (but probably not as appreciated by my friends as I would've liked them to be). 

And as I was singing - probably some throwback Bob Dylan song from the seventies that only gets heard these days through some alcohol-induced, swaying, slit-eyed drunk like me standing on top of the world (or on top of a stage that seems like it could collapse any second now, or is that just the room spinning?) - something happened. It was subtle, but sobering. It was silent, but effective at least for the moment. 

I lost me, or, in more logical terms, I lost my dignity. And I was the last sucker to see it. 

I'm sure everyone else had already lost my dignity for me, but I wouldn't have noticed. 

As I stood there in a bar full of people, I saw myself for who I truly was - a joke, a wretch, a loser, a hopeless cause. Although there were maybe a hundred people in the room, it seemed like I was the only one. I was singing into a void, a chasm, an empty place full of mirror reflections of me at different points of my drinking career. There's me when I screwed up that wedding. There's me when I hurt my dad. There's me when I said that to her. There's me when I quit school. There's me when I nearly drank myself to death. There's me crying. There's me walking into the bar with the hospital bracelet still on my wrist.

And the most important reflection I saw that night was, There's me not being able to do a fucking thing about me.

I lost me that night, and I would never recover.

Because, when I lost me, something else took over. 

This something else was something different. It was something mysteriously hopeful. It was something that would set me on a path that I'd never known before. And I decided that next morning that I wanted more of that something. I wanted to drink that something up like I would a thirty pack of Lone Star or my favorite mix of a rum and coke.

And that something started driving me to do something, but more importantly, it seemed like that something was doing things to me, inside me, around me, and through me.

And that something, I decided, was profitable enough to pour all of my energies into. That something was valuable enough to entrust my life to. That something was powerful enough to take away the obsession that was so prevalent for so many years in my life. That something became everything.

I knew that it could either be me or the mysterious something that would determine my course, and I lost me. That something was the only thing available, and let me tell you . . . 

I haven't been the same since. 

God either is or isn't. Unless I'm crushed by a self-imposed crisis, I will always choose me. Unless circumstances have made me willing to accept that there's nothing left of me to fix whatever problem has come up, I will always choose me. 

And so, life today takes on a completely different meaning. I still want to drink up the mysteries of that something, but the only way to get the satisfaction I need is to stay in a state of lostness. I have to remember that I lost me back in 2008 and I'm never getting me back. Me is dead. Me is never going to be recovered. Me is a joke, a dead end road, a torture chamber. 

But a new Me, thanks to the something that started working in me, began forming that next day. And the new Me is who I have today. And the sky's the limit. Alcohol is no longer my master, but has been replaced by a loving something that gently guides me through life's problems, and points me where I need to go.

Either God is or God isn't. It's either me or God. I choose God today.

Advice

So, I have this intense desire to fix other people. I wish I could blame alcohol for this destructive pattern of behavior, but it was there long before I took my first drink. The alcohol only intensified it and made it easier to bypass the throbbing need to attempt working on myself and all the problems that came with being me. I found that drinking was the cure-all for many problems such as these, and it became a great solution to honing in all of my energies and ambitions to working on other people's problems. 

When life is devoid of meaning, there's nothing I'd rather do than get a thirty pack of Lone Star, turn off the phone, start mapping out the strategies I'm gonna use on my next victim, and get to work. Needless to say, I've had more than enough amends to make with people who I've tried to control and instruct on how to live the "right" way. 

These days, while the desire to change other people still looms deep in the recesses of my self-centered heart, I've been pretty successful at shutting it off and not letting the desire turn into tangible actions. At least, I think it has. I've definitely been accused more times than not of slipping in little "life lessons" with unsuspecting subjects of my mad world. 

One of my most thorough patients of my self-seeking methods was named Ashley. This isn't her real name, but due to anonymity purposes I'll leave it there. In my mind (but not reality), Ashley needed a real fix. She was on the streets, running around with a dude who didn't deserve her, and got herself deep into some drug problems. Despite my own drinking problems (an understatement), I decided that Ashlely needed to "straighten up." She needed to get her life together. She needed a little Jon Tucker therapy. So, I made my own list of what I thought Ashley should do with her life. It included getting into recovery (which I had never attempted myself). And so, as the little servant that I was at the time, I did some pretty heroic things for poor Ashley.

