Celebrating failure? Yes. Because failure is a part of success, and failure is important for me to remember who gets the glory for the great miracle of my recovery. It was failure that brought me to the understanding that I needed help, to the place where I could no longer deceive myself about being able to control my drinking and drugging. Out on parole for barely a week, with only six months to go before the State of Texas was off my back, I still could not wait. I couldn't make myself just not drink or drug for six months, not even to avoid going back to prison. That night, for the first time, I admitted I was an alcoholic and expressed an inward desire to try a spiritual program of recovery instead of fighting to fix myself. It was just 24 hours I desired, 24 hours at a time.
I didn't last the week. More expressions of desire came and seemed insincerely given, because I failed over and over again. Two weeks seemed to be my utter limit as I failed at that point several times before finally pushing on through to my first 30 days. I received congratulations that day, and that night I got both drunk and high. I had been so happy earlier when friends were telling me good job and encouraging me to keep on doing it. I dared to hope and began believing that maybe, just maybe, I could do this thing. Epic Fail. In less than eight hours later, I was wasted and feeling hopeless and worthless once more.
That failure caused me to surrender. The failure at the start made me realize I needed help. But I saw that help like a crutch. I would do it. I would walk the recovery road and get clean and sober, but I would have this crutch to help me. And I kept failing down, because I was still trying to do it myself, with a little assistance from God, on my terms, of course. That 30 day failure showed me that I had it wrong. Relationship with God and the spiritual principles exemplified and made a part of our lives through the steps are not a crutch after all. That connection with God is not a crutch, but a stretcher. We can't even limp our way to freedom without Him. I needed that failure to show me that God had to do it, with a little help from me (that help mainly being my willingness to get honest and give Him control and let Him do what He wanted with my life), on His terms rather than mine.
That's what I did/ And a year later, I was still clean and sober. I said stupid arrogant things like I can't understand how anyone could go back out after really getting this. After experiencing the freedom from obsession and recovering from a hopeless state of mind and body, how could anyone throw it all away to return to the misery that drove them broken to the beginning in the first place? The pride that came before the fail. A week after my celebration of that year clean and sober I witnessed another's fall. After three and a half years of climbing to freedom, he plunged back into the depths, and two weeks later we buried him. Oh, and I got mad. Mad at people, mad at God. It wasn't supposed to happen like that.
I quit working on my relationship with God. I quit trying to improve, no, I quit trying to even maintain any semblance of conscious contact with my Creator. Within a month I was white-knuckling it, as I had back in the beginning. The freedom from the obsession was gone. I didn't cry out to God for help. I didn't tell anyone that I was struggling and had lost what I had been given. I retreated. I kept how I was feeling and thinking to myself. God and I weren't talking. I couldn't keep doing the other work, like making amends, because I was too busy just trying to hold onto my sobriety. I quit working on, looking at, and, especially, asking God for help with my character defects, because I was too busy fighting a war against myself to do any of that stuff. I quit looking at what was going on inside and my part in what was messed up in my life, and I quit talking to anyone about it, because I knew that I was in danger, and I knew that I was wrong, and I was ashamed that I was one of those people who had it and threw it away, or lost it, or had it stolen, even though I hadn't picked back up yet. Yet being the key word there.
In case you didn't know this, Dear Reader, you can't surrender your will and life over to the care of a God that you refuse to talk to and are running from.....10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3...and now 2 was fading fast. God returned me to sanity once, but could He do it again? And, if so, could He keep me in that place? I believed it less and less.....1...maybe the reason why I made it 15 months was because I wasn't really one of those people who can't do it...never mind that I had been white knuckling it and fighting the urge to go out for the last three of those months. Doesn't that actually prove the point? I resisted the obsession and compulsion to drink and drug for three months. I did that. On my own. Surely that meant I had some control. So, maybe after being clean for so long I can manage my drinking. And failure beyond epic proportions, I picked up that first drink once again.
Today I celebrate that too. Because that wasn't an early relapse. I couldn't excuse that one with I hadn't done the work yet. No. I was free. I went months without even thinking about going out. I helped others walk the road I had walked and take the steps I had taken. I had made it out of Egypt, through the Red Sea and to the Land of Promise. Then I went back. I was taken captive again. I needed that failure to see that not only is my relationship with God the stretcher that carries me to freedom, but that relationship is the only thing that keeps me there. Not only can I not free and fix myself, once I have been given freedom and a life worth living, I can't keep it on my own either.
I still get angry at God sometimes, and that's OK, if I take that anger to Him. Usually as I tell Him how I feel and why it doesn't take long before I realize just how far back into self I've slipped and that what's upsetting me is that I am not getting my way, the way that I want it and the when that I want it. So I can ask Him once more to forgive me and relieve me of the bondage of self, and I find myself at peace again before the obsession returns. I can become afraid, and that's OK too, as long as I run to my refuge found in relationship with Daddy rather than away from Him. Basically, I can feel, think, and experience all kinds of negative and detrimental things and situations, and as long as I let them drive me to Him rather than from Him, I'm OK. But even the good things won't help if I am turning away from His love and care for me to find what I need in something else besides relationship with Him.
Those are lessons that I learned from failure, failure that nearly killed me. And over seven years later, they still help me remember that I have nothing to be proud about, because I didn't do it. He did. What I did, when I tried to hold onto this thing on my own, was fail.
Sometimes we let shame make us avoid looking at, remembering or talking about our failure. We feel God is ashamed of us for blowing it, or we can only show His glory by talking about and letting people see the victories. But that's bogus. How many parents over the years have rejoiced over their baby's first steps? How many videos have been taken of that precious moment? That great accomplishment and wonderful moment we all cheer over is a moment of failure. Not once have I ever seen or heard of a baby standing up for the first time, taking one step and then going without ever taking a tumble after. Some do better than others. Some take one step, some may walk for half an hour, but all those babies wind up falling on their butt before it's over. Hey, I'm 46, and I slipped and fell just a couple of days ago. It happens. Landed right on my butt, and I swear the goats laughed.
My point is, it's true that it's progress rather than perfection and not progress of perfection. We're going to fall short in the whole relationship with God thing. If we run to Him when we slip into self, when we realize we're taking our will back, we may get back before much damage is done, before we get all the way back to Egypt. But even if we get to the point of eating out of the pig trough, like the Prodigal we've become, before we run back home to Daddy, He is there waiting for us with love and open arms In our weakness, He is shown to be strong. In our failures, His faithfulness and love are proven because it has to be all Him and not us. We have failed. He has not. Don't be ashamed of the failures of the past. They teach us that His love for us is not based on our performance or ability. They remind us that we never get strong enough or well enough to no longer need Him. There is no point where we get to say thanks, I can take it from here. And the hope that our story can give to the hopeless is not that we stopped crawling and started running, without ever a wobble or stumble, but rather that God picked us up after every fall.
And those who I have talked to who have had the miracle of expressing the desire to stay clean and sober for 24 hours and years later still have not relapsed, have all told me they fell and failed. Maybe they didn't pick up that drink or drug, but they have messed up, they have gotten back into self, they have fallen short, far short, of perfection. Relapse or not, we all fail, and these failures remind us of our need for God's grace and of His great love for us. We don't get to use that as an excuse to fail more, but we don't have to be ashamed or hide those failures. We can celebrate the victory that came out of them, the baby that grew to be a track star after all those times falling down, and we can place the glory where it belongs, on Daddy who always picked us up and then who held our hand to keep us from falling back down.
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