Grace Envisioned

Sobriety is a gift. Plain and simple. It has allowed me to begin to experience life in ways I never thought possible…I’ll say that again…it has allowed me to experience life in ways that I never thought possible. But what does that mean? It’s pretty nebulous for the most part. Its difficult to pin down what it means to experience life differently than I have in the past. For me it manifests itself in a myriad of ways. Simple things that may not have meant much, now seem to hit differently for me. Its these moments that I am continuing to happen upon in sobriety that have become heavy in the weight they now carry.

Yesterday I had one of these experiences. It was brief, maybe ten seconds. But this one is going to stick with me a while and I really wanted to put it on paper.

The events that led to the moment were innocuous. A typical Friday night in our house. Our youngest  son was at a sleepover. My wife, older son, and I, had just finished watching a movie and were all about to go to bed. I was detailing my morning plans to them…gym, meeting, breakfast…when my son asked if he could join me for my workout. “Of course!” I said, not sure if he would make it up that early on the first Saturday of Christmas Break. He and his brother had just finished Finals week, so I was totally prepared for morning to come and him wanting to sleep in, but I was really hopeful he would join me.

To my excitement the next morning at 6:40AM, the words “Are you up?” had not finished leaving my mouth before he was standing, looking for his shoes to come join me. I was in heaven! At 15 years-old any and every moment to spend with a teenage son that wants to hang out is a win. I was really looking forward to our workout.

My typical “reward” for a good Saturday morning workout is my large Yeti Cup full of good Community Coffee, (I’ll address my caffeine addiction some other time). I like to leave it in my car as my “finish line” that lets me know I put in the good work to earn that first sip. As I am making it, I pour the creamer into it, and as the last bit of it leaves the carton and I come the realization I was going to leave my wife high-and-dry with nothing for her morning cup of Joe…that is a NO-NO is this house. There are few things in this life that bring pleasure to my bride of almost 20 years like her morning cup of coffee and to take that away from her on the first morning of her Christmas break was a sin I was not willing to commit. I had to fix this.

So, I made a note to remind me to buy the creamer and put it on the dashboard of my car as we left for the gym. The workout was great, my son and I got to talk, and we left there feeling better, albeit sorer, than we arrived. The note I left did its job reminding me that our next stop was the closet grocery store and so off we went to get my creamer and hopefully make it home in time to have every thing ready for my wife to wake up.

To our collective dismay we pull into the grocery store parking lot and see my wife’s car. It didn’t take a lot of mental calculus to realize she had woken up, made her coffee, then had to come to terms with the fact that “yours truly” had taken the last of the creamer and she was now running the last errand she wanted to run at 8AM on a Saturday morning.

We made the decision to go find her and help her finish up any other shopping she may need to attend to. We split up, he went right, and I went left. My path took me pass the cheese and sour cream to the back of the store where the remaining dairy section held the milk and creamer. Bingo! There she was, pushing the cart with the slow roll of one who has not yet had the pleasure of that first cup of morning goodness.

She sees me, and with a slight tilt of the head gives me an inquisitive smile, followed by a hug and kiss and a “What are you doing here?” look. As I make my way to her, I am explaining how my plan to “save her morning” derailed the moment we saw her car in the parking lot. As I finish my sentence, my eyes…looking past my wife…catch my son behind her as he rounds the corner of the produce section and makes his way towards us.

My wife’s eyes catch mine and she naturally directs her attention to where I was looking. And that’s when it happened.

She turns and starts walking towards him. He sees her coming and gets this really silly smile on his face and immediately breaks into this exaggerated duck-walk-run-thing…it looks like it has been practiced. While it may have been the first time I have seen this, it definitely wasn’t the first time they had done this. My wife, seeing Logan start his run, mirrors his gait and in a super-dramatic-slow-mo-scene-from-a-movie-embrace, they fall into each other’s arms laughing and hugging with the added bonus of my wife lifting her leg back as they slowly turn to face me.

It was magical.

They are now looking at me with the widest of smiles, arm-in-arm and slowly making their way back to me. I was floored. The moment overwhelmed me. My eyes filled with tears. I stood their dumbfounded for what I as witnessing. If gratitude were a blanket, I now had it wrapped around me, bringing with it comfort in a way I had never felt before. It was just a moment. It was so simple, but man was it beautiful to witness.

What I want to say right now is that God gave me this moment, but I think the better way to say it is that God gave me the ability to see this moment.

Drugs and alcohol blinded me from the life that was surrounding me. This life has ALWAYS been there. Yet, as close as it was, it was always just out of reach. It took a lot to get to the point in life where I could truly enjoy what I just witnessed. To have this moment and be present in this moment, without the hang-ups and baggage that a life-addicted brings. My previous life would not have allowed that moment to have taken place in the way it just did, and here’s why….

The ripple effects of addiction washes across everyone in its vicinity. My behaviors informed my family’s actions. Eggshells were the floor that they walked on in our home. My volatility, and radical mood swings made it difficult for my family to know peace. Had these last three and a half years passed without me getting sober, it’s an extremely possible (if not probable) reality that I would be alone right now. That’s where we were heading.

Who knows what that reality truly looks like? Its nightmarish to go down that rabbit-hole. Split time between my wife and I. Boys growing up without their father. Me being a hopeless wreck, my wife may have moved on….the more I think about it the scarier it gets. But that didn’t happen.

God, The Spirit or Nature, The Spirit of the Universe or whatever one uses to describe it, stepped in, laid Grace in my lap, and said “Hey, I see you are hurting, come follow me and I will give you things you could never dream of.”

And He did. In the simplest way possible. He let me see it. He opened my eyes and let me see the love that is my life. I just had to trust Him and do the work.

The longer I have stayed sober, the more that is continuing to be revealed. I keep getting a clearer vision to what is most important. Family, Love, Helping Others, Being Present. All of which when practiced, have this way of compounding their effects on what I can see. It hasn’t stopped getting better. Thank God for that!