I helped her get a car (which I would eventually take back), I got her into a church group (which she would eventually run away from for good reason), I would bring her groceries (as long as she scratched my back), and even showed up to her baby's baptism (the baby of which I would try to get taken away by CPS). Needless to say, Ashley was a very valuable person in my life, not because I thought she contributed alot to my needs, but because I found life's deep purpose in fixing all of her problems.

I wish I could say that my maddening journey of fixing others stopped with Ashley, but really it was a continuing pattern that oozed through my grand self images of being a wonderful helper in the world. There were many Ashleys in my world, and God knows I still have some back in the corners of my mind that I owe amends to. 

And like I said earlier, the desire to change people didn't start when I started drinking, but the drink intensified it and blinded me from my own defects of character.

The worst thing I ever did "for" Ashley (at the time I surely didn't think it was wrong) was suspect she and her loser husband were doing drugs while she was pregnant, and call the CPS about it. Well, the CPS eventually went knocking on her door, and they searched the whole house. Not a drug was found on her. She was sober and doing everything a pregnant woman should've been doing to prepare for a child. And the last thing I remember is receiving a phone call from Ashley, crying, feeling betrayed, and asking me, How could you do this to me?

That was 2007, give or take a year. In 2009, on Christmas Eve, I had my last drink. Alcohol had finally become my master, and I saw it. I felt it. I knew deep inside that alcohol had me and I couldn't do anything about it. I went to my first recovery meeting, and for a year struggled with trying to accept that someone other than myself had a solution for my drinking. Day after day, I white knuckled not only the desires to drink, but also the anger, fear, and dishonesty that comes with untreated alcoholism. 

Finally, after a year or so of living in misery, I found a sponsor. And this sponsor saved my life. Although I hadn't drank, I was ready to die. I was ready to take some measures of my own to escape for good this impending disaster called life. It was hell not being able to fix myself or anybody else, and death sounded real good. 

But luckily, the man I ran into knew what he was talking about. He put me to work on the twelve steps, and soon I was seeing everything through a different lens. I was seeing my flaws. The memories of my shaky past started shooting through my mind like comets. And after about three months of intense stepwork, I finally saw what I needed to see. All of my problems weren't caused by other people, but they existed inside me. I just couldn't see them because I was always trying to focus on something else instead, namely alcohol. 

One of the many truths that I saw had to do with Ashley. I finally saw what I'd never seen before, which was my insane desire to "help" other people, even when they didn't want my help. I wondered how many people I'd done this same thing to. I wondered how in the world I would resolve this dilemma. But, most importantly, I had a spiritual awakening. 

I realized that no human power could fix me, and that I surely wasn't powerful enough to fix myself or anybody else. God became my fixer. That was 2010. 

I made most of my amends, and started going about relationships much differently. I stopped giving advice (yeah right!), or at least started catching myself giving advice. I never found Ashley though. I couldn't find her on Facebook, I couldn't find her in the directory, I couldn't find an email address or phone number. I didn't know if she was dead or alive. But, I knew I had to apologize for my wrongdoings. I needed her forgiveness. I needed her to free me from what I thought I was in bondage with - the remorse and shame of calling the CPS on her. 

And in 2014 I got that chance. I was checking my Facebook messages one day, and a random girl sent me a message. I didn't recognize the name, but after scanning through her pictures I realized it was her. My heart immediately felt excited that she was alive. I wanted to cry I was so happy. 

She gave me her number, I gave her mine, and immediately my phone rang. I heard her voice for the first time in seven years. After so much turmoil we'd both gone through, she told me she'd been sober about the same length of time I was. She'd managed to lose her loser husband (without my help!), and was successfully raising her kid (without my help!). She was completely self-sufficient and had a spiritual awakening of her own (again, without my help!). 

The first thing I told her was how sorry I was for calling the CPS, and before I could even finish the sentence, she said, Tucker! That was the best thing anybody's ever done for me! Thank you! When that happened, I woke up and I realized that I had to change!

I'll never forget what she told me on the phone that day. Today, she's sharing her story with countless numbers of people who are going down the same road as she was, and she's got a message to carry about how God transformed her into a beautiful, caring, compassionate, and sober mother. 

When life is devoid of meaning, I find meaning in fixing other people's problems and telling them how to live. While it looks to me like it's helpful, it's actually damaging and destructive. It produces resentment in other people, and destroys relationships. But thanks to God, I don't have to live that way anymore, and when the tendency flares up, I can see it, catch it, and get rid of it before it turns into hurtful action. 

Preserve

So, I have this constant drive to stand out from everybody else. You can read it in my writing, you can see it in the way I study the Bible, you can see it in the way I work. 

I don't like common sense answers.

I don't like going with the flow of current mainstream thought. 

And, I don't like settling.

And these can all be used for good, to contribute to the world and do my part in making it a better place for the people around me. However, a lot of the time, my motives are misdirected. 

And there's a couple reasons for this. This first is, I despise the idea of authority. Anytime someone brings us ideas like submitting to authority, or respecting authority, or anything else along those lines, I feel this need to push back. And let me turn it over for a second to defend this point.

If you think about it, we call certain people authority figures, because they're supposed to represent something right? Judges represent the preservation of law. Police represent the preservation of safety. Pastors represent the preservation of spiritual health. Bosses represent the preservation of business growth. 

Yet, we know that all these different authority figures aren't any better than we are. We know everyone has their issues. We know everyone does bad things, whether they're in secret or public. So, it's really hard to "submit" to authority with this knowledge. It's really difficult to step aside, surrender my thoughts on any given issue, and give a wholesale green light to whatever an authority figure sees as the right way to go.

The other reason my motives in standing out from the rest is, the concept that we are unique is woven into the fabric of the American religious/social system. As Americans, we're told over and over that we're part of the greatest country in the world, that we're a sovereign nation, that we're a "Christian nation."

As Christians, we're told that we have the "only way to God." And, I'm sure that Muslims are told the same thing, along with Jews and every other religion that finds a home in this country. 

And add to that the litany of advertising ads and political jargon that screams at us through every media source we encounter, and the same concept is hammered over and over again. 

 So, when I pair my dislike for authority with this concept of being part of a culture that's "better" than all the rest, my tendency to stand out from the crowd, to not settle for the status quo, and to "be the best I can be" is very misdirected. 

Why?

Because the desire to do great things, to be a great contributor to the great world we live in, isn't necessarily driven so much by sacred ambition as it is isolated judgmentalism. 

In other words, sacred ambition says, Do great things and be a great person so others can have a better life.

And isolated judgmentalism says, Do great things and be a great person because you are set apart from everyone else.

For years and years, I was convinced that the Bible was about how Christians are set apart from everyone else. The word "holy" was (and is) used so much that it became apparent that I must have this special inside scoop to God that no one else has. Even the Bible itself was (and is) called the Word of God, as if anyone who owned a Bible owned a slice of the God pie. I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone say, If you don't have a Bible, how can you know God? And let me tell you, that certainly affects how I go about contributing to the world. 

While all of us are unique, we're not overly unique to the point that we're on a higher level than anyone else. The best way I can state this is, we're equally unique. 

I like the picture that Paul paints about the body. I believe that when he talks about the body, it's easy to imagine he's only speaking to Christians. But, if I just expand my thinking a little bit, the picture works for humanity. 

Paul basically says that we all have unique functions, but they're not so unique because they accommodate other unique functions. In other words, every function is unique in what it does, but it's a small part of a great whole. And the great whole is a fully functioning body. 

So, how do I, as a not-so-unique being living in this not-so-unique world live in the way of sacred ambition and not isolated judgmentalism?

Come to understand and respect my own flaws. Why? Because those are what keep my pride in check as I wake up and go out into the world that I share with everyone else. When I'm humbled by the realization of my own flaws, I'm able to see that everyone else is trying to figure this thing called life out just like I am. 

It changes the way I see people. They're no longer different than me. They're no longer the fuel I use to drive my ambition, but they're sacred. They're God's children. In fact, they're benefactors of my ambitions. 

More importantly, I'm no longer different than anybody else. I no longer have this engrained mindset that I'm set apart, called out, or branded with this concept that I have the insider information that no one else does. And I can rest in that. I can start seeing that God isn't just in me, but in everybody. My worldview begins expanding to the point where I can see past the prejudices of my own religion, and see that God communicates through other religions as well. 

I can start seeing myself as one little part of the great whole of humanity